Laura Carney FOUND and FINISHED her Father’s BUCKET List!

 

Thank you Laura Carney for joining me on my podcast!

Laura talked to us about finding her father’s bucket list, deciding to complete it and writing her book!

My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free

Laura Carney is a writer and copy editor in New York. She’s been published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner’s World, People magazine, Guideposts, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper and other places, and her book My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free is being published by Post Hill Press in July 2023. Her work as a copy editor has been primarily in magazines, for 20 years, including Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, Vanity Fair, and GQ. She’s @myfatherslist on Instagram and Twitter, and her websites are myfatherslist.com and bylauracarney.com.

Lisa Niver:

Good morning. This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel, and I’m so excited to be here with author Laura Carney. Hi, Laura.

Laura Carney:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lisa Niver:

I’m so excited to hear about your book, My Father’s List. It’s incredible what’s happening with the publicity for your book. Everyone wants to talk to you about this incredible journey you’ve been on. So, tell us, tell all the listeners a little bit about how did this happen? I know you found your father’s bucket list. So, tell us a bit about how that happened.

Laura Carney:

My father passed away in 2003, because of a distracted driver, a teenager who was making a phone call. It wasn’t until 13 years later–the year that I got married, and my brother also got married, my husband and I were visiting my younger brother at his first house, he had just purchased a condo. We had gone up to celebrate that, and he was a couple of weeks away from his wedding, and in the process of the move, he had found this little pouch that had my dad’s list in it. Nobody knew it existed, except for my mom, we found out later. She actually was there when he wrote it. I was a baby. It was 1978 when he wrote it.

As soon as we saw it, it was a lightning bolt kind of moment, where I knew immediately, I needed to finish it for him. Again, there’s no waffling. No like, oh, that seems crazy. It was just, we loved it so much, because it was so funny, and the items on it were so him. It was like, of course this is what he wanted to do. And my husband was the one who actually said it first, “this is your book. You need to finish this and write about it.” And you know, I always joke, thank goodness he said it before, because he ended up being the main person who was doing these list items with me.

Lisa Niver:

There’s so much to talk about in that, what you just shared, so, first of all, I’m so sorry about your father that what a horrible thing for you to grow up without him. That must have been. I’m so sorry.

Laura Carney:

I know. Yeah, I was 25. So I was an adult, but it was more like I didn’t get to experience a lot of the adult milestones.

Lisa Niver:

And I know you’ve done some activism about distracted driving.

Laura Carney:

I did actually. You know, it’s so weird: I always like to say that everything goes back to running for me, because I wasn’t an athletic person. At least, I didn’t perceive myself, not since I was a kid. I played all different sports as a kid. But when I was 35, I took up running. It was just because my coworkers at Good Housekeeping were all running marathons. You know, my old jobs, we went to happy hour, and this place, they didn’t do that. They were more wholesome. So, I thought, okay, I’ll try running.

And next thing I knew, an article came across my desk one day about distracted driving, and it was about a man. His name is Joel Feldman, whose daughter had been killed by a distracted driver, and as soon as I saw it, I remembered that the driver had been on a phone in my dad’s crash. So, I called him up the next day. I said, I think I’ve had an experience with this, can I help you?

So, he had me talking in a high school with him a few months later, and that was really the beginning of it, because since I was already a runner, now, I just started raising funds for him with my runs. And I think what happened was, the running was helping me release my grief. I had so much, mostly anger, but anger and grief just bottled inside of me, and when I would be moving my body in this, you know, vigorous way, it was almost like I was just releasing these toxins out, you know, and I would always find myself crying. Not always, but often, and I think it was also because I felt like I was doing something empowering with the grief. Like, here I am raising money for this organization that’s trying to save lives.

So, you know, I did it that way. I never really became someone who was doing lots of talks, I think because, you know, it wasn’t my child. Like it wasn’t, you know, it was a little bit different for me. And I also started to feel like, something about it just, I wasn’t as good at it as other people were. I just wasn’t into the legal side as much. I’m a writer. I’m much more comfortable behind the scenes. So, when the list appeared, for me, it was just like, this is a really inspiring form of activism. Like this feels like something that is right for me to do, because if I if I’m talking about someone’s dreams, and I’m kind of illustrating to the world, this is what’s lost if a person loses their life, so, that honestly that, yeah, my activism and my writing, those things were the catalyst for that moment to happen, and certainly my wedding, too.

