June 2, 2025

Turning Tragedy into Purpose: Rick and Jane Howe’s Journey with SIDS

Turning Tragedy into Purpose: Rick and Jane Howe’s Journey with SIDS
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Season 6

In this heartfelt episode of No Wrong Choices , we sit down with Rick and Jane Howe to explore their journey after the devastating loss of their infant son, Stevie, to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). They share how, in the face of unimaginable tragedy, they turned their grief into action — creating national awareness campaigns, pioneering educational efforts, and driving change that cut SIDS deaths in half.

Through humor, candor, and raw honesty, Rick and Jane reveal how they found strength in each other, mobilized thousands of volunteers, and ultimately helped save thousands of babies’ lives. Their story is a testament to the power of resilience, community, and the belief that even the most personal pain can lead to a profound and lasting impact.

Whether you’ve faced loss, adversity, or simply want to learn how purpose can emerge from heartbreak, this conversation is both moving and inspiring.


To discover more episodes or connect with us:



00:03 - The Reality of SIDS

01:31 - Beginning the SIDS Awareness Journey

05:20 - Breaking the Silence Around SIDS

10:13 - Adopting Ricky After Tragedy

16:14 - Red Nose Day: A Revolutionary Approach

24:35 - Impact and Changes in SIDS Rates

38:24 - SIDS Today and Future Challenges

42:44 - Closing Thoughts and Resources

WEBVTT

00:00:03.008 --> 00:00:05.136
Nobody's prepared for this, these little babies.

00:00:05.136 --> 00:00:14.871
They just die in their sleep and we know more about it now than we did, you know, 30 years ago when our baby died, but it's still a diagnosis of nothing.

00:00:14.871 --> 00:00:18.708
The phone rang like close to midnight.

00:00:18.708 --> 00:00:20.342
We answered the phone.

00:00:20.342 --> 00:00:27.600
It was a lawyer from Guadalajara and he says I hear that you would like to adopt a baby.

00:00:28.060 --> 00:00:30.387
That little Ricky Howe saved our lives.

00:00:30.487 --> 00:00:31.952
Yeah, he was wonderful.

00:00:35.441 --> 00:00:39.384
We had probably 6,000 volunteers nationwide.

00:00:39.384 --> 00:00:39.746
Wow.

00:00:39.746 --> 00:00:48.595
We recruited Lloyd Bridges, who had lost a baby to SIDS, as our national spokesman and got him to do a PSA.

00:00:48.595 --> 00:00:54.719
We recruited Bozo the Clown as our national spokesman.

00:00:54.719 --> 00:00:59.192
Talk about how in the world is Bozo the Clown talking about SIDS?

00:00:59.192 --> 00:00:59.841
Well, guess what?

00:00:59.841 --> 00:01:11.001
It worked and it got people talking worked and it got people talking.

00:01:11.042 --> 00:01:16.981
We spent a long time following the research and meeting the people who were doing the research and trying to help fundraise to make sure that there was an awareness out there.

00:01:16.981 --> 00:01:19.468
It kept us strong.

00:01:19.468 --> 00:01:20.650
It kept us stronger.

00:01:20.650 --> 00:01:32.200
It kept us alive us stronger, it kept us alive.

00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:36.210
If tragedy comes into your life and you have the ability and the opportunity to make things better for other people, you have to do it.

00:01:36.210 --> 00:01:37.033
You just have to.

00:01:38.980 --> 00:01:41.346
Hello and welcome to no Wrong Choices.

00:01:41.346 --> 00:01:45.474
I'm Larry Samuels and I'll be joined by Larry Shea in just a moment.

00:01:45.474 --> 00:01:48.891
Today's episode is a little bit different from what we usually do.

00:01:48.891 --> 00:02:02.933
Instead of exploring a career path or sharing a very powerful personal journey story from Rick and Jane Howe that was shaped by their experience with SIDS, it's a story of turning tragedy into purpose, healing and impact.

00:02:02.933 --> 00:02:09.088
Before we begin, please be sure to take a moment to like, follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening right now.

00:02:09.088 --> 00:02:11.461
Let's get started Now.

00:02:11.461 --> 00:02:15.153
Joining no Wrong Choices are Rick and Jane Howe.

00:02:15.153 --> 00:02:25.567
Rick is one of my favorite people from within the business of media space and I feel like I know Jane from the countless photos that Rick posts on social media.

00:02:25.567 --> 00:02:27.647
So, jane, I feel like I know you already.

00:02:27.647 --> 00:02:30.967
Welcome to my life in a more formal fashion.

00:02:31.067 --> 00:02:33.393
Thank you, glad to be here Happy to be here.

00:02:33.719 --> 00:02:35.206
so thank you both for joining us.

00:02:35.206 --> 00:02:48.846
Today we're going to explore a very personal and consequential journey from Rick and Jane's lives that had a deep and lasting impact upon them and countless others their experience with SIDS.

00:02:48.846 --> 00:02:55.366
Thank you both for trusting us with what is obviously a very personal and heartfelt story.

00:02:55.627 --> 00:03:04.349
Well, the last time we did this on any kind of camera had to have been, well, my good heaven, in 1987.

00:03:04.570 --> 00:03:05.752
On the Phil Donahue show.

00:03:06.402 --> 00:03:07.507
Or John Rivers.

00:03:07.507 --> 00:03:11.050
We were actually on her show, and that was all in 86 and 87.

00:03:11.050 --> 00:03:15.031
So I can't even count back that far, but that was the last century.

00:03:15.439 --> 00:03:23.384
That was the last century, and I'm guessing that this is going to be a whole lot easier and more comfortable than confronting Phil Donahue and Joan Rivers.

00:03:25.501 --> 00:03:26.866
Joan Rivers was a piece of work.

00:03:26.866 --> 00:03:30.991
Phil Donahue was pretty easy, but the show was an interesting experience.

00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:35.911
I had a chance to watch the clip, as did Larry, and that seemed pretty intense.

00:03:36.632 --> 00:03:42.810
It was Well, and the audience had a lot of SIDS parents in it, so that's where the camera was panning around picking up all those people.

00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:46.389
Well, I promise the two of us will have a lighter touch.

00:03:46.389 --> 00:03:48.587
I can make you that promise, all right, all right.

00:03:48.587 --> 00:04:02.354
So, rick and Jane, before we get into your journey story and how SIDS impacted your life, I think it would be helpful for everyone for you to just share a little bit about what SIDS is.

00:04:03.479 --> 00:04:10.223
Well, this is our personal story, so I'm going to tell you about it from a personal perspective.

00:04:10.223 --> 00:04:12.969
SIDS is not anything I ever worried about.

00:04:12.969 --> 00:04:14.813
I never even thought.

00:04:14.813 --> 00:04:22.100
I'm not sure I even knew about it, but Rick and I were high school sweethearts and we got married and we were married for a long time.

00:04:22.100 --> 00:04:36.269
It's time to start a family and you know, looking at biological clocks and all that kind of stuff and as it turns out, it was not an easy thing for us to get pregnant and have a family seat of turn.

00:04:36.269 --> 00:04:39.552
And he was full-term, he was a healthy bouncy baby boy.

00:04:39.552 --> 00:04:59.242
We named him Stephen and everything was fine until it wasn't, I guess, when Stevie died.

