Twin Cities Author Sal Di Leo Joins Charles Hall Youth Services To Celebrate People Who Make A Difference In The Lives of Foster Care Children
Sal Di Leo, Minnesota author of Did I Ever Thank You, Sister, will be the featured speaker on Saturday, May 19, at this year’s Ho Waste Donor Recognition Brunch hosted by Charles Hall Youth Services. Each year, the Ho Waste (Good Voice) event celebrates those individuals and organizations that make a difference in the lives of at-risk children and their families in North Dakota. The event begins at 10:30 a.m. at Bismarck’s Municipal Country Club.
This May, National Foster Care Month serves as a platform for connecting our nation’s most vulnerable children to concerned, nurturing adults who, no matter how much time they have to give, can do something to change a lifetime for today’s high risk youth in foster care, explains Gayla Sherman, co-executive director of Charles Hall Youth Services. In the United States today, there are just over 400,000 children in foster care.
“In North Dakota, we have fewer than 1,000 children in foster care,” comments Sherman. “We should be able to get our arms around that and make a lasting, positive difference for the future of these kids. The difference between triumph and tragedy is clear – it only takes one, truly caring adult in a child’s life to make a difference.”
Sal Di Leo spent a decade of his young life in a Catholic orphanage outside Chicago. In his book, he shares his journey of discovery and remembrance as he reconstructs what really happened to him and his siblings, including some difficult years at Nebraska’s Boy’s Town.
As an adult, Di Leo tried to rise above his turbulent past in an aggressive quest for power and money. His success soon turned to failure, including bankruptcy and contemplation of suicide. Then, 43 years following his years at the orphanage, Di Leo returned to thank the Sisters of St. Francis who “saved his life, once upon a time.”
“Although it was not easy,” says Di Leo, “I was fortunate enough to be influenced and helped by many giving adults along the way who have made all the difference. I wasn’t intending on writing a book when I started out, I just wanted to write a story I thought needed to be told.”
A successful business consultant today, 57-year-old Di Leo is now a sought-after speaker around the country for Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, and many civic groups supporting at-risk children and their families. His goal is to sell 100,000 books within the year to get his message out that gratitude is the best way to overcome life’s obstacles and find forgiveness, courage and hope.
“Look around and look for good,” says Di Leo. “Gratitude will help you overcome the obstacles in your way. Someday, you can pass this on to another who needs encouragement. . . . Don’t stop giving. You are making a difference.”
“Like all children, youth in foster care deserve and benefit from enduring, positive relationships with caring adults,” states Sherman. “Now is the time to get involved, and Sal is just the person to inspire our community to do more.”
Di Leo is scheduled to do a book signing at Barnes & Noble in the Southridge Center on Friday, May 18, beginning at 2:30 p.m. In addition, books will be sold at the Ho Waste Brunch and are available for download at Amazon.com. and Barnes & Noble.com.
Sponsored by KXMB-TV, this year’s event will feature musical entertainment by the Sonorus String Quartet, with Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra’s Concertmaster Everaldo Martinez. Special recognitions will include the Living the Message community giving award, the Power of One award, the Macedonian Stewardship award acknowledging the philanthropic impact of an area organization or business, and the Gear Up Promising Practices award given to a human services professional who exhibits cutting-edge efforts in youth work practice.
For more information about the Ho Waste Brunch, call 701-255-2773, ext. 301, or visit www.charleshallyouthservices.com. The event is free, but reservations are required.
To learn more about National Foster Care Month and the many ways you can make a lasting difference for children in foster care, visit www.fostercaremonth.org.
Come out and support Charles Hall Ho Waste. The event will take place at Bismarck’s Municipal Country Club on Saturday, May 19 at 10:30 am. It supports a great cause and great kids, so I hope to see all of you there!
See the video here: http://on.fb.me/IDk8CJ
Sal will be signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Bismarck, ND. Please join him as he signs copies of Did I Ever Thank You, Sister? The event is happening on Friday, May 18 in the Southridge Center at 2:30 PM.
Get directions to the Barnes & Noble here: http://bit.ly/ID6j4d
Hope to see you there!
Save the Date! I will be speaking at Charles Hall in order to raise money for foster care. I am hoping that this will bring awareness to foster kids and generate some community support that the children desperately need.
Please feel free to send me an e-mail if you have any questions- saldileo@aol.com
“There’s No Place Like Home”
By Tom Nugent
Forty-three years after being raised in a Catholic orphanage near Chicago, Sal Di Leo (BS ’77) went back to say thanks to the nuns who’d saved his life, once upon a time.
A successful business consultant today, the 57-year-old Di Leo found several of the Sisters of St. Francis living in retirement in Joliet, Illinois. Blinking back tears, he told them how grateful he was for their help during his struggling, poverty-wracked childhood. Then he wrapped his arms around a white-haired nun, Sister David Ann Hoy, now aged 82.
The two of them enjoyed a long, satisfying hug.
“Is this incredible, or what?” said the former UNL education major, as he hurried from one nun to the next in order to offer them his fervent thanks.
It was an unforgettable moment, to say the least. But Sal Di Leo’s touching story – Orphan Boy Makes Good! – also contains a fascinating twist.
In a dark and unexpected chapter that might have been written in Hollywood, the Di Leo Saga includes a dramatic “fall from grace” . . . a searing mid-life crisis in which the wealthy entrepreneur went bankrupt, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and then came very close to taking his own life with a shotgun.
