April 1963, a music teacher in rural Nevada asks her nine students to write one sentence about their favorite singer. It’s just a classroom exercise. She doesn’t expect anyone to read them. 3 weeks later, a delivery truck pulls up to the tiny schoolhouse. What’s inside will change how these children see themselves forever. Here is the story.

 The letter arrives on a Thursday afternoon. Dean Martin’s office in Beverly Hills gets stacks of fan mail every day. Marriage proposals, song requests, people wanting money, people wanting advice, people wanting autographed photos for their nieces, nephews, dying grandmothers. His secretary, Gloria, sorts through hundreds of envelopes weekly.

 Most get the standard treatment. Form letter, signed glossy photo, dean signature stamped by a machine, but this one catches her eye. The envelope is homemade, addressed in careful teacher’s handwriting. Nevada postmark, small town she’s never heard of. Inside, two pages torn from a lined notebook folded neatly.

 Gloria reads the first line and stops sorting. Dear Mr. Martin. My name is Helen Carter. I teach music at a small school in Nevada. Nine students, ages 7 to 13. She keeps reading. We don’t have much. No record player, no radio that works. No way to hear music except when someone visits town and brings back stories about what they heard. But we have your albums.

 Well, we have the covers. Someone donated them years ago, but the records inside were broken. So, we read the song titles and imagine what they sound like. Gloria reads that line twice. They read song titles and imagine. I’m writing because last week I asked the children to write one sentence about their favorite singer. All nine picked you.

 Not because they’ve heard you sing, they haven’t, but because your album covers make you look like someone who’s having fun, and we don’t have much fun here. Gloria sets down her coffee. I’m not asking for anything. I just wanted you to know that somewhere in Nevada, nine children believe you’re the greatest singer in America, even though they’ve never heard your voice.

 Then at the bottom, nine sentences in children’s handwriting. Dear Mr. Martin, you look happy. I want to be happy, too. Lucy, age seven. My dad says you’re on TV, but we don’t have one. I bet you’re funny. Robert, age 10. I want to sing like you someday, even though I don’t know how you sound. Maria, age nine. Nine children, nine sentences, all believing in someone they’d never heard.

 Gloria walks into Dean’s office. He’s on the couch reading Variety, drinking coffee, wearing a cardigan and slacks. It’s 2:00 p.m. Most stars are on set or in meetings. Dean’s just reading. Boss, you need to see this. Dean looks up, takes the letter, reads it once, then again, then a third time.

 He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally. They’ve never heard me sing. No, they have album covers. No records? Yes. And they wrote sentences about me. Anyway, yes. Dean folds the letter, taps it against his knee. Before we go further, quick question. Where are you watching from? Drop a comment. Let’s see which cities got the most people who remember when music actually mattered.

It’s April 19th, 1963. Dean Martin is 45 years old. He’s made 30 albums, starred in 40 movies, has a hit TV variety show watched by 30 million people every week. He’s one of the biggest stars in America, and somewhere in Nevada, nine children have never heard his voice. He picks up the phone, calls his business manager.

 How much would a good record player cost? The kind that works. For what? For a school? Depends. Portable, maybe $150. Nice one, $300. Get the nice one. And get me copies of my albums. All of them. The good ones, the bad ones, all of them. Dean, what’s this? And get me 20 albums from other singers. Sinatra, Ella, Nat King, Cole, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett. The best.

 Kids should hear the best. His manager hesitates. This is going to cost. I don’t care what it costs. Just do it. Dean hangs up, pulls out a piece of paper, starts writing. He crosses out lines, starts over, crumples it up, tries again. Takes him 40 minutes to write one page. Dear Helen and students, thank you for your letter.

 I’m honored you picked me, especially since you’ve never heard me sing. That takes faith. Or maybe you’re just bad guessers. Either way, I appreciate it. Here’s the thing, Pali. Music isn’t about being perfect. It’s about having fun. And you don’t need a fancy setup to have fun, but it helps. So, I’m sending you a record player and some albums.

Mine mostly because I’m vain, but also some other singers because they’re better than me and you should know that. Listen to everything. Find what you like. Sing along even if you sound terrible. That’s the whole point. You’re not just nine kids in Nevada. You’re nine people who know what matters. That’s everybody. Keep listening.

 Keep singing. And Lucy, age seven, you asked about being happy. Here’s the secret. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Life’s too short. Your friend Dean. He seals the letter, ships it with the record player and 40 albums. Doesn’t tell anyone. Doesn’t call the press. just sends it and goes back to work. 6 months later, Dean is in Reno filming four for Texas. Comedy western.

 Him and Frank Sinatra robbing banks, fighting over Anita Ecberg. Typical stuff. The shoot is chaos. Frank’s in a mood. The director is drunk. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Dean gets restless. One afternoon between setups, he asks his driver about that school, the one with nine students, the one he sent the record player to.

 Where is it? About 60 miles from here. Middle of nowhere. Get me a car. Dean, you’ve got two scenes this afternoon. Tell him I’m sick. I’ll be back tomorrow. His driver arranges a car. Dean drives himself. 60 m through Nevada desert. No entourage, no photographers, no press, just him in a rental sedan with the windows down, smoking a cigarette, following directions to a schoolhouse he’s never seen. He arrives at 100 p.m.

