Listen to the full conversation: https://t-sml.mtrbio.com/public/smartlink/pyramid-club
Andrew Bogert spent his Air Force career keeping wounded troops alive on cargo jets. Today he runs a pet and home concierge business and chairs the Pyramid Club LGBTQ+ committee.
Andrew joined the Pyramid Club in October 2015. Before that he served in the Air Force Reserve as a flight combat medic, flying into Baghdad and Balad after Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off and into Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. His job was to pick up wounded troops from every branch of the service, plus civilians moving through the State Department, and keep them alive on the run to Ramstein Air Base.
That career started almost by accident. Andrew wanted to be a flight attendant and washed out of the American Airlines process on a height requirement, a quarter of an inch too tall. A friend in the Army pointed him toward Aeromed, and three years of training later he was fully qualified on the aircraft, lifting patients into the top litter tier of what amounted to a flying hospital carrying up to 100 people at a time.
The instinct behind all of it came from his mother, Joan Marie Bogert, a nurse for 60 years who fostered 32 children over 12 years with his father in an emergency placement home outside Allentown. Andrew is the youngest of five. He tells Vince he would think of her before treating an injury he had never seen before.
Caretaking is also what brought him to horses. After retiring in 2011 he found Shamrock Reins at a table outside a courthouse during jury duty, met founder Janet Brennan, and spent five years in intensive equine therapy at the farm in Pipersville. He is certified to work with horses now, and he walks through what a session looks like, from grooming and anatomy to lunging on a long lead to the moment you breathe into a horse's nostrils so it learns your scent. Dogs came next, which is how Drew's Doggy Days started. He takes care of dogs, cats, horses, chickens, goats, homes and pools, whatever the client needs.
At the Club, Andrew chairs the committee Maureen Coyle asked him to join in 2015, back when it was called the LGBT committee and four people sat around one table. It is the LGBTQ+ committee now, more than twenty members strong, and it fills the room on the third Thursday of most months with a rotating cast of partner organizations. Penn Medicine, Jefferson, the Philadelphia Police, the Fire Department, Aramark. Andrew served during Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and he is direct about why a conversation like this one matters.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Meet Andrew Bogert
2:34 - Becoming a Flight Combat Medic
4:41 - The Nurse Who Raised Him
7:49 - Equine Therapy After Service
11:40 - From Horses to Doggy Days
13:52 - Inside the LGBTQ+ Committee
GUEST LINKS:
Drew's Doggy Days on Instagram: @drewbogert
drewbogert@gmail.com
ABOUT PEOPLE AT PYRAMID:
People at Pyramid is the Pyramid Club's member spotlight podcast. Every episode, host Vince Quinn sits down with one of our members to find out who they are, what they do, and what makes them worth knowing. Business, service, second acts, and the occasional story nobody saw coming.
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