During that life-or-death crisis 25 years ago, the Sisters of St. Francis once again stepped forward to help save Sal from destruction.
By Tom Nugent
—Joliet, Illinois
On the worst day of Sal Di Leo’s amazing life, a smiling woman in a snow-white veil brought him a gift he would never forget.
It was a metal tray loaded with roast beef, gravy, green beans, potatoes and carrots. Along with the tray, the woman in white gave him a glass of milk and “a little dessert bowl full of canned peaches.”
Sal was eight years old on that winter afternoon nearly half a century ago. As he looked at the delectable goodies stacked high on the tray, his eyes grew huge. “It was the first time in my life,” he would later recall, “that I’d ever seen so much food sitting on a plate at one time.”
Unable to believe his good fortune, the little boy asked the smiling nun in a quavering voice: “Is all of this for me, sister?”
“It sure is,” said the nun, who was a member of the St. Francis Sisters of the Immaculate Heart. “You go right ahead and dig in!”
It happened on a cold, blustery afternoon in March of 1963 – about two hours after the terrified Di Leo was removed from his dysfunctional home in Joliet by social workers . . . and then transferred (along with three of his siblings) to the nearby Guardian Angel Home, operated by the locally based Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate.
For Di Leo, the author of a moving autobiography that tells the story of his rescue by the nuns in gripping detail (Did I Ever Thank You, Sister? – now available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com), the forced removal to the orphanage was the start of a nine-year odyssey that would finally end when he checked into UNL’s Harper Hall as a freshman in the fall of 1972.
Deserted by their mentally disturbed father and utterly penniless, Sal and his 11 siblings had been living through “a nightmare of neglect and poverty,” when the local authorities decided to intervene. Only a third grader at the time, the youthful Di Leo was deeply alarmed by the sudden removal to the “huge stone building” on the hill, where more than 150 orphans lived under the care of the nuns. As he would later write in his moving account of the experience:
That [first] night, as I lay in the dark dormitory room with all the other little boys, lined up in our beds in rows and rows, I looked up at the ceiling late into the night. I found myself watching a soft light on the ceiling that crept in from the moon outside and was shining in our room. The winds of March whistled outside our window and sounded angry as they whipped up against the old stone structure with a vengeance.
“I could hear the banging of the old radiators as the sounds came up from the bowels of the building while everyone else silently slept. I wondered if it was true when Philip had said that there were bad kids banging on the pipes to let someone know they were there and they wanted to get out. I also could not get out of my head the . . . wish that I was not there and that things could be different.
I stared for a long time into the night at the glimmering moonlight on the ceiling and I found myself making a vow I would never forget. I said, “Oh, God, help me make sure that if I ever have kids someday, they never have to feel pain and be alone.” The tears rushed down my face and I finally fell asleep from exhaustion.
A Wealthy Man by Age 30 . . . And Then Bankrupt
Sal Di Leo would ultimately spend more than five years at the Guardian Angel Home, before going on to a four-year sojourn at Boys Town in Omaha and then a successful college career at UNL. The story of his gritty survival as a poverty-stricken orphan is deeply compelling, of course. And yet it seems almost tame, when compared to the astonishing saga of his later life. A brilliant entrepreneur in business, Di Leo became wealthy beyond his wildest dreams – by the age of 30.
But the hunger that drove him also contained the seeds of his financial destruction. As a self-described “moral failure” whose “highly unethical business practices” would eventually paralyze him with guilt, Di Leo became a money-obsessed, hard-drinking business exec whose excesses finally left him afraid to look at himself in the mirror each day.
“The reality is that I lost my moral compass after leaving UNL,” Di Leo says today. “After spending all those years as an orphan, I became consumed by the desire to make money. I thought that if I could just pile up enough dollars, I’d finally begin to feel good about myself. But I was wrong, dead wrong.
“I was financially secure by the age of 30,” he recalls, “and I was completely miserable.”
Di Leo’s financial success was undeniable, however. After launching a national chain of appliance-rental outlets (based in Baton Rouge, La.) in the early 1980s, he’d quickly built his fledgling enterprise into a profit-making machine. With dozens of branches, his high-flying leasing outfit was quickly selling franchises – most of which were racking up huge sales. But the more money Sal made, the worse he seemed to feel.
“I was doing very well financially,” he recalls today, “but I knew I was making money by charging exorbitant rates to people who couldn’t afford to rent our TV sets and stereos and other electronic gear. And as soon as they missed a payment, we’d move in and repossess the appliances and then rent them to the next poor souls who didn’t realize what they were getting into.
“It was wrong, and deep down, I knew it was wrong. I started drinking heavily and started taking drugs.”
In the end, the confused and increasingly conflicted entrepreneur ran his million-dollar-a-year gold mine straight into the ground, by drinking too much and taking too many “reckless financial risks.” By late 1985, most of his outlets were shuttered and he was broke. And he was utterly desperate.
On a “truly terrible afternoon” in December of 1985, Di Leo went out to his garage in Baton Rouge and took a long hard look at the Remington 16 gauge shotgun hanging on the wall. Then he unhooked it and carried it into the house. He inserted a shell into the barrel. Then he sat down, holding the gun in his lap. His wife and their two young daughters were off on a shopping trip . . . and all he needed now was the courage to pull that trigger. “At that terrible point in my life,” Di Leo recalls, “I really felt like I was worth more dead than alive . . . and I felt compelled to pull the trigger in order to save my family, so that they would at least have some insurance money.”
