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All right, all right.

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Feeny talks with friends.

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Episode 158. I'm with a great friend.

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How you doing, Mike? I'm doing great.

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Thank you.

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Retired Colonel
Mike Cadbury is in the house.

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This is an amazing thing.

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This is our highest ranked podcast guest.

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Your bar is low.

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Your colonel, retired colonel, 30 years.

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The, active military. All army

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and I counted

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looking through your,

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resume and looking you up 30

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rolls. Yeah, right.

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I can start with.

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You are a pleb. You are a cadet.

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But most importantly,
you are a husband to Kathy

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and a dad to Connor, Rebecca and my kids.

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That is the most important role.

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I work the hardest for those. Yeah, a lot.

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But when I was home,
I think my wife and I counted up.

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It was seven and a half years of time

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while I was in the army
that I was not home.

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Really.

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And so when I came home,
I wanted to be that person.

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And so my uniform came on,

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and I was dad as much as possible
and husband as much as possible.

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Wow. Yeah.

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Out of the 37.5 away from family.

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That's amazing.

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That's amazing.

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So kudos to your wife, Kathy.

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Absolutely. Yeah.

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She held it.

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Held it down. She did everything. Yes.

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Wow. Wow.

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And, interesting story too.

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So, where'd you meet her?

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I met Kathy in Germany.

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I was lieutenant
and was coming home from the gym one night

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and walking past
one of my friend's apartments,

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and he leaned out the window
and said, my dear American girls,

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cooking dinner tonight.

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You want to come over?

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And I'm like, yes,
let me go grab a shower.

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So I ran back to my bar
and grabbed a shower with

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at his place, and two women were there.

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One happened to be in the kitchen cooking
and the other one was

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a friend of one of my other friends there,
and that's how they both ended up.

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They were just touring around
Europe and visiting Lou and my friends.

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And so I walked in the kitchen
to see who was cooking.

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And this beautiful
woman doing chicken parm.

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Man, that smells amazing.

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And then we went on two dates
and she had to go back to work.

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She worked as a chef on a, on a converted
green barge in the canals of France.

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And so she had to go back to work.

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So I met her like in
let's say August, late August.

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And then she went back to work
until October.

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And then we kept in touch, calling,
writing letters.

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Yeah. Like 1989.

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So we were,
just came back to what she said.

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Hey, my parents are going to be in France.
Paris.

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You want to come join us? Absolutely.

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Jump on a train and win over there
and then.

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So this was probably our fourth date.

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Wow. I planned on marrying her
in front of Notre Dame, and she said I.

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No, no, I've got a year old Eurail pass.

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I may not make that one.

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As it turned out,

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we, got engaged in November
of the same year.

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Of the same year. Wow. Yeah.

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So we had literally six days.

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I think that's a beautiful story.

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That's so cool.

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And three children.

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Three kids? Yeah. Military family.

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Yeah. Very much so.

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Yeah.

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And your kids bounced around
to different schools and stuff to to do

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the whole military thing.

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Our kids went to at least eight different
schools before they went to college.

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So, they

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I think my oldest daughter,
she was the one that actually

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got four years of one high school.

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So it was great for her.

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Where was that?

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That was in Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Beautiful. Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Prison capital.

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Yeah. Fort Leavenworth.

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Oh, wow. Yeah. Fun.

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Oh, wow.

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So, yeah,
that's so considered Army brats, right?

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They are Army brat. Army brats.

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Did they have any.

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Did they appreciate it?

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Did they? Did they have regrets?
Did they want to stay?

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How were the feelings?
Did you talk it over as a family?

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Were these family meetings
when you had to move or.

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We talked it over.

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But I think they understood.

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Always in front of my wife
was the best to explain to her that,

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you know, the Army asked you what
your desires are, where you want to go.

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But the number one thing
is, what are the needs of the army?

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What's your skill set?

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And where's there going to be
an empty slot that you have to go to?

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And usually you had a couple choices,
and I, I like to think I voted for

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my family and for all the times where
I had the opportunity to have a couple

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what would be considered great jobs, but

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instead, you know, good example.

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After I finished as a battalion operations
officer,

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brigade operations officer at Fort Drum,
New York, they offered me a job

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as the fire support chain
or the Joint Readiness training Center.

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Louisiana. Okay.

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Not a great place.

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I mean, I I'm sure people from there
know that there's good things to do

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and there's good things you can find.

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But everyplace you go,
I don't want to demean any place.

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But it wasn't at the top of our list.

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Basically the school system.

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But we did a tremendous job for me.

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It was that
or go to a NATO assignment in Europe.

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And how did family come with me

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and kind of time with them and life
would be a little bit more relaxed.

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And so I thought it was an opportunity.

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The kids were the right age.

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They were elementary,
like fifth grade, sixth grade to.

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So they appreciated.

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And to this day,
they all still will travel.

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They think traveling is a great. Yeah.

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And then who lives in England right now?

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It's a great learning opportunity.

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Get to see another place and learn.

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Learn culture and food and traditions.

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So your daughter's currently in it.

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Is she the nurse or.

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No, no, the nurse practitioner.

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My oldest daughter is in West Hartford
here.

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Okay. Her grandkids. Okay.

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And then my youngest daughter, Rebecca,
she was the one who did.

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She graduated from Annapolis,
did five years in the Navy.

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Retired, went to grad school,
started working for GE.

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And now she works wind energy.

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Wow. In England for GE.

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Very cool.

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And then my son,
he graduated from West Point.

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He did six years and going to grad school

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now manages a bunch of data scientists

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for one of the boutique
defense contractors down in DC.

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Very cool, very cool.

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So you have another important role.
Grandpa.

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Grandpa? Yup.

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Which one?

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You know, I was going to say,
what do they call you?

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Pop pop pop pop pop.

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And I like it.

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Yeah.

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So are my.

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Yeah. My grandkids or. No, my grandkids.

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Well, my daughters
call my wife's dad pop pop.

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And his dad was pop pop.
So it was like a cool thing.

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Pop up is an a military thing
because he was a Navy I don't know

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are the kids pick that where
if there's an area of the world where

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certain grandparent

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names step and my my,
my grandfather was a German.

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Now he was an American
whose family's from Germany originally.

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Yeah.

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You know, he was in the U.S.

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Army in World War two,

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but we always call him pop up.

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Yeah, yeah.

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German roots, German ancestry.

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Pop up seems to come up.

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Okay.

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I've noticed that too,

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man. So

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now, what are the four years
of West Point?

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The nicknames.

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I know the first years pleb for sure.

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And then they call it the year
if you're sophomore year.

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Oh yup.

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Yup, it is the third year.

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And then your first, your senior year.

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Very good.

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Yeah. Yucks yucks are yearling.

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Well, yucks. Yeah.
You call them yucks. Yeah. Short.

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But you hit it on the head. Okay.

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But please, I remember I went to a Notre
Dame game, Notre Dame versus Army.

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Yeah.

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And when the guys were walking
by, we'd lo.

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Please, please, please.

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And I thought that was always funny.

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And some schools, they're knobs
I think is that Navy Citadel.

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Oh, Citadel. Citadel.

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My buddy.
Yeah. One of my friends went to Citadel.

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And why are you a first
if you're a senior in college?

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First, it's your first class.

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Yea yea yea,
your first class being an officer. Yea.

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Official. Okay.
We will first class. Their class.

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Fourth class
is the other designation of the class.

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Fourth class is the lowest level.

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And you graduate in 1986.

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How was West Point?

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Beautiful campus I love it.

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My daughter shoots the rifle
and goes there twice a year.

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Okay.

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It's amazing and I always wanted to go.

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I think my eighth grade,
they took a field trip.

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For some reason
my behavior didn't allow me to go,

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but my daughter got
and I like I put in the headphones,

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I jogged, I was like
wanted to like really take it in.

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So it was really cool.

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On the roof of one place,
it said sink Navy.

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Yeah, go army them home. Yeah. Call.

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Oh, yeah. Is that still any.

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I don't know if they still do it.

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I mean, how crazy they get there, but,

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it used to be that they would take,
like, plates.

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The police would take the plates
out of the mess hall and spell stuff out

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on the big marching plane,

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in front of, like, Washington Hall.

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Yup. Spill things out
with all with thousands of plates.

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You know, the trouble for that?

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We hanging sheets off clock towers
and things like that for the Navy beat.

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Navy week is a big week.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

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But West Point itself, I mean, I,

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I, I would say I struggled there
academically.

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I worked hard,
and I was not a top student,

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you know, I'd end up
going to summer school twice. Wow.

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We call them staff stores.

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So summer term academic program.

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And we would put them on the inside
of our jackets, like letter jackets.

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And it was kind of a secret society,
these guys that are just struggling.

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Why? But, but the thing is you graduating
everybody that graduates

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as a lieutenant, so long as you graduate,
when you graduate.

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Yeah.

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Like,

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a degree is a C or a C for a degree
or so on.

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And so 20120, there you go, there you go.

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Two one go.

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No, that was great.

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I had a, that year, in 1986.

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Nice.

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And then your son was, what year
he was, 15, 2015.

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Yeah. That is awesome.

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That's legacy.

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That's really cool.
Father son. Both went to West Point.

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I had another podcast guest,
Captain Paul Buca.

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00:11:02,662 --> 00:11:03,788
You know, I've heard of him.

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00:11:03,788 --> 00:11:06,916
1965 Medal of Honor.

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00:11:06,916 --> 00:11:09,377
He was podcast guest number 43.

253
00:11:09,377 --> 00:11:12,380
Go back and check it out. He outranks me.

254
00:11:12,630 --> 00:11:14,924
No, I thought he's a captain.
I would salute.

255
00:11:14,924 --> 00:11:17,093
And then a little there.

256
00:11:17,093 --> 00:11:19,428
So what?

257
00:11:19,428 --> 00:11:20,304
I got to go back.

258
00:11:20,304 --> 00:11:22,556
So you're not the highest ranking
podcast guest?

259
00:11:22,556 --> 00:11:25,309
Probably not. But he's a captain.

260
00:11:25,309 --> 00:11:26,352
But you're a colonel.

261
00:11:26,352 --> 00:11:28,104
But the Medal of Honor medal?

262
00:11:28,104 --> 00:11:30,898
What on earth automatically.

263
00:11:30,898 --> 00:11:31,607
No, no.

264
00:11:31,607 --> 00:11:33,526
Does it really not
honestly. Honestly, it does it.

265
00:11:33,526 --> 00:11:38,489
It is considered I mean, I mean,
most of them are given posthumously. So,

266
00:11:39,573 --> 00:11:42,618
there was only when I interviewed him,

267
00:11:42,743 --> 00:11:45,705
there was only like 60 living

268
00:11:45,705 --> 00:11:48,624
out of the 170 that there ever were.

269
00:11:48,624 --> 00:11:49,667
There were only 60 living.

270
00:11:49,667 --> 00:11:51,335
He was one of 60. Yeah.

271
00:11:51,335 --> 00:11:55,965
So I interviewed him in March 20, 22, 22.

272
00:11:55,965 --> 00:11:56,799
Yeah.

273
00:11:56,799 --> 00:11:58,509
Oh. He's amazing.

274
00:11:58,509 --> 00:12:00,553
He's in the swimming Hall of Fame.

275
00:12:00,553 --> 00:12:03,389
He Vietnam ran down in.

276
00:12:03,389 --> 00:12:04,974
Yeah. Risked his life. Yeah.

277
00:12:04,974 --> 00:12:08,644
You know, losing troops, carrying troops.

278
00:12:08,644 --> 00:12:10,521
Had a whole story, amazing story.

279
00:12:10,521 --> 00:12:12,857
Amazing human being.

280
00:12:12,857 --> 00:12:14,150
Have you interacted with him?

281
00:12:14,150 --> 00:12:19,196
I've met him, before, but not
in a prolonged engagement thing like that.

282
00:12:19,196 --> 00:12:20,364
Yeah.

283
00:12:20,364 --> 00:12:21,991
Somewhere where he was a speaker.

284
00:12:21,991 --> 00:12:25,035
Yeah, he did our back to school.

285
00:12:25,035 --> 00:12:26,662
Rah rah. Like convocation.

286
00:12:26,662 --> 00:12:29,874
One year at West Hartford at Conard
High School is amazing.

287
00:12:29,915 --> 00:12:30,833
He's a great guy.

288
00:12:30,833 --> 00:12:33,919
And then he recently passed, July 2024.

289
00:12:34,462 --> 00:12:36,547
His grandchildren were at my school.

290
00:12:36,547 --> 00:12:42,094
His I taught his granddaughter and
his grandson, Matilda, was first older.

291
00:12:42,094 --> 00:12:45,556
She's like in middle school now and then
Fletcher's currently in fifth grade. So.

292
00:12:46,474 --> 00:12:47,349
And the what's the hotel?

293
00:12:47,349 --> 00:12:49,852
Everyone stays at the Thayer Fair.

294
00:12:49,852 --> 00:12:51,562
He has, like, a, a suite

295
00:12:53,189 --> 00:12:55,816
dedicated to him, all his plaques
and everything.

296
00:12:55,816 --> 00:12:56,400
Or maybe.

297
00:12:56,400 --> 00:12:59,403
And then he has a
he has something in the in the pool

298
00:12:59,737 --> 00:13:02,740
is our first boom pick.

299
00:13:03,073 --> 00:13:04,158
Stephanie, are you ready?

300
00:13:04,158 --> 00:13:07,036
Ready at the pool.

301
00:13:07,036 --> 00:13:09,079
Boom. Oh, that's at Thayer Hall.

302
00:13:09,079 --> 00:13:10,748
Thayer hotel. Yeah.

303
00:13:10,748 --> 00:13:13,459
And that's a he has, like, a corner

304
00:13:13,459 --> 00:13:14,627
black Army night remembered.

305
00:13:14,627 --> 00:13:16,962
Medal of honor, Paul Buca. Yeah.

306
00:13:16,962 --> 00:13:19,173
He's like a hero. Legend. Yeah, yeah.

307
00:13:19,173 --> 00:13:23,177
But I, I had to, like,
sneak into the swim area

308
00:13:23,385 --> 00:13:26,639
because it's for authorized personnel
only.

309
00:13:27,139 --> 00:13:30,351
I had I told him it was my grandfather
and I had to see Paul Buca.

310
00:13:30,768 --> 00:13:33,062
It's close enough.
I tell both of his grandkids.

311
00:13:33,062 --> 00:13:36,023
Get kicked out for that. Really? Oh,

312
00:13:36,106 --> 00:13:36,690
you want to?

313
00:13:36,690 --> 00:13:37,858
So. Okay, good.

314
00:13:37,858 --> 00:13:41,111
But I was trying to, not dance.

315
00:13:41,111 --> 00:13:44,240
I got I had to get the pick
because he told me he.

316
00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:45,950
That picture was
in there. I hunted it down,

317
00:13:47,117 --> 00:13:48,202
I lied, cheat and steal that.

318
00:13:48,202 --> 00:13:50,412
But it was a wonderful photo,
and I thought it was worth it.

319
00:13:50,412 --> 00:13:52,164
No one was armed.

320
00:13:52,164 --> 00:13:55,125
He's a hero.

321
00:13:56,001 --> 00:13:56,752
I was going to say.

