My name is Gary McDougall. As a child growing up, I thought the American dream was a just a fantasy. But with hard work and a lot of perseverance I achieved it. I am living The American Dream. The only thing I’m missing is that white-picket fence. And the reason I don’t have it? Well that’s because the homeowner’s association in my neighborhood doesn’t allow it.

My life has not been an ordinary one. From what you are about to read, you’ll certainly find that out. As I’ve spoken to people over the course of my life, both personally and professionally, I have heard some of the most astonished reactions:

That really happened?

You survived what?

How are you even still here?

Funny thing is, I’ve never asked myself these questions. For my entire life, I’ve always assumed that what was happening to me was normal. The physical abuse and sexual abuse, poverty, racism, despair, emotional trauma – thought it was all normal. Thought that what I was going through was what everyone else in the world was going through. But through these conversations I was having, I began to find out I was wrong.

I was living a much tougher life than the average person.

I did. I lived a rough life. So rough, in fact, that it brought me to the brink of suicide. I had a plan in place and I was ready to execute. In my mind, there just wasn’t a reason to be here anymore. Nothing was going right. Nothing in my life was amounting to anything. I felt useless.

That’s when I got my sign from God.

The story I’m about to tell you is my way of unraveling everything. There are things in this book that I’ve never discussed with another living soul. Things I told myself I’d keep inside me forever. But I’m letting them out now because its time. God has put me on Earth for a reason and I believe that this book will reveal just that.

I was in fourth grade when I had my first dance with the Devil. I was living in Belize at the time with my mother and five of my siblings. We lived in a small neighborhood called Cinderella Town, but the disaster that took place on Halloween night of 1961 makes for a story that could never be called a Cinderella story.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I’d been back and forth between my birthplace of The United States and my parents’ birthplace of Belize several times. Since I was born – and several siblings after – we lived in the U.S. It wasn’t all glamour, though. My mother and father had a relationship that was anything but stable, and after some incident – I still have no idea what it was – my mother took us and went back to Belize, leaving my father in Brooklyn, N.Y. In fact, I still have a telegram that she sent to him in 1959 letting him know that we’d arrived back in Belize safely.

I always saw my mother as a remarkable woman and the more you read of this book, the more you’ll be able to see why. The fact that she managed to make a happy life out of a relationship with my father was amazing enough, but she did so much more. Halloween night in 1961 was one of those nights.

In 1961, there was no Weather Channel, especially not in Belize. But somehow, my mother had heard about this hurricane out in the Caribbean and knew it was coming through. She knew about it, but we didn’t leave the house. The skies outside grew darker and she eventually asked me – me, a boy, sixteen days shy of my eighth birthday – if we should leave. As crazy as it sounds that she asked me, the crazier part is that I said no. Maybe it was the brave little boy in me that wanted to hunker down and wait out the storm. Who knows? What I do know is that I said no.

The skies grew even darker, the wind picked up and it began to rain harder, and then my mother asked me again, “Should we leave?” This time, I said yes. We needed to worry about all of us getting out: Mom, me, Robert, Wayne, Felicia, and Patricia who was just an infant at the time. The weather was getting bad and we all needed to get somewhere safe.

In the small Caribbean countries like Belize, most everyone is Catholic. At the time, I was already baptized and had made my Holy Communion. I was brought up into the Catholic life and this would play a pretty important role down the road. But for now, I was a little Catholic boy with my Catholic family and we needed to get somewhere that would protect us from the storm.

The first place we could think to go was the church. So we did.

Our house in Cinderella Town was tiny. It had two rooms and a kitchen and it stood up on stilts. (The house actually still stands to this day.) Right across the street from that house was a church, and next to that church was the school. Our house was small and our town was small and everything I remember doing was in that small little space. But it was what we knew. When we walked out of the front door to look for a safe spot, we walked right across the street and into that church.

What we found when we walked out of our small house was that the weather was worse than what we thought. The winds were so intense by this point that we struggled to get across the street and into the church. It wasn’t easy, but we made it.

We were in the place of God now and everyone felt safe. many people from Cinderella Town were already there, as was the priest, and everyone was praying and singing – hunkering down and hoping for the best. Everyone had a sense of hope, but hope went out the window when the roof was ripped off. 

The church was small, but it had this tall bell tower on top. The wind outside became so intense that the bell tower was ripped clean off, and when the churchgoers inside looked up and saw the sky, everyone started running. As we all ran out of the church and looked for another safe spot, the priest stayed back. I never did get proof, but I heard that he had his own little safe spot in the form of a second-story loft.

For the rest of us that ran, we all went next door and into the school. The school was made of cinder block and designed almost like a strip mall – all classrooms lined up next to each other, side by side. The cinder-block structure wasn’t only on the perimeter of the entire building, but between each classroom, too. For this reason, everyone thought it would be safest.

It wasn’t.

I’d later learn that Hurricane Hattie struck Cinderella Town with all its glory. Our little town was right on the eastern coastline of Belize and when the hurricane slammed into us, it brought all its might. After it had its way with the place we loved, it was documented as one of the most powerful hurricane to hit North America up to that time. The wind speeds were gusting at 200 mph and the waves were 25 feet high. But the worst part – the part that proved most deadly – was the storm surge that came after.