But then came a sudden impulse. “For some reason, I hesitated,” Di Leo remembers, “and all at once, Sister Paul [one of the nuns who had raised him at the orphanage] jumped into my head. I felt total despair, and I needed a last prayer before I took my life. So I called the Mother House for the Sisters of St. Francis.”
It would be his way of saying goodbye to everything.
Di Leo dialed the number. He held his breath. He hadn’t spoken with Sister Paul – the nun he’d been closest to as a boy – in more than 18 years. And then, all at once, she was on the line and greeting him cheerfully. Here’s how Sal described the moment in his 1999 autobiography:
Finally, I heard her voice on the other line, “Hello. This is Sister Paul. Who’s calling?” she asked. Her voice sounded just like it used to. She was sure and steady. It was good to hear her voice. I didn’t quite know what to say, though.
“Sister Paul,” I said, “this is Sal Di Leo. Do you remember me?” I asked.
“Sal Di Leo. How would I forget you and how are you?” she asked in her kind and reassuring voice. I felt alive again.
Sister Paul and I talked for almost half an hour. She asked me about my brother and my sisters. I told her my older sister had become a nun, too, and my little sister was living in Alaska and apparently doing well. When she asked about me, I told her I was fine and doing OK. I didn’t tell her how bad things were for me. But I think she knew somehow that things weren’t as I pretended. She asked: “Are you still going to church?”
“No, Sister. I left the Church,” I said.
“Then get back. Find a priest, go to confession, and receive Communion. You know you can’t go through life without God,” she finished.
I knew she was right. Tears were running down my face as I said I would and hung up. I went to the garage and hung the gun back up on the wall. When my wife and the kids came home, I hugged them a little tighter.
That phone call to the Guardian Angel Home marked a decisive turning-point in Sal Di Leo’s roller-coaster life. Renewed and reenergized, he borrowed $7,000 from his in-laws and moved his young family to Minneapolis, where he soon went back to work – not as a high-rolling, risk-taking entrepreneur, but as an ordinary nine-to-five manager of a local furniture store.
Although several years of difficult struggle still lay ahead, Di Leo’s life was now back on track. He would never be wealthy again, and that was fine with him. “It took me a dozen years – and a great deal of mental suffering – to understand that mere money couldn’t make me happy,” he says today. “I spent several years in counseling, and I thank God that my wonderful wife never gave up on me.
“Eventually, I came to understand that my obsessive-compulsive lifestyle had been a compensation mechanism – a futile psychological strategy in which I was trying to overcome my dread of being dependent on other people by making tons and tons of money. Those early years of struggle had taken their toll on me . . . had left me desperate to prove I could take care of myself, instead of relying on others to feed and clothe me.
“Once I understood the compulsions that were driving me, I could begin to overcome them. But it wouldn’t have happened without the help of so many other people . . . and when I look back on the assistance I got from my loving wife and the wonderful nuns and the counselors, I’m just eternally grateful.
“Really, I’m the luckiest guy I’ve ever met!”
Enjoying “The Thrill of Freedom” at UNL
When Sal Di Leo arrived on the campus of UNL – fresh from a four-year residency at the famed Boys Town orphanage in Omaha – he was “amazed and delighted by the sudden freedom” he was allowed to enjoy.
“For nearly ten years, I’d been living the highly regimented life of an orphan in an institution,” he recalled during a recent interview in Joliet. “Now, all at once, I was just another freshman living in a college dorm.
“At first I could hardly believe it. Just walking around the campus by myself was a thrill. Just enjoying the warm summer air, as I walked past the big fountain near the Student Union – that was a big adventure for me. And when I realized that I could go get a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza anytime I wanted, I could hardly believe my good luck.”
Di Leo says his exhilarating sense of freedom only increased during his first-ever class at UNL, where he came face to face with an English Lit instructor whose freewheeling teaching style really turned him on to short stories and novels. “My first class really set the pace for me,” he would write later in his autobiography. “It was a literature professor named Clyde Burkholder. I walked in that first day and he was sitting on top of his desk, just talking to a couple of kids. He gave us our syllabus and told us we didn’t have to show up for class if we didn’t want to, and it was up to us if we wanted to learn. I was used to the regimented Boys Town classes.
“I thought he was such a cool guy. I really enjoyed his class.”
As the months passed, the gung-ho freshman savored one adventure after the next. Soon he was working part-time in a campus microbiology lab, and dating a girl who lived in a nearby dorm . . . and also shouting his lungs out at Cornhusker football games. “The 1970s were great years for Nebraska football,” he remembers with a smile of nostalgia, “and many of us who were part of the old ‘Knothole Gang’ still remember the excitement of watching great athletes like Dave Humm throw long touchdown passes on those wonderful Saturday afternoons at the stadium.”