322
00:13:56,752 --> 00:13:58,796
So how often have you gone up?

323
00:13:58,796 --> 00:14:00,047
Do you go to football games?

324
00:14:00,047 --> 00:14:01,966
Go to a few football games there?

325
00:14:01,966 --> 00:14:04,969
Not in the last couple years.

326
00:14:05,302 --> 00:14:07,263
Just timing hasn't worked out for some.

327
00:14:07,263 --> 00:14:08,722
We've gone to a couple of wrestling
matches,

328
00:14:08,722 --> 00:14:11,684
trimmed down to go
watch a couple wrestling matches.

329
00:14:13,018 --> 00:14:14,562
When we lived in D.C..

330
00:14:14,562 --> 00:14:16,188
I go to the Army-Navy games.

331
00:14:16,188 --> 00:14:18,899
Oh, yeah. Baltimore. Yeah. Area.

332
00:14:18,899 --> 00:14:20,192
Especially when the kids were going there.

333
00:14:20,192 --> 00:14:22,903
In fact, one of the pictures
I think I sent you had.

334
00:14:22,903 --> 00:14:26,031
Oh, yeah, whole family at halftime
and won the Army-Navy game with my son

335
00:14:26,031 --> 00:14:27,116
and daughter.

336
00:14:27,116 --> 00:14:30,119
Let's put on their uniforms,
my other daughter wearing like,

337
00:14:30,578 --> 00:14:33,581
and, someone's had scarfs, scarves on.

338
00:14:33,998 --> 00:14:36,834
And my daughter,
I think my oldest daughter we're.

339
00:14:36,834 --> 00:14:40,880
But underneath the scarf
my ready for the next boom boom.

340
00:14:41,922 --> 00:14:42,673
Those are Navy's.

341
00:14:42,673 --> 00:14:43,465
Oh gosh.

342
00:14:43,465 --> 00:14:45,259
She went to Annapolis Navy.

343
00:14:45,259 --> 00:14:47,803
My youngest on the one with the white hat.

344
00:14:47,803 --> 00:14:49,138
Oh. Oh. Yep.

345
00:14:49,138 --> 00:14:50,723
Okay. And my son to call guy.

346
00:14:50,723 --> 00:14:52,766
They're that's
also where they currently serving

347
00:14:52,766 --> 00:14:54,810
at the same time they were in school
the same.

348
00:14:54,810 --> 00:14:57,813
They were a year apart. Nice.

349
00:14:58,147 --> 00:15:01,150
The funny thing is Becker
got accepted to West Point, but she said,

350
00:15:01,191 --> 00:15:02,985
there's
no way I'm going to go to that place

351
00:15:02,985 --> 00:15:05,988
and be Connor's little sister
one more time.

352
00:15:06,113 --> 00:15:07,448
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

353
00:15:07,448 --> 00:15:10,034
Okay, that makes sense.

354
00:15:10,034 --> 00:15:10,784
Look how young you are.

355
00:15:10,784 --> 00:15:13,245
You're looking good over here.

356
00:15:13,245 --> 00:15:14,955
You guys are like 14.

357
00:15:14,955 --> 00:15:17,958
That's like. That's about 11 years ago.

358
00:15:18,584 --> 00:15:20,294
That's so cool. What?

359
00:15:20,294 --> 00:15:23,964
Yeah, I like it.

360
00:15:23,964 --> 00:15:25,424
That was so cool. That's amazing

361
00:15:26,759 --> 00:15:28,344
man. Wonderful story.

362
00:15:28,344 --> 00:15:30,054
When are you gonna write a book?

363
00:15:30,054 --> 00:15:31,972
This is great. This is so cool.

364
00:15:31,972 --> 00:15:33,140
And then back to just.

365
00:15:33,140 --> 00:15:35,392
I'm really amazed I learned something

366
00:15:35,392 --> 00:15:39,229
new that you would salute Paul
because he's a medal of honor.

367
00:15:39,438 --> 00:15:41,315
That's like. Yeah, tops.

368
00:15:41,315 --> 00:15:44,652
What if it if he earned it as a private,
you would still some them

369
00:15:45,235 --> 00:15:48,113
he would render respect to that. Yeah.

370
00:15:48,113 --> 00:15:49,823
That individual.

371
00:15:49,823 --> 00:15:50,866
Yeah.

372
00:15:50,866 --> 00:15:52,284
That's the number one.

373
00:15:52,284 --> 00:15:55,204
It is the highest award. Yeah. Yep.

374
00:15:55,204 --> 00:15:55,579
Okay.

375
00:15:55,579 --> 00:15:58,874
And then you've earned, the brave star.

376
00:15:59,541 --> 00:16:00,209
Bronze star.

377
00:16:00,209 --> 00:16:03,212
Yeah. Sorry. Bronze star.

378
00:16:03,587 --> 00:16:06,799
There are a couple in between
the Bronze Star and the okay.

379
00:16:07,424 --> 00:16:09,802
And Silver Star in between there.

380
00:16:09,802 --> 00:16:12,471
Okay. Each one requiring a little more.

381
00:16:12,471 --> 00:16:15,474
Sacrifice, if you will. Gotcha.

382
00:16:15,557 --> 00:16:16,809
Firefighter.

383
00:16:16,809 --> 00:16:18,978
Yeah. Injury.

384
00:16:18,978 --> 00:16:19,561
Yeah.

385
00:16:19,561 --> 00:16:21,438
That's the like
the injury is the Purple Heart.

386
00:16:21,438 --> 00:16:23,273
So if you get wounded, you get.

387
00:16:23,273 --> 00:16:24,483
Oh that's right, that's right.

388
00:16:24,483 --> 00:16:26,485
You, Yep. Yep.

389
00:16:27,820 --> 00:16:30,197
But the

390
00:16:30,197 --> 00:16:32,074
the higher level of

391
00:16:32,074 --> 00:16:35,202
those awards
are you think of awards of valor.

392
00:16:35,452 --> 00:16:39,415
Yep. And, you know, total disregard
for your own health and safety. Yep.

393
00:16:39,707 --> 00:16:42,418
And you are engaging with the enemy

394
00:16:42,418 --> 00:16:45,421
and you were taking care of those
around you.

395
00:16:46,463 --> 00:16:50,259
You're putting others safety at risk
for something. Yep.

396
00:16:50,592 --> 00:16:53,846
To accomplish the mission
while saving offers.

397
00:16:54,304 --> 00:16:56,724
Yeah. That's amazing.

398
00:16:56,724 --> 00:16:59,852
Well,
let's go over the things that I know.

399
00:16:59,852 --> 00:17:01,603
I didn't say that. I think I'm a podcast.

400
00:17:01,603 --> 00:17:04,648
I was like, oh, yeah,
because I'm so embarrassed.

401
00:17:05,024 --> 00:17:06,650
You won the Medal of Honor.

402
00:17:06,650 --> 00:17:09,403
And I was like, oh, what an idiot. No.

403
00:17:09,403 --> 00:17:11,655
That's earned. Right? Yeah.

404
00:17:11,655 --> 00:17:13,657
You know, it's, are the medal.

405
00:17:13,657 --> 00:17:16,660
Most of them are given posthumously. So.

406
00:17:18,704 --> 00:17:19,455
We got another boom.

407
00:17:19,455 --> 00:17:20,289
We're a lot of booms today.

408
00:17:20,289 --> 00:17:21,915
These are beautiful medals right here.

409
00:17:21,915 --> 00:17:23,500
This is air assault.

410
00:17:23,500 --> 00:17:24,835
Yes. Aerosol wings.

411
00:17:24,835 --> 00:17:26,211
So you parachute it.

412
00:17:26,211 --> 00:17:27,921
This is your parachutist badge? No.

413
00:17:29,465 --> 00:17:31,008
Oh, was it airborne?

414
00:17:31,008 --> 00:17:31,759
Okay. Oops.

415
00:17:31,759 --> 00:17:32,676
That one's airborne. Was.

416
00:17:32,676 --> 00:17:35,304
That's jumping out of a plane.

417
00:17:35,304 --> 00:17:36,263
How many times?

418
00:17:36,263 --> 00:17:39,224
Well, you got to jump
five times to get the badge.

419
00:17:39,224 --> 00:17:43,145
And then, Ranger school,
I think I had, like, five more jumps.

420
00:17:44,188 --> 00:17:47,191
This is your Ranger tab.

421
00:17:47,441 --> 00:17:48,984
I still see your Ranger tab.

422
00:17:48,984 --> 00:17:50,360
Yeah, it is one of the.

423
00:17:50,360 --> 00:17:53,280
It is the only tattoo I have.

424
00:17:53,280 --> 00:17:54,323
What made you.

425
00:17:54,323 --> 00:17:55,157
What year was that?

426
00:17:55,157 --> 00:17:57,117
What was the inspiration?

427
00:17:57,117 --> 00:17:57,868
Okay.

428
00:17:57,868 --> 00:17:58,577
Funny story.

429
00:17:58,577 --> 00:18:01,413
Never had a tattoo.

430
00:18:01,413 --> 00:18:04,083
And my wife is not a big fan of tattoos.

431
00:18:04,083 --> 00:18:06,543
It's like I want you to tattoo.

432
00:18:06,543 --> 00:18:08,545
I'm, like, on top of that one.

433
00:18:08,545 --> 00:18:11,715
But then a couple of my friends
have Ranger Tab,

434
00:18:11,715 --> 00:18:14,885
so they got on their shoulders,
and I was like, that would be cool.

435
00:18:15,052 --> 00:18:18,055
Yeah, that's that's
what the tab is worn on uniform. Yep.

436
00:18:18,097 --> 00:18:21,100
And you know, this may be a part
you have to edit out.

437
00:18:21,183 --> 00:18:21,850
Like I said,

438
00:18:23,310 --> 00:18:24,103
if you ever got

439
00:18:24,103 --> 00:18:28,315
high, I'd like to get a tattoo
and so, now

440
00:18:28,732 --> 00:18:32,277
this is like 2018, 2019,

441
00:18:32,402 --> 00:18:35,405
2020, 2020 I think is what it was.

442
00:18:35,489 --> 00:18:37,825
So I've been out of the Army
for four years,

443
00:18:37,825 --> 00:18:40,202
no longer
working for Department of Defense.

444
00:18:40,202 --> 00:18:41,703
You know, I'm free and clear.

445
00:18:41,703 --> 00:18:44,706
I'm retired, retired and

446
00:18:45,541 --> 00:18:48,752
in the role
I had in, Colonial Beach, Virginia,

447
00:18:48,752 --> 00:18:52,548
I helped get a guy, permission zone

448
00:18:53,173 --> 00:18:56,093
to put a tattoo place in

449
00:18:56,093 --> 00:18:56,385
county.

450
00:18:56,385 --> 00:18:58,804
Never had one, but we got it in as well.

451
00:18:58,804 --> 00:19:01,890
It was exactly how your municipal
government should work, folks.

452
00:19:01,890 --> 00:19:04,476
The board, the town, the town
council, town council.

453
00:19:04,476 --> 00:19:07,104
Guess the planning commission, planning
commission looks at it,

454
00:19:07,104 --> 00:19:09,940
does some work on the zoning and laws
and then brings

455
00:19:09,940 --> 00:19:13,277
it back up to the county council says,
yes, this guy opened his business.

456
00:19:13,819 --> 00:19:16,363
And I told him, I said
I want to be one of your first customers.

457
00:19:16,363 --> 00:19:21,952
But again, you don't have a reason
to get a tattoo other than about that

458
00:19:21,952 --> 00:19:25,789
same time good friend of ours,
gave me a little bit of a brownie,

459
00:19:26,915 --> 00:19:29,334
and, my wife said, yes, you've

460
00:19:29,334 --> 00:19:33,463
you've achieved the state of mind
in, where you can have your tattoo

461
00:19:33,463 --> 00:19:36,466
because she thought it was
I was hilarious.

462
00:19:36,508 --> 00:19:37,467
That's an awesome story.

463
00:19:37,467 --> 00:19:39,469
Because, yeah,
your whole life, you never know.

464
00:19:39,469 --> 00:19:41,847
Had that feeling is the military service.

465
00:19:41,847 --> 00:19:42,681
Yeah.

466
00:19:42,681 --> 00:19:44,433
So you're you're analysis tests.

467
00:19:44,433 --> 00:19:46,226
Yep yep yep yep yep.

468
00:19:46,226 --> 00:19:47,477
There's no reason to, you know.

469
00:19:47,477 --> 00:19:49,688
So I have a friend like that too.

470
00:19:49,688 --> 00:19:50,230
He's a he's

471
00:19:50,230 --> 00:19:53,525
a cop and he's, he said when he retires
that's going to be his next move.

472
00:19:54,067 --> 00:19:56,236
He's like I'm going to do something. Yeah.

473
00:19:56,236 --> 00:19:57,404
Oh that's funny.

474
00:19:57,404 --> 00:20:00,532
No, the Ranger tab tat Mike has it.

475
00:20:00,532 --> 00:20:03,035
I noticed it right
away. It's a great talking point.

476
00:20:03,035 --> 00:20:05,204
You're like and he's chiseled.

477
00:20:05,204 --> 00:20:07,789
So he's chiseled with the Ranger tat.

478
00:20:07,789 --> 00:20:09,875
And I'm like I'm not messing with Mike.

479
00:20:09,875 --> 00:20:11,877
And we start to talk and here we are.

480
00:20:11,877 --> 00:20:14,922
So you're just I'm very excited
to talk with you again.

481
00:20:14,922 --> 00:20:17,716
This is retired Colonel Mike Carberry.

482
00:20:17,716 --> 00:20:20,510
You are? Yeah.

483
00:20:20,510 --> 00:20:23,639
So in that role in you were got the guy,

484
00:20:23,639 --> 00:20:26,642
the tattoo, you were a deputy mayor,

485
00:20:27,017 --> 00:20:29,853
or were you on the volunteer of a board
planning zoning commission?

486
00:20:29,853 --> 00:20:30,354
Okay.

487
00:20:30,354 --> 00:20:34,691
And then I ran for town
council, after a year and,

488
00:20:35,859 --> 00:20:38,070
then got,

489
00:20:38,070 --> 00:20:41,823
I guess more nominated to be, the vice
mayor of the town.

490
00:20:41,990 --> 00:20:42,574
Yeah.

491
00:20:42,574 --> 00:20:45,744
I had the most votes
at a town council race that year. Yep.

492
00:20:46,286 --> 00:20:46,995
It's kind of a thing.

493
00:20:46,995 --> 00:20:49,206
They will get the most votes.

494
00:20:49,206 --> 00:20:52,501
They will, unless there's great big
objections from the rest of the council.

495
00:20:52,501 --> 00:20:53,835
We'll let this person be.

496
00:20:53,835 --> 00:20:56,505
Did you campaign
and give speeches and stuff?

497
00:20:56,505 --> 00:20:59,091
Yeah, I went out and, Did you. Dornoch.

498
00:20:59,091 --> 00:21:02,094
Oh. Or not?

499
00:21:02,427 --> 00:21:04,680
Got Colonial Beach is a town of like 20.

500
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:06,807
It was 2000 people, maybe 3000.

501
00:21:06,807 --> 00:21:07,516
Summertime.

502
00:21:07,516 --> 00:21:08,600
It might jump off that lot.

503
00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:11,019
45, 100 because of.

504
00:21:11,019 --> 00:21:13,021
Yeah, right on the water.

505
00:21:13,021 --> 00:21:14,773
But it's a golf cart town.

506
00:21:14,773 --> 00:21:18,777
So I was driving to Colonial Beach,
my golf cart and my bags of goodies and,

507
00:21:18,777 --> 00:21:23,699
like, my fliers and pamphlets and stuff
and going door to door and campaigning.

508
00:21:23,782 --> 00:21:27,953
And that's when you had the awesome house
with the, deck that went out a pair.

509
00:21:28,036 --> 00:21:30,163
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was nice.

510
00:21:30,163 --> 00:21:30,914
And that was that.

511
00:21:30,914 --> 00:21:32,457
Also when you were a substitute teacher?

512
00:21:32,457 --> 00:21:34,167
Yes, ma'am.

513
00:21:34,167 --> 00:21:35,127
This guy that's.

514
00:21:35,127 --> 00:21:36,378
We're knocking on all these rolls.

515
00:21:36,378 --> 00:21:38,005
He's a 35.

516
00:21:38,005 --> 00:21:40,924
After I retired, retired and said, right,
I'm really bored now.

517
00:21:40,924 --> 00:21:41,925
I gotta do something.

518
00:21:41,925 --> 00:21:44,845
So I go to the high school and said, hey,
you guys need a tutor to help out?

519
00:21:44,845 --> 00:21:46,305
And then they were like, can you sub?

520
00:21:46,305 --> 00:21:47,806
I said, do I need a certificate?

521
00:21:47,806 --> 00:21:50,017
Like, do you have a bachelor's degree?

522
00:21:50,017 --> 00:21:51,393
Yeah, I got that in a little bit more.

523
00:21:51,393 --> 00:21:53,478
And they're like,
you're good, you're good to stuff.

524
00:21:53,478 --> 00:21:54,563
So yeah.

525
00:21:54,563 --> 00:21:57,524
Now all you need is a pulse to sub.

526
00:21:57,607 --> 00:22:00,319
Back then you needed college degree.

527
00:22:00,319 --> 00:22:02,696
You had you had two masters.

528
00:22:02,696 --> 00:22:03,530
You had your master.

529
00:22:03,530 --> 00:22:07,743
You mean you taught at, the academy, the,
school events?

530
00:22:07,743 --> 00:22:09,286
Well, first got to see him. Yeah.

531
00:22:09,286 --> 00:22:09,911
Sam's.

532
00:22:09,911 --> 00:22:12,247
It's an acronym
we're going to talk about later.

533
00:22:12,247 --> 00:22:13,582
No, it's it's great.

534
00:22:13,582 --> 00:22:16,543
So you worked at the Pentagon? Yes.

535
00:22:17,002 --> 00:22:18,962
You were chief of staff.

536
00:22:18,962 --> 00:22:22,299
When I hear that, like, that's,
like the biggest role ever.

537
00:22:22,299 --> 00:22:23,258
But you did that.

538
00:22:23,258 --> 00:22:24,885
You were chief of staff to the provost.

539
00:22:24,885 --> 00:22:27,929
Provost
and chief of staff to the director.

540
00:22:28,138 --> 00:22:28,597
Yeah.

541
00:22:28,597 --> 00:22:32,392
So after the Pentagon,
when I first got to the Pentagon in 2012,

542
00:22:32,893 --> 00:22:35,812
I was the chief of staff for the G7.

543
00:22:35,812 --> 00:22:41,026
So one of the joint directors,
the Joint Staff, and we had the largest

544
00:22:41,026 --> 00:22:45,697
director for a huge military
civilian defense contractor.

545
00:22:45,697 --> 00:22:49,034
So we had,
the G7 was in charge of training.

546
00:22:49,409 --> 00:22:51,078
Is that Jag G7?

547
00:22:51,078 --> 00:22:52,245
What's a G7 stand for?

548
00:22:52,245 --> 00:22:54,873
Seven is just the number.

549
00:22:54,873 --> 00:22:57,751
The distance of J one is personnel,
J two is intelligence, G

550
00:22:57,751 --> 00:22:59,836
three is operations, J four is logistics.

551
00:22:59,836 --> 00:23:03,131
Gotcha is plan
G six is communication, J seven

552
00:23:03,131 --> 00:23:06,134
is doctor and training and education.

553
00:23:06,259 --> 00:23:07,302
Thank you.

554
00:23:07,302 --> 00:23:09,763
Is the, acquisition.

555
00:23:09,763 --> 00:23:12,015
So so the eight joint directorates.

556
00:23:12,015 --> 00:23:14,810
Gotcha. And so we had the biggest one in,

557
00:23:15,977 --> 00:23:17,229
that was made the J.

558
00:23:17,229 --> 00:23:18,438
The chief of staff.

559
00:23:18,438 --> 00:23:23,360
So two years I did my penance
going in really early, spin the wheels

560
00:23:23,360 --> 00:23:26,988
on the, on the door lock to go in
and turn the lights out at night.

561
00:23:26,988 --> 00:23:30,450
And then after two years where you open,
you open and shut down the Pentagon.

562
00:23:30,951 --> 00:23:33,870
No, no. Just our, Yeah. Yeah.

563
00:23:33,870 --> 00:23:35,747
Well, the Pentagon doesn't shut down, so.

564
00:23:35,747 --> 00:23:36,498
Yeah. Okay.

565
00:23:36,498 --> 00:23:37,040
True.

566
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,209
Parking lots,
at least half full almost all the time.

567
00:23:39,209 --> 00:23:40,252
Yeah.

568
00:23:40,252 --> 00:23:43,213
Now, how many people go in in
and out of that on a daily basis.

569
00:23:43,338 --> 00:23:47,259
So I think I when I was there
I think they said the Pentagon

570
00:23:47,259 --> 00:23:51,430
has like 22,000 employees in that one
building.

571
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:52,556
Yeah.

572
00:23:52,556 --> 00:23:54,891
And, 
you know, get a lot of membership workers,

573
00:23:54,891 --> 00:23:57,811
you know, guys that are coming
in the evenings to work. The Colonel and

574
00:23:58,937 --> 00:24:01,940
I've been to DC so many times,
and I've never do.

575
00:24:01,940 --> 00:24:05,026
They do they do tours
or can you go in and visit tours?

576
00:24:05,026 --> 00:24:06,903
I know they again, I don't know.

577
00:24:06,903 --> 00:24:08,196
It's been a couple of years. Yeah.

578
00:24:08,196 --> 00:24:10,991
But yeah, you could sign up for tours
and they

579
00:24:10,991 --> 00:24:15,370
I mean, the cool thing about the tours
is they have, these young soldiers,

580
00:24:16,121 --> 00:24:20,333
sailors, airmen, Marines,
that are assigned to the honor guards

581
00:24:20,500 --> 00:24:24,337
there in DC, you know, like the place
in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

582
00:24:24,379 --> 00:24:25,088
Oh, yeah.

583
00:24:25,088 --> 00:24:26,506
Yep. See a group of guys,

584
00:24:26,506 --> 00:24:30,135
and they have to train
to become tour guides for the Pentagon.

585
00:24:30,135 --> 00:24:33,138
And what they do
is they walk the entire backwards.

586
00:24:34,514 --> 00:24:36,558
And so they're
they got a crowd in front of them,

587
00:24:36,558 --> 00:24:38,643
and they're just talking
to crown their point stuff as they go.

588
00:24:38,643 --> 00:24:41,396
And they're just walking backwards
hoping that the crowds is it.

589
00:24:41,396 --> 00:24:42,314
What is it?

590
00:24:42,314 --> 00:24:45,317
Very structured and military
like how they march into two men

591
00:24:45,317 --> 00:24:46,902
than the unknown star? No, no.

592
00:24:46,902 --> 00:24:48,528
Like they're not taking 21 steps.

593
00:24:48,528 --> 00:24:50,322
Pause. Go now. Okay.

594
00:24:50,322 --> 00:24:51,573
But they walk backwards. Yeah.

595
00:24:51,573 --> 00:24:55,035
They walk backwards and it's funny to
watch and do the training because they're

596
00:24:55,577 --> 00:24:58,121
senior and CEOs are with it
with clipboards and they're like,

597
00:24:58,121 --> 00:24:59,289
oh no, you missed one.

598
00:24:59,289 --> 00:25:01,291
You know kind of thing is like it's okay.

599
00:25:01,291 --> 00:25:03,835
But also it's an honorable position
tour guy.

600
00:25:03,835 --> 00:25:05,045
Oh that's so cool. All right.

601
00:25:05,045 --> 00:25:07,339
They know that you got to work
hard to get to you.

602
00:25:07,339 --> 00:25:11,551
I parked at a mall once,
and I saw it really close, a DC, I forgot

603
00:25:11,551 --> 00:25:15,013
where and when, but I was like, oh, that's
depending on in, like, Crystal city.

604
00:25:15,514 --> 00:25:18,016
Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go.

605
00:25:18,016 --> 00:25:20,810
I teach shapes in third grade,
so I always pull up,

606
00:25:20,810 --> 00:25:22,854
you know, when we're talking
triangles. Pentagon.

607
00:25:22,854 --> 00:25:24,314
We talk about the Pentagon.

608
00:25:24,314 --> 00:25:27,275
What goes on on the inside of the Pentagon
like the.

609
00:25:27,275 --> 00:25:30,320
Is that a atrium, like, outside
hangout spot, like for lunch,

610
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:31,196
or what are we doing in there?

611
00:25:31,196 --> 00:25:34,574
There's actually a little sandwich place.

612
00:25:34,824 --> 00:25:35,242
There you go.

613
00:25:37,035 --> 00:25:40,038
And, rumor

614
00:25:40,038 --> 00:25:43,041
has it that the height of the Cold War,

615
00:25:43,124 --> 00:25:46,545
you know, the Russians had Soviet
satellites flying over,

616
00:25:46,545 --> 00:25:49,548
and these people really needed
this one central building.

617
00:25:49,589 --> 00:25:51,299
So that was going to be
the number one target,

618
00:25:51,299 --> 00:25:54,302
because they figured
that was like a command center.

619
00:25:55,303 --> 00:25:58,098
So they were going to bomb the burger
joint first. Yes.

620
00:25:58,098 --> 00:25:58,765
That was going places.

621
00:25:58,765 --> 00:25:59,808
That was a target.

622
00:25:59,808 --> 00:26:00,517
But yeah.

623
00:26:00,517 --> 00:26:03,520
So it's just it's funny like
this is a hot spot.

624
00:26:03,645 --> 00:26:06,982
It's a cut through the best of the best
go here every day.

625
00:26:07,482 --> 00:26:09,985
It's a burger place. It's a perfect. Wow.

626
00:26:09,985 --> 00:26:12,779
Very cool.

627
00:26:12,779 --> 00:26:14,948
Oh, let's do this game.

628
00:26:14,948 --> 00:26:15,991
Okay.

629
00:26:15,991 --> 00:26:18,952
You've been a lot of places
in your 30 years.

630
00:26:18,952 --> 00:26:21,705
Well, maybe we could do, like,

631
00:26:21,705 --> 00:26:24,708
it could either be like a rank or a job
or a location.

632
00:26:24,791 --> 00:26:29,504
Your best rank or job location,
your worst rank or job location.

633
00:26:29,879 --> 00:26:32,799
Your first rank or last.

634
00:26:32,799 --> 00:26:35,885
So it's best. Worst first, last.

635
00:26:36,386 --> 00:26:39,389
Any order you want, best rank.

636
00:26:39,931 --> 00:26:43,018
We'll say location
because you travel a can.

637
00:26:43,018 --> 00:26:44,269
I guess it was a Germany.

638
00:26:44,269 --> 00:26:45,186
Yeah.

639
00:26:45,186 --> 00:26:50,442
Is Germany known to have the best bass
Olympic swimming pool workout?

640
00:26:50,609 --> 00:26:51,276
It's true.

641
00:26:51,276 --> 00:26:53,653
No. Oh, you were on.

642
00:26:53,653 --> 00:26:55,488
And this is when I was working for. Yeah.

643
00:26:55,488 --> 00:26:57,741
So I was in Germany as a lieutenant,
and we lived.

644
00:26:57,741 --> 00:27:00,535
And we were the only American combat unit.

645
00:27:00,535 --> 00:27:03,622
It was in the very northern part of,
like Raymond in Bremerhaven.

646
00:27:03,955 --> 00:27:06,541
So we're in the very moving water
we were in. Only Americans.

647
00:27:06,541 --> 00:27:07,542
We're not. The Brits

648
00:27:08,835 --> 00:27:11,212
had the biggest footprint up there.

649
00:27:11,212 --> 00:27:13,965
If you go back to D-Day
invasion, Normandy,

650
00:27:13,965 --> 00:27:17,260
if you follow the maps where we came
ashore, the Brits came

651
00:27:17,260 --> 00:27:20,764
ashore as we went across France
and then started settling in Germany.

652
00:27:21,514 --> 00:27:22,515
The Brits stayed in the north.

653
00:27:22,515 --> 00:27:24,809
We went down into Bavaria.

654
00:27:24,809 --> 00:27:27,812
So Frankfurt on south
is where most of the American units are.

655
00:27:28,229 --> 00:27:28,688
Okay.

656
00:27:28,688 --> 00:27:32,400
And to this day, that's kind of how
the footprint still plans out, plays out.

657
00:27:32,734 --> 00:27:34,069
It was all based on where

658
00:27:34,069 --> 00:27:37,072
where those beaches were in Normandy,
where we kept moving across wow.

659
00:27:37,072 --> 00:27:37,530
And over.

660
00:27:37,530 --> 00:27:39,699
But so as a lieutenant, it was just

661
00:27:39,699 --> 00:27:43,203
I mean, it was a small army base,
you know, we had a gym on the base.

662
00:27:43,203 --> 00:27:45,830
There wasn't too much.
I belong to a gym downtown.

663
00:27:47,123 --> 00:27:48,583
I got with the German people and,

664
00:27:48,583 --> 00:27:51,878
you know, they they let about 5 or 6 of us
lieutenants joined their gym,

665
00:27:52,337 --> 00:27:55,423
and they were like our tour guides,
you know, that's so cool.

666
00:27:55,799 --> 00:27:58,134
Had good friends with them.

667
00:27:58,134 --> 00:28:01,137
But the second assignment in Germany,
when I had the kids with me,

668
00:28:01,471 --> 00:28:04,516
that was just, I mean, we

669
00:28:04,974 --> 00:28:07,936
we had more opportunities for me

670
00:28:07,936 --> 00:28:10,939
than I could have truly in the Army.

671
00:28:11,064 --> 00:28:13,358
So they did the two weeks of Christmas,
two weeks in the summer,

672
00:28:13,358 --> 00:28:15,777
two weeks in the spring.
Oh, yeah. That's living.

673
00:28:15,777 --> 00:28:19,823
Take that time to go travel Europe and
take the kids around to see things. And,

674
00:28:20,990 --> 00:28:23,159
so they saw stuff at a young age, like,

675
00:28:23,159 --> 00:28:25,036
that's why
they're still traveling to this day.

676
00:28:25,036 --> 00:28:29,958
They just, we went to Italy one year,
right around Easter time.

