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• Article on Mr. Gardner
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• About The Pursuit of Happyness

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Tavis: I suspect that after you hear Chris Gardner's story, you'll probably realize that his life would make a good movie. Unfortunately, Will Smith has already beaten you to the punch. When he was a young man, Chris Gardner was homeless, at one point sleeping in a men's bathroom stall with his son. He was able to pull himself up from those dire circumstances and is now the CEO of a very successful brokerage firm.

His memoir is called "The Pursuit of Happyness" which, as I mentioned, is being made into a film starring big Willie, Will Smith. Chris Gardner, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Chris Gardner: Thank you. Good to be here.

Tavis: John, do me a favor and put that book cover back up. I want to make a point about this cover. The book is called "Pursuit of Happyness.' As you can see, that "y" sticks out. I know that Chris Gardner is not illiterate. You can't be and be having a successful brokerage firm. So you obviously chose to spell happiness as h-a-p-p-y-n-e-s-s and I assume there's a reason for that.

Gardner: A very good reason. At one point in time, there was a place called Happyness that became very, very important to my son and I. That was how they spelled it. H-a-p-p-y.

Tavis: Tell me about the place.

Gardner: The place was in Oakland, West Oakland, California. After a year of living on the streets in some of the places you alluded to earlier, we had finally found a place to call our own, our own home, and it was right down the street from a place called Happyness, which turned out to be day care center.

Tavis: Tell me - obviously it's always tough in conversations like this because there's so much to talk about. Give me your version, the short version - and there's a whole book here obviously - about how you and your son ended up homeless. How did that happen?

Gardner: Life happens. Life happens. That's my new favorite four-letter word.

Tavis: Life happens.

Gardner: Life happens, and sometimes everything that can go wrong goes wrong at one time. My son and I weren't just homeless. There's a class within homelessness. Fifteen percent of all the homeless people in this country have jobs and go to work every day. We were part of that class.

Tavis: Tell me how you got to be a part of that class. How did you end up homeless?

Gardner: My ex and I split, she took my child and decided at some point she did not want him anymore and brought him back to me. I was living in a boardinghouse. The boardinghouse did not allow children. Just like that. That's how we became homeless.

Tavis: So you were already in a boardinghouse at that point?

Gardner: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Tavis: And she brings your son to you and you guys are out on the street?

Gardner: Just like that.

Tavis: So what did you do? The boardinghouse says you can't have kids in here. Obviously, you love your son.

Gardner: So you go from a series of hotels - and I do put a special emphasis on that first syllable for a reason. Twenty-five dollars a day and a color television. You go downstream to ten dollars a day and a black and white television. You can imagine who some of your neighbors might be. You go from there to a series of shelters. From the shelters, you go into the airports and the bathrooms and the subway stations. You go wherever you could go.

Tavis: Tell me how one - being homeless is, in and of itself, a challenge. I say challenge because I can't even think of a word that is more apropos - but being homeless itself is difficult. How does one parent a child homeless?

Gardner: You know what? For me, it was easy. It was an act of love. I was lucky in one sense. I was lucky in the sense that my son wasn't an infant. He was two years old going through this process and one of the things that I committed to do was to give him a sense of normalcy as much as possible. With all the meager and limited resources that we had, try to create a sense of normalcy for he and I.

Tavis: Give me an example of what you mean by that because one listener right now watching thinks, "How do you show a kid who's homeless normalcy?" What do you mean by that?

Gardner: First of all, he and I were together every day.

Tavis: That's abnormal these days.

Gardner: Well -

Tavis: - you get my point, though.

Gardner: Absolutely, absolutely. But to be there every day and to get him comfortable with "I'll be back." We had to learn, for instance, about the food chain of day care in our country. At the top of the food chain, there is the au pair, or the nanny, who is there 24-7-365. There is the licensed registered day care center. There is the dependable baby sitter.

And at the bottom of that food chain is something called a woman who keeps kids. She's not licensed, she's not registered, but she provided a service that allowed me and a lot of other people just like me to go to work every day to this day. So a woman who keeps kids is very, very important.

Tavis: There's a powerful passage in this book, Chris, where you share - I'll let you share it now - the story of what your son's reaction was and how you responded to his reaction when you finally did - I'm fast-forwarding here a little bit now. You know where I'm going with this - when you finally did get a place and the bag that you carried around everywhere you went.

Gardner: The bags (laughter).

Tavis: The bags, plural (laughter). Your shopping cart full of bags. Tell me what happens when you get a place and your son - go ahead. You tell the story.

Gardner: Well, the first thing I can say to you, I have a thing about bags to this day. I cannot throw bags away.

Tavis: So you got a houseful of bags (laughter).

Gardner: I have a room in my house with nothing but bags in it, all right?

Tavis: Got some nice ones too, I'm sure (laughter). Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Gardner: No, no, but I cannot throw bags away. But after a year of being on the streets, we get our first place in Oakland, California. My son had seen me carry everything that we owned for a year. We spend the night in our first place. We get up to leave in the morning to go to work and to go to school.