00:04:59.363 --> 00:05:04.696
One thing I want to make sure to say here is that in the world of SIDS, when it comes to married couples, there's a big divorce rate.

00:05:04.696 --> 00:05:12.651
It seems like either this kind of a tragedy in your lifetime makes you stronger or pulls you apart.

00:05:12.651 --> 00:05:19.009
Well, it made Rick and I stronger, and what we decided to do was to get active.

00:05:19.009 --> 00:05:36.382
I think that most people who volunteer for any particular charity that's connected to a medical tragedy do it because the tragedy has affected them themselves, and so in this case, even though we didn't know a whole lot about SIDS.

00:05:36.382 --> 00:05:57.324
We educated ourselves rapidly and I'll tell you what, just in our situation, because SIDS can't be pre-diagnosed, it's a diagnosis upon autopsy and then we found out about the difference between a coroner and a medical examiner and what happens to the tissue samples.

00:05:57.324 --> 00:06:01.754
It was horrible and it made us stronger.

00:06:01.754 --> 00:06:10.461
It made us stronger In my particular opinion about us.

00:06:10.461 --> 00:06:12.446
We took that tragedy and we used it to move forwards, not backwards.

00:06:12.507 --> 00:06:17.341
I think a lot of people who are affected by trauma in their lives let it tear them down.

00:06:18.043 --> 00:06:27.100
We hope to make it build us up and I think, in our particular situation, us up.

00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:35.908
And I think in our particular situation, given the, it's almost like back then, the trauma about block grant money getting turned off and put back into the state and then, one by one, the state SIDS organizations got closed down.

00:06:35.908 --> 00:06:47.492
It was our job to make sure that all this stuff got put back into place, because parents who have lost a child, grandparents who have lost their grandchild, need help.

00:06:47.492 --> 00:06:57.466
They need help, they need support and, as a medical, well, first of all, it's still, I think, number three in terms of lives lost infant children.

00:06:57.466 --> 00:07:02.468
It was number one when we lost Stevie, but the money needs to be there for research.

00:07:02.468 --> 00:07:18.471
The money needs to be there for research, the money needs to be there for support of parents, and we spent a long time following the research and meeting the people who were doing the research and trying to help fundraise to make sure that there was an awareness out there.

00:07:18.471 --> 00:07:27.982
It kept us strong, it kept us stronger, it kept us alive, it kept us basically moving forward instead of backwards.

00:07:28.442 --> 00:07:37.987
Just to make sure that everybody listening really understands what we're talking about SIDS sudden infant death syndrome.

00:07:37.987 --> 00:07:41.473
Can you define for us what that is?

00:07:42.053 --> 00:07:44.632
Here's what I'm going to say, and not a whole lot has changed.

00:07:44.632 --> 00:07:45.920
It is a diagnosis.

00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:50.608
After the fact, sids deaths go into the statistical column.

00:07:50.608 --> 00:07:53.312
After autopsy there is a.

00:07:53.312 --> 00:08:02.483
I guess in families there's a genetic component that if you've had one SIDS death in your family your chances of having another one are greater.

00:08:02.483 --> 00:08:11.187
But really and truly, mostly it happens to a baby while they're sleeping and nobody's prepared for this.

00:08:11.187 --> 00:08:18.112
These little babies, they just die in their sleep and we know more about it now than we did, you know, 30 years ago when our baby died.

00:08:18.112 --> 00:08:21.971
But it's still a diagnosis of nothing.

00:08:21.971 --> 00:08:23.925
They can't find anything wrong.

00:08:24.639 --> 00:08:26.636
I think the official word is something diagnosis of nothing.

00:08:26.636 --> 00:08:27.047
They didn't find anything wrong.

00:08:27.047 --> 00:08:27.891
I think the official word is something diagnosis of exclusion.

00:08:27.891 --> 00:08:34.990
They've excluded all other reasons why the baby might have died and if there isn't anything, it's infant death syndrome.

00:08:35.029 --> 00:08:36.261
Wow, Rick and Jane.

00:08:36.261 --> 00:08:37.307
This is Larry Shea.

00:08:37.307 --> 00:08:38.958
Thank you for sharing this story.

00:08:38.958 --> 00:08:43.566
It obviously deserves a lot of attention and I want to thank you for sharing it with us.

00:08:43.566 --> 00:08:45.541
Take us back to the beginning.

00:08:45.541 --> 00:08:50.673
Did anybody talk about SIDS at all when you had the baby, or was it just after the fact?

00:08:51.740 --> 00:08:53.043
People didn't talk about SIDS.

00:08:53.043 --> 00:08:56.191
It was like people didn't talk about cancer.

00:08:56.191 --> 00:08:56.912
You know the big C.

00:08:56.912 --> 00:08:58.342
You didn't mention it.

00:08:58.342 --> 00:09:04.995
Stevie died, jane and I wrote a public service announcement and company I worked with, showtime, produced it, paid for it, even licensed some music behind announcement.

00:09:04.995 --> 00:09:13.624
And a company I worked with, showtime, produced it, paid for it, even licensed some music behind it and it was beautiful and heartbreaking and it didn't work at all.

00:09:14.105 --> 00:09:23.350
And so after the fact we did a focus group study and those parents didn't know that they were coming in to talk about SIDS.

00:09:23.350 --> 00:09:35.807
They thought they were coming in to talk about things that happen to babies, just broadly right Diseases and falling out of the crib and the cat jumping in the bed and all the old wives tales, all the old foolish fables.

00:09:35.807 --> 00:09:41.467
And I wanted to show these parents storyboards for a PSA.

00:09:41.467 --> 00:09:43.432
And we went around the room.

00:09:43.432 --> 00:09:48.384
It was a one-hour session, I think we went 45 minutes in and nobody mentioned SIDS.

00:09:48.384 --> 00:09:55.587
So I sent a note in to the moderator and I said listen, you got to bring up SIDS, we got to show the storyboards.

00:09:55.587 --> 00:10:02.989
So he said to the group, and these were parents, all parents of newborns one to four months.

00:10:03.389 --> 00:10:12.408
Okay, which is sort of the peak of the curve of Sid's incidents and he said well, what about sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS?

00:10:12.408 --> 00:10:15.263
Everybody in the room pushed back from the table.

00:10:15.263 --> 00:10:19.422
If there had been a thermometer in the room, the temperature would have dropped 10 degrees.

00:10:19.422 --> 00:10:28.905
Everybody knew someone, or knew of someone, who'd lost a baby, but nobody would mention it Since you couldn't do anything about it.

00:10:28.905 --> 00:10:30.311
It was terrifying.

00:10:30.311 --> 00:10:33.589
The pediatricians didn't even talk about it.

00:10:33.589 --> 00:10:36.347
No, there wasn't a thing you could do.

00:10:36.347 --> 00:10:43.254
So that taught us that if we wanted to get people to talk about SIDS, we needed to get to them another way.

00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:48.692
What did you know about SIDS before your tragedy?

00:10:49.259 --> 00:10:53.807
Basically nothing, and I'll go even beyond that.

00:10:53.807 --> 00:10:56.594
Rick and I had been married for a while.

00:10:56.594 --> 00:10:58.582
We were financially stable.

00:10:58.582 --> 00:11:00.125
We knew our marriage was stable.

