Born Lucky

Born Lucky is a memoir by Leland "Lucky" Vittert, a television journalist. The book traces Leland's journey from a childhood defined by severe social and cognitive differences that experts could not name to a career as a foreign correspondent and prime-time cable news anchor, crediting his father, Mark Vittert, as the guiding force behind his survival and success.

Leland's story opens in 1986, when a teacher at his nursery school in St. Louis called his parents, Mark and Carol Vittert, in for a meeting and recommended their four-year-old son be evaluated. Leland had not spoken until age three, refused group activities, and preferred adults to children. In fourth grade, an IQ test revealed a 68-point gap between his genius-level verbal score and his performance score, classified as mildly impaired. Because autism was then understood only in its most extreme forms, no diagnosis fit Leland's profile. Experts used the term "social blindness," denoting severe difficulty reading social cues. A psychologist told Mark that Leland "has to want it," a phrase that became Mark's guiding principle. Mark and Carol refused any formal label, believing it would lower expectations. Mark's philosophy was direct: The world would not adapt to Leland, so Leland had to adapt to the world.

Leland recounts his birth in 1982, when doctors performing a C-section found the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck with two knots. The doctor declared him "one lucky baby," and the nickname stayed for 18 years. His parents had married after three dates and planned to have no children; Carol's unexpected pregnancy changed everything.

Mark's values are rooted in his family history. His father, who lost everything in the Great Depression and refused to declare bankruptcy, died when Mark was 16, leaving a letter instructing his sons that a man is measured by honesty and integrity. Mark has carried it in his wallet ever since. His entrepreneurial career reinforces this ethos: After 106 rejected sales calls for his first company, his 107th saved the business. Years later, a close friend's death at 40 prompted Mark to sell his businesses and devote himself to family.

After the family moved to Switzerland in 1987 for Mark's volunteer work with the United Nations, the International School in Geneva asked them to remove five-year-old Leland, confirming for Mark that his son's difficulties would not resolve on their own. At their lake house in Michigan, Mark lifted Leland onto a tree branch and told him to jump. "I'll always catch you," he said, establishing a foundational metaphor of trust.

Mark began teaching Leland the unspoken rules of social interaction. Inspired by Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, he devised a system: At adult dinners, Mark tapped his watch whenever Leland needed to stop talking. After each outing, they reviewed the evening like game film. Social interaction became, for Leland, a deliberate skill rather than instinct.

At eight, Leland discovered flying. His instructor, Stan Mick, a retired General Motors engineer, became the first person outside his family to believe in him. When Mark asked Mick to tell Leland he could not fly because of persistent motion sickness, Mick refused: "If he won't quit, I can't." By 11, Leland had crossed the Atlantic from St. Louis to Paris, retracing aviator Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic route. Flying gave him an identity outside the social structures he could not navigate.

Throughout grade school and middle school, Leland endured relentless bullying. After Mark discovered his elementary school was protecting bullies, he pulled Leland out. At John Burroughs School, a principal told Mark and Carol that everyone thought Leland was "really pretty weird." An art teacher humiliated Leland in front of the class, and students mocked his differences. When Leland's younger sister, Liberty, enrolled at the same school, students targeted her as well. Almost every afternoon, Mark waited at the end of the driveway to absorb Leland's anger and tears, reassuring him that the values causing him pain would earn him respect later. Both parents reveal that Mark sometimes cried alone after Leland went to bed.

Leland found rowing before ninth grade, a sport that rewarded effort over coordination, and made the varsity crew as a freshman. A talk radio internship introduced him to broadcasting; host Charlie Brennan's advice, "Go practice your craft," shaped his trajectory. After a failed attempt to fit in socially resulted in schoolwide ostracism, Leland vowed never to change who he was. He gained admission to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and faced familiar rejection in college, turned down by every fraternity.

After graduating, Leland built his career through local stations in Little Rock, Orlando, and Denver. Persistent outreach to Fox News led to the only available foreign correspondent post: Jerusalem, a bureau no one else wanted. When the Arab Spring erupted in January 2011, Fox sent him to Cairo. Mark pleaded with him not to go, then relented in tears. Leland reported live from Tahrir Square the night Hosni Mubarak resigned, telling Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, "I feel like it's something I'm going to tell my kids about." In Libya, a security operative carried the crew to safety seconds before a jet bombed their position.

When Leland reunited with his parents after Libya, an email from the parent of a childhood bully, expressing pride in his accomplishments, confirmed Mark's lifelong promise: The values that made Leland a target in school were the same values earning him respect as an adult. Over four years, he covered the Benghazi attack that killed his friend Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL, and the Russian incursion into Ukraine. By late 2013, recognizing he was relying on adrenaline and alcohol to cope, Leland decided to return home. Fox executive Bill Shine brought him back to anchor.

Shine's advice was simple: "Just be you." When Shine was forced out of Fox in 2017, Leland lost his biggest advocate. During the 2020 election, Leland pressed a Trump campaign spokesperson on-air for evidence of voter fraud and received none. A Fox executive warned him to "respect the audience." By December, he was removed from the anchor desk. On January 1, 2021, he anchored his final Fox broadcast. Within days, he developed COVID-19 and was hospitalized with dangerously low oxygen levels.

Shine, now consulting for the start-up cable network NewsNation, connected Leland with executive Sean Compton, who offered him his own show. On July 19, 2021, On Balance with Leland Vittert premiered. Fox News's $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems vindicated Leland's stance on election coverage. In Chicago, a college friend introduced Leland to Rachel; on their fourth date, Mark invited himself along and declared, "You're going to marry that girl." Golf became their shared passion, the first recreational activity father and son ever enjoyed together.

Leland closes the memoir by acknowledging that he still misses social cues and talks too much but now has tools to manage what he calls the human equation, a learned skill requiring constant practice. Having always insisted he did not want children, he now considers parenthood for the first time, inspired by Mark's example. In a brief afterword, Mark addresses parents of children with disabilities, urging that love, patience, and unwavering belief can make an enormous difference. The central lesson, as Leland frames it, is that Mark did not change the world for him; he changed Leland for the world.