But yeah, when I started doing the list, it’s almost like everything in the years leading up to that had been preparing me for it.

Lisa Niver:

You were in the right place at the right time.  So, this is where I got confused. He wrote the list when you were a baby, that’s why I was thinking you grew up without him. Now, I understand. Did he do any of the things on the list before he died?

Laura Carney:

He did. Yeah. I mean, my brother and I were just marveling over the fact that he had checked off five of the items and marked one as having failed at, you know, just as many as like, he did things like a comedy monologue in a nightclub (thank goodness, because I didn’t want to do that). And he did go to the World Series game, and he wrote the score next to it, as proof. He helped his parents enjoy their retirement. He developed an impressive record collection. The one that he failed, that was “pay my dad back $1,000 plus interest,” which made me kind of sad, because it just meant that my grandfather passed away before he was able to do that.

Lisa Niver:

You talked about the World Series. And there were quite a few sports ones on the list. You went to the Rose Bowl and the Super Bowl. Were you a sporty family? Because you said you weren’t that athletic.

Laura Carney:

He and my brother were, and my brain would shut off when they would talk about sports. They loved sports. But yeah, I mean, he took us to games, all kinds. Basketball, baseball, college football games. He was a huge sports fan. My brother was, too. I mean, he coached me in sports as though I was a boy.

Lisa Niver:

You were very athletic. What was the picture you sent me with something about the best seed. Was that tennis, but your foot was in a cast?

Laura Carney:

That was arrogance on my part, because I did play on the tennis team in high school, and I considered it my best sport. So I thought, oh, I’ll just do this in one day. This is fine. And I was playing against a friend, my husband’s best friend, who’s a tennis coach, and I was kind of having some stomach issues, and my husband’s like, oh, I’ll do it instead of you. It’s okay. And I said, no, no, no, no. I’m going to get this done today. And like, as soon as I got out there, like, I just tore a tendon in my foot. Like, one wrong move, and then I had to get surgery. And it just, I mean, that, in a way became the most involved list item just because of what happened that day. And you know, in many ways, my greatest teacher, because I realized, I could have just not played, and anytime I approach a list item with arrogance, like, this is going to be easy, or like, arrogance, or rushing, like, let’s just get this out of the way, you know, stuff like that, it doesn’t work. That’s been the case. So, what I started learning was, if I’m doing this with humility, so, no ego, I’m doing this with kindness, and I’m doing it to promote somebody else, that’s usually when they work out.

Lisa Niver:

Those are really good lessons for people listening, who also want to do things from a bucket list, that you really have to pay attention. There’s risks personally, and you have to pick well. Tell us about corresponding with the Pope, how’d that happen?

Laura Carney:

I put that off towards the end, just because it seemed impossible. I thought this surely is the one, this is the one that’s going to do me in, that is going to be…you know, you can’t even call him “he,” the pronoun he uses is “His Holiness”…like His Holiness might not respond. And I consulted a priest in New York, a Jesuit priest who is comfortable in the media. He works with Martin Scorsese. Like he does a lot, and he wrote me back, unbelievably, and said, just try it, he might write back. So, I thought, well, this guy seems to have an audience with Pope Francis more than most priests, so, maybe…I’m not saying he put a word in for me, but maybe he knows something. So, I went ahead and I wrote the letter. And I just crafted it really well. I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to tell His Holiness, and you can you can google online, there’s a proper etiquette to writing to the Pope. And most people don’t know this, but he will write back, or somebody will who works under him, who they say represents him.

Lisa Niver:

That’s so amazing. So, the Pope and then also a president, you have corresponded with, right?

