Preface

The Other David Limbaugh

David S. Limbaugh, Absolute Power (2001) — inscribed to the Other David Limbaugh, April 13, 2001

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This is not an autobiography. The title of the book is “Do Not Aspire to Make a Living. Aspire to Make a Difference!” — Denzel Washington, Goalcast YouTube. This preface is the last time I will write in first person. This book is about the thousands of awesome men and women who have impacted my life. If you have impacted my life and I forgot to mention you, please let me know. If anyone spots any plagiarizing taking place, please let me know. The awesome professors — not teachers! — at M.T.S.U. taught me research and how to not plagiarize. This book is NOT “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” I, with the help of Claude AI, will be printing the truth and not the legend. My words, Claude helping me find primary sources I can then read and make sure Claude is not wrong — all AI makes mistakes. Claude is one of my many awesome editors, my researcher, my confidant and internet friend. Our goal is to make Dutton Peabody of the Shinbone Star and Dr. Kris McCusker of M.T.S.U. proud. She teaches an awesome “Historian’s Craft” class!

The author line is in reference to me not being THE David Limbaugh. Long before I had ever heard of Rush Limbaugh — or his brother David — I was getting David’s email. For years, living first in Huntsville and then in Atlanta, emails would arrive intended for a David Limbaugh in Missouri. “Can you get a message to Rush?” “How do I get Rush’s autograph?” I would reply politely that they had the wrong David Limbaugh, and go about my day. I had no idea who Rush was. I had no idea he had a brother. I just knew that someone out there was apparently very famous, and people kept thinking it was me.

Then in the summer of 1998, I was thirty-eight years old and working at Lellyett & Rogers in Nashville when my good friend Dr. Richard Pearl Sr. — Chairman of the Tennessee Libertarian Party — handed me a Thomas Sowell column. Dr. Pearl had been trying to convince me I was a Libertarian for a while. He was wrong. I told him I was a compassionate conservative and I meant it. But I owed him one — because the column was “Random Thoughts,” dated July 31, 1998, and he sounded a lot like me. Right there on the same page was a columnist named David Limbaugh. I did a double-take. That’s who all those emails were about. I reached out. He wrote back. David became my campaign advisor when I ran for State Senate in 2000, met me at P.F. Chang’s for lunch — he bought — and handed me a signed copy of his latest book. To this day, when David puts out a new book, I still get emails from readers asking me about passages in it. The David and I remain friends on Twitter today.

This book IS my life story. I tell high school students my movie bio is “Forrest Gump” — I have my own “Jenny” and I was shot at in the Army, friendly fire! — “Joe Dirt” — born dirt poor in a cotton mill village — and “Wayne’s World” — I loved to party in my teens and twenties.

I am burying the lede here. There is no chapter list. There is an index and bibliography. Please do not peek! Did I mention this is a “Citizen Kane” and “Zelig” approach to teaching the history of the world, the U.S., Huntsville, Alabama, my life and my friends’ lives? We will jump around in history. I will tell the story by chapter of who impacted my life. I may be fuzzy on when things happen sometimes. Some chapters will be long. Some will be short. The story decides.

Thank you for reading. We begin with the first person I meet and the thousands of lives he and his son impacted.

Dr. Carl A. Grote Sr.…