After receiving his B.S. in Education in the spring of ’77, Di Leo signed on as a fourth-grade teacher at a public school in Fremont, Nebraska, where he earned a thoroughly unimpressive $7,000 per annum. But his heart wasn’t really in teaching, and within a year he’d handed in his resignation. Deep down, he was burning with a desire to make money – lots and lots of money. To do that, he understood that “working for a wage” wasn’t enough; if he wanted to become truly wealthy, he would have to become a successful entrepreneur. After a couple of years as a hard-charging salesman at an appliance-rental company, he was convinced he knew enough to build his own franchise operation . . . and managed to convince several banks to loan him $300,000 in order to launch his first two stores in Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi.
And so it began – Sal Di Leo’s long, arduous journey from astonishing business success and fabulous wealth to Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ask him to describe the collapse of his business empire in the mid-1980s and he’ll tell you: “That bankruptcy was the best thing that ever happened to me – that and my decision to call Sister Paul, instead of killing myselfwith my shotgun.”
For Di Leo, who has returned to the Joliet orphanage several times over the years in order to thank the nuns for their work, the “great blessing” of his life has been the “gift of understanding” that what matters most is the “willingness to give of yourself” to the community in which you live.
Only a year and a half ago, Di Leo was able to do precisely that. After putting up $320,000 of his own money and with the help of some other “wonderful volunteers,” he and his wife (they recently celebrated their 30th anniversary) participated in the “official dedication and blessing” of the St. Francis Lodge – a free vacation and spiritual retreat center for nuns (and especially St. Francis nuns) in rural Minnesota.
Located in a bucolic and vernal setting at Lake George (near Bemidji), the St. Francis Lodge is the ideal resting place for religious clerics of all faiths who need time to relax and meditate, according to Di Leo. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me,” he said the other day, “to know that the good nuns who took care of me early in life are now able to rest and relax at the Lodge, and especially during the spring and summer, when the lake and its environs seem especially beautiful.”
Then he paused for a moment to reflect on his thoroughly remarkable life – and on the two “miracles” that came when he needed them most. “I’m indebted,” he said, “to so many good people who’ve helped me along the way. They are the heroes in my life.
“I just hope I can send the message from my life that it is so important to stop and recognize the good in our lives, and to thank those who help us. That’s a big part of what success really is. Gratitude leads to ‘passing it on,’ and it’s very freeing!”
***
During his recent visit to the St. Francis Retirement Home in Joliet, Di Leo glowed with joyful energy as he invited one elderly nun after the next to visit the lakeside retreat center.
The nuns responded in kind. Sister David Hoy, who’d been one of Di Leo’s favorites during his stay at the Guardian Home 45 years before, told a rollicking story of how the nine-year-old Di Leo had once tried to dispose of a lunchtime orange he didn’t want to eat.
“We were riding on a school bus that day,” said the white-haired, 82-year-old nun, “and when we got off the bus for lunch, Sal took a look around to make sure nobody was watching him. Then he knelt down and stuck the orange under one of the bus tires, so that that it would be squashed flat when we drove away.
“Well, I spotted him. So I shouted to the bus driver: ‘Don’t move!’ I retrieved the orange and I told him: ‘Sal, it’s okay if you don’t want to eat the orange – but we shouldn’t waste it. Let’s take it back home and see if somebody else wants it, what do you say?’”
Laughter all around.
And then a few minutes later, it was time to go. Sal Di Leo’s visit to his old friends was ending. It was time for Sal to return to his life in Minneapolis, where he’s been working as a successful business consultant for the past decade or so. And so he went from one Sister of St. Francis to the next, while hugging and smiling and vowing that he would see them all again soon.
“Sal was all boy,” laughed Sister David Ann, moments after surviving a rib-crunching bear-hug from her once-upon-a-time charge. “He was a handful at times, let me tell you. But he was also a kind-hearted little fellow with lots of goodness in him.
“It’s wonderful to see what a fine man he’s become!”
#####
There’s No Place Like Home
Forty-three years after being raised in a Catholic orphanage near Chicago, Sal Di Leo (BS ’77) went back to say thanks to the nuns who’d saved his life, once upon a time.
A successful business consultant today, the 57-year-old Di Leo found several of the Sisters of St. Francis living in retirement in Joliet, Illinois. Blinking back tears, he told them how grateful he was for their help during his struggling, poverty-wracked childhood. Then he wrapped his arms around a white-haired nun, Sister David Ann Hoy, now aged 82.
The two of them enjoyed a long, satisfying hug.
“Is this incredible, or what?” said the former UNL education major, as he hurried from one nun to the next in order to offer them his fervent thanks.
It was an unforgettable moment, to say the least. But Sal Di Leo’s touching story – Orphan Boy Makes Good! – also contains a fascinating twist.
In a dark and unexpected chapter that might have been written in Hollywood, the Di Leo Saga includes a dramatic “fall from grace” . . . a searing mid-life crisis in which the wealthy entrepreneur went bankrupt, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and then came very close to taking his own life with a shotgun.
During that life-or-death crisis 25 years ago, the Sisters of St. Francis once again stepped forward to help save Sal from destruction.
By Tom Nugent
—Joliet, Illinois
On the worst day of Sal Di Leo’s amazing life, a smiling woman in a snow-white veil brought him a gift he would never forget.
It was a metal tray loaded with roast beef, gravy, green beans, potatoes and carrots. Along with the tray, the woman in white gave him a glass of milk and “a little dessert bowl full of canned peaches.”