00:11:00.125 --> 00:11:04.113
We thought, okay, let's have a baby now.

00:11:04.113 --> 00:11:07.499
And we were totally shocked and surprised.

00:11:07.499 --> 00:11:14.951
We thought we were the perfect parents to have a little baby when Stevie died.

00:11:14.951 --> 00:11:15.792
Oh my God.

00:11:15.792 --> 00:11:18.134
It was so what.

00:11:18.134 --> 00:11:19.942
I got mad at God.

00:11:19.942 --> 00:11:21.667
I definitely got mad at God.

00:11:21.667 --> 00:11:23.912
And what do you want us to do?

00:11:23.912 --> 00:11:30.592
And I think that's part of our activism was that we felt that we had to do something to make sure that people were aware of this.

00:11:31.639 --> 00:11:50.063
In that year, which Stevie was born in 84, died in 85, two in a thousand babies live births died, and so back then that was about 7,000 babies a year were SIDS deaths, depending on where you lived in the country.

00:11:50.063 --> 00:12:24.335
There were a lot of people, and we found when we lived in New Jersey, that there was in fact a support group, part of an organization, the National SIDS Foundation, and their job was to run sort of monthly meetings for parents who'd lost babies to SIDS, because we all had similar, almost identical experiences actually, and we all had things that we couldn't talk about in public, that no one wanted to hear, because no one wanted to talk about it.

00:12:25.220 --> 00:12:26.985
Because there was no way to prevent it.

00:12:27.506 --> 00:12:28.571
Right, right.

00:12:28.571 --> 00:12:40.693
So we talked about it in the meetings and I just remember sitting in one meeting and sometimes I had to reach into the back of my brain and bring out a little squirmy thing that I hadn't thought about.

00:12:40.693 --> 00:12:47.722
Yeah, because somebody brought up something and I felt that adding my part to that story would help.

00:12:48.804 --> 00:12:51.529
How difficult was that to open up about it?

00:12:51.529 --> 00:13:04.306
Did you open up about it to each other and the group, or did you just realize that the awareness was so important that you had to open up to a larger group and bring awareness to this?

00:13:04.725 --> 00:13:07.250
Well in terms of meeting up with others.

00:13:07.250 --> 00:13:11.836
You have to remember that this is a diagnosis upon autopsy.

00:13:11.836 --> 00:13:18.892
There's no warning, it just happens, and I carried a lot of guilt.

00:13:18.892 --> 00:13:31.404
I couldn't understand why we, the perfect parents who had prepared so well to have a baby, bring a baby into our lives, how quick this possibly happened to us.

00:13:31.404 --> 00:13:50.650
And even now, I honestly feel that somehow, if tragedy strikes your life, if tragedy comes into your life and you have the ability and the opportunity to make things better for other people, you have to do it.

00:13:50.650 --> 00:13:59.740
You just have to, and I think Rick and I jumped right into that with both feet and really and truly, it gave us something to do other than think about ourselves.

00:14:00.541 --> 00:14:04.104
We actually use the phrase and you said something close to that.

00:14:04.104 --> 00:14:05.725
We actually used the phrase and you said something close to that.

00:14:05.725 --> 00:14:07.267
If you can do it you must do it.

00:14:07.287 --> 00:14:09.028
Yeah, if you can, you must you know.

00:14:09.028 --> 00:14:17.514
And we realized that Jane was an organizer and she ran the state group in New Jersey.

00:14:17.514 --> 00:14:25.062
She's real good at meetings and minutes and all that annoying stuff Me I talk for a living.

00:14:25.062 --> 00:14:27.148
So I was okay doing those meetings.

00:14:27.148 --> 00:14:42.725
But then we got involved on a national level and started figuring out how we could actually make it something that people would talk about and put some pressure on the medical establishment to get research done.

00:14:43.606 --> 00:14:48.120
So I want to get a look into your lives at this point in time.

00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:55.793
So, were you in your late 20s, early 30s at this moment in time, or beyond that?

00:14:56.783 --> 00:14:58.975
We were both 35 when Okay.

00:14:58.975 --> 00:15:02.769
So you're both 35 Actually 34 when Stevie was born, 35 when he died.

00:15:02.919 --> 00:15:03.240
Got it.

00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:08.513
So you're 35 and, rick, you're working at Showtime at that point in time, correct In New York?

00:15:08.513 --> 00:15:11.187
Yep, jane, were you a professional as well.

00:15:11.941 --> 00:15:13.407
I'd been a teacher all my life.

00:15:13.407 --> 00:15:23.434
At that point in time, I was a volunteer at our local environmental center, but I was not getting paid.

00:15:23.434 --> 00:15:32.230
I was doing a lot of work, but I wasn't getting paid, Of course you were getting paid as a mom, but prior to that she was teaching at Bruce Springsteen's high school.

00:15:32.782 --> 00:15:34.884
Oh wait a minute In Freehold New.

00:15:34.905 --> 00:15:35.187
Jersey.

00:15:35.187 --> 00:15:39.851
Now you're making it personal for me as the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan that I know.

00:15:40.942 --> 00:15:42.768
I have taught agriculture all my life.

00:15:42.768 --> 00:15:47.190
I can tell you anything you want to know about growing a beautiful tomato.

00:15:48.159 --> 00:15:48.821
Very nice.

00:15:48.821 --> 00:16:03.188
So you're in your mid-30s and this tragedy strikes and I'm sure that you're lost, you're confused, you're scared, you're upset All the emotions that were going on that moment.

00:16:03.188 --> 00:16:17.957
How long was it in between tragedy striking and being able to create a sense of purpose from this and to create some sort of meaning and a path for yourselves?

00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:26.873
Well, the folks at Showtime, Jane and I, probably the predominant emotion we had is we were angry.

00:16:27.313 --> 00:16:27.614
Yeah.

00:16:27.794 --> 00:16:30.147
Yeah, white heart angry.

00:16:30.147 --> 00:16:32.888
We decided aggression was better than depression.

00:16:33.089 --> 00:16:33.289
Yep.

00:16:34.380 --> 00:16:37.350
The folks at Showtime picked up on that.

00:16:37.350 --> 00:16:39.306
They produced our spot.

00:16:39.306 --> 00:16:49.183
The PR people at Showtime got us on the Phil Donahue show of all things, which was an interesting experience, and then the Joan Rivers show.

00:16:49.183 --> 00:16:51.908
After that, when she had a talk show and four-year audience.

00:16:51.908 --> 00:16:55.714
That was the last time that Jan and I sat and talked about this in public.

00:16:55.714 --> 00:17:00.379
Wow, we'd had private conversations, but that was the last time we did in public.

00:17:00.379 --> 00:17:08.440
But then we did something extraordinarily important in public.

00:17:08.440 --> 00:17:10.003
But then we did something extraordinarily important.

00:17:10.003 --> 00:17:13.791
Stevie died on October 22nd and we decided we could not be around the family my family and Janie's family.

00:17:13.791 --> 00:17:15.181
We just couldn't be there at Christmas.

00:17:15.181 --> 00:17:18.305
Just could not be there at Christmas.

00:17:19.467 --> 00:17:21.390
So Think Debbie Downer.

00:17:21.871 --> 00:17:25.375
Yeah, just couldn't deal with everybody's comments.

00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:29.048
There's no way to know what I mean.