677
00:28:29,958 --> 00:28:33,128
It was, the Leaning Tower of Pisa
had just opened up after having

678
00:28:33,128 --> 00:28:34,421
been closed for decades.

679
00:28:35,422 --> 00:28:37,924
And so we were one of the
first groups of people we got to go down.

680
00:28:37,924 --> 00:28:41,761
And my daughter, I remember she was
leaning over the edge and I was joking.

681
00:28:42,303 --> 00:28:44,264
She whispered,

682
00:28:44,264 --> 00:28:47,267
at the top of this tower, the leaning and,

683
00:28:47,392 --> 00:28:50,145
she, you know, fast forward a few years,

684
00:28:50,145 --> 00:28:53,481
she was doing her
com in an essay for college. Yep.

685
00:28:53,898 --> 00:28:56,901
And the title of her
essay was To Spit or Not to Spit.

686
00:28:56,985 --> 00:29:00,405
kind of brought in the whole
how she got to travel all over the world

687
00:29:00,405 --> 00:29:03,992
and got to see so many things
and adjust and adapt.

688
00:29:03,992 --> 00:29:05,410
And how she thought

689
00:29:05,410 --> 00:29:08,621
growing up in that environment
would make her a good student for UConn.

690
00:29:09,330 --> 00:29:10,373
So it's awesome.

691
00:29:10,373 --> 00:29:13,376
Yeah, she get in, she did it.

692
00:29:13,418 --> 00:29:16,629
So we got first, last, best, worst.

693
00:29:16,755 --> 00:29:18,882
That was your best base? Germany.

694
00:29:18,882 --> 00:29:22,969
Oh no, Germany was your first
or where was Germany was my first.

695
00:29:23,303 --> 00:29:24,471
Gotcha. Yes.

696
00:29:24,471 --> 00:29:26,806
And Germany was also my best assignment.

697
00:29:26,806 --> 00:29:29,809
Nice. Okay, so first and best,
but different times. Okay.

698
00:29:29,809 --> 00:29:31,352
Many years apart.

699
00:29:31,352 --> 00:29:32,937
What's going to be what is,

700
00:29:35,356 --> 00:29:35,774
Worst.

701
00:29:35,774 --> 00:29:39,152
It's kind of hard to distinguish
what the worst is, because worst can be.

702
00:29:39,152 --> 00:29:41,446
I was away from my family, which was bad.

703
00:29:41,446 --> 00:29:44,449
Yeah, a couple times.

704
00:29:44,949 --> 00:29:47,368
But both of them

705
00:29:47,368 --> 00:29:50,371
were extremely rewarding
and developmental.

706
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:53,750
A year in Korea was incredibly rewarding.

707
00:29:53,750 --> 00:29:56,002
Good on my family. All they did was work.

708
00:29:56,002 --> 00:29:57,587
I'm just okay. I'm here without my family.

709
00:29:57,587 --> 00:30:00,215
I'm going to put my heart
and soul into this and I work.

710
00:30:00,215 --> 00:30:01,424
What was your role there in Korea?

711
00:30:01,424 --> 00:30:04,427
I was the, division chief of operations.

712
00:30:04,886 --> 00:30:09,766
So the crisis action planner,
North Korean shore subs come ashore,

713
00:30:10,099 --> 00:30:13,394
North Koreans incursion
along the, the DMZ.

714
00:30:14,145 --> 00:30:15,772
The instructions were,

715
00:30:15,772 --> 00:30:19,275
call my cable and satellite,
come up and fire up the operation center.

716
00:30:19,275 --> 00:30:22,862
Get things to whatever status boards
we need, make communications

717
00:30:22,862 --> 00:30:25,865
with, Republic,
the Korean special operations forces.

718
00:30:26,157 --> 00:30:27,992
So it was just like
it was a really heady job.

719
00:30:27,992 --> 00:30:32,622
You're, like, just going through things
happening all the time, but stressful

720
00:30:32,622 --> 00:30:35,834
and sounds like high top security and,
like,

721
00:30:35,834 --> 00:30:38,837
lives on the line, and, like,
this is real deal.

722
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:39,254
Yeah.

723
00:30:39,254 --> 00:30:41,464
And then but then on the same token,

724
00:30:41,464 --> 00:30:45,301
deployed to Iraq in 2003
as a battalion carrier.

725
00:30:45,301 --> 00:30:48,847
So I was I was a major in Korea
and a lieutenant colonel

726
00:30:48,847 --> 00:30:51,850
in Iraq in 2003.

727
00:30:51,850 --> 00:30:54,853
And then I had some moments
of being frightening,

728
00:30:55,770 --> 00:30:59,816
being rewarding,
being just angry, like, you know, and,

729
00:31:00,900 --> 00:31:02,318
did you just mentioned Iraq?

730
00:31:02,318 --> 00:31:03,444
Yeah.

731
00:31:03,444 --> 00:31:06,281
Now confirm or deny.

732
00:31:06,281 --> 00:31:09,284
Did you have a severe injury in Iraq?

733
00:31:11,035 --> 00:31:13,204
Technically, yes.

734
00:31:13,204 --> 00:31:15,248
I was injured in Iraq,

735
00:31:15,248 --> 00:31:18,167
was not wounded, but injured.

736
00:31:18,167 --> 00:31:20,169
Do you want to talk about that?

737
00:31:20,169 --> 00:31:20,420
Yeah.

738
00:31:20,420 --> 00:31:24,382
I mean, I think I'll 
I'll start out with the, the Army as

739
00:31:24,382 --> 00:31:27,427
a young man's game or young person's game,
because there are definitely women

740
00:31:27,427 --> 00:31:31,514
that are just absolutely tough as nails
and as good as every man is out there.

741
00:31:32,432 --> 00:31:34,017
You know, I've got pleasure to serve with.

742
00:31:34,017 --> 00:31:37,020
Watching
what I'll say, it's a young person's game.

743
00:31:38,271 --> 00:31:40,398
We're in a lot of body armor.

744
00:31:40,398 --> 00:31:44,527
The extra body armor plates
and your Kevlar and day

745
00:31:44,527 --> 00:31:47,739
packs and weapons and magazines
and what you're carrying around

746
00:31:47,739 --> 00:31:50,533
a few extra pounds on
you as you run around. And,

747
00:31:51,492 --> 00:31:52,702
at the time, we were

748
00:31:52,702 --> 00:31:56,623
in an operation,
and I happened to be out with the unit

749
00:31:56,623 --> 00:32:00,001
that was conducting it, just kind of
with the lieutenant seeing how they do.

750
00:32:00,460 --> 00:32:04,547
And we got involved in the chase
and jumping over walls,

751
00:32:04,547 --> 00:32:09,344
and I was not as nimble with my body
armor stuff as I used to be.

752
00:32:09,344 --> 00:32:11,888
That could be 70 pounds.
Yeah, right. He was.

753
00:32:11,888 --> 00:32:15,350
He was probably not 70,
probably not 70, probably 35 pounds.

754
00:32:15,558 --> 00:32:16,100
Okay.

755
00:32:16,100 --> 00:32:19,103
But just, you know, it's hot, you know,

756
00:32:20,021 --> 00:32:23,024
41, 42 at the time.

757
00:32:23,983 --> 00:32:26,861
And kind of land
rolling the back up a little bit.

758
00:32:26,861 --> 00:32:28,613
That happened several more times.

759
00:32:28,613 --> 00:32:31,616
And you go to the doctor,
give me some Motrin, vitamin D,

760
00:32:31,908 --> 00:32:34,786
well, they just go and, by the time

761
00:32:34,786 --> 00:32:38,164
we're getting ready to leave Iraq,
my back is really starting to get bad.

762
00:32:38,498 --> 00:32:41,960
But, we hit a bomb crater

763
00:32:43,294 --> 00:32:46,130
before we got out of Iraq into Kuwait,

764
00:32:46,130 --> 00:32:50,927
and just the jolt of that ended up
rupturing a disc in my back.

765
00:32:52,053 --> 00:32:54,180
It had been

766
00:32:54,180 --> 00:32:55,598
pinched, I guess.

767
00:32:55,598 --> 00:32:57,016
Yeah.

768
00:32:57,016 --> 00:33:00,937
It was bulging already,
and this just ruptured, and it went out to

769
00:33:01,229 --> 00:33:04,232
attach to your body in the end of medevac

770
00:33:04,315 --> 00:33:07,235
to one school for, emergency surgery.

771
00:33:07,235 --> 00:33:09,696
Yeah, because you have compressed
discs in your back,

772
00:33:09,696 --> 00:33:13,157
but none of the bomb
strap metal affected you.

773
00:33:14,826 --> 00:33:16,411
Not yet.

774
00:33:16,411 --> 00:33:19,872
I do have one piece of shrapnel
that I didn't know about until,

775
00:33:20,999 --> 00:33:24,168
probably about six years
after I got back from Iraq.

776
00:33:25,336 --> 00:33:29,382
As an IED event,
that a little piece of shrapnel sliver of,

777
00:33:29,382 --> 00:33:32,385
metal went right through the vehicle

778
00:33:32,927 --> 00:33:35,680
and into my pant leg, into my cap.

779
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,683
In the time
I just thought it was just something stung

780
00:33:39,017 --> 00:33:41,060
because it's just hot and sharp and goes.
It went.

781
00:33:41,060 --> 00:33:44,022
Just put your needle. Yeah. Yeah.

782
00:33:44,022 --> 00:33:48,860
And didn't see it until all the docs were
doing X-rays of my knee and,

783
00:33:49,819 --> 00:33:52,822
and there
would be an MRI, and they're like, hey,

784
00:33:53,031 --> 00:33:56,409
you've got a metal in your leg where
you shouldn't have metal in your leg.

785
00:33:56,868 --> 00:33:59,328
And that was the only it was like,
yeah, I remember that one time

786
00:33:59,328 --> 00:34:02,623
when you didn't know that the whole time,
though, there's metal in your leg.

787
00:34:02,623 --> 00:34:05,001
Yeah, it's still in there.
Did you save it?

788
00:34:05,001 --> 00:34:05,918
Yes, it's still in there.

789
00:34:05,918 --> 00:34:06,544
The guy said.

790
00:34:06,544 --> 00:34:09,922
Doc said like it's not worth if it doesn't
bother you, don't worry about it.

791
00:34:09,922 --> 00:34:13,342
Yeah, well, I get the beep beep on the, 
no metal detector.

792
00:34:13,676 --> 00:34:16,220
It's literally like a

793
00:34:16,220 --> 00:34:17,847
it's a little thicker than a needle.

794
00:34:17,847 --> 00:34:19,640
Yeah, maybe an inch long.

795
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:22,643
Yeah,
maybe an eighth or 16th of an inch wide.

796
00:34:22,894 --> 00:34:27,690
It's not a big piece like I said, it went
into, like, it's so fast that I never.

797
00:34:28,274 --> 00:34:30,943
Yeah, I got scratch and that was it.

798
00:34:30,943 --> 00:34:33,488
So your back took a beating back.

799
00:34:33,488 --> 00:34:35,364
Yeah, but you're still in great shape.

800
00:34:35,364 --> 00:34:36,240
Try me. Yeah.

801
00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:39,243
Is that preventative like,
is that working out to help the back?

802
00:34:39,911 --> 00:34:40,328
It is.

803
00:34:40,328 --> 00:34:42,663
I mean I've always looked at fitness
as being something.

804
00:34:42,663 --> 00:34:45,583
That was what it was.
It's always important in the military.

805
00:34:45,583 --> 00:34:46,667
It was important to me.

806
00:34:46,667 --> 00:34:49,670
I wrestled in high school
and college and, So.

807
00:34:50,171 --> 00:34:51,798
So you wrestled for West Point? Yes.

808
00:34:53,091 --> 00:34:54,342
Wow. I'm.

809
00:34:54,342 --> 00:34:55,551
What weight?

810
00:34:55,551 --> 00:34:56,385
You're now in the Hall of Fame.

811
00:34:56,385 --> 00:34:57,512
Come on.

812
00:34:57,512 --> 00:34:59,097
Paul is in the Hall of Fame. No.

813
00:34:59,097 --> 00:35:01,432
He is. Yeah. That, like, just didn't do
enough.

814
00:35:01,432 --> 00:35:03,017
You know what? Weight class.

815
00:35:03,017 --> 00:35:04,310
What was your record?

816
00:35:04,310 --> 00:35:06,312
I was 150, 150.

817
00:35:06,312 --> 00:35:09,273
So I think that's 149 is the actual weight
class now.

818
00:35:09,273 --> 00:35:14,487
Yes. 150
and I will say I batted about 500 there.

819
00:35:14,487 --> 00:35:14,987
You go.

820
00:35:14,987 --> 00:35:17,990
Held your own respectable,

821
00:35:18,199 --> 00:35:19,367
can't win them all.

822
00:35:19,367 --> 00:35:22,578
No. And I did Russell my senior year
because I went to the coach and said,

823
00:35:22,578 --> 00:35:25,748
if I don't stop wrestling,
I'm not going to graduate.

824
00:35:25,873 --> 00:35:26,958
I know that for a fact.

825
00:35:26,958 --> 00:35:28,501
For the studies and stuff. Yeah.

826
00:35:28,501 --> 00:35:31,796
Yes. There's no
let up for your varsity athlete.

827
00:35:31,796 --> 00:35:34,090
You have the same, you know, 22 hours.

828
00:35:34,090 --> 00:35:36,759
Put it on a schedule that,
anybody else does.

829
00:35:36,759 --> 00:35:39,554
So it's it's grueling.

830
00:35:40,513 --> 00:35:40,763
For me.

831
00:35:40,763 --> 00:35:43,766
It was really good. Yeah.

832
00:35:44,267 --> 00:35:48,437
So go back to worst assignment, you know,

833
00:35:48,479 --> 00:35:51,858
and I felt like when our unit left Iraq,

834
00:35:51,858 --> 00:35:54,861
we had accomplished a lot, like.

835
00:35:55,486 --> 00:35:57,155
Yeah. What year was Iraq?

836
00:35:57,155 --> 00:35:57,530
That?

837
00:35:57,530 --> 00:36:01,659
My first trip over
there was 2003, like August 2003.

838
00:36:02,326 --> 00:36:04,495
September 2004.

839
00:36:04,495 --> 00:36:06,414
Wow. Whole year. Yeah.

840
00:36:06,414 --> 00:36:09,417
Like 13 months,
actually, almost 13 months.

841
00:36:10,459 --> 00:36:13,212
And then I went back
a couple more times in staff roles.

842
00:36:13,212 --> 00:36:16,424
I was part of a team that,
we would go over

843
00:36:17,008 --> 00:36:19,594
to conduct exercises with units
that were getting ready to go over,

844
00:36:19,594 --> 00:36:22,597
and then we would go over
like three months after they got there

845
00:36:22,763 --> 00:36:25,850
and just kind of shadow them and watch
and then sit down with their commander,

846
00:36:26,100 --> 00:36:29,353
provide feedback on, hey,
we think you got a good process here.

847
00:36:29,353 --> 00:36:31,063
Or here's
something you might want to consider.

848
00:36:31,063 --> 00:36:34,066
The timing of having this meeting
so that you could do this kind of

849
00:36:34,483 --> 00:36:36,819
so is that a R.

