"Quiet Hero"

Once in a while there comes along an important story that needs to be told.  "Quiet Hero" by Rita Cosby is one of those stories.

Most of us know Rita Cosby from her journalistic appearances on all the major news networks, anchoring prime time news reports and currently as a correspondent for the popular show, Inside Edition.  Her first book, "Blonde Ambition" about the life and death of Anna Nicole Smith, was a New York Times Best Seller.

"An Emmy-award winning journalist, Rita Cosby hosted the top-rated show on MSNBC, "Rita Cosby: Live & Direct." She also hosted Fox New Channel's highly rated programs, "Fox News Live with Rita Cosby" and "The Big Story Weekend Edition with Rita Cosby." Some of her groundbreaking interviews include: an exclusive interview with Slobodan Milosevic while he was imprisoned at The Hague; an exclusive interview with Yasser Arafat when his compound was under siege; she was the first journalist to see the suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo and witness an actual interrogation; and a rare, private meeting with Pope John Paul II after receiving an exclusive letter from Timothy McVeigh explaining why he carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. Having interviewed more than a dozen world leaders and four US Presidents, she also made headlines for her interviews with Michael Jackson, David Berkowitz and Dr. Jack Kevorkian. She has been a featured guest on hundreds of television and radio shows worldwide and earned her two bachelors' degrees from the University of South Carolina."

Of all of the news stories reported by Rita Cosby, her latest is the one that will be the best remembered, her legacy.  Like many of us, her father and family members did not do a lot of explaining to a young child about experiences in World War II, it was taken for granted that something happened on a grand scale, we studied about it in school, but at home, there was an accepted silence, it wasn't talked about.

Rita Cosby's parents divorced when she was a teenager and she lost the relationship with her father for many years.  Not until after her mother died did she make a conscious decision to rebuild the relationship that had been severed.  She discovered among her mother's belongings a tattered tan suitcase, which when opened, exposed the memories of a man whose life was as important as many of the world leaders Cosby had interviewed.

"Quiet Hero" poignantly recounts the realities of her father's years as a member of the Resistance in wartime Poland, his homeland a battleground, Richard Cosby was determined to fight to the end.  His experience as a prisoner in a German POW camp and his rescue by American forces, is chilling, especially for a young man still in his teens.

That's not the whole story, as told by Rita Cosby to Susan Murphy Milano, Guest Host of The Roth Show, on  December 29.  Rita tells listeners about the special bond she now knows with the father that was absent from her life and how they have reconnected in a very special way.  Of all the leaders and celebrities in the stories which Rita Cosby has covered over the years, the "Quiet Hero" was right in her own family, told from the point of view of a daughter learning the truth after so many years of silence.

Listen to Rita Cosby: