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TwitThisDoing the Impossible
Rudy Giuliani loves the impossible. That trait has shaped his life, prepared him to lead the nation in those horrific days after September 11 and transformed him into our most popular leader. In this interview with Reader's Digest, the mayor reveals how he learned to fight for what he believes in and how he overcame his worst fear. He also candidly discusses the love in his life -- and God's plan for his future.RD: What is your first memory?
Giuliani: In the late '40s, at the height of the rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, we lived so close to Ebbets Field that you could hear the fans cheering. But my father was a Yankee fan. Before I had a choice, he began dressing me up in a little Yankee uniform -- even my bat had Yankee pinstripes.
RD: Was it dangerous to go around in a little Yankee uniform?
Giuliani: That's more than a joke. And that experience has something to do with my character and personality. I had to physically defend myself from neighborhood kids who would attack me. Once they put a rope around my neck and tried to hang me from a tree. My grandmother chased them away.
RD: Why did your father continue sending you out in the uniform?
Giuliani: He thought I would learn how to stand up for what I believed in. And he turned out to be right. There are a thousand ways to teach a child that lesson, and that was his way. My father also taught me how to box, beginning when I was very young. He would sit in a chair, so as I grew up he remained my height. He would have a pair of boxing gloves on, and I would have a pair. And he would tell me to try to hit him. Then he would show me how to defend myself; he would never hit me.
RD: What did your mother say?
Giuliani: That he was going to make me too violent. So in response, he would always lecture me, saying I shouldn't be a bully, shouldn't be an aggressor and should never fight with anyone smaller than me.
RD: Did his lessons sink in?
Giuliani: Yes, they did. Let me fast-forward to September 11. All that day, I could hear him saying to me: "In a crisis, when everybody else gets very, very excited, you have to become the calmest person in the room, so you can figure a way out of the situation." He would say that over and over. And on September 11, his voice was in my head.
RD: Starting with your father making you a Yankee fan in Brooklyn, you have achieved the unachievable -- crushing the mob when you were a prosecutor, becoming a Republican mayor of a Democratic stronghold, and then revitalizing the city that experts had written off as the Rotting Apple.
Giuliani: I love the challenge of doing things people say can't be done. The minute somebody says, "That can't be done," I respond by thinking it would be interesting, exciting and fulfilling to prove it can be done.
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