00:17:29.048 --> 00:17:30.351
It's unimaginable.

00:17:30.431 --> 00:17:31.292
Two classic things.

00:17:31.292 --> 00:17:42.093
After Stevie died, my parents came up to stay with us for a while and my dad, sitting there on the couch, came up and he said can you give me something to do?

00:17:42.093 --> 00:17:44.426
I said go mow the lawn.

00:17:44.426 --> 00:17:48.281
Said can you give me something to do?

00:17:48.281 --> 00:17:48.863
I said go, mow the lawn.

00:17:48.863 --> 00:17:55.503
And then shortly after that I was at a trade industry conference and a friend came up to me and I can't believe he actually said this, but I'll never forget it.

00:17:55.503 --> 00:17:57.307
He said yeah, I know how you feel.

00:17:57.307 --> 00:17:58.592
I lost my dog last week.

00:17:58.592 --> 00:18:00.544
Oh wow, are you kidding me?

00:18:00.544 --> 00:18:01.526
But I can't.

00:18:02.147 --> 00:18:03.130
People don't know what to say.

00:18:03.130 --> 00:18:03.632
Do they Right?

00:18:03.632 --> 00:18:05.881
No, kidding me, but I can't.

00:18:05.881 --> 00:18:06.583
People don't know what to say.

00:18:06.583 --> 00:18:07.003
Do they Right?

00:18:07.003 --> 00:18:07.704
No, you don't say it.

00:18:07.704 --> 00:18:08.787
Very often they have nothing to say.

00:18:08.787 --> 00:18:11.834
They have no context when it comes to a parent losing a child.

00:18:11.834 --> 00:18:31.528
So we decided we were going to get away for Christmas and we had a little bit of experience going to Mexico, and right after that was the earthquake in Mexico City, where a lot of the hospitals pancaked, the mothers died and there were babies.

00:18:33.381 --> 00:18:43.057
So we were having a miserable time that Christmas in Mexico, not knowing that Mexico had the highest birth rate in the entire global community.

00:18:43.498 --> 00:18:44.259
Babies everywhere.

00:18:44.519 --> 00:18:47.625
Babies everywhere, babies everywhere this earthquake happened.

00:18:47.625 --> 00:18:52.965
There were a lot of orphans, so we actually went to the local.

00:18:52.965 --> 00:18:54.430
I can't believe we did this.

00:18:54.430 --> 00:18:55.372
We were so naive.

00:18:55.372 --> 00:18:57.480
We went to the local embassy.

00:18:57.480 --> 00:19:11.730
We talked to the people in the embassy about these babies who might need parents because we were parents who were looking for a baby and they said, well, you know, we have an orphanage system here.

00:19:11.730 --> 00:19:27.185
We don't really do this, but we know this person, who women find him and if they want to place a baby and so, to make a long story short, if you remember, hands Across America, I do long story short if you remember Hands Across America.

00:19:27.646 --> 00:19:36.325
That night both of my sisters were in our house in New Jersey because we were going to go to Princeton and hold hands across America and the phone rang like close to midnight.

00:19:36.325 --> 00:19:37.928
We answered the phone.

00:19:37.928 --> 00:19:45.369
It was a lawyer from Guadalajara and he says I hear that you would like to adopt a baby.

00:19:45.369 --> 00:19:47.453
And we said yeah, yeah.

00:19:47.453 --> 00:19:50.765
And one thing led to another.

00:19:50.765 --> 00:19:57.405
There was a whole lot of serendipity involved and we adopted our Ricky Howe.

00:19:57.405 --> 00:20:03.564
He was born on September 24th and we were down there waiting for him to be born.

00:20:04.174 --> 00:20:07.340
I'm going to embarrass you for a minute we were down there waiting.

00:20:07.340 --> 00:20:15.321
Stevie had died previous October, ricky was born September 24th and Jane got her milk back.

00:20:15.634 --> 00:20:19.201
Oh yeah, I got my milk supply back.

00:20:20.255 --> 00:20:21.319
The human body.

00:20:22.035 --> 00:20:23.863
We actually took this as a sign from.

00:20:25.260 --> 00:20:25.361
God.

00:20:25.361 --> 00:20:29.501
And this is a year after Stevie had passed away Eleven months.

00:20:30.458 --> 00:20:35.260
I woke up one morning and I looked brushing my teeth I'm like what's that on my shirt?

00:20:35.260 --> 00:20:37.583
And I got my milk supply back.

00:20:37.583 --> 00:20:41.665
So I called La Leche League and I said, well, what's going on?

00:20:41.665 --> 00:20:43.461
And they said, oh, it happens all the time.

00:20:43.461 --> 00:20:45.621
Go out and get a pump and build up your supply.

00:20:45.621 --> 00:20:46.784
Wow.

00:20:46.844 --> 00:20:47.065
Yeah.

00:20:48.454 --> 00:20:49.817
It was at home.

00:20:49.817 --> 00:20:52.282
People were like are you crazy?

00:20:52.282 --> 00:20:54.868
You're going to give your money to an old Mexican lawyer?

00:20:54.868 --> 00:20:56.234
What are you?

00:20:56.255 --> 00:20:56.336
nuts.

00:20:56.336 --> 00:21:06.909
We stayed at a little casita in a village outside of Guadalajara about two months because you couldn't begin the adoption process in Mexico.

00:21:06.909 --> 00:21:20.124
Until the baby was born we got referrals from friends and physicians was born, we got referrals from friends and physicians we went to the Mexican consulate in New York City to get all those documents stamped and authenticated.

00:21:20.124 --> 00:21:26.864
So when Stevie was born, we were in a tiny little hotel.

00:21:26.864 --> 00:21:27.465
Oh my heavens.

00:21:27.465 --> 00:21:31.617
When Ricky was born Wow, we were at a tiny little hotel in Guadalajara.

00:21:31.617 --> 00:21:33.244
I think you had him in his arms within a couple hours before he was born.

00:21:33.244 --> 00:21:34.470
Wow, we were at a tiny little hotel in Guadalajara.

00:21:34.470 --> 00:21:37.799
I think you had him in his arms within a couple hours before he was born.

00:21:37.820 --> 00:21:39.144
Yeah, I had him right away.

00:21:39.625 --> 00:21:45.290
We hopped in the car, we went down to the village and spent the next two months on Mexican baby time.

00:21:45.592 --> 00:22:02.441
And I would like to say this adoption all by itself, no matter where you are, but especially in this country, there's a whole lot of things that a lot of places where you can fall down for a number of different reasons, but I think the main reason is that we weren't afraid.

00:22:02.441 --> 00:22:12.063
We had so much experience with infertility and if we had to wait, maybe to get pregnant again, for the next baby to come around.

00:22:12.063 --> 00:22:17.653
And here there's, I call it, this whole world full of babies that needed parents, and we were there.

00:22:17.653 --> 00:22:24.688
We were parents that were perfectly willing and able to bring in a new child into our family, and it worked out.

00:22:25.355 --> 00:22:27.482
That little Ricky Howe saved our lives.

00:22:27.894 --> 00:22:29.060
Yeah, he was wonderful.

00:22:30.016 --> 00:22:40.025
Well as somebody who is adopted or was adopted, I certainly have great admiration and respect for everything you did, and I was very lucky in my life as well.