The winds had torn roofs off of part of the school and caused chaos. To remain safe, everyone ran to the end of the row where a partial roof remained. Once there, the wind finally died down. Everything stopped. Heavy rains and wind gusts went off in the distance. Out of nowhere, it was silent—so quiet you could hear a pin drop. There were no animals or birds or insects – all long gone. It was just us, hidden inside the school. And that was when the water started to pour in. The storm surge was coming. I remember everyone screaming, trying to stand on desks and chairs to stay above water.

My mother has amazed me in many ways throughout my life and this was one of the first ones I can remember.

As the waters began to rise, she and another woman swam my two brothers, two sisters, and me out of the building and to telephone poles where they tied us to them – using sheets or something, I’m not sure. As the waters rose, they would move us higher. This continued until we were at the top of the posts and then when the water began to recede, they swam us over to the roof of our house. Then when the water levels got low enough, my siblings and I were brought into the house through the windows by my mother and the other woman. That was where we stayed until the storm surge was sucked back out into the Caribbean.

It might have been a day, maybe two – I don’t really know – until that happened and all that remained were puddles on the streets. Mom said she wanted to leave and when I asked where we were going to go, she said we were going to try to go into Belize City proper. So that’s where we headed.

When we left the house and began walking down the streets, we saw nothing but death – dead people, dead animals, death everywhere. There was nobody. It was quiet. And we just kept walking. We walked until we were spotted by soldiers driving around. They picked us up and drove us to a hotel called the St. George Hotel where the Red Cross was set up.

Of the people who stayed behind in Cinderella Town during the Hurricane, we were the only known survivors.  

We stayed in that hotel for a few days and then we ended up at the Belize Airport, sleeping there with a bunch of other survivors. Then my mom worked her miracles once more, somehow managing to get us onto a plane to Miami. There were cargo planes that were flying in and out of the Belize Airport to bring supplies for the survivors, and somehow she managed to get us onto a plane that was heading out. We were destined to get away from the disaster, on our way to the United States to stay with some of my mother’s relatives. We’d be safe after all.

Not quite.

As we sat in the cargo area of that plane – me, Mom, my two sisters and my two brothers – thinking we would soon be safely landing in sunny Miami, we were hit with the reality that the plane didn’t have enough fuel to make it. We – the extra cargo – had caused the small cargo plane more fuel than anticipated and we lost an engine, which caused us to  almost crash into the Atlantic Ocean..

We made it to land – the plane made an emergency landing somewhere near Miami – but it was costly. It took Mom 40 years before she’d step foot on another airplane after that. Me? I wasn’t so scared, but that was because I was just a little kid. I didn’t realize how close I was to dying that day, or even a few days prior during the hurricane. I’d nearly lost my life twice in that few-day span, but I managed to survive. I would go on to have many more scenarios in my life where I narrowly escaped with my life, but this was just the beginning.

Gary McDougall would live through Hurricane Hattie and the near-wreck on the way to Miami. I would live to carry on the name: McDougall. The name got its roots in Belize and it all started with a shipwreck.

Since the day I accepted God into my life again, things have progressed. They might not have progressed as quickly as I would have liked them to, but they’ve moved forward nonetheless.

I had always had God in my life, but it was never like it had been from this moment on. I was a good Catholic as a kid – I went to Catholic school, sang in the choir, went to church every Sunday. I did it all the right way. But this time was different. This time I actually believed in what I was doing rather than going through the motions.

Before I truly had faith, I went through the motions of someone who did – Baptism, Holy Communion and Confirmation. But it was when I was baptized a second time that I really and truly felt like something great had happened. It was done in Brooklyn only a few weeks after that loud and unknown Boom! shuddered through the sky and I found hope for living again. From then on, I began to actually talk to God. And not in the way the church tells you to, through the priest. I began to speak directly to Him, and that’s what made the difference…I think so, anyway.

Since I didn’t have a job – denied by the Willowbrook State School for the amazing in-home opportunity with my own apartment – I went down to the local unemployment office. It was there that I met a nice woman who was working for the office. “I’m going to keep my eye out for you,” she told me. And she did. One week later she called me and told me she had an amazing opportunity.

“What is it?” I asked her.

It was for a new government-funded program called Comprehensive Employment Training Act, or CETA. The program was a partnership between the federal government, and local government and private companies where the government would pay the first 18 months’ salary to a new employee while in training. The program gave potential employees the opportunity to prove themselves without any financial burden on the entity that hired them.

For me, the available position was a security officer within the City University of New York (CUNY) program, stationed in Brooklyn. I prayed every night for a job and when this one came, I gladly took it. I was given the job and had my uniform – I wasn’t police, but I still had a badge so that was pretty cool.

I was working as a security officer, but on the side I also began fashion modeling. Some people recommended to me that I should get into it so I gave it a shot. I was doing photo shoots and runway shows, trying to get together a nice portfolio in order to attempt to get into a modeling agency.