Laura Carney:

Yeah, President Jimmy Carter. I was doing a TV show, an interview right at the very beginning of doing the list, and somebody wrote to me, someone emailed me and said, you know, if any president will do, Jimmy Carter still teaches Sunday school every Sunday in Plains Georgia, and he was 92, at the time. He’s not doing it anymore now, so I emailed his health liaison, and she said she could give me a tour of the Carter Center if I came down, and she told me to get in touch with the innkeeper because there’s like one innkeeper in town and she’s the one who makes sure you can get into the church, like you can get a pew, because sometimes he would have 500 people and they couldn’t get everybody in. So, we basically went in there like we were VIPs. So, we got to sit right behind where he was sitting. But that still didn’t ensure that I was going to be able to talk to him. It wasn’t like just be in the vicinity of a president, it was talk to the president. So, just by total coincidence, we ended up at the hotel at the same time as one of his biographers. And you know, being a journalist, I had been bingeing everything, Jimmy Carter for like a week, and so, I could talk to Art about him, and kind of hold my own. And that went on for two or three hours.

Lisa Niver:

You talked to him for two or three hours?

Laura Carney:

In the parking lot. Yeah, my husband, kind of chiming in sometimes, but mostly just watching it because he found it very entertaining.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, my goodness, how incredible.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, and he kept…it was funny, because his name is Art Milnes. He’s actually a Canadian speechwriter for Prime Ministers, and he kept throwing out all these names, like George HW Bush and George W Bush, and you know, people he’d met, and I got to my hotel room, I just Googled it, and it was like, there he was with each one of the men he’d been talking about and Jimmy Carter even spent the night in his house once in Canada. So, I mean, we’re pretty sure he put in a good word for us, and that’s why I got a few sentences. But the funny thing is like, we’re still friends now. Like, I just talked to Art last week, and to this day, we still don’t know. Like, we don’t know if he said anything to him, and he’ll probably never tell us.

Lisa Niver:

Well, that’s okay. I mean, what an incredible journey you’ve been on the last five years. And how did the experience of the COVID coaster change getting through your your list?

Laura Carney:

I’ve never heard it called that before.

Lisa Niver:

There were ups and downs in the COVID coaster.

Laura Carney:

That’s true. That’s very true. Like I don’t want to sound like I benefited from the pandemic, because I certainly didn’t. I had to stay away from my family, just like everybody else did. And also, I mean, my husband and I are quite privileged, in that we could both do our jobs from home. So, you know, we didn’t have to cope with a lot of hardships that so many people did. But at the same time, I was starting to write a book proposal then, and I suddenly had a lot of time and space to do that.

You know, I had list items that actually could be helped by the fact that we couldn’t leave the house and we couldn’t go certain places. So, like, have my own tennis court, suddenly, a Ping-Pong table sufficed, because we didn’t know when it was going to end. We might have been trapped in the house forever. So that was the closest I was going to come to having my own tennis court. Own a large house and our own land, that ended up being a very large tent, which if you look up house in the dictionary, it just says shelter. You know, it says a couple of things. But it says shelter. And we couldn’t travel anymore, but we were itching to travel. And the best we could come up with was camping. So, I was sitting there and it occurred to me, oh, my God, this is our large house, and we had just run every single street in our town, just because we were so restless. And I thought, well, that’s sort of like we owned our land. So, there were a lot of things like that that happened during the pandemic that was almost like, I mean, quite honestly, what it was teaching me was even in times that seem bleak, and terrible there are still glimmers of hope in your everyday life, and that my dad’s spirit, who had been helping me the entire time, like he’s still there helping me. He’s still helping me find like, the bright lining of everything.

Lisa Niver:

That was very beautiful. What you just said, yes. And that’s true. So, during the COVID, coaster, you had times where you weren’t traveling, but quite a few of your list are traveling including London and New Orleans. Were they places you also wanted to go or it was really you went because it was on your dad’s list?