00:22:40.194 --> 00:22:42.759
Well, we came to the conclusion.

00:22:42.759 --> 00:22:48.710
I still actually believe this with all my heart is that families come together in so many different ways.

00:22:49.316 --> 00:22:52.097
So there's, something there, yeah, for sure.

00:22:52.799 --> 00:23:04.984
I have to ask while this process is going on obviously a super important time you're putting your family back together and finding this love and this Mexican baby time, as it were.

00:23:04.984 --> 00:23:19.679
Are you still in the back of your mind, or maybe even having open conversations about the awareness factor, or did you just put professional and everything on hold to take that time that you needed, or were you still talking about it?

00:23:20.500 --> 00:23:21.564
Awareness about SIDS.

00:23:21.604 --> 00:23:21.964
Correct.

00:23:22.527 --> 00:23:24.402
Yeah, no, it never went away Right.

00:23:24.855 --> 00:23:28.086
And here is where the story takes an interesting turn.

00:23:28.086 --> 00:23:40.144
After we did that public service announcement that was so perfectly recorded and perfectly written and completely turned people off, and then we realized that you needed to come at it a different way.

00:23:40.144 --> 00:23:48.471
We saw that a SIDS organization in Australia had ripped off Red Nose Day from England.

00:23:48.471 --> 00:23:55.981
England Red Nose Day was comic relief where you'd put on a red nose, you had to buy it and you would do it for a good cause.

00:23:55.981 --> 00:24:02.461
They did National Red Nose Day for SIDS in Australia and it took us a while to kind of figure out what was going on there.

00:24:02.461 --> 00:24:19.105
And it occurred to us that the way you got people to talk about SIDS was to kind of come around the back of the head and you got them to get a red nose and to talk about stopping SIDS before they really understood what they were doing.

00:24:19.105 --> 00:24:25.766
And then they developed the awareness themselves at their own pace as to what they were doing.

00:24:25.934 --> 00:24:34.528
So we ran from our living room a national awareness campaign for Red Nose Day USA.

00:24:34.528 --> 00:24:39.059
We had probably 6,000 volunteers nationwide.

00:24:39.059 --> 00:24:47.839
We recruited Lloyd Bridges, who had lost a baby to SIDS, as our national spokesman and got him to do a PSA.

00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:59.163
We recruited Bozo the Clown as our national smoke clown and he was on our posters and again, talk about how in the world is Bozo the Clown talking about SIDS?

00:24:59.163 --> 00:24:59.806
Well, guess what?

00:24:59.806 --> 00:25:02.761
It worked and it got people talking.

00:25:02.761 --> 00:25:04.459
It ran for about three years.

00:25:04.459 --> 00:25:08.607
Did all the national promotional jazz that you would do?

00:25:08.607 --> 00:25:17.240
And what happened was people started talking and at the same time, there had been research that was done.

00:25:17.760 --> 00:25:21.087
It started in England, but it was corroborated in Australia.

00:25:21.894 --> 00:25:34.858
And prior to this time, my parents, jane's parents, and all the nurses and all the grandparents said you put a baby down to sleep and put the baby on the tummy, because if the baby throws up he's not going to choke.

00:25:34.858 --> 00:25:36.702
That's what we all did.

00:25:36.702 --> 00:25:44.084
And in England they did a study of babies on their backs and a magical thing the SIDS rate was cut in half.

00:25:44.084 --> 00:25:46.509
Wow, just from that.

00:25:46.835 --> 00:25:48.419
And that happened in Australia.

00:25:48.419 --> 00:25:59.855
And we were down there and they said you've got to do this in the United States and the American Medical Association said said you've got to do this in the United States and the American Medical Association said no, we've got to replicate their data.

00:25:59.855 --> 00:26:01.098
You can't do that right now.

00:26:01.098 --> 00:26:01.807
So we just how long was that going to take?

00:26:01.807 --> 00:26:03.150
Oh, another 10-year study Wow.

00:26:03.635 --> 00:26:04.638
You know what it was.

00:26:04.638 --> 00:26:10.717
The study was one thing, but they had to change all the way they taught doctors and nurses.

00:26:10.717 --> 00:26:17.736
They had to change all the medical books, all the medical text, if they were going to say it's not stomach to sleep anymore, it's back to sleep.

00:26:17.736 --> 00:26:24.776
It was just an enormous, enormous expense for them by way of how they educate doctors and nurses.

00:26:24.776 --> 00:26:26.818
So we just did it.

00:26:27.359 --> 00:26:30.384
For the third year of the campaign.

00:26:30.384 --> 00:26:32.769
It ran 91, 92, 93, 94.

00:26:32.769 --> 00:26:42.134
I went to a Walgreens board meeting with Bozo the Clown at the invitation of the chairman of Walgreens, who was the Sid's grandparent.

00:26:42.134 --> 00:26:49.188
But he wasn't at that meeting so I went into the meeting, without the support of the chairman, with Bozo in Chicago.

00:26:49.188 --> 00:27:00.990
Now just got to tell you you haven't lived until you've seen a bunch of very senior corporate executives turning into little children when Bozo's walking around going.

00:27:01.175 --> 00:27:02.442
Did he make balloon animals?

00:27:02.442 --> 00:27:04.539
That's great.

00:27:05.855 --> 00:27:18.202
But the net result was Walgreens not only published a booklet called Back to Sleep Reducing the Risk for SIDS, they distributed it at their stores.

00:27:18.202 --> 00:27:20.701
We had our red noses.

00:27:20.701 --> 00:27:28.515
We had a red nose for $2 and a badge that said I'm too chicken to wear a red nose, but there was a 50 cent fine, so you had to pay $2.50.

00:27:28.515 --> 00:27:32.224
And we had a nose that would go on the grill of your car.

00:27:32.954 --> 00:27:43.124
Walgreens sold them nationwide in 1999, and that was the first time that the word got out about putting babies on their backs to sleep.

00:27:43.124 --> 00:27:45.221
Yep, and what was the impact?

00:27:45.221 --> 00:27:49.685
In 1993, we lost about 7,000 babies.

00:27:49.685 --> 00:27:53.040
By 1995, we lost 3,500.

00:27:53.040 --> 00:27:54.202
Wow, cut it in half.

00:27:54.202 --> 00:27:55.105
Incredible.

00:27:55.105 --> 00:28:04.679
And the issue I mean just understand, this isn't a vaccination or something that takes a long time.

00:28:04.679 --> 00:28:07.806
You just put the babies on their backs and the results were instantaneous.

00:28:07.806 --> 00:28:11.740
And then the American Academy of Pediatrics said, yep, okay, it's all right.

00:28:11.740 --> 00:28:13.946
And the AMA said, yep, okay, it's all right.

00:28:13.946 --> 00:28:19.346
And all of a sudden even the nurses said it took a while with the grandmothers I think.

00:28:19.346 --> 00:28:22.182
But even the nurses said the baby's not our baby.

00:28:22.182 --> 00:28:22.845
It's remarkable.

00:28:22.845 --> 00:28:25.644
So it had an instant impact.

00:28:26.234 --> 00:28:40.403
So I'm curious, when you were at Showtime, as all of this stuff was developing, when you were at Showtime, as all of this stuff was developing, did you make a decision to walk away from Showtime to pursue this full time?

00:28:40.564 --> 00:28:41.384
No, no, no.