850
00:36:36,819 --> 00:36:41,699
And after review hey, we would do the
after action reviews after the operation.

851
00:36:41,699 --> 00:36:42,241
This was this.

852
00:36:42,241 --> 00:36:43,784
Oh this is during our role.

853
00:36:43,784 --> 00:36:47,288
Our mission was to with them
in collaboration at the same.

854
00:36:47,288 --> 00:36:50,291
Oh okay. So you're like modeling
what to do.

855
00:36:50,499 --> 00:36:50,750
Yeah.

856
00:36:50,750 --> 00:36:54,170
Modeling and consulting
if you really will.

857
00:36:54,170 --> 00:36:56,255
You know, it's like, yeah, we're kind of

858
00:36:56,255 --> 00:36:59,717
an extra set of eyes and ears
for the commander and the staff and,

859
00:37:01,093 --> 00:37:01,510
help them

860
00:37:01,510 --> 00:37:04,513
kind of implement best practices
that we've seen in other units.

861
00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:07,600
So that was a job that,
I mean, even though I was home,

862
00:37:08,351 --> 00:37:10,937
I was gone 270 days of the year.

863
00:37:10,937 --> 00:37:12,647
You know, that job?

864
00:37:12,647 --> 00:37:14,357
Just one trip.

865
00:37:14,357 --> 00:37:16,567
I flew around the world.

866
00:37:16,567 --> 00:37:16,817
Yeah.

867
00:37:16,817 --> 00:37:22,823
Literally went from Fort Kansas
to Fort Hood, Texas for about four weeks,

868
00:37:23,324 --> 00:37:26,369
then to Norfolk, Virginia
for a couple of weeks,

869
00:37:26,911 --> 00:37:32,124
then to Iraq for like three weeks,
and then to, Thailand

870
00:37:32,124 --> 00:37:37,296
for an exercise for like four weeks
and then circle back around the globe.

871
00:37:37,296 --> 00:37:39,924
And so we used to joke with Magellan
patch.

872
00:37:39,924 --> 00:37:40,508
Wow. Yeah.

873
00:37:40,508 --> 00:37:43,552
I circumnavigate one temporary duty trip.

874
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:45,054
Jeez. That's amazing.

875
00:37:45,054 --> 00:37:45,888
That's a great story.

876
00:37:45,888 --> 00:37:48,808
Like,
that's all worth it, right, then. Yeah.

877
00:37:48,808 --> 00:37:51,185
Wow. So first, best last.

878
00:37:51,185 --> 00:37:52,103
Did we do them all? Yeah.

879
00:37:52,103 --> 00:37:53,980
So I mean, it's it's kind of a tossup.

880
00:37:53,980 --> 00:37:56,983
Like I said, it was
it was hard and tough and

881
00:37:57,024 --> 00:38:00,820
and Korea was the same way
Korea was a a grueling assignment.

882
00:38:00,820 --> 00:38:05,157
But I always look back at Korea as like
I learned more in that one year

883
00:38:06,200 --> 00:38:08,119
of being immersed in

884
00:38:08,119 --> 00:38:11,122
kind of crisis operations,
crisis plan, crisis action.

885
00:38:11,580 --> 00:38:12,748
And I came out of there.

886
00:38:12,748 --> 00:38:15,710
I thought, I'm prepared
to kind of do a lot of jobs.

887
00:38:15,710 --> 00:38:18,671
I think, yeah.

888
00:38:18,879 --> 00:38:21,257
Thank you for
that was great, great storytelling.

889
00:38:21,257 --> 00:38:24,176
I learned so much.
Let's go back to the way beginning.

890
00:38:24,176 --> 00:38:27,638
What did actually originally inspired you
to join the military?

891
00:38:30,349 --> 00:38:32,518
I, my grandfather on

892
00:38:32,518 --> 00:38:35,771
my mom's side was a retired army officer.

893
00:38:35,896 --> 00:38:38,941
But when I was born,
he'd been out. Right?

894
00:38:39,025 --> 00:38:40,359
And he never talked about it.

895
00:38:40,359 --> 00:38:45,406
You just had a box of medals that he kept,
and once a while, you pull him out.

896
00:38:45,406 --> 00:38:48,367
Like if I helped him, like,
clean the yard, he could hear it.

897
00:38:48,367 --> 00:38:51,287
You can have a medal.

898
00:38:51,287 --> 00:38:52,997
Some ribbon and a piece of metal.

899
00:38:52,997 --> 00:38:54,457
I kept a bunch of them.

900
00:38:54,457 --> 00:38:56,417
But I thought it was cool.

901
00:38:56,417 --> 00:38:57,585
He did it, but it didn't.

902
00:38:58,544 --> 00:38:59,879
You know, I was, like, six years old.

903
00:38:59,879 --> 00:39:01,339
That wasn't really my motivation.

904
00:39:01,339 --> 00:39:05,134
And then as I got older, in high school,
we lived next to an Air Force base,

905
00:39:05,134 --> 00:39:09,513
and I saw,
I see an F-16 fly off and be cool to do.

906
00:39:09,764 --> 00:39:11,265
Yeah. I wonder how you get to do that.

907
00:39:11,265 --> 00:39:14,727
You know, kind of like, you know,
I did some research and asked around and,

908
00:39:15,436 --> 00:39:18,230
as much as a 14, 15 year old could

909
00:39:18,230 --> 00:39:21,776
and oh, there's a place called Air Force
Academy where you can go

910
00:39:21,776 --> 00:39:25,071
and and learn how to
and maybe get to become a pilot.

911
00:39:25,571 --> 00:39:26,030
Yeah.

912
00:39:26,030 --> 00:39:30,701
No, I there's these other schools too,
you know, Annapolis and at West Point.

913
00:39:30,743 --> 00:39:33,412
Yeah. And it was my sophomore
year in high school when,

914
00:39:34,372 --> 00:39:37,333
we were wrestling universal practice
over the Christmas holidays.

915
00:39:37,333 --> 00:39:40,002
And one of the guys on the team,
his brother, was a wrestler

916
00:39:40,002 --> 00:39:43,005
at West Point, and his brother
came back to work out with us.

917
00:39:43,255 --> 00:39:46,759
This guy walks in the room, captain
America just joined the crowd here.

918
00:39:46,759 --> 00:39:50,388
I mean, this guy talking about chiseled
granite jaw, you know, just

919
00:39:50,805 --> 00:39:54,517
in the most polite and kind person
and just just a classy guy.

920
00:39:55,142 --> 00:39:59,146
And I thought, man,
I want to be like him when I grow up.

921
00:39:59,772 --> 00:40:03,526
And so I started looking more and more
in the West Wing as a place to go.

922
00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:05,736
Nice. That's kind of how I. That's.

923
00:40:05,736 --> 00:40:06,737
Well, yeah.

924
00:40:06,737 --> 00:40:09,740
Pat collector and Dan collector.

925
00:40:11,117 --> 00:40:12,910
That's so for that. Yeah.

926
00:40:12,910 --> 00:40:15,913
And the conditions for me to say
this is what I think I want to do.

927
00:40:16,163 --> 00:40:17,748
Yeah. It just takes a couple like that.

928
00:40:17,748 --> 00:40:19,917
When he walked in the room,
you're like, whoa, I want to be like that.

929
00:40:19,917 --> 00:40:22,920
And then
and then to have that positive manner.

930
00:40:23,170 --> 00:40:25,131
Like, he's just like a positive influence.

931
00:40:25,131 --> 00:40:27,716
Yeah. I met him later on in life, too.

932
00:40:27,716 --> 00:40:31,053
I mean, after he left the West Point,
I, I graduated from West Point.

933
00:40:31,053 --> 00:40:34,056
You saw him in the Army
and I told him one day I said, you don't

934
00:40:34,056 --> 00:40:37,143
remember me from the wrestling room
and late high school.

935
00:40:37,852 --> 00:40:39,854
I said,
but you're the reason I went to West.

936
00:40:39,854 --> 00:40:42,940
He's like, really? Yeah. That's so cool.

937
00:40:43,983 --> 00:40:45,192
We're going to take a pause

938
00:40:45,192 --> 00:40:48,195
because we have some more special guests
here.

939
00:40:49,029 --> 00:40:51,490
We're here at oh, let's
thank some sponsors.

940
00:40:51,490 --> 00:40:55,077
Let's thank Direct Line Media,
Stephania and Dave from Direct Line Media.

941
00:40:55,077 --> 00:40:57,913
Nothing, not none of
this would be possible without them.

942
00:40:57,913 --> 00:40:59,331
Let's thank our wonderful hosts.

943
00:40:59,331 --> 00:41:00,875
Maximum beverage.

944
00:41:00,875 --> 00:41:03,085
They've been hosting us ever since.

945
00:41:03,085 --> 00:41:05,087
And we've been collaborating
on a lot of events.

946
00:41:05,087 --> 00:41:07,047
We've hosted our whiskey event.

947
00:41:07,047 --> 00:41:09,800
They have hosted their whiskey event
and have been gracious

948
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:12,928
enough to have friends of Fini
be the beneficiary.

949
00:41:13,304 --> 00:41:16,098
So we have some special guests,
and we have a nice, beautiful

950
00:41:16,098 --> 00:41:18,350
check check time.

951
00:41:18,350 --> 00:41:19,477
You want to come around, All right.

952
00:41:19,477 --> 00:41:20,478
So fast.

953
00:41:20,478 --> 00:41:21,687
Yes. Let's talk.

954
00:41:21,687 --> 00:41:23,606
We have Whiskey Festival 2000.

955
00:41:23,606 --> 00:41:26,609
And actually now it's the
we have Whiskey and Spirits Festival

956
00:41:27,109 --> 00:41:29,612
2000. 25.

957
00:41:30,696 --> 00:41:32,823
We happened in,

958
00:41:32,823 --> 00:41:35,826
late September or was it early October?

959
00:41:36,243 --> 00:41:38,913
I don't know, one of the two dates,
September 24th, was

960
00:41:38,913 --> 00:41:40,831
that one was number 24.

961
00:41:40,831 --> 00:41:43,584
So we had our best event in a long time.

962
00:41:43,584 --> 00:41:45,711
Yeah, man, you a lot more.

963
00:41:45,711 --> 00:41:46,962
Lot a lot of people.

964
00:41:46,962 --> 00:41:48,130
All right.

965
00:41:48,130 --> 00:41:51,091
I think our best attendance
in, like 2 or 3 years,

966
00:41:51,842 --> 00:41:53,719
and, live music was great.

967
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:54,762
Live music was excellent.

968
00:41:54,762 --> 00:41:56,639
We had panga world beat.

969
00:41:56,639 --> 00:41:57,598
Check those guys out.

970
00:41:57,598 --> 00:42:00,184
Check them out.

971
00:42:00,184 --> 00:42:02,770
And, yeah, it was an awesome event.

972
00:42:02,770 --> 00:42:05,773
We're so happy that we can,
you know, we have a local charity that

973
00:42:06,815 --> 00:42:09,068
you know, provides for,

974
00:42:09,068 --> 00:42:12,071
families not only in West Hartford
but in the greater Hartford community.

975
00:42:12,196 --> 00:42:16,325
Yep. And,
you know, we're obviously pleased

976
00:42:16,325 --> 00:42:20,871
to present you
with the check for $7,000 for this year's.

977
00:42:20,871 --> 00:42:23,666
So we have whiskey.
Yeah. Thank you so much.

978
00:42:24,667 --> 00:42:26,001
This collaboration

979
00:42:26,001 --> 00:42:29,004
goes back, I think six years.

980
00:42:29,046 --> 00:42:30,422
This might have been.

981
00:42:30,422 --> 00:42:31,715
Yeah, okay.

982
00:42:31,715 --> 00:42:32,049
At least.

983
00:42:32,049 --> 00:42:34,885
So we're looking forward to it.
And we can't thank you enough.

984
00:42:34,885 --> 00:42:37,179
You are extremely thoughtful
and generous.

985
00:42:37,179 --> 00:42:38,847
We love maximum beverage.

986
00:42:38,847 --> 00:42:40,307
We love the whiskey event.

987
00:42:40,307 --> 00:42:42,851
Do we have a date for the next

988
00:42:42,851 --> 00:42:44,019
save the date.

989
00:42:44,019 --> 00:42:44,895
Similar.

990
00:42:44,895 --> 00:42:45,563
How similar?

991
00:42:45,563 --> 00:42:48,190
Similar. Be right around that weekend.

992
00:42:48,190 --> 00:42:51,068
The last Saturday in September.

993
00:42:51,068 --> 00:42:52,152
September. Works well because.

994
00:42:52,152 --> 00:42:53,612
Still pretty warm.

995
00:42:53,612 --> 00:42:56,365
A lot of people were outside.

996
00:42:56,365 --> 00:42:59,618
Yeah, it's going to be a toll country
club, which was it was a great venue.

997
00:42:59,910 --> 00:43:02,663
Very happy with how that all turned out.

998
00:43:02,663 --> 00:43:06,125
You know, at the end of the day,
we want to create a great experience

999
00:43:06,125 --> 00:43:07,251
for the people that go to the event.

1000
00:43:07,251 --> 00:43:07,543
Yeah.

1001
00:43:07,543 --> 00:43:11,630
And, if, if, if we can raise money

1002
00:43:11,630 --> 00:43:15,968
for charity,
that's obviously a massive bonus.

1003
00:43:15,968 --> 00:43:21,849
And all that seem to work out
over the last, 1011,

1004
00:43:21,932 --> 00:43:24,935
I think it was our 11th year,
maybe our 12th year.

1005
00:43:24,935 --> 00:43:25,936
Yeah. I also want to thank you.

1006
00:43:25,936 --> 00:43:27,730
And add in that we also sold over

1007
00:43:27,730 --> 00:43:30,858
$1,000 worth of raffle tickets
because we had a great location.

1008
00:43:30,858 --> 00:43:32,067
As soon as people walked in,

1009
00:43:32,067 --> 00:43:35,613
they grabbed their program, their cigar,
and they hit the raffle or swag.

1010
00:43:36,071 --> 00:43:38,532
So, so merch sold some merch, a hat.

1011
00:43:38,532 --> 00:43:39,158
Got a hat?

1012
00:43:39,158 --> 00:43:39,366
Yeah.

1013
00:43:39,366 --> 00:43:40,451
You know, be a good friend.

1014
00:43:40,451 --> 00:43:42,995
He's a good friend. Matt's a good friend.

1015
00:43:43,954 --> 00:43:45,998
Oh. And then that's another thing too.

1016
00:43:45,998 --> 00:43:48,542
So September 12th, it's official.

1017
00:43:48,542 --> 00:43:52,880
It's going to be at Tonks, but
maximum beverage host the whiskey hole.

1018
00:43:53,213 --> 00:43:55,633
Juicy hole. 1114.

1019
00:43:55,633 --> 00:43:57,968
That's what I said. Whole 14.

1020
00:43:57,968 --> 00:44:01,055
So I I've never gotten a bottle back
with whiskey in it.

1021
00:44:02,014 --> 00:44:03,974
I always get empty bottles.

1022
00:44:03,974 --> 00:44:05,017
Yeah I'm fine.

1023
00:44:05,017 --> 00:44:06,935
Everyone golfs great until 14.