Laura Carney:

Oh, yeah. I mean, there wasn’t ever a time where I was like, St. Thomas. God, don’t make me go there. Yeah, I wanted to go to all those places, and I had been. I mean, we’d been to Paris, already. I’d been to Los Angeles, already. I’ve been to Chicago. I’ve been to Las Vegas. So, a lot of them I had already checked off. Yeah, it was thrilling to get to go to each of those places. Sometimes it started to feel a bit much, like we went to New Orleans, and then San Diego, and then Miami, and then St. Thomas within a period of eight months. So, it was a lot of traveling and I got really good at traveling. I got so much better at packing, so much more efficient. Like it just started…I remember at one point I felt like getting on a plane, to me, started to feel like getting on a train, which is what, as a commuter to New York City, I would do every day. But yeah, it was a really interesting way to travel, too, I think, because I was always doing it as a researcher and as a writer, and I’m always looking for the things, like what would my dad have experienced if he checked this off himself? So, usually, that means very cultural or historic parts of the places I’m going to.

Lisa Niver:

Did you have a sense of how he picked the places? Was there a theme to it?

Laura Carney:

Yeah. Like the Rose Bowl, and the NCAA Final Four, and also the Super Bowl, I mean, because he’s a sports nut, like we were talking about, especially football, he really loved watching football. I think you could kind of narrow down each of these places to one thing, sometimes, that he was probably most interested in. So, for example, Vienna is the study of music, and my dad was a singer. So, he loved the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and surely he was interested in the history of music, and that’s why he wanted to go there. It was, you know, Vienna is also a cultural melting pot for Europe, and he was an American Studies major, who was also very interested in world history. So, that would have been something that he was curious about. London, I think everybody wants to go to London, but I knew he loved King Arthur. He was a writer, he loved literature. So, those are the things I’m focusing on when I went to London, and we actually made a side trip to Ireland, which is where my family’s from. So, that was really amazing, too.

And then, as far as San Diego goes, I had to go sailing in San Diego, because that’s where people do it. I mean, most naval bases in the world are in San Diego and my dad helped…he actually was like…he has a publishing company on the side, and he helped his friend publish her book called Sailing Is Fun in the 1970s, so I think that’s probably what he would have wanted to do. She was joking with me once though. She said, he was handing it out at marinas, where they already know how to sail. But anyway, yeah, that’s why I did that. In New Orleans, similar. We went to Jazz Fest that’s, you know, a town that’s famous for music. Yeah, that’s really how I was narrowing things down. St. Thomas, I think he probably wanted to go there, just because in the 1970s, the Caribbean became a very popular place for people to want to travel to. So, I think that’s probably what that was about.

Lisa Niver:

And I noticed when you were talking about the different places, you mentioned, Vienna, and singing, you recorded some songs also as part of this, right?

Laura Carney:

I did. It’s funny, I’ve been featured now on three TV shows singing, and it’s been a different song each time No, sorry, no, two TV shows and NPR. All of a sudden, I hear my voice at like nine o’clock in the morning. And each time without instrumental accompaniment. Thank you, but I don’t think of myself as a singer.

Lisa Niver:

I think a lot of people don’t think of themselves as a singer, or a sailor, or an athlete. And I think it’s really inspiring for people that you did it anyway.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, I can carry, I have good pitch, I can carry a tune, and the singing was, it was almost like any other list item. I mean, I’ve told people sometimes, when I did swim the width of a river, I was like, in the middle of this river and just thinking how am I going to do this, and all of a sudden, I could. Like I was a much less panicked person, coming back. And things like that would happen all the time, where suddenly I felt more confident, and like I couldn’t fail, if I had my dad helping me and if I was doing it to honor him. So, the same thing happened with singing. Like, I remember being startled when I first heard my voice while recording with my cousin who was helping me, because he’s a musician. And I said, what did you do to it? And he was like, nothing. This is just you. And I thought something’s going on here. Like, clearly my dad’s helping me, and I feel like he helped me write the book, too, quite honestly. Because you know, sometimes you read a passage and you’re like, did I do that? Like I can’t do…I’m not usually that good. You know what I mean?

Lisa Niver:

I think it’s fantastic. I have to say when I looked at the pictures you shared with me, one of my favorites was grow a watermelon.