Sal was eight years old on that winter afternoon nearly half a century ago. As he looked at the delectable goodies stacked high on the tray, his eyes grew huge. “It was the first time in my life,” he would later recall, “that I’d ever seen so much food sitting on a plate at one time.”
Unable to believe his good fortune, the little boy asked the smiling nun in a quavering voice: “Is all of this for me, sister?”
“It sure is,” said the nun, who was a member of the St. Francis Sisters of the Immaculate Heart. “You go right ahead and dig in!”
It happened on a cold, blustery afternoon in March of 1963 – about two hours after the terrified Di Leo was removed from his dysfunctional home in Joliet by social workers . . . and then transferred (along with three of his siblings) to the nearby Guardian Angel Home, operated by the locally based Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate.
For Di Leo, the author of a moving autobiography that tells the story of his rescue by the nuns in gripping detail (Did I Ever Thank You, Sister? – now available at www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com), the forced removal to the orphanage was the start of a nine-year odyssey that would finally end when he checked into UNL’s Harper Hall as a freshman in the fall of 1972.
Deserted by their mentally disturbed father and utterly penniless, Sal and his 11 siblings had been living through “a nightmare of neglect and poverty,” when the local authorities decided to intervene. Only a third grader at the time, the youthful Di Leo was deeply alarmed by the sudden removal to the “huge stone building” on the hill, where more than 150 orphans lived under the care of the nuns. As he would later write in his moving account of the experience:
That [first] night, as I lay in the dark dormitory room with all the other little boys, lined up in our beds in rows and rows, I looked up at the ceiling late into the night. I found myself watching a soft light on the ceiling that crept in from the moon outside and was shining in our room. The winds of March whistled outside our window and sounded angry as they whipped up against the old stone structure with a vengeance.
“I could hear the banging of the old radiators as the sounds came up from the bowels of the building while everyone else silently slept. I wondered if it was true when Philip had said that there were bad kids banging on the pipes to let someone know they were there and they wanted to get out. I also could not get out of my head the . . . wish that I was not there and that things could be different.
I stared for a long time into the night at the glimmering moonlight on the ceiling and I found myself making a vow I would never forget. I said, “Oh, God, help me make sure that if I ever have kids someday, they never have to feel pain and be alone.” The tears rushed down my face and I finally fell asleep from exhaustion.
A Wealthy Man by Age 30 . . . And Then Bankrupt
Sal Di Leo would ultimately spend more than five years at the Guardian Angel Home, before going on to a four-year sojourn at Boys Town in Omaha and then a successful college career at UNL. The story of his gritty survival as a poverty-stricken orphan is deeply compelling, of course. And yet it seems almost tame, when compared to the astonishing saga of his later life. A brilliant entrepreneur in business, Di Leo became wealthy beyond his wildest dreams – by the age of 30.
But the hunger that drove him also contained the seeds of his financial destruction. As a self-described “moral failure” whose “highly unethical business practices” would eventually paralyze him with guilt, Di Leo became a money-obsessed, hard-drinking business exec whose excesses finally left him afraid to look at himself in the mirror each day.
“The reality is that I lost my moral compass after leaving UNL,” Di Leo says today. “After spending all those years as an orphan, I became consumed by the desire to make money. I thought that if I could just pile up enough dollars, I’d finally begin to feel good about myself. But I was wrong, dead wrong.
“I was financially secure by the age of 30,” he recalls, “and I was completely miserable.”
Di Leo’s financial success was undeniable, however. After launching a national chain of appliance-rental outlets (based in Baton Rouge, La.) in the early 1980s, he’d quickly built his fledgling enterprise into a profit-making machine. With dozens of branches, his high-flying leasing outfit was quickly selling franchises – most of which were racking up huge sales. But the more money Sal made, the worse he seemed to feel.
“I was doing very well financially,” he recalls today, “but I knew I was making money by charging exorbitant rates to people who couldn’t afford to rent our TV sets and stereos and other electronic gear. And as soon as they missed a payment, we’d move in and repossess the appliances and then rent them to the next poor souls who didn’t realize what they were getting into.
“It was wrong, and deep down, I knew it was wrong. I started drinking heavily and started taking drugs.”
In the end, the confused and increasingly conflicted entrepreneur ran his million-dollar-a-year gold mine straight into the ground, by drinking too much and taking too many “reckless financial risks.” By late 1985, most of his outlets were shuttered and he was broke. And he was utterly desperate.
On a “truly terrible afternoon” in December of 1985, Di Leo went out to his garage in Baton Rouge and took a long hard look at the Remington 16 gauge shotgun hanging on the wall. Then he unhooked it and carried it into the house. He inserted a shell into the barrel. Then he sat down, holding the gun in his lap. His wife and their two young daughters were off on a shopping trip . . . and all he needed now was the courage to pull that trigger. “At that terrible point in my life,” Di Leo recalls, “I really felt like I was worth more dead than alive . . . and I felt compelled to pull the trigger in order to save my family, so that they would at least have some insurance money.”
But then came a sudden impulse. “For some reason, I hesitated,” Di Leo remembers, “and all at once, Sister Paul [one of the nuns who had raised him at the orphanage] jumped into my head. I felt total despair, and I needed a last prayer before I took my life. So I called the Mother House for the Sisters of St. Francis.”
It would be his way of saying goodbye to everything.