1024
00:44:06,935 --> 00:44:10,064
But golfing goes down 15, 16,
17 for some reason.

1025
00:44:10,064 --> 00:44:13,317
But no, that's it's
a great collaboration.

1026
00:44:13,359 --> 00:44:16,445
You're you're really, a pillar

1027
00:44:16,445 --> 00:44:19,448
in the community, and we can't
thank you enough here at Maximum Beverage.

1028
00:44:19,782 --> 00:44:20,824
Thank you, Brian.

1029
00:44:20,824 --> 00:44:24,119
Thank you, Matt Conaway, over there
and the whole Whitney crew.

1030
00:44:24,578 --> 00:44:26,413
We really appreciate you.

1031
00:44:26,413 --> 00:44:28,332
And your, support means the world.

1032
00:44:28,332 --> 00:44:30,042
What about for for the.

1033
00:44:30,042 --> 00:44:32,294
My girls got into Fordham. If.

1034
00:44:32,294 --> 00:44:34,088
And this guy could get into Fordham.

1035
00:44:34,088 --> 00:44:36,423
Anybody should be
able to get into Fordham. But

1036
00:44:37,549 --> 00:44:39,760
anyway, they going, I don't know.

1037
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:41,804
Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of money.

1038
00:44:41,804 --> 00:44:43,263
Yeah. So but they got it.

1039
00:44:43,263 --> 00:44:46,100
So we're very,
very good. We're happy about that.

1040
00:44:46,100 --> 00:44:46,975
Right. Yep.

1041
00:44:46,975 --> 00:44:48,018
So we'll see.

1042
00:44:48,018 --> 00:44:49,561
So, thank you for that.

1043
00:44:49,561 --> 00:44:51,980
Thank you for hopping in the pick, too.
You know, that was cool.

1044
00:44:51,980 --> 00:44:53,649
We're here at Maximum Beverage.

1045
00:44:53,649 --> 00:44:56,985
We just got a check for $7,000
for their whiskey You event.

1046
00:44:57,236 --> 00:44:58,570
You like whiskey?

1047
00:44:58,570 --> 00:45:00,155
You're going to come to our next event?

1048
00:45:00,155 --> 00:45:02,074
Oh, yeah. I'll be there.
All right, all right.

1049
00:45:02,074 --> 00:45:02,908
You want to volunteer?

1050
00:45:02,908 --> 00:45:05,911
I know you love volunteering. Frequent?

1051
00:45:06,328 --> 00:45:08,163
Yeah, I heard you're their best customer.

1052
00:45:08,163 --> 00:45:09,415
You got customer of the week?

1053
00:45:09,415 --> 00:45:12,000
No. I'm kidding.

1054
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:13,919
Well, Connor knew you, so Connor was like,
I know.

1055
00:45:13,919 --> 00:45:15,170
Make what?

1056
00:45:15,170 --> 00:45:16,547
Your whiskey of choice.

1057
00:45:16,547 --> 00:45:19,091
You know, I like High West.

1058
00:45:19,091 --> 00:45:21,510
Oh, that double rye. Okay.

1059
00:45:21,510 --> 00:45:22,720
And I don't know if I have a

1060
00:45:23,929 --> 00:45:24,972
liking to it because

1061
00:45:24,972 --> 00:45:27,975
it's, distilled in Park City, Utah.

1062
00:45:27,975 --> 00:45:28,851
Okay.

1063
00:45:28,851 --> 00:45:33,480
Which, 
So that's where I was going to get that.

1064
00:45:33,981 --> 00:45:36,024
I was going to ask you
where you wrestled in high school.

1065
00:45:36,024 --> 00:45:37,109
Utah.

1066
00:45:37,109 --> 00:45:38,986
And now you like High West
because of Utah?

1067
00:45:38,986 --> 00:45:39,737
Yeah.

1068
00:45:39,737 --> 00:45:41,405
Wait, more Mormon state.

1069
00:45:41,405 --> 00:45:44,450
They get to make whiskey? Yeah, yeah.

1070
00:45:44,491 --> 00:45:47,327
When I was growing up there,
I thought it was dry at some point.

1071
00:45:47,327 --> 00:45:50,330
No, no, I think they have the three
two beer, though.

1072
00:45:50,956 --> 00:45:51,832
Only beer you get there.

1073
00:45:51,832 --> 00:45:54,835
But, even when I was growing up, like

1074
00:45:56,211 --> 00:45:59,214
10% of the state was,

1075
00:45:59,715 --> 00:46:02,134
I was not LDS,

1076
00:46:02,134 --> 00:46:04,136
and people used to call Park City

1077
00:46:04,136 --> 00:46:07,139
the City of Sin because it was like
the fun place to go skiing.

1078
00:46:07,139 --> 00:46:10,851
And everybody out there, I think it was
it was just kind of a cool place to be.

1079
00:46:10,851 --> 00:46:13,854
Park city has always been kind
of the whole place, and it's just awesome.

1080
00:46:14,021 --> 00:46:17,024
It's nice you you still have family there?

1081
00:46:17,441 --> 00:46:19,985
My brothers still
live in Utah. Yeah. Nice.

1082
00:46:21,361 --> 00:46:22,154
Nice.

1083
00:46:22,154 --> 00:46:24,281
Now, who
could win in a fight in wrestling?

1084
00:46:24,281 --> 00:46:25,866
Which brother?

1085
00:46:25,866 --> 00:46:27,117
Who being up? Which brother?

1086
00:46:27,117 --> 00:46:29,161
I'm seven years older

1087
00:46:29,161 --> 00:46:32,164
than my next closest brother,
so there really wasn't that much.

1088
00:46:32,915 --> 00:46:36,335
And then my youngest brother, he's
a state champion

1089
00:46:37,127 --> 00:46:40,589
wrestler, but he was it the, like,
the 98 pound weight class?

1090
00:46:40,923 --> 00:46:43,926
He was really strong. 90 pounds.

1091
00:46:44,051 --> 00:46:44,301
Yeah.

1092
00:46:44,301 --> 00:46:46,178
They have that class
that's in high school.

1093
00:46:46,178 --> 00:46:47,554
They do okay.

1094
00:46:47,554 --> 00:46:50,182
It's like college. It starts
I think 125 is the latest.

1095
00:46:50,182 --> 00:46:52,601
I was going to say that's featherweight.
Yeah.

1096
00:46:52,601 --> 00:46:55,604
Extra feather.

1097
00:46:56,438 --> 00:46:58,899
What what were some of your core values

1098
00:46:58,899 --> 00:47:01,652
and the military or what?

1099
00:47:01,652 --> 00:47:02,152
Yeah. Good.

1100
00:47:02,152 --> 00:47:03,987
I mean, yeah, yeah.

1101
00:47:03,987 --> 00:47:06,323
Integrity.

1102
00:47:06,323 --> 00:47:07,783
And just honesty.

1103
00:47:07,783 --> 00:47:10,202
Loyalty.

1104
00:47:10,202 --> 00:47:11,495
I think I,

1105
00:47:11,495 --> 00:47:15,249
I'd like to say I had
most of that instilled in me growing up,

1106
00:47:15,958 --> 00:47:19,586
even though my dad was in the military,
and he taught me that the importance

1107
00:47:19,586 --> 00:47:20,963
of doing a job and doing it right.

1108
00:47:22,089 --> 00:47:24,633
Sticking to your word,

1109
00:47:24,633 --> 00:47:27,302
pushing yourself to be better,

1110
00:47:27,302 --> 00:47:30,097
treating people with dignity and respect
regardless.

1111
00:47:30,097 --> 00:47:30,430
Yeah.

1112
00:47:30,430 --> 00:47:33,392
I'd like to think at West Point,

1113
00:47:34,226 --> 00:47:36,186
reaffirmed that or just kind of validated

1114
00:47:36,186 --> 00:47:39,189
that this is a,
this is a way you should be.

1115
00:47:40,107 --> 00:47:41,942
And so I've kind of

1116
00:47:41,942 --> 00:47:44,945
I've always wanted to
hopefully that I model that.

1117
00:47:45,571 --> 00:47:46,196
Yeah.

1118
00:47:46,196 --> 00:47:49,199
Who I interact with with my family.

1119
00:47:49,950 --> 00:47:53,161
You you reminded me when I first met you

1120
00:47:53,620 --> 00:47:56,582
of the guy
that came into the wrestling gym.

1121
00:47:57,082 --> 00:47:59,251
You know, I looked at you like, wow,

1122
00:47:59,251 --> 00:48:02,671
that's kind of like who I want to be
when I grow up. No.

1123
00:48:02,671 --> 00:48:03,338
Dead serious.

1124
00:48:03,338 --> 00:48:05,883
I don't know if you want to take it
as a compliment or.

1125
00:48:05,883 --> 00:48:08,635
But, I saw you physically fit.

1126
00:48:08,635 --> 00:48:11,471
You had the Ranger tat, you know, good.

1127
00:48:11,471 --> 00:48:12,222
Had a hair.

1128
00:48:12,222 --> 00:48:14,057
You were very, polite.

1129
00:48:14,057 --> 00:48:16,810
And like I said, hey.
And you were like, talked.

1130
00:48:16,810 --> 00:48:18,061
And we had a nice conversation.

1131
00:48:18,061 --> 00:48:20,647
So I walked away going, man, that guy's.

1132
00:48:20,647 --> 00:48:22,691
And ever since I'm like,
I got to get him on the podcast.

1133
00:48:22,691 --> 00:48:23,901
I got to get him on the podcast.

1134
00:48:23,901 --> 00:48:25,736
So I'll thank you again.

1135
00:48:25,736 --> 00:48:27,571
I'm having a wonderful
time chatting with you.

1136
00:48:28,780 --> 00:48:29,406
Yeah, yeah.

1137
00:48:29,406 --> 00:48:32,409
And your
locker is like two down by choice, right?

1138
00:48:32,409 --> 00:48:34,620
We just I kind of just like that
one by the mirror.

1139
00:48:34,620 --> 00:48:35,913
Why do you choose that one?

1140
00:48:35,913 --> 00:48:38,206
Or is your little one down there
little ones right underneath there.

1141
00:48:38,206 --> 00:48:41,919
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just started that one,
my little ones around the corner.

1142
00:48:41,919 --> 00:48:44,922
But I still just like that
tall one for some reason.

1143
00:48:45,005 --> 00:48:45,881
But her shoes are tough.

1144
00:48:45,881 --> 00:48:47,716
Yes. See, I want to be like you.

1145
00:48:47,716 --> 00:48:49,176
You put your boots on top of the locker.

1146
00:48:49,176 --> 00:48:51,094
I put my boots on top of the locker.

1147
00:48:51,094 --> 00:48:52,471
You do kettlebell workouts.

1148
00:48:52,471 --> 00:48:55,474
Now I want to do kettlebell workouts.

1149
00:48:55,766 --> 00:48:56,433
How is that?

1150
00:48:56,433 --> 00:48:57,225
Speaking of which,

1151
00:48:57,225 --> 00:49:01,146
how is anything else of the military
before we move on to civilian life?

1152
00:49:02,064 --> 00:49:03,774
I think so, yes.

1153
00:49:03,774 --> 00:49:05,442
Yeah, it was a long time I liked it.

1154
00:49:05,442 --> 00:49:07,152
Yeah, I'm glad I did it.

1155
00:49:07,152 --> 00:49:11,031
I have zero regrets
of any of the assignments I have.

1156
00:49:11,615 --> 00:49:12,240
I've had.

1157
00:49:12,240 --> 00:49:15,661
And, what I did, I'm glad I got to stay,
and I got to serve as long as I did.

1158
00:49:15,661 --> 00:49:17,663
Yeah, 30 years is remarkable.

1159
00:49:17,663 --> 00:49:19,331
A lot of people do 20 and out.

1160
00:49:19,331 --> 00:49:21,041
The goal is 20, obviously. Right.

1161
00:49:21,041 --> 00:49:23,335
And then you just felt

1162
00:49:23,335 --> 00:49:26,797
I just felt like it
was I enjoyed doing what I was doing. And

1163
00:49:27,756 --> 00:49:28,340
I kind of, I

1164
00:49:28,340 --> 00:49:30,842
always when I was a lieutenant,
I said I want to be a battalion commander.

1165
00:49:30,842 --> 00:49:33,053
That was that was a
if I could become a battalion,

1166
00:49:33,053 --> 00:49:34,179
I had a great battalion commanders.

1167
00:49:34,179 --> 00:49:36,932
Lieutenant, the guy that again,
you look up to, you like

1168
00:49:36,932 --> 00:49:39,977
that would be so cool to be like,
you know, Colonel Burns, you know,

1169
00:49:41,311 --> 00:49:44,231
and I got that opportunity,
and so it was successful.

1170
00:49:44,231 --> 00:49:45,941
My tank man was successful.

1171
00:49:45,941 --> 00:49:46,650
I didn't get fired.

1172
00:49:46,650 --> 00:49:50,612
So successful in just long enough.

1173
00:49:50,612 --> 00:49:53,573
And then the next promotion
and then more competition, right.

1174
00:49:53,573 --> 00:49:54,950
The next, you know, command.

1175
00:49:54,950 --> 00:49:57,327
So it was like
it just made sense to stay in.

1176
00:49:57,327 --> 00:49:58,745
Things were going well.

1177
00:49:58,745 --> 00:50:01,123
Yeah. Very cool. So how was that?

1178
00:50:01,123 --> 00:50:04,668
How was your Army career
help you transition to your civilian

1179
00:50:04,668 --> 00:50:05,669
life that you're doing now

1180
00:50:07,170 --> 00:50:08,505
or how was that transition.

1181
00:50:08,505 --> 00:50:11,466
So transition is can be a very difficult
time for the people,

1182
00:50:11,466 --> 00:50:13,927
for anybody in the military.
It is it just. Yeah.

1183
00:50:13,927 --> 00:50:19,891
Because you're, not all, entities
and civilian world

1184
00:50:20,934 --> 00:50:23,937
employees or run the same way military,

1185
00:50:25,522 --> 00:50:27,149
people probably get out.

1186
00:50:27,149 --> 00:50:27,691
Right.

1187
00:50:27,691 --> 00:50:32,988
But for me, my transition was pretty easy
because I was working

1188
00:50:32,988 --> 00:50:36,533
as the chief of staff for the provost,
the National Defense University.

1189
00:50:37,701 --> 00:50:40,704
As I was getting ready to retire,
they basically said,

1190
00:50:40,954 --> 00:50:43,957
hey, we're not going to get a backfill
for you.

1191
00:50:44,249 --> 00:50:47,169
If you competed for this job
as a civilian,

1192
00:50:47,169 --> 00:50:51,006
would you be interested
in applying for it, competing for it?

1193
00:50:51,131 --> 00:50:53,133
Like, absolutely.

1194
00:50:53,133 --> 00:50:56,136
It turned out the job was basically made
as this before you got out.

1195
00:50:56,344 --> 00:50:58,930
This is all right
as you're getting out right as I was.

1196
00:50:58,930 --> 00:51:00,640
Oh, so they almost create a position
for you.

1197
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:02,768
You think, wow, that's amazing.

1198
00:51:02,768 --> 00:51:06,480
Well,
that's shows the job that you did, right.

1199
00:51:06,772 --> 00:51:08,732
They know that you would be a good fit.