00:28:41.384 --> 00:28:46.106
As a matter of fact, the energy level was high.

00:28:46.106 --> 00:28:48.867
The president of Showtime was Tony Cox.

00:28:48.867 --> 00:28:52.711
He supported our work, supported my work.

00:28:52.711 --> 00:28:56.212
At Showtime we had a terrific staff.

00:28:56.212 --> 00:29:10.448
And just an interesting anecdote of this in early September 86, I'm going to the office waiting for the phone to ring because Ricky could have been born at any time after early September.

00:29:10.448 --> 00:29:16.039
I'm sitting in the office staring at the phone and my people said for Christ's sake, will you get out of here?

00:29:16.039 --> 00:29:20.163
We got this, so we packed up and we went to Mexico.

00:29:20.163 --> 00:29:25.169
The Showtime people were hugely supportive Corporately.

00:29:25.569 --> 00:29:37.134
They were part of Viacom corporately and all my friends there were unbelievably supportive of our work.

00:29:37.134 --> 00:29:43.795
Amazing, how did you because this is important for any kind of mobilization how were you able to reach Lloyd Bridges, reach Bozo the Clown?

00:29:43.795 --> 00:29:46.385
How were you able to, obviously, to get them on board.

00:29:46.385 --> 00:29:54.186
Lloyd had a very personal connection to the story, but how were you able to reach them and convince them that you guys were going to make a difference?

00:29:55.809 --> 00:30:03.107
Actually, I think Larry wouldn't understand that I'm a real asshole

00:30:03.307 --> 00:30:05.974
If Rick wants something, he will find a way to get it.

00:30:05.994 --> 00:30:09.461
He heard that Lloyd was a Sid's grandparent.

00:30:09.461 --> 00:30:31.604
So I flew out to LA, met in their little house with Lloyd and his wife Dorothy, who he called the general, and so I went through my pitch and I said we'd like you to do a public service announcement wearing a red nose and he goes, I'm not doing that.

00:30:31.604 --> 00:30:32.924
Dorothy said one word.

00:30:32.924 --> 00:31:03.652
She said Lloyd and Larry Harmon was the original, one of the original Bozos and I looked up his agent and he put me in contact with Larry and I went to Larry's apartment in New York which was filled, of course, with Bozo tchotchkes and we got Larry and Bozo to be our national spokes clown and, frankly, once we had those two, all of the PR stuff, we got on the Today Show with the weather guy Willard Scott.

00:31:03.672 --> 00:31:04.994
Willard Scott, Willard Scott sure.

00:31:05.775 --> 00:31:07.742
Wearing a red nose and holding up the poster.

00:31:07.742 --> 00:31:10.843
Janie got involved with the local clowns.

00:31:10.843 --> 00:31:12.086
Nationwide Yep.

00:31:13.676 --> 00:31:14.821
I became a clown.

00:31:14.821 --> 00:31:17.444
I was Mary Jane from Maryland.

00:31:17.955 --> 00:31:20.163
And you think herding cats is hard.

00:31:20.163 --> 00:31:21.621
You should try herding a clown.

00:31:21.621 --> 00:31:26.662
You know they have their own thing.

00:31:26.662 --> 00:31:27.223
But guess what?

00:31:27.223 --> 00:31:31.626
They got right behind the program and they supported us in local events.

00:31:31.626 --> 00:31:36.185
And what we had in New Jersey was the New Jersey chapter of the National SIDS Foundation.

00:31:36.185 --> 00:31:43.847
But then there was also the Maryland chapter and the Florida chapter and individual cities and a half dozen chapters in California.

00:31:43.847 --> 00:31:51.298
And all of those chapters and all of those volunteers were the people who made that campaign, Red Nose Day work.

00:31:51.298 --> 00:32:02.423
They got local support, they sold the red noses and it's not the kind of thing that would have worked in Manhattan, but boy, in Omaha it was a gangbust.

00:32:02.463 --> 00:32:03.448
That's incredible.

00:32:03.528 --> 00:32:09.244
Just a different kind of feel to the place, although it did pretty good in LA, but New York was a little snotty for that.

00:32:09.244 --> 00:32:09.826
Sorry, larry.

00:32:10.454 --> 00:32:13.142
that's all right, I grew up in Buffalo.

00:32:13.142 --> 00:32:15.027
I'm half and half at this point, I guess.

00:32:17.076 --> 00:32:18.859
Well, we did talk to other.

00:32:18.859 --> 00:32:19.902
We did look.

00:32:19.902 --> 00:32:24.700
There was a lot of people who've lost kids to SIDS but they don't make it public.

00:32:24.700 --> 00:32:37.579
When we did find Lloyd Bridges and his family and we talked to with Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges and they told us that I guess the Sid's baby was in between Bo and Jeff.

00:32:37.579 --> 00:32:46.346
Bo said I had a normal childhood but when Jeff was born my mom would chew his food for him if she thought it would save his life.

00:32:46.346 --> 00:32:57.276
And then he turned into the wild one because he'd been brought up very strictly controlled from a safety point of view.

00:32:57.276 --> 00:33:00.503
You know, and it affects families that way.

00:33:00.503 --> 00:33:10.763
When our Stevie died, my sister how devastating and really and truly the whole government behind it, you know losing the.

00:33:10.763 --> 00:33:28.779
I guess John Kennedy created individual state departments that got folded into block grant money and once the states were able to do what they wanted with the block grant money, they closed those SIDS programs down, which sounds like something we're going through today.

00:33:29.060 --> 00:33:38.181
Yeah, before we get into that and that's critical and we will talk about that in a moment I'm curious about momentum and longevity.

00:33:38.181 --> 00:33:48.056
After you go through this incredible effort and have such wonderful success in terms of creating awareness and bringing numbers down, et cetera, et cetera.

00:33:48.056 --> 00:33:51.743
I'm curious were there regulations that were put in place?

00:33:51.743 --> 00:33:53.748
Were there foundations that were created?

00:33:53.748 --> 00:34:00.167
Were there funds that were created to continue the work that you guys had done?

00:34:00.994 --> 00:34:15.822
There was, frankly, not anywhere close to enough research money put into SIDS, because in the scale of how many people die from cancer and this and that and the other thing, sids is pretty far down the list and we still don't know what causes it, by the way.

00:34:15.822 --> 00:34:17.967
So it's hard, hard research.

00:34:17.967 --> 00:34:21.483
There's a new story that comes out every couple of years.

00:34:21.483 --> 00:34:28.686
Somebody said it was the brainstem and somebody said this kind of chemical in your system, that kind of chemical, you don't know.

00:34:28.686 --> 00:34:37.916
Okay, but the research is continuing, independent primarily of the government, and you'll you're going to ask the question a little bit about what the government was doing.

00:34:37.916 --> 00:34:48.135
In our specific case, when we got the numbers down with red nose day, we said, well, number one, we were doing that as volunteers, so we ran out of money, so I had to go back to work.

00:34:48.135 --> 00:34:59.927
But you know, after four years of that we said, okay, we're done, we've got a family, and we sort of stepped away from the whole thing and worked on raising a kid.

00:35:00.114 --> 00:35:08.878
Yeah, I would like to add to that that instead of living in the past then for Stevie, we lived in the present for our son, ricky.