Di Leo dialed the number. He held his breath. He hadn’t spoken with Sister Paul – the nun he’d been closest to as a boy – in more than 18 years. And then, all at once, she was on the line and greeting him cheerfully. Here’s how Sal described the moment in his 1999 autobiography:
Finally, I heard her voice on the other line, “Hello. This is Sister Paul. Who’s calling?” she asked. Her voice sounded just like it used to. She was sure and steady. It was good to hear her voice. I didn’t quite know what to say, though.
“Sister Paul,” I said, “this is Sal Di Leo. Do you remember me?” I asked.
“Sal Di Leo. How would I forget you and how are you?” she asked in her kind and reassuring voice. I felt alive again.
Sister Paul and I talked for almost half an hour. She asked me about my brother and my sisters. I told her my older sister had become a nun, too, and my little sister was living in Alaska and apparently doing well. When she asked about me, I told her I was fine and doing OK. I didn’t tell her how bad things were for me. But I think she knew somehow that things weren’t as I pretended. She asked: “Are you still going to church?”
“No, Sister. I left the Church,” I said.
“Then get back. Find a priest, go to confession, and receive Communion. You know you can’t go through life without God,” she finished.
I knew she was right. Tears were running down my face as I said I would and hung up. I went to the garage and hung the gun back up on the wall. When my wife and the kids came home, I hugged them a little tighter.
That phone call to the Guardian Angel Home marked a decisive turning-point in Sal Di Leo’s roller-coaster life. Renewed and reenergized, he borrowed $7,000 from his in-laws and moved his young family to Minneapolis, where he soon went back to work – not as a high-rolling, risk-taking entrepreneur, but as an ordinary nine-to-five manager of a local furniture store.
Although several years of difficult struggle still lay ahead, Di Leo’s life was now back on track. He would never be wealthy again, and that was fine with him. “It took me a dozen years – and a great deal of mental suffering – to understand that mere money couldn’t make me happy,” he says today. “I spent several years in counseling, and I thank God that my wonderful wife never gave up on me.
“Eventually, I came to understand that my obsessive-compulsive lifestyle had been a compensation mechanism – a futile psychological strategy in which I was trying to overcome my dread of being dependent on other people by making tons and tons of money. Those early years of struggle had taken their toll on me . . . had left me desperate to prove I could take care of myself, instead of relying on others to feed and clothe me.
“Once I understood the compulsions that were driving me, I could begin to overcome them. But it wouldn’t have happened without the help of so many other people . . . and when I look back on the assistance I got from my loving wife and the wonderful nuns and the counselors, I’m just eternally grateful.
“Really, I’m the luckiest guy I’ve ever met!”
Enjoying “The Thrill of Freedom” at UNL
When Sal Di Leo arrived on the campus of UNL – fresh from a four-year residency at the famed Boys Town orphanage in Omaha – he was “amazed and delighted by the sudden freedom” he was allowed to enjoy.
“For nearly ten years, I’d been living the highly regimented life of an orphan in an institution,” he recalled during a recent interview in Joliet. “Now, all at once, I was just another freshman living in a college dorm.
“At first I could hardly believe it. Just walking around the campus by myself was a thrill. Just enjoying the warm summer air, as I walked past the big fountain near the Student Union – that was a big adventure for me. And when I realized that I could go get a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza anytime I wanted, I could hardly believe my good luck.”
Di Leo says his exhilarating sense of freedom only increased during his first-ever class at UNL, where he came face to face with an English Lit instructor whose freewheeling teaching style really turned him on to short stories and novels. “My first class really set the pace for me,” he would write later in his autobiography. “It was a literature professor named Clyde Burkholder. I walked in that first day and he was sitting on top of his desk, just talking to a couple of kids. He gave us our syllabus and told us we didn’t have to show up for class if we didn’t want to, and it was up to us if we wanted to learn. I was used to the regimented Boys Town classes.
“I thought he was such a cool guy. I really enjoyed his class.”
As the months passed, the gung-ho freshman savored one adventure after the next. Soon he was working part-time in a campus microbiology lab, and dating a girl who lived in a nearby dorm . . . and also shouting his lungs out at Cornhusker football games. “The 1970s were great years for Nebraska football,” he remembers with a smile of nostalgia, “and many of us who were part of the old ‘Knothole Gang’ still remember the excitement of watching great athletes like Dave Humm throw long touchdown passes on those wonderful Saturday afternoons at the stadium.”
After receiving his B.S. in Education in the spring of ’77, Di Leo signed on as a fourth-grade teacher at a public school in Fremont, Nebraska, where he earned a thoroughly unimpressive $7,000 per annum. But his heart wasn’t really in teaching, and within a year he’d handed in his resignation. Deep down, he was burning with a desire to make money – lots and lots of money. To do that, he understood that “working for a wage” wasn’t enough; if he wanted to become truly wealthy, he would have to become a successful entrepreneur. After a couple of years as a hard-charging salesman at an appliance-rental company, he was convinced he knew enough to build his own franchise operation . . . and managed to convince several banks to loan him $300,000 in order to launch his first two stores in Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi.
And so it began – Sal Di Leo’s long, arduous journey from astonishing business success and fabulous wealth to Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ask him to describe the collapse of his business empire in the mid-1980s and he’ll tell you: “That bankruptcy was the best thing that ever happened to me – that and my decision to call Sister Paul, instead of killing myselfwith my shotgun.”