1200
00:51:08,732 --> 00:51:10,067
It was a unique thing because.

1201
00:51:12,110 --> 00:51:14,154
We got really enjoyable.

1202
00:51:14,154 --> 00:51:15,155
We had a. Yeah.

1203
00:51:15,155 --> 00:51:16,615
What is that the provost.

1204
00:51:16,615 --> 00:51:17,240
Yeah.

1205
00:51:17,240 --> 00:51:19,659
Out of all the deans
in the colleges. Gotcha.

1206
00:51:19,659 --> 00:51:23,830
So he's the head academic at every college
or just had military colleges?

1207
00:51:24,331 --> 00:51:26,500
I think, Provost,
I mean, they may call him something.

1208
00:51:26,500 --> 00:51:28,085
Yeah. Okay.

1209
00:51:28,085 --> 00:51:30,253
Different colleges.
I was just unfamiliar with that.

1210
00:51:30,253 --> 00:51:30,670
Yeah. Okay.

1211
00:51:30,670 --> 00:51:33,340
So this was,
the head of the head of the academic.

1212
00:51:33,340 --> 00:51:35,258
It's all academic departments. Gotcha.

1213
00:51:35,258 --> 00:51:38,970
So we had a president
of the National Defense University.

1214
00:51:38,970 --> 00:51:41,848
You had the provost
and you had the chief operating officer.

1215
00:51:41,848 --> 00:51:45,060
So the provost and the chief
operating officer were kind of co-equal

1216
00:51:45,185 --> 00:51:47,145
but running different things.

1217
00:51:47,145 --> 00:51:50,649
Chief operating officer is like, how much
does it cost to give people an education?

1218
00:51:51,316 --> 00:51:53,318
Or are we giving them what we're saying?

1219
00:51:53,318 --> 00:51:56,321
We're giving them
and you know, yeah, okay.

1220
00:51:56,404 --> 00:51:58,406
And so my job and I kind of took it.

1221
00:51:58,406 --> 00:52:02,369
I was like, hey, how to help the provost
describe to the chief

1222
00:52:02,369 --> 00:52:06,331
operating officer what we're doing
and what the costs are.

1223
00:52:06,540 --> 00:52:11,253
One university and so in that role,

1224
00:52:11,253 --> 00:52:15,841
I had for two years as a military
and civilian, that was my transition.

1225
00:52:15,841 --> 00:52:18,885
I was doing what I was doing already
just to get different clothes right?

1226
00:52:19,261 --> 00:52:21,346
Yeah. It's a suit now was it?

1227
00:52:21,346 --> 00:52:24,432
And then I competed to be,
a dean of administration

1228
00:52:24,432 --> 00:52:26,268
for one of the colleges there.

1229
00:52:26,268 --> 00:52:29,104
It was kind of
I went from working for the provost

1230
00:52:29,104 --> 00:52:32,524
to working directly for the CEO,
as the dean of administration.

1231
00:52:32,649 --> 00:52:36,695
So every college had a dean
of administration and a dean of faculty.

1232
00:52:37,237 --> 00:52:39,656
Nice.
So I was that. That's a nice transition.

1233
00:52:39,656 --> 00:52:40,657
It was good. Yeah.

1234
00:52:40,657 --> 00:52:44,161
So it was like almost staying
in the military path and lane

1235
00:52:44,286 --> 00:52:46,204
department offense job. Yeah.

1236
00:52:46,204 --> 00:52:47,497
The language is very similar.

1237
00:52:47,497 --> 00:52:50,417
Although you were exposed
to a lot more from, the interagency.

1238
00:52:50,417 --> 00:52:51,459
So we had a lot of

1239
00:52:52,502 --> 00:52:54,921
energy, transportation

1240
00:52:54,921 --> 00:52:58,425
security folks that were students
enrolled in National Defense University

1241
00:52:58,758 --> 00:53:02,345
and, faculty
that was civilian faculty, PhD.

1242
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:03,930
Yeah.

1243
00:53:03,930 --> 00:53:06,183
And you have two masters.

1244
00:53:06,183 --> 00:53:08,768
Yeah. So you were hanging with them.

1245
00:53:08,768 --> 00:53:11,438
Hanging with them
academically anyway, right?

1246
00:53:11,438 --> 00:53:12,355
Right, right.

1247
00:53:12,355 --> 00:53:16,568
So and then so your civilian life now
volunteering,

1248
00:53:17,277 --> 00:53:20,280
being a grandfather and being a trainer,

1249
00:53:20,780 --> 00:53:22,782
being a personal trainer,
that's a brand new one.

1250
00:53:22,782 --> 00:53:25,744
That's a that's a role
I'm just trying on right now.

1251
00:53:25,744 --> 00:53:29,497
Because I'm a gym rat by heart,
and, it's a place where I go and relax.

1252
00:53:29,497 --> 00:53:32,500
I actually, I get it's
a cathartic experience for me to go.

1253
00:53:32,500 --> 00:53:33,210
Yeah.

1254
00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:35,879
And I never keep track
of what my exercise is.

1255
00:53:35,879 --> 00:53:39,049
I don't just go stats.

1256
00:53:39,049 --> 00:53:41,259
I think I just.
What do I feel like doing today?

1257
00:53:41,259 --> 00:53:43,720
It's kind of how I didn't
want it to be a job.

1258
00:53:43,720 --> 00:53:46,056
I wanted to be kind of like,
this is just for the body part time.

1259
00:53:47,766 --> 00:53:48,934
And then when I first got

1260
00:53:48,934 --> 00:53:53,271
here to Hartford,
I started going to go to Wilson Gray YMCA.

1261
00:53:53,271 --> 00:53:56,274
It was the gym that I saw it in that close
by where I live.

1262
00:53:57,067 --> 00:53:59,819
And when I walked in there one day,
I said, hey, do you guys do

1263
00:53:59,819 --> 00:54:01,154
afterschool programs for kids?

1264
00:54:01,154 --> 00:54:03,156
Do you need somebody to come tutor?

1265
00:54:03,156 --> 00:54:03,698
Almost kind of.

1266
00:54:03,698 --> 00:54:06,451
How I got to be a substitute teacher.
Right.

1267
00:54:06,451 --> 00:54:06,785
Nice.

1268
00:54:06,785 --> 00:54:12,082
And they kind of said, well, yeah,
we had these school programs

1269
00:54:12,082 --> 00:54:14,084
and we had these
teen programs on the weekends.

1270
00:54:14,084 --> 00:54:16,920
Would you be willing to help out
with that, like. Absolutely.

1271
00:54:16,920 --> 00:54:20,423
And then they asked me to
I was on the board of their board of like,

1272
00:54:20,632 --> 00:54:22,050
Wilson Gray for a while.

1273
00:54:22,050 --> 00:54:23,301
That's awesome.

1274
00:54:23,301 --> 00:54:26,096
And then joined and then,

1275
00:54:26,096 --> 00:54:29,015
another board I'm on is the Connecticut
Veterans Legal Center out of,

1276
00:54:30,183 --> 00:54:31,810
basically headquartered out of New Haven.

1277
00:54:31,810 --> 00:54:35,855
But they have offices in West Haven, VA,

1278
00:54:36,106 --> 00:54:39,943
Newington, VA, and they, they're,
helping veterans a little bit older.

1279
00:54:40,026 --> 00:54:41,903
Yeah, yeah.

1280
00:54:41,903 --> 00:54:44,072
Oh, with that being said, I want to I

1281
00:54:44,072 --> 00:54:47,784
the VA is and Newington is great suggests

1282
00:54:47,784 --> 00:54:52,205
any veteran should or maybe you will
you do agree or disagree with me.

1283
00:54:52,330 --> 00:54:55,417
Suggest veterans reach out to the VA

1284
00:54:55,417 --> 00:54:59,796
and to go over their past like,
health wise.

1285
00:54:59,796 --> 00:55:03,133
Like maybe injuries or health
or just talk it over.

1286
00:55:03,174 --> 00:55:06,386
The first thing you do
is you go to a veterans service

1287
00:55:06,386 --> 00:55:10,140
office or VSO and that's either through,
American Legion.

1288
00:55:10,473 --> 00:55:13,268
Yeah. The VFW,

1289
00:55:13,268 --> 00:55:15,186
organizations
like Wounded Warrior Project,

1290
00:55:15,186 --> 00:55:19,649
we have vsos that will work with you
and review your medical history and help

1291
00:55:19,649 --> 00:55:24,738
you prepare the paperwork to submit
to the VA for a disability rating or a.

1292
00:55:25,238 --> 00:55:26,948
Yeah, yeah. Or something.

1293
00:55:28,450 --> 00:55:31,619
If you if you need an upgrade,
you're not really going to go to the VSO.

1294
00:55:31,619 --> 00:55:33,413
It's me.
And you were already in the VA system.

1295
00:55:33,413 --> 00:55:36,333
And you, your doctor says, hey,
you've gotten worse at this.

1296
00:55:36,333 --> 00:55:38,418
Okay? It may be worth going back. Yeah.

1297
00:55:38,418 --> 00:55:42,756
Hey, I want to resubmit, my rating for the
my elbow or whatever it might be.

1298
00:55:42,756 --> 00:55:44,174
Yeah.

1299
00:55:44,174 --> 00:55:47,552
But, yeah, definitely with,
a veteran service officer

1300
00:55:47,552 --> 00:55:50,972
for VSO first
and then and then through the V.A.

1301
00:55:50,972 --> 00:55:52,015
system, because.

1302
00:55:52,015 --> 00:55:55,352
And then I served eight years in the Army
National Guard

1303
00:55:55,352 --> 00:55:56,811
as a medic out of New Britain.

1304
00:55:56,811 --> 00:56:00,065
But I drilled at West
Haven as a nurse, like a doctor.

1305
00:56:00,398 --> 00:56:03,360
So I know that, facility as well.

1306
00:56:03,818 --> 00:56:07,906
I remember seeing blood in the hallway,
and I was like, I almost like, attempted

1307
00:56:07,906 --> 00:56:11,618
to, like someone got, like, ripped
an IV out while walking down the hallway.

1308
00:56:11,701 --> 00:56:14,162
So it wasn't
that crazy, was like droplets.

1309
00:56:14,162 --> 00:56:16,539
But then I was like, going to go
wipe it up.

1310
00:56:16,539 --> 00:56:19,084
And they're like,
no, no, no, stay away, that's HIV.

1311
00:56:19,084 --> 00:56:21,169
And I was like,
oh my God, if I touched like, who knows?

1312
00:56:21,169 --> 00:56:24,172
Like but that was like a stain memory.

1313
00:56:24,214 --> 00:56:29,135
And then like talking like a lot of
veterans are patients just like to talk.

1314
00:56:29,177 --> 00:56:30,512
They needed someone to talk with.

1315
00:56:30,512 --> 00:56:33,932
So I sat bedside and talked a lot.

1316
00:56:35,392 --> 00:56:36,476
Gave a catheter that

1317
00:56:36,476 --> 00:56:39,813
was maybe we don't talk about that,
but that was interesting.

1318
00:56:39,813 --> 00:56:44,734
Sticks with me like the tube
that for stuck with that person's stuck.

1319
00:56:45,485 --> 00:56:47,028
He remembers that just like I do.

1320
00:56:47,028 --> 00:56:49,864
But no great facilities.

1321
00:56:49,864 --> 00:56:52,659
Yeah. I would suggest the VA
for veteran, actually.

1322
00:56:52,659 --> 00:56:57,789
And then I was walking at a Hartford
athletic game and a table for the VA

1323
00:56:57,789 --> 00:57:00,875
was there, got a number, shot

1324
00:57:00,875 --> 00:57:03,878
him an email called, went
and got my hearing tested.

1325
00:57:04,254 --> 00:57:08,174
It was good, but just like
got got involved and never thought

1326
00:57:09,300 --> 00:57:10,051
to do that.

1327
00:57:10,051 --> 00:57:13,304
But I was thankful for that table there
and I was very

1328
00:57:13,471 --> 00:57:16,307
welcomed at the Newington, VA.

1329
00:57:16,307 --> 00:57:20,103
So veterans out there, please,
like I would suggest reaching out

1330
00:57:20,103 --> 00:57:25,984
to your VSO first
and then possibly seeing, yeah.

1331
00:57:26,192 --> 00:57:30,488
And seeking help and care, whether it be
physical medicine, mental mental health.

1332
00:57:30,572 --> 00:57:32,449
Yeah. Someone to talk to. Yeah.

1333
00:57:33,450 --> 00:57:34,576
So I'm totally for that.

1334
00:57:34,576 --> 00:57:36,119
And I totally suggest it.

1335
00:57:36,119 --> 00:57:39,414
Do you do you want to talk personally?

1336
00:57:39,706 --> 00:57:41,124
How was your VA experience?

1337
00:57:41,124 --> 00:57:42,584
Did you talk with someone?

1338
00:57:42,584 --> 00:57:44,878
Did you have physical needs or did you?

1339
00:57:44,878 --> 00:57:48,965
I mean, I've definitely got my money's
worth of the VA goes down in, in Richmond,

1340
00:57:48,965 --> 00:57:51,509
Virginia
when I got out of the military and,

1341
00:57:51,509 --> 00:57:53,052
we moved down to Colonial Beach, Virginia.

1342
00:57:53,052 --> 00:57:55,263
The Richmond was closest VA center.

1343
00:57:55,263 --> 00:57:58,266
So I had some, some surgeries done there.

1344
00:57:59,017 --> 00:58:01,895
And I've had surgeries done up here,
the West Haven War

1345
00:58:01,895 --> 00:58:04,898
Hawk and, and I've gone through,

1346
00:58:06,399 --> 00:58:08,276
some PTSD behavioral health

1347
00:58:08,276 --> 00:58:11,279
counseling,
working with a psychiatrist up here.

1348
00:58:11,404 --> 00:58:13,823
When we first moved up here,
I was having a hard time.

1349
00:58:13,823 --> 00:58:16,826
And, again, I'm not

1350
00:58:16,868 --> 00:58:21,247
the stigma attached to mental health,
and I think there still is.

1351
00:58:21,456 --> 00:58:25,210
Yeah, yeah, I've talked about it,
but I'm a big proponent of.

1352
00:58:25,210 --> 00:58:29,380
Hey, there are people in ways
that they can help you, you know, fix it.

1353
00:58:29,380 --> 00:58:32,342
It's not it's not something
that's going to be able to be turned off.

1354
00:58:32,634 --> 00:58:35,637
But they help
you learn ways to deal with it better.

1355
00:58:35,678 --> 00:58:37,680
My family
basically an intervention with me.

1356
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:39,390
Dad, you're becoming a jerk.

1357
00:58:39,390 --> 00:58:40,558
You need some help?

1358
00:58:40,558 --> 00:58:42,727
Yeah, I was I was being a jerk. And so

1359
00:58:43,686 --> 00:58:44,812
it's good to talk about it.

1360
00:58:44,812 --> 00:58:47,565
And strategies. Coping strategies.

1361
00:58:47,565 --> 00:58:50,151
Working out
I'm sure is very helpful for you.

1362
00:58:50,151 --> 00:58:53,154
So. No, it's great.

1363
00:58:54,030 --> 00:58:56,157
I wore my tags today where? Your dogs.