At the same time, I also began songwriting. But the seed had been planted long before. When I was a junior in high school, I would always walk through the halls of my school singing popular songs, only with my own made-up lyrics. The lyrics were derogatory and offensive, but it was something I liked. And I’ll never forget my English teacher, Mrs. Schmedes, who pulled me aside one day after hearing me and gave me an earful. “Young man, why are you singing these offensive, terrible words? It’s obvious that you’re talented—you’re one of my best English students. Why don’t you write songs that are meaningful and nice?”

Light bulb! 

Her words right then ignited something I never knew I loved. I taught myself the structure of songwriting and began to write. I kept doing this and while a fashion model and a security officer, I wrote my first song.

It was an exciting time, finishing my first song. But I was only a lyricist. I had no melody. Just words formatted the way a song would be. And a song without a melody is only half of a song. I met a guy named Peter Roberts who was a composer and we finished this song together. After that, I didn’t know what to do with it. We had a song and no way to get it out there. We needed a singer so we could make a demo.

Then one day a modeling friend of mine told me about her uncle, a Broadway singer who was getting ready to sign a record deal. And then something even better happened. She said, “Hey, why don’t you come meet my uncle? Maybe he’ll do your demo. Who knows?”

I did meet him. We met and I showed him the lyrics and then we played some of the melody on a piano and, low and behold, he liked it. He took the song with him into a recording studio and he sang the demo for us. Now we not only had a demo, but we had a demo by a singer who was about to sign a record deal.

Finished demo or no finished demo, I got a taste of the celebrity life on New Year’s Eve of 1978. The same model friend who introduced me to her uncle also told me about a party she was invited to at Studio 54. Studio 54!? I thought. How in the world did you get access to Studio 54? This was Ground Zero for disco clubs – the most famous disco club in the entire world. It was known for having A-list celebrities roaming around inside its walls and on the night of New Year’s Eve 1978, the rumors were found to be true.

“I have this famous model friend who wants me to go with her,” my friend told me. And as it turns out, her famous model friend was Naomi Sims, who was coined as being the first African-American supermodel. So when my friend told me I could not only go to Studio 54 but I could go with Naomi Sims? I was in.

The night was unforgettable to say the least. My friend and I took a cab to Naomi’s house and we had dinner with the supermodel and her husband. Then a limousine came and picked us up and took us to the exclusive club, and it was like living in a movie. We walked in, right past the bouncers, and there were celebrities everywhere. Drugs were all over, there were transgenders, loud music and Grace Jones being carried out on a chariot by shirtless men… it was overwhelming.

Getting into Studio 54 was something I never could have even dreamed of, but it turned out to be too much. I felt sick, like I was in over my head or something. I’d been so lucky to get into this club and after being there for only a short while, I told my model friend that I was sick and then I left – out the doors of Studio 54 just as easily as I walked in them, and then I was in the back of a cab and on my way home.

I never did see that girl again – my model friend – but I did see her uncle, a man by the name of Chuck Cissel, the one who recorded the demo for me. He liked the song so much that he told me he was going to place the song on his first album. Not only did he want to put the song on his album, but he told me he was moving to Los Angeles and I was more than welcome to come out there with him.

Sure!

What else was I going to do? I didn’t have much going on back in New York and moving to L.A. meant a chance at becoming a full-time songwriter. So I accepted and I was off to California, home to the stars and streets lined with palm trees. All didn’t start out too well in beautiful California. Chuck’s first record deal fell through but it only turned out to be a hiccup – he found a new record company under Clive Davis where he’d have a home. And once his contract there was signed, he began recording.

My song wouldn’t be put on Chuck’s first album, but it would be put on the second. I was happy to wait. Clive Davis was grooming Chuck to be the male version of Whitney Houston, even though this was before she would become a star, and I wasn’t going to complain about the wait. After all, his second album, in my mind, had the chance to be better than his first. He would have a bigger following by then. I was going to be famous – good thing I wrote my songs under the pseudonym Gary Swann. Otherwise, the paparazzi would be coming after me in no time.

The second album came five years after moving to L.A., in 1984, and Chuck called me to let me know the song was going to be used. “You need to go talk to the publishers. We’re going to record your song on the next album and you need to work out a contract,” he said. Not only was he going to use the song, but when they were in the studio and sampling my song, Dionne Warwick happened to be there and heard it, and she said it was the most original song she’d ever heard.

Really? Dionne Warwick thought that about my song? I was doing it. My songwriting career was about to take off.

The song was called Understanding Man and it was on Chuck Cissel’s second album. My song wasn’t the first single he picked off of the album, but it was there nonetheless. Today, you can’t just call into a radio station and ask for any old song off of an album to be played, but back then you could. And that’s exactly what I did.

The first time I ever heard my song on the radio was after I made one of these calls. I was in the car by myself, happier than ever. I was screaming My song is on the radio! Oh my God, my song is on the radio! I did that! and poking a finger at the song coming out of the speaker. It was my song being played on the radio. One of the greatest feelings of my life.