For Di Leo, who has returned to the Joliet orphanage several times over the years in order to thank the nuns for their work, the “great blessing” of his life has been the “gift of understanding” that what matters most is the “willingness to give of yourself” to the community in which you live.
Only a year and a half ago, Di Leo was able to do precisely that. After putting up $320,000 of his own money and with the help of some other “wonderful volunteers,” he and his wife (they recently celebrated their 30th anniversary) participated in the “official dedication and blessing” of the St. Francis Lodge – a free vacation and spiritual retreat center for nuns (and especially St. Francis nuns) in rural Minnesota.
Located in a bucolic and vernal setting at Lake George (near Bemidji), the St. Francis Lodge is the ideal resting place for religious clerics of all faiths who need time to relax and meditate, according to Di Leo. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me,” he said the other day, “to know that the good nuns who took care of me early in life are now able to rest and relax at the Lodge, and especially during the spring and summer, when the lake and its environs seem especially beautiful.”
Then he paused for a moment to reflect on his thoroughly remarkable life – and on the two “miracles” that came when he needed them most. “I’m indebted,” he said, “to so many good people who’ve helped me along the way. They are the heroes in my life.
“I just hope I can send the message from my life that it is so important to stop and recognize the good in our lives, and to thank those who help us. That’s a big part of what success really is. Gratitude leads to ‘passing it on,’ and it’s very freeing!”
***
During his recent visit to the St. Francis Retirement Home in Joliet, Di Leo glowed with joyful energy as he invited one elderly nun after the next to visit the lakeside retreat center.
The nuns responded in kind. Sister David Hoy, who’d been one of Di Leo’s favorites during his stay at the Guardian Home 45 years before, told a rollicking story of how the nine-year-old Di Leo had once tried to dispose of a lunchtime orange he didn’t want to eat.
“We were riding on a school bus that day,” said the white-haired, 82-year-old nun, “and when we got off the bus for lunch, Sal took a look around to make sure nobody was watching him. Then he knelt down and stuck the orange under one of the bus tires, so that that it would be squashed flat when we drove away.
“Well, I spotted him. So I shouted to the bus driver: ‘Don’t move!’ I retrieved the orange and I told him: ‘Sal, it’s okay if you don’t want to eat the orange – but we shouldn’t waste it. Let’s take it back home and see if somebody else wants it, what do you say?’”
Laughter all around.
And then a few minutes later, it was time to go. Sal Di Leo’s visit to his old friends was ending. It was time for Sal to return to his life in Minneapolis, where he’s been working as a successful business consultant for the past decade or so. And so he went from one Sister of St. Francis to the next, while hugging and smiling and vowing that he would see them all again soon.
“Sal was all boy,” laughed Sister David Ann, moments after surviving a rib-crunching bear-hug from her once-upon-a-time charge. “He was a handful at times, let me tell you. But he was also a kind-hearted little fellow with lots of goodness in him.
“It’s wonderful to see what a fine man he’s become!”
#####
Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota author Sal Di Leo, who wrote his memoirs, “Did I ever thank you, Sister?”, with the intention of only writing it down for his wife and children 13 years ago, is seeing something quite interesting happening. “As people began to ask me for copies of my book, I received a great deal of unsolicited feedback about the story. I heard from most of those who responded they really liked the story and found it to be a very uplifting book to read. I didn’t intend on it being a book when I started out. I just wanted to write down my story and what had happened. I didn’t have an agenda or lesson to teach either. But, with time, I have learned that it does have a message and people truly want to hear it. It is a message of forgiveness, courage, and hope. I am truly grateful if I can help someone by telling them my story”, Di Leo says.
“With all the new technology and the way people are buying books online, we went to the e-book format and now sell my book at amazon.com and Barne&Noble.com, and soon will available on i-tunes, google books, etc. We don’t see it as impossible to sell 100,000 books over the next year. We are reading stories of people doing this. Anything can happen”!, Sal adds with a positive note.
For more info. go to www.salsbook.net.
Sal Di Leo shares a story of discovery and remembrance as he returns to his childhood orphanage in his book, “Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?”
Retreat beckons visitors
Owners plan to move, expand rock grotto this year
St. Francis Lodge has welcomed Sisters from Illinois, North Dakota and Minnesota
and other guests since it opened in May 2010.
Located on Lake George, about 12 miles east of Itasca State Park, the private, family-
owned retreat offers Sisters a quiet place for respite.
Sal and Beth Di Leo built the lodge with a vision inspired after Sal revisited Joliet, IL,
where at age 8 he was taken to an orphanage run by the Sisters of St. Francis.
“They gave me faith, a value system and a work ethic,” Sal says. The lodge’s open
doors reflect his sense of gratitude as expressed in his book, Did I Ever Thank You,
Sister? Sal describes the lodge as “ a very ecumenical mission for God… a place of
peace and prayer.”
In addition to the lodge, a small chapel and grotto are located on the grounds of the
lakeside retreat. In 2012, the Di Leos hope to move and enlarge the rock grotto and are
looking for a skilled craftsman to lead the project. Sal is already rounding up volunteers
to help.
“We want to create a more prominent place, larger and more accessible, where
people can kneel or sit and pray,” Sal said. The new grotto would serve as a backdrop
between the lake and an outdoor sanctuary with an altar and seating for Masses and
religious events, accommodating more people than the chapel can hold.