00:35:08.878 --> 00:35:19.929
He was old enough that he knew what the time divide was on activities, and me personally, I had to get over my guilt.

00:35:20.050 --> 00:35:38.231
I thought, you know, when we got Ricky it was my second chance and I had to devote myself to him and I did the best that I could, and at one point I had to let go of Stevie and embrace Ricky, but on the other hand, go of Stevie and embrace Ricky but on the other hand, we didn't really protect Ricky?

00:35:38.271 --> 00:35:38.731
No, we didn't.

00:35:38.731 --> 00:35:44.360
If he wanted to practice walking across the top of a fence, he could do it.

00:35:44.360 --> 00:35:48.007
He was pretty athletic and boy, we dragged that kid all over the world.

00:35:48.027 --> 00:35:48.389
Yeah, we did.

00:35:49.496 --> 00:35:50.902
All of our SIDS-related.

00:35:50.961 --> 00:35:51.885
Yeah, we were not.

00:35:51.885 --> 00:35:52.585
I agree with that we were not.

00:35:52.585 --> 00:35:53.094
I agree with that.

00:35:53.094 --> 00:35:55.021
We were not overprotective with him.

00:35:55.021 --> 00:35:56.639
I think he benefited from that.

00:35:56.639 --> 00:35:57.503
Yeah sure.

00:35:58.275 --> 00:36:08.130
I just have to ask if, at this point in the journey, when you're stepping away, you've brought awareness, you've done what you can do to a certain extent and you wanted to get back to your family.

00:36:08.130 --> 00:36:13.757
I don't even know how to ask this, but did you pat yourself on the back for bringing this awareness?

00:36:13.757 --> 00:36:17.099
I mean, it's amazing what you were able to accomplish.

00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:32.289
There must have been some reflection of we did a damn good thing here and now the SIDS organization itself had gone through a lot of changes.

00:36:32.289 --> 00:36:40.722
I remember standing in the entry room into the main speaker's auditorium thinking like, oh, what am I doing here, you know?

00:36:40.722 --> 00:36:44.565
And somebody walked up to me and they said God, you're Jane Howe.

00:36:44.565 --> 00:36:49.605
And I said yeah, and they said do you know how many babies lives you saved?

00:36:49.605 --> 00:36:56.561
And that was the first time that I actually thought about it that way and that somebody else thought of it that way too.

00:36:57.536 --> 00:37:04.775
We can reasonably assume that the process of putting the babies on their backs to sleep would have come along eventually.

00:37:04.775 --> 00:37:11.360
What we think we did, with all the people and all the volunteers and everything else, was we accelerated that.

00:37:11.380 --> 00:37:11.541
Yeah.

00:37:11.581 --> 00:37:13.538
Sure did so arguably.

00:37:13.538 --> 00:37:18.146
3,500 babies a year, times however many years Decades.

00:37:18.146 --> 00:37:20.302
Yeah, we're not backpatters.

00:37:20.302 --> 00:37:24.646
We were too busy living our lives with our little Ricky boy.

00:37:24.646 --> 00:37:27.802
Again, he saved us.

00:37:27.963 --> 00:37:30.260
Yep, he made us a family again.

00:37:30.942 --> 00:37:31.704
That's incredible.

00:37:31.704 --> 00:37:32.706
It's funny.

00:37:32.706 --> 00:37:42.407
You think about success within our journeys and I imagine what could be a greater success than what you just described?

00:37:42.775 --> 00:37:45.255
It wasn't just us, we just were the catalyst.

00:37:45.255 --> 00:37:51.606
I will tell you the one thing what we did with Red Nose Day was a direct outprop of the work that I did at Showtime.

00:37:51.606 --> 00:37:52.405
I ran national promotions at Showtime.

00:37:52.405 --> 00:37:54.257
I ran national promotions at Showtime.

00:37:54.257 --> 00:37:55.780
I knew how to do that shit Right.

00:37:56.099 --> 00:38:00.869
So where are we with SIDS today, in 2025?

00:38:00.869 --> 00:38:02.938
Has your impact endured?

00:38:03.018 --> 00:38:04.360
Well, the numbers have stayed down.

00:38:04.822 --> 00:38:14.148
However, within ethnic populations, notably African-American and Native American populations, the numbers are creeping back up.

00:38:14.335 --> 00:39:14.748
The SIDS rates are creeping back up and part of that is attributed to the fact that they're not getting the instructions about putting the babies on the back and also not covering the babies with blankets, and there's a handful of fine-tuned things there, but the real issue is putting the babies on the back and the Eunice Shriver Institute at the NICHD started taking over the education for back to sleep and publishing the brochures, getting that information out, training the doctors, training the hospitals, working with local organizations and just keeping the push up until just a few days ago, when we're recording this, when the administration the Trump administration cut the funding down for the national institutes, cut the staffing down at NIH, and everything we've read in the last couple of days is that all the support work for SIDS is going to go away.

00:39:14.748 --> 00:39:32.581
There will still be some volunteer organizations, like the one that we worked with, which still exists, but with $50,000 a year budgets not however much the NIH has and hospitals doing research but having to get their own money to do that.

00:39:32.581 --> 00:39:38.550
But the federal government's support to save these babies may dry up.

00:39:38.735 --> 00:39:40.961
Certainly they're trying to dry it up.

00:39:41.824 --> 00:39:51.135
Wow, has progress been made in terms of research and trying to figure out what SIDS really is Like?

00:39:51.135 --> 00:39:53.603
Have we learned more over the past?

00:39:53.603 --> 00:39:54.445
You know, bunch of years.

00:39:55.175 --> 00:40:01.170
The prominent piece of evidence appears to be the infant brainstem.

00:40:01.170 --> 00:40:27.724
The spotlight on the infant brainstem has to do with damage from toxins, from a third trimester infection they think it's Staphylococcus that the infant brainstem is damaged and it can no longer make a decision between heart or lung, which is one of the reasons why I guess, putting the baby on his back instead of his stomach, that infants that have this.

00:40:28.398 --> 00:40:29.835
Predilection almost right.

00:40:30.096 --> 00:40:38.342
Yeah that have this damage to their brainstem do not arouse when they're breathing in carbon monoxide instead of oxygen.

00:40:38.342 --> 00:40:49.344
So if you take their face away from any kind of soft bedding and turn them on their backs, I guess a lot of people will say well then they're going to aspirate if they regurgitate.

00:40:49.344 --> 00:41:00.289
Well, it turns out that breathing in carbon monoxide was more detrimental to these babies that had this damage to their infant brainstem, which controlled autonomic function.

00:41:01.215 --> 00:41:09.199
What we know so far in the research is different theories as to why it happens, not a lick of information about how to stop it.

00:41:09.199 --> 00:41:09.840
Nothing Got it.

00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:12.061
There's no vaccination of information about how to stop it.

00:41:12.061 --> 00:41:13.161
Nothing Got it.

00:41:13.161 --> 00:41:14.583
There's no vaccination.

00:41:14.583 --> 00:41:16.423
There's no way to prevent it.

00:41:16.423 --> 00:41:20.766
Parents are still going to get up and check on their babies, yeah, night long.

00:41:20.766 --> 00:41:25.269
We used to have a whole business of baby monitors.