Laura Carney:

Oh, that’s everybody’s favorite. So quirky. It’s so unusual. I mean, he liked to eat watermelon. That’s the closest I can come to you for why he would have wanted to do that. And you know, plant an apple tree, that’s easier to figure out because he was so American, and that’s Johnny Appleseed. That’s such an American thing to do. I don’t know why he wanted to grow a watermelon, but you know, we don’t have a backyard. We live in an apartment. So, I actually just grew it in a pot on my fire escape. And my husband helped a lot with that because he’s a morning person, I’m a night person. So, he was watering it every morning and I was watering it every evening. And by the end of the summer, we did have one little baby golf ball-sized sugar baby watermelon. And they’re supposed to get to be about like bowling ball size, but I think it’s because our bucket was so small. And it only reached, like I said, but it still tasted good.

Lisa Niver:

I think that everybody is going to love learning more about you and your dad’s list in your book. So, tell everybody, where can they find more if they want to see the pictures? They want to hear you singing? They want to buy the book? What’s the best way to find you? What should they do?

Laura Carney:

Oh, well, you can preorder the book at bylauracarney.com. That’s my website. I also have a newsletter sign-up on there. I’d like to update everyone every week on what’s going on. And @myfatherslist everywhere: Instagram, Facebook. And if you want to go to Twitter, I’m LAC30.

Lisa Niver:

Your book is available for preorder, and if people want to see you more, you’ve been everywhere, lately. The Daily Blast, Lester Holt, People Magazine. Congratulations on so much incredible coverage for your book, My Father’s List, and I I agree with you, I’m sure your father helped you with these challenges, and I bet he’s just so proud of what you’ve accomplished.

Laura Carney:

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And it really, a lot of the lesson for me was just letting go, and just believing that he was.

Lisa Niver:

It has been so much fun to talk with you. I wish you the biggest and greatest success. I can’t wait until the next book comes out when you get to do your bucket list.

Laura Carney:

Yeah, yeah. I’m already doing it. So, that might be a good idea.

Lisa Niver:

Oh, you are doing a whole other list of your own? That’s awesome. All right. Well, we’ll have to talk about that on the next podcast. Thank you, so much, and good luck.

Laura Carney:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

On the cusp of middle age, a newlywed journalist discovers and finishes the bucket list of her late free-spirited father.

Fifty-four adventures in five years. That’s what thirty-eight-year-old journalist Laura Carney embarked on when she discovered her late father Mick’s bucket list.

Killed in a car crash when Laura was twenty-five, Mick seemed lost forever. My Father’s List is the story of how one woman—with the help of family, friends, and even strangers—found the courage to go after her own dreams after realizing those of a beloved yet mysterious man. This is a story about secrets—and the freedom we feel when we learn to trust again: in life, in love, and in a father’s lessons on how to fully live.

Connect with Laura on her website, Twitter and Instagram

INSIDE EDITION: In Completing Her Late Father’s Bucket List, Daughter Faces Mortality: ‘I Had Something That Needed to Heal

INSIDE EDITION: Woman Finds Dad’s Bucket List Years After His Death, Vows to Complete It: ‘It’s What I Was Meant To Do’

PEOPLE MAGAZINE: Daughter Completes Bucket List Her Late Dad Made the Year She Was Born: ‘I Know He’s Proud’

The Washington Post: She found late father’s bucket list, then spent 6 years completing it

NPR: Daughter starts checking off things on her deceased father’s bucket list

Lisa Ellen Niver

Lisa Niver is an award-winning travel expert who has explored 102 countries on six continents. This University of Pennsylvania graduate sailed across the seas for seven years with Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, and Renaissance Cruises and spent three years backpacking across Asia. Discover her articles in publications from AARP: The Magazine and AAA Explorer to WIRED and Wharton Magazine, as well as her site WeSaidGoTravel. On her award nominated global podcast, Make Your Own Map, Niver has interviewed Deepak Chopra, Olympic medalists, and numerous bestselling authors, and as a journalist has been invited to both the Oscars and the United Nations. For her print and digital stories as well as her television segments, she has been awarded three Southern California Journalism Awards and two National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards and been a finalist twenty-two times. Named a #3 travel influencer for 2023, Niver talks travel on broadcast television at KTLA TV Los Angeles, her YouTube channel with over 2 million views, and in her memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.

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