He sees me walk off without carrying all the things, all the stuff. He gets excited. He gets irritated. He wants to help. He says, "Poppa, you forgot this, you forgot that, don't we need this?" And to be able to explain to that little boy that, "Well, son, we don't have to carry everything anymore. We have a key." To this day, man, I can still feel that. That was probably one of the most important things I was ever able to share with my child.

Tavis: It sounds to me and I suspect to the viewer that you did a remarkable job. It doesn't even sound like you struggled with it, but I don't buy that. But it sounds to me like you had a pretty easy time of maintaining your dignity. I mean, the story is almost my son and I hung out every day, we did this and we did that and I tried to give him normalcy.

I mean, you listen to this and, you know, it's a cool story. It's an empowering story, but I'm thinking you are homeless. Your son is homeless. How does one - I asked earlier how one parents in a homelessness state - but how does one maintain one's dignity? We're going to come full circle in a moment.

Gardner: Well, let me say this about that. We were homeless, but we were not hopeless. There's a difference, okay? And your sense of dignity has got nothing to do with your stuff.

Tavis: But a lot of folk who are homeless are hopeless. Not everybody, but -

Gardner: - that's a different class. That's a whole different trip. You're asking me about me.

Tavis: Okay. How did you end up homeless and yet not hopeless?

Gardner: I had just started my career on Wall Street after pursuing a career on Wall Street for a year and being told that no way for a year. I was finally getting an opportunity. That was all the hope in the world. I had nothing but upside. Were there absolutely challenges and issues and crises? Absolutely, but I still had hope. I was in the game and I knew that, if I just kept going forward, and I also kept in mind and keep this in mind to this day, baby steps count too. Sometimes baby steps are more important than giant strides. So the dignity thing, that's not negotiable.

Tavis: Let me fast-forward now in some quantum leaps. You get your first place a year after being homeless. You've got the key. The story starts to turn a little bit now in the direction that you want it to move in. Take me a little further about how we end up with this full-time gig and the brokerage firm idea starts to jump. Tell me how we get to where we are now.

Gardner: We worked for this.

Tavis: A lot of work.

Gardner: We worked and we still work. We work smart. We don't work hard, and we learn. I'm doing something right now that honestly I can't talk a lot about. We're doing a private transaction, but we're doing some work in South Africa that is probably, next to raising my children, the most important thing I'll ever have a chance to do in my life. So we're tremendously excited about that. But it comes back to the basics, the basics. Blocking, tackling, practice, practice, practice and being passionate about what you do. I can't stress that enough. You've got to love it.

Tavis: You mentioned South Africa a moment ago. One reads in the book, again one of your prouder moments aside from raising your son and getting this firm off the ground and the project that you can't talk about relative to South Africa. One of your prouder moments you write in the book is meeting Mandela and actually talking to Mr. Mandela.

Gardner: Oh, man. That, for me, - hey, man, look. That was like meeting Jesus Christ, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny all at the same time. Sitting on the couch in his office for forty-five minutes. Absolutely, it's never going to happen again. The problem I have now after spending that kind of time with Mr. Mandela -

Tavis: - nobody impresses you (laughter).

Gardner: It's like, "Who are you?" (Laughter)

Tavis: Now you see why I said that, don't you?

Gardner: "Who are you? I know you're important, but -"

Tavis: - I had the same reaction, man. Aside from meeting Dr. King, as my viewers know, Mandela's the next closest thing. Once you meet Mandela, you're like, "Okay, and?" "I have met Nelson Mandela. I've had lunch with Nelson Mandela, and?" I feel you on that.

The movie project. Will Smith. Will has sat in this very chair you're sitting in now. Will's a good friend. Look forward to talking to him when the movie comes out. Big Willie, over here, over here. Big Willie, I have a seat for you when the movie comes out. Come on back and see us. That said, I assume you're excited. One's got to be excited about Will Smith.

Gardner: Hey, man, look. I got to tell you, you're going to see Will Smith like you've never seen him. Right here. No space ships, no aliens, no cars, no guns. Just all right here. And I can say one more thing. This is basically a love story.

Tavis: And Will's son plays -

Gardner: - I wasn't going to mention that.

Tavis: The last time he was here, he told us he was working on something.

Gardner: Jaden Smith has got more talent in his big toe than Will got in his whole body.

Tavis: Ouch! (Laughter)

Gardner: I can say that to you. You know why? Because I told that to Will and he said, "You know what? If this was anybody else's kid, I'd have him put off the set." (Laughter)

Tavis: That sounds like something Will would say.

Gardner: Yeah, Will and Jada. After you see this little boy's performance, you'll agree with me that the Smiths have become the new first family of film.

Tavis: Yeah, they're wonderful people. I love them all. "The Pursuit of Happyness" by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe. The movie starring Will Smith coming out later this year. Again, we hope to see Will when it comes out, but in the meantime, Chris Gardner, what a pleasure to have you on the program. Nice to meet you.

Gardner: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: All the best to you and your son. How is your son, by the way, these days?

Gardner: He's getting there. He's twenty-five. We're still working on it.

Tavis: Well, you know, we're all cracked vessels (laughter). We're all works in progress.

Gardner: Yes, we are.

Tavis: Up next, a look at baseball legend, Roberto Clemente, with Washington Post writer, David Maraniss. Stay with us.