1364
00:58:56,157 --> 00:58:58,076
Now, do you call these dog tags? ID tags?

1365
00:58:58,076 --> 00:59:00,828
What do you call them? Dog tags. Yeah.

1366
00:59:00,828 --> 00:59:01,955
I wear them on Veteran's Day.

1367
00:59:01,955 --> 00:59:03,957
And then I wore hung up on the shadowbox.

1368
00:59:03,957 --> 00:59:05,708
Oh, yeah.

1369
00:59:05,708 --> 00:59:08,670
Let's describe the shadow box
and what's in there?

1370
00:59:09,629 --> 00:59:12,340
My white one is like,

1371
00:59:12,340 --> 00:59:15,343
everything the the medals, badges,

1372
00:59:16,386 --> 00:59:18,513
ranks,

1373
00:59:18,513 --> 00:59:22,392
unit press, you know, kind of the shiny
one, the big one.

1374
00:59:23,101 --> 00:59:27,063
And, in the background of it is,
she took one of my whole,

1375
00:59:27,522 --> 00:59:30,149
sets of dress blue trousers.

1376
00:59:30,149 --> 00:59:32,402
So it's blue with the gold stripe.
Oh, nice.

1377
00:59:32,402 --> 00:59:35,780
That's the background for all the medals,
ribbons and shiny stuff.

1378
00:59:36,197 --> 00:59:37,657
And then she did one. It was,

1379
00:59:38,700 --> 00:59:41,119
we call it a color field.

1380
00:59:41,119 --> 00:59:42,996
Shadow box with a combat shadow box.

1381
00:59:42,996 --> 00:59:45,331
It's got,

1382
00:59:45,331 --> 00:59:46,082
name tapes.

1383
00:59:46,082 --> 00:59:49,294
The from the subdued, you know, like,
I what I wore in Iraq

1384
00:59:49,294 --> 00:59:53,798
and my uniforms there and, the black pins,
like the aerosol wings.

1385
00:59:54,215 --> 00:59:57,218
Oh, yeah. Airborne wings. Next up.

1386
00:59:57,510 --> 00:59:58,845
What else is in there?

1387
00:59:58,845 --> 01:00:02,432
Oh, there's a set of spurs,
my or my combat spurs.

1388
01:00:02,765 --> 01:00:06,102
So for riding a horse, spurs are new.

1389
01:00:06,853 --> 01:00:08,855
There is a

1390
01:00:08,855 --> 01:00:10,481
cavalry units. Yep.

1391
01:00:10,481 --> 01:00:13,818
We still have armored cavalry regiment now
and you can.

1392
01:00:14,110 --> 01:00:17,196
So we had a brigade reconnaissance troops
or a Cav troop,

1393
01:00:17,572 --> 01:00:20,366
which is a company size
element, was attached

1394
01:00:20,366 --> 01:00:24,454
to our battalion in Iraq
and they were escort.

1395
01:00:24,454 --> 01:00:26,748
I went with them
to go to one of the other bases

1396
01:00:26,748 --> 01:00:29,876
where we had some more soldiers,
and I was going to go do a motion ceremony

1397
01:00:29,876 --> 01:00:34,422
for a couple lieutenants that were down
there, and brigade reconnaissance trip.

1398
01:00:34,422 --> 01:00:36,633
The BRT was my escort.

1399
01:00:36,633 --> 01:00:39,969
And while we were going,
I'm going to call him an IED.

1400
01:00:41,763 --> 01:00:43,264
Another convoy that come under attack.

1401
01:00:43,264 --> 01:00:47,852
So we got there, tried to security area
and actually found

1402
01:00:47,852 --> 01:00:49,062
the guys that set it off.

1403
01:00:49,062 --> 01:00:51,189
And so we were on the chase with them.

1404
01:00:51,189 --> 01:00:56,361
And so it was one of the few opportunities
where I, got on the radio and called

1405
01:00:56,361 --> 01:00:59,781
in artillery, my own artillery on the bad

1406
01:00:59,781 --> 01:01:02,784
guys down in the field down there. So,

1407
01:01:02,784 --> 01:01:05,036
the troop commander as captain,
it worked for me.

1408
01:01:05,036 --> 01:01:08,122
He's like, sir, you have your combat spur,
so you're going to get combat.

1409
01:01:08,122 --> 01:01:11,709
So working with the BRT and. Gotcha.

1410
01:01:11,709 --> 01:01:12,543
It was just.

1411
01:01:12,543 --> 01:01:14,253
Do they look like spurs on a boot?

1412
01:01:14,253 --> 01:01:16,714
I'm thinking
so kind of sprinkle points on them.

1413
01:01:16,714 --> 01:01:20,259
So it's the horseshoe thing
with one single stud coming out of it.

1414
01:01:20,301 --> 01:01:21,844
Gotcha gotcha gotcha.

1415
01:01:21,844 --> 01:01:23,429
Oh, cool. You can wear them on boots.

1416
01:01:24,430 --> 01:01:25,890
Very cool.

1417
01:01:25,890 --> 01:01:28,726
But that's what that that's awesome.

1418
01:01:28,726 --> 01:01:31,187
The tactical channel, maybe.

1419
01:01:31,187 --> 01:01:33,064
Can you get a picture of that to me?

1420
01:01:33,064 --> 01:01:34,148
Yeah, I'll send you a picture.

1421
01:01:34,148 --> 01:01:35,942
I guess we're going to put the picture
right here.

1422
01:01:35,942 --> 01:01:38,903
Stefan. Your shadow box. Boom.

1423
01:01:38,903 --> 01:01:41,906
So the cool thing about shadow box,
the shadow box

1424
01:01:42,156 --> 01:01:45,159
is there are a couple ribbons in there,

1425
01:01:45,159 --> 01:01:48,162
that I medals that I'd earned,

1426
01:01:48,413 --> 01:01:52,125
my time in the Army, and my grandfather
happened to hear of those two.

1427
01:01:52,125 --> 01:01:55,503
And remember those who gave me one
as a kid raking leaves and stuff.

1428
01:01:55,503 --> 01:01:56,295
Yeah, yeah.

1429
01:01:56,295 --> 01:01:59,632
So I have his Bronze Star
and Bronze Star in there.

1430
01:02:00,133 --> 01:02:03,886
And I have one of his campaign medals
is that my campaign was a safe.

1431
01:02:04,178 --> 01:02:06,472
It's a little more shriveled,
a little more faded.

1432
01:02:06,472 --> 01:02:08,349
Wow. Is the medal the same?

1433
01:02:08,349 --> 01:02:09,559
But the ribbons worn?

1434
01:02:09,559 --> 01:02:11,686
Yeah. Wow. That's awesome.

1435
01:02:11,686 --> 01:02:13,479
What are you going to do with yours?

1436
01:02:13,479 --> 01:02:15,523
So we give them to your son or.

1437
01:02:15,523 --> 01:02:16,899
I don't think you don't know. Yeah, he's.

1438
01:02:16,899 --> 01:02:18,776
You know, he's he. Time will tell.

1439
01:02:18,776 --> 01:02:21,112
He earned his own stuff. Yeah. He's,

1440
01:02:23,614 --> 01:02:24,866
Geez, I

1441
01:02:24,866 --> 01:02:27,869
had a flag that was flown
over there in 2004.

1442
01:02:27,910 --> 01:02:30,037
I brought it back with me.

1443
01:02:30,037 --> 01:02:32,290
I gave it to my son
when he deployed to Iraq

1444
01:02:32,290 --> 01:02:35,293
in 2017.

1445
01:02:35,376 --> 01:02:38,379
And. No, he took, like 20, I'm sorry, 20

1446
01:02:39,380 --> 01:02:41,048
took the same flag over in Iraq.

1447
01:02:41,048 --> 01:02:44,719
So 17 years later,
the same flag has been there twice.

1448
01:02:45,261 --> 01:02:48,139
Yeah, it's kind of surreal. Wow.

1449
01:02:48,139 --> 01:02:49,599
So he brought it back and he gave it back.

1450
01:02:49,599 --> 01:02:52,602
And that's a special flag.

1451
01:02:52,852 --> 01:02:53,519
That's a keeper.

1452
01:02:53,519 --> 01:02:54,854
We're still on the military stuff.

1453
01:02:54,854 --> 01:02:58,566
It seems like
I know we always go back after 30 years.

1454
01:02:59,066 --> 01:03:01,402
All right. Kettlebell workout
kettlebell workout.

1455
01:03:01,402 --> 01:03:02,820
Give everyone a kettlebell workout.

1456
01:03:02,820 --> 01:03:06,157
Because we got to wrap this up I had
we usually go for 50 minutes with Feeny.

1457
01:03:06,491 --> 01:03:07,700
I think we're at an hour.

1458
01:03:07,700 --> 01:03:10,161
Plus, we did take a break for the, check.

1459
01:03:10,161 --> 01:03:12,163
But again, you're a wonderful guest.

1460
01:03:12,163 --> 01:03:13,331
I could talk to you forever.

1461
01:03:13,331 --> 01:03:17,335
I'm learning so much, and I love hearing
all the wonderful things that you did.

1462
01:03:17,335 --> 01:03:19,754
And I can't thank you for your service.

1463
01:03:19,754 --> 01:03:22,173
Truly means the world. Well,
thank you for your service.

1464
01:03:22,173 --> 01:03:23,382
I know I did.

1465
01:03:23,382 --> 01:03:25,218
I was a boy scout in the National
Guard. No, I'm kidding.

1466
01:03:26,677 --> 01:03:28,888
Compared to, you know, not compared.

1467
01:03:28,888 --> 01:03:32,141
I mean, different time, different place,
different set of circumstances.

1468
01:03:32,558 --> 01:03:34,060
People serve, serve.

1469
01:03:34,060 --> 01:03:35,978
And they make that decision to serve.

1470
01:03:35,978 --> 01:03:38,064
And that should be recognized
no matter what.

1471
01:03:38,064 --> 01:03:38,731
It's reserves.

1472
01:03:38,731 --> 01:03:40,191
Guard active.

1473
01:03:40,191 --> 01:03:42,610
All right.
That makes me that decision to serve.

1474
01:03:42,610 --> 01:03:45,071
You know
you know the consequences of serving

1475
01:03:45,071 --> 01:03:46,280
and what that will kind of entail.

1476
01:03:46,280 --> 01:03:49,283
So hats off to anybody that has served.

1477
01:03:50,117 --> 01:03:51,994
Hey, man,
I really appreciate that kind words

1478
01:03:51,994 --> 01:03:53,496
because sometimes I do knock myself.

1479
01:03:53,496 --> 01:03:55,081
But I did do eight years.

1480
01:03:55,081 --> 01:03:57,917
I didn't see any combat.

1481
01:03:57,917 --> 01:04:00,378
I trained combat.

1482
01:04:00,378 --> 01:04:02,255
Wow. 17 years before I was gone.

1483
01:04:02,255 --> 01:04:02,505
Yeah.

1484
01:04:02,505 --> 01:04:05,508
So amazing

1485
01:04:06,008 --> 01:04:07,552
way to look at it that way.

1486
01:04:07,552 --> 01:04:12,557
But it it helped me so much in my path
and my it allowed me to go to school.

1487
01:04:12,765 --> 01:04:15,101
The GI Bill, the tuition waiver. Yeah.

1488
01:04:15,101 --> 01:04:16,310
It gave me some discipline.

1489
01:04:16,310 --> 01:04:17,895
It gave me some physical fitness.

1490
01:04:17,895 --> 01:04:20,314
It let me travel.
First time ever on a plane.

1491
01:04:22,525 --> 01:04:24,068
I met people from all over the world.

1492
01:04:24,068 --> 01:04:27,238
The first time
I, you know, I from a diverse

1493
01:04:27,989 --> 01:04:30,491
community in Waterbury, Connecticut,
I met a guy.

1494
01:04:30,491 --> 01:04:31,534
He was from West Virginia.

1495
01:04:31,534 --> 01:04:33,578
He never saw a black person before.

1496
01:04:33,578 --> 01:04:36,122
I went on, approached my friend and said,
what's up?

1497
01:04:36,122 --> 01:04:37,415
He was looked at me like,

1498
01:04:37,415 --> 01:04:40,293
you're the first white person
to ever approach me to say, what's up?

1499
01:04:40,293 --> 01:04:42,295
Because he was like, from Kansas.

1500
01:04:42,295 --> 01:04:43,170
I still remember that.

1501
01:04:43,170 --> 01:04:44,463
And he was like, so I'm like,

1502
01:04:44,463 --> 01:04:47,592
such Tennessee guy was really religious
and telling me about,

1503
01:04:48,092 --> 01:04:51,095
I need to start going to church
and believing in God.

1504
01:04:51,095 --> 01:04:55,057
And one dude told me about plucking
my eyebrows because I had like a unibrow.

1505
01:04:55,057 --> 01:05:00,396
So all these memories and basic training
I made, I got an awesome video.

1506
01:05:00,479 --> 01:05:02,273
Oh, we got to pull that video up.

1507
01:05:02,273 --> 01:05:05,276
Me in the gas chamber at Basic training.

1508
01:05:05,985 --> 01:05:08,321
Yes, we're going to put it right here.

1509
01:05:08,321 --> 01:05:11,073
My buddy
spanks hitting me on the back of the head

1510
01:05:11,073 --> 01:05:12,700
because we turn and you got to walk out.

1511
01:05:12,700 --> 01:05:17,246
But the person's the person in front
not walking out, and we're yelling move!

1512
01:05:17,580 --> 01:05:18,706
Because,

1513
01:05:19,916 --> 01:05:21,959
that gas chamber experience,

1514
01:05:21,959 --> 01:05:25,922
you know, unforgettable,
unforgettable and unforgettable.

1515
01:05:27,131 --> 01:05:27,882
But the snaps.

1516
01:05:27,882 --> 01:05:29,300
But I don't know how.

1517
01:05:29,300 --> 01:05:32,303
It was a VHS tape for the graduation.

1518
01:05:32,470 --> 01:05:38,225
I didn't even buy it, that is,
I don't know, but I got it put on DVD

1519
01:05:38,225 --> 01:05:41,228
and I put it on the computer,
but I have it.

1520
01:05:43,481 --> 01:05:45,399
And then we'll show that last
kettlebell pick

1521
01:05:45,399 --> 01:05:48,611
one more kettlebell
pic of me lifting with with Mike.

1522
01:05:48,611 --> 01:05:51,238
And I was sore for like three days
because of that.

1523
01:05:51,238 --> 01:05:56,077
We're going to give us a kettlebell
workout, tell us the benefits of that.

1524
01:05:56,243 --> 01:05:58,746
And then,
we're going to do some closing remarks.

1525
01:05:58,746 --> 01:06:00,456
This is great. It's been fun.

1526
01:06:00,456 --> 01:06:03,459
Yeah. Start with the swing.

1527
01:06:03,626 --> 01:06:04,502
The swing.

1528
01:06:04,502 --> 01:06:05,419
What do you think is that

1529
01:06:05,419 --> 01:06:09,173
is that is that the swing is
one of the most basic moves to be able to.

1530
01:06:09,173 --> 01:06:09,423
Yeah.

1531
01:06:10,383 --> 01:06:14,011
Engage
your core, your hips, the lumbar hip,

1532
01:06:