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Ghostbusters' Ernie Hudson, Author Paul Shemella, and Retired Captain and Author Donna Roman Hernandez
This edition of The Neil Haley Show opens with a Total Celebrity conversation with actor Ernie Hudson, beloved as Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters. Hudson recounted that the role was anything but a given, since director Ivan Reitman, with whom he had worked the year before on Spacehunter, initially felt he was wrong for the film and would not even see him. It took months to land an audition, which he eventually won. Hudson said he always believed Ghostbusters would be a hit, given the funny cast and sharp script, but never imagined it would endure for decades and inspire such fiercely loyal fans. He recalled how, after Ghostbusters, fans and strangers alike began sharing their own ghost stories with him, a fitting lead-in to his appearance on the paranormal series The Haunting Of, airing Saturday, September 10th at 11 a.m., in which he revisits and shares personal experiences with the unexplained. Grateful and busy with a slate of projects, he said it is a great time in his career and that he feels blessed.
Neil then welcomed author Paul Shemella, a retired Navy SEAL captain, lecturer, and caregiver whose memoir Into the Mist: An Alzheimer's Journey chronicles his wife Lena's illness and his devotion to her. Shemella explained that dementia is an umbrella term, like cancer, covering some hundred conditions, of which Alzheimer's is the most common at roughly seventy percent, with other forms requiring different approaches. He spoke candidly about starting out knowing nothing, even about a wife whose healthy living seemed like it should have prevented the disease, and about learning as he went. He pointed to encouraging research and to lifestyle habits that can lower risk, and framed his work, sharing what he wishes he had known, as a ministry to help other caregivers cope more effectively. He counts himself lucky that Lena, now unable to speak or walk, still smiles, and his mantra is to live from one smile to the next.
The hour closes with a Criminally Good with Sherrie and Jen simulcast, presented by Storehouse Media Group, welcoming Donna Roman Hernandez, a retired thirty-year New Jersey police captain turned award-winning filmmaker, author, podcaster, and victim advocate. Roman Hernandez shared that she pursued the badge because she admired her father, an Essex County constable, only to endure decades of abuse from him at home, and she chose law enforcement anyway to help others who might have a bad parent too. Rising from a Newark 911 dispatcher to captain of an all-male department, a promotion she had to fight to have affirmed, she served as the county's domestic violence liaison and a trainer for the attorney general's office, all while never disclosing her own experience, out of a fear, common among officers and especially women, of being seen as weak. Her memoir, Battered Blue, released through her company Blue Force Films, weaves in her late mother's handwritten diary to honor a dying wish to tell their shared story. She reflected that the community she served became a kind of shield of armor, a place where, unlike in her childhood home, she felt safe and could see the good her work did, and that surviving the danger at home made the street feel manageable. Above all, she spoke of transforming pain into empathy and purpose, meeting victims not as someone reciting a training guide but as someone who has lived it. Find Ernie Hudson on The Haunting Of, Paul Shemella's Into the Mist on Amazon, and Donna Roman Hernandez's Battered Blue wherever books are sold.