 School is in session. He can hear music playing inside. His music. Everybody loves somebody coming through the walls. He parks, walks to the door, knocks. The music stops. Helen opens the door, sees Dean Martin standing there in sunglasses and a cardigan, and her knees almost give out. Mr. Martin, hope I’m not interrupting.

 The nine students are frozen, mouths open. One boy drops his pencil. It rolls across the floor. Nobody moves to pick it up. Dean steps inside. The room is small, one big space, nine desks, wood stove, chalkboard, American flag, and in the corner on a table, the record player, his album stacked beside it. Sinatra, Ella, not King Cole, all there.

 You’ve been using this. Helen finally finds her voice. Every day we listen during lunch. The children take turns picking songs. Dean walks to the record player, touches it like it’s fragile. What’s your favorite? A small voice from the front row. Ain’t that a kick in the head? Dean turns.

 A girl, maybe seven, blonde pigtails. Lucy, you wrote me that sentence about being happy. Lucy nods, face turning red. Well, that song makes me happy, too. Good choice. He spends the next 4 hours with them. Doesn’t perform, doesn’t sing, just talks. He asks them what they’ve learned from listening to music. They answer, “How to have fun, how to not worry so much, how to be yourself.” Dean listens.

 Really listens. These kids understand. They got it. The whole point of music, the whole point of life in nine simple answers. Near the end of the afternoon, one boy raises his hand. Small kid, serious face. Robert, age 10. Mr. Martin. Yeah. Pali, why did you help us? We’re nobody. The room goes silent.

 Every child waiting for the answer. Helen standing by the window, handsfolded, also waiting. Dean walks over to Robert’s desk, pulls up a chair, sits down eye level with the boy. Listen to me. You’re not nobody. Don’t ever say that. Robert’s eyes are wet. But we live in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows we exist. Dean leans forward.

 You know what makes somebody a somebody? Robert shakes his head. Believing you matter. That’s it. Doesn’t matter where you live. Doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. Doesn’t matter if you’re on TV or in a schoolhouse in Nevada. You matter because you say you do. Understand? Robert nods slowly. Dean stands, looks at all of them.

 And when you grow up, you find the next kids who think they’re nobody, and you tell them the same thing. That’s how this works. We lift each other up. Got it? Nine voices together. Yes, sir. Before Dean leaves, Helen asks one favor. Could we take a photograph? Dean agrees. They gather outside. Nine students, Helen, Dean Martin, standing in front of the schoolhouse.

 Someone’s father has a camera, takes one shot. That’s all they need. Dean drives back to Reno. Doesn’t mention the visit to anyone. just another afternoon off. But on the drive, he thinks about Robert’s question. We are nobody. How many people think that? How many kids grow up believing geography determines worth? He’s been singing for 25 years.

 Always thought it was just entertainment, something to pass the time, make people smile. Now he knows different. Music teaches not because it’s profound, because it reminds people to stop taking life so seriously. And sometimes that’s the most important lesson. Robert grows up in that Nevada town, graduates high school, goes to college on a music scholarship, studies education, returns to Nevada, takes a job at a small school, different town, different students, but the same one room feeling.

 rural kids, ranchers children, kids who think nobody sees them. He teaches them the same lesson. You matter because you say you do. Uses Dean’s albums sometimes. Plays them on an old record player. Tells them about the day Dean Martin drove 60 miles on his day off to sit with nine kids who thought they didn’t matter.

 In 2005, he writes an article for the local newspaper about that day, about what Dean taught him, about spending 40 years passing on that lesson. The headline, “The day Dean taught me everyone’s somebody.” He writes, “I was 10 years old when Dean Martin sat in a chair beside my desk and told me I wasn’t nobody. I’m 52 now.

 I’ve taught hundreds of students and I tell every single one what Dean told me. You matter because you say you do. That’s the whole game. The article runs once. Small circulation. Most people never see it, but the nine students from that day do. They’re adults now, scattered across the country. Different lives, different careers, but they all remember.

 They remember the record player arriving, the albums, the letter, and the day a movie star drove 60 miles to spend four hours with nine children who thought they didn’t matter. The photograph from that day still exists. Lucy, the girl with blonde pigtails who loved Ain’t That a Kick in the Head, kept it for 60 years, framed it, hung it in her living room, showed it to her children, her grandchildren.

 In the photo, nine children stand in front of a small schoolhouse. Helen stands to the left. Dean Martin sits in a chair to the right, cardigan unbuttoned, cigarette in hand, smiling like he’s got nowhere else to be. Robert is standing next to him, grinning. They’re all grinning. At the bottom, someone wrote in pen, “The day we learned we’re somebody.

” When Lucy dies in 2018 at 62, her daughter finds the photograph, donates it to a museum. Not the Dean Martin Museum, the Nevada State Museum. Because this isn’t just about Dean, it’s about what he taught. The museum displays it with Robert’s article with the letter Dean wrote with testimony from the surviving students.

The plaque reads, “Dean Martin didn’t just sing. He taught generations of Americans that you don’t need permission to matter. This photograph captures the moment nine children learned that lesson. Not from a record, but from a man who drove 60 m to make sure they knew they were somebody. And by the way, most of you watch these stories but forget to subscribe.

 If you want more stories about Dean and the values he stood for, hit that subscribe button because they don’t make entertainers like Dean Martin anymore. And unfortunately they never will