“We want to enhance the experience and make St. Francis Lodge even more special,
create an even more peaceful environment,” Sal said. “If we can find someone who can
lead us, our goal is to have it done in a year.
“We have seen some special things happen to people here. Some reaffirm their faith
and find comfort in their time with God. I feel God is calling me to make this a shrine to
the Blessed Mother and dedicated to God, the Father,” Sal said.
From the time in 1999, when Sal first envisioned creating the retreat as a way to
thank the nuns who raised him, until now, the money has managed to come and many
people have given their time, energy and prayers to help, Sal said. “It’s little people
doing little things and doing bigger things for God.”
In the same vein, creating a more grandiose outdoor environment suits Sal’s feeling
that all the work is serving a higher purpose. “God has asked me to do this and it’s
provided me and others an opportunity to find a connection with God.”
Sal also plans to dedicate the grotto and a larger statue of St. Francis to be added on
the hillside to the late Father Bernard Reiser. Father Reiser, who had retired from
Epiphany Catholic Church in Coon Rapids, came to help dedicate the lodge in May
2010. Father Reiser seemed impressed with the lodge, built, in his words, in “the
cathedral of nature with the dome of the sky and stars as the lights. How fitting to have
Mass in the heart of Minnesota and among the pines.”
“Father Reiser was very encouraging and supportive of our efforts,” Sal said. He is
also grateful to Father Duane Pribula from Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Church in
Nevis, who has celebrated Holy Masses at St. Francis Lodge on multiple occasions.
In addition to moving and enlarging the grotto, the Di Leos are planning other projects
at the lodge and grounds starting in March. According to Sal, one objective is “to get us
off the grid” in the next few years. A friend is helping find solar panels sufficient to power
a big part of the lodge’s energy consumption.
The couple also will create a four-season heated porch in the back entrance and add
plumbing for another washer and dryer there for guests to save them from climbing up
and down the spiral staircase to the existing laundry area.
In May or early June, a dedication is planned for a new “Sun-Room Quarters,”
finished last fall and named the Ray Welter Family Guest Room, in honor of a friend
who has helped over the years.
“We are anticipating a very busy year as people are already booking up time at St.
Francis Lodge,” Sal said. “We have Nuns coming from quite a distance, as well as other
guests. We hope you will come and see for yourself just how beautiful it is.”
Anyone who has time to volunteer on these projects and, most especially, someone
who could lead the stonework on the new grotto, may call Sal at 612-382-3582.
Proceeds from his book Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?, now available online from
Barnes and Noble at www.bn.com or at www.salsbook.net, go toward paying for the
lodge.
Dear Friends Of St. Francis Lodge:
As some of you know, this past Monday, November 14th, our home in Minneapolis was broken into. We lost a lot of valuables and our house was trashed. it was very hard for my wife and me to come home to see we were violated. It was her mother’s and grandmother’s jewelry that was most valuable in what it meant to Beth.
The person who did this was staying at a neighbor’s home and decided to rob us. We actually helped the family out where this person was staying on multiple occasions and even let them stay at St. Francis Lodge for a week at a time for two summers. That’s what probably hurts the most. The people who took this person in have brought other bad people in before and it has blown up as well. Needless to say, we are upset with this family for making such bad choices on who to help and for bringing these people into our neighborhood.
Through this hardship Beth and I have realized that God is teaching us a lesson from this. Although it would be easy to say that it doesn’t pay to help others out, I am reminded that I am the recipient of a lot of kindness from many people who helped me along the way. When I speak to Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, Serra Clubs, etc. about my life, I tell them to “keep giving. Everything you have given, has been received. You are making a difference. My life is proof of that from all those who gave to me. Not everyone is going to thank you. But, I am for all of us”.
We are praying for the person who robbed us and for the family that harbored her. Please pray for them too.
Finally, with Thanksgiving coming this month, I have launched a new web site called www.didIeverthankyou.com (did I ever thank you), as a place where people can go to reflect on their lives and post a note to thank someone in their lives (living or deceased) for something they did that made a difference. I am convinced gratitude is healing and contagious and can change our perspective on life. Please help us direct people to this site. Our goal is to have a large amount of “thank you’s” by Christmas.
You are in our Prayers. Please Keep us in yours.
God Bless You and & HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
I recently returned from Joliet, Ill. where I was able to visit with my old friends, The Sisters Of St. St. Francis in Joliet. I spoke at the Joliet Rotary Club about my book and was able to tell my story.
The most rewarding thing I have found while giving these speeches is that I am able to say how truly grateful I am to the many people who have helped me along the way. They have made all the difference in my life. I am extremely lucky to be able to thank those people for what they did for me and let them know that my life has turned out well because of them.
It seems I always receive the same reaction from each group I speak to; They are happy to hear that the work they do is truly making a difference. I think everyone needs to be thanked and everyone has someone to thank. It is empowering and creates a sense of peace.
I have recently set up my Facebook page, “Did I Ever Thank You?” to give people to have a place to go where they can thank someone who has helped them or has made a difference in their lives, even if the person is gone. I am doing this because I believe gratitude is healing.
In 2012 I plan on a national tour called, “Did I Ever Thank You?” to get this message out to the world. For more information please visit the tour website http://didieverthankyou.com/
Thank you to everyone who is taking the time to read this blog.
Sal