00:41:25.269 --> 00:41:36.764
Monitors, yeah, and they sold a lot of baby monitors and none of them did any good Because, frankly, if the baby is going to stop, the baby's gonna stop breathing and there's not a blessed thing in the world you can do.

00:41:37.496 --> 00:41:44.956
Yeah, obviously a lot more work to be done in this area and tons tons more losing funding does not help, you know.

00:41:44.956 --> 00:41:46.380
No, it's just tragic.

00:41:46.380 --> 00:42:15.757
I want to just say I think one of the most remarkable things about your story and your journey both of you is something that you stated at the very beginning, which is, when something happens like this, it usually ends with divorce and you blaming each other and you tearing each other apart and this is the exact opposite of that of the strength that you gave each other to build each other up and it's just admirable from my perspective up, and it's just admirable from my perspective.

00:42:15.798 --> 00:42:20.454
I want to ask you about advice for anybody navigating any kind of tragedy with a baby, whether it be SIDS or something else of this nature.

00:42:20.454 --> 00:42:26.307
How can they learn from your story and be as strong as you were through this journey?

00:42:26.934 --> 00:42:28.117
Don't be afraid to talk about it.

00:42:28.117 --> 00:42:36.780
Find other people who've gone through what you've gone through, and my own personal view don't give in to depression.

00:42:36.780 --> 00:42:39.025
Fight back, get angry.

00:42:39.326 --> 00:42:40.007
Make a difference.

00:42:40.007 --> 00:42:46.007
That's great advice and for anybody out there listening who would like to make a difference.

00:42:46.007 --> 00:42:47.157
Where can they go?

00:42:47.157 --> 00:42:48.342
Can they donate?

00:42:48.342 --> 00:42:49.706
How can people get involved?

00:42:50.175 --> 00:42:53.916
There is an organization they can simply Google First Candle.

00:42:53.916 --> 00:42:57.188
That is the name of the organization that we worked with.

00:42:57.188 --> 00:42:58.552
That has grown up.

00:42:58.552 --> 00:43:10.382
They've expanded their work a little bit past SIDS to other infant death issues, but First Candle is now going to take vastly more importance if the government is backing away.

00:43:10.382 --> 00:43:13.588
So go to First Candle I think it would be firstcandleorg.

00:43:13.588 --> 00:43:21.329
They are there to listen and they are there to help and maybe, more importantly, give you something that you can do.

00:43:22.856 --> 00:43:27.405
That's great advice and everybody out there, make sure you check that out.

00:43:27.405 --> 00:43:31.306
And Rick and Jane, this has been such an incredible story.

00:43:31.306 --> 00:43:34.054
And Rick and Jane, this has been such an incredible story.

00:43:34.054 --> 00:43:43.706
It's an inspiration in so many different ways, as Larry just articulated, to see two people come together to become stronger through something like this.

00:43:43.706 --> 00:43:46.824
It's something that all of us can learn from.

00:43:46.824 --> 00:43:49.164
I'm so blown away by this story.

00:43:49.164 --> 00:43:51.983
Thank you for bringing this to us.

00:43:51.983 --> 00:43:56.338
Is there anything else you'd like to share before we part?

00:43:56.739 --> 00:44:00.927
I think when you have a partner for life, that's what makes it all work.

00:44:01.614 --> 00:44:04.003
Truer words have never been spoken.

00:44:04.003 --> 00:44:05.748
What great advice from Rick.

00:44:05.748 --> 00:44:08.637
Larry Shea, what are your takeaways from this conversation?

00:44:09.298 --> 00:44:15.518
Yeah, you know we talk about adversity a lot on this program, you know, but never quite like this.

00:44:15.518 --> 00:44:27.856
This is way beyond like life handing you lemons and let's go make some lemonade, obviously, but just the strength, the mobilization, the determination to make a real difference.

00:44:27.856 --> 00:44:32.219
I mean it's truly remarkable and a remarkable story.

00:44:32.219 --> 00:44:38.887
But I think the true story is them just defying the odds to stay together.

00:44:38.887 --> 00:44:42.692
You know, usually these things tear people apart and it's just.

00:44:42.692 --> 00:44:50.068
This is flipping the table over, you know, and saying you know what's been done in the past isn't good enough and we're going to do something about it.

00:44:50.068 --> 00:44:52.242
And it's just so admirable.

00:44:52.242 --> 00:45:01.181
It's a story of facing incredible adversity and I just want to say this family is truly remarkable and I'm inspired by them.

00:45:01.181 --> 00:45:02.063
It was really touching.

00:45:02.443 --> 00:45:03.005
Absolutely.

00:45:03.005 --> 00:45:07.639
You know we came up with an idea for a show, you know, a long time ago.

00:45:07.639 --> 00:45:33.456
That was tied to learning from, you know, our experiences and learning from the different things that happened to us along the way, and it was all based in the belief that every single thing that we go through, every single thing that we do, we learn from and in some way it makes us better, it makes us stronger, it makes us more capable and, you know, unfortunately for the Howe family, they had to go through tragedy in this case.

00:45:33.456 --> 00:46:08.525
But you know, all of that really holds true here and it's truly incredible and inspiring to see what they were able to do with what was thrown at them, to ignite, in a way, a foundation, to create such an impact on a cause that was taboo, that wasn't talked about, that was a secret that was hiding in everybody's back room in a way, to bring that to the forefront in the way that they did and to use what they went through in this way.

00:46:10.288 --> 00:46:13.289
We haven't really broached this subject before.

00:46:13.289 --> 00:46:16.963
We haven't talked to people who have gone through something like this before.

00:46:16.963 --> 00:46:24.907
I learned so much, I was so incredibly inspired and you know I have a great deal of respect for Rick.

00:46:24.907 --> 00:46:36.021
I've known him for a long time and in a way, this, I think, deepened that if, if, if it was at possible, I just, I was blown away and we have to pat them on the back.

00:46:36.715 --> 00:46:46.181
If they're not going to do it themselves, we should, because they saved thousands of lives, countless thousands of lives, and I just thank them.

00:46:46.181 --> 00:46:49.043
I thank them for sharing their story and I thank them for what they've done.

00:46:49.644 --> 00:46:50.005
I do too.

00:46:50.005 --> 00:46:54.101
Rick and Jane, thank you so much for trusting us with this story.

00:46:54.101 --> 00:46:57.807
As we touched on at the end of the conversation.

00:46:57.807 --> 00:47:15.436
If anybody out there would like to learn more or get involved, the website that you can visit is firstcandleorg, and they are set up to really tackle SIDS and to tackle this very delicate and critically important topic and issue.

00:47:15.436 --> 00:47:20.927
So, Rick and Jane Howe, thank you so much for joining this episode of no Wrong Choices.

00:47:20.927 --> 00:47:23.500
We also thank you for joining us.

00:47:23.500 --> 00:47:33.206
If this episode made you think of somebody who could be a great guest, please let us know by reaching out via the contact page of our website at norWrongChoicescom.

00:47:33.206 --> 00:47:41.320
While you're there, you can check out our blog for highlights and extra insights from our conversations, and don't forget to follow us on social media.

00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:45.777
We're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram Threads, YouTube and X.

00:47:45.777 --> 00:47:50.208
On behalf of Larry Shea and me, Larry Samuels, thank you again for joining us.

00:47:50.208 --> 00:47:53.599
We'll be back with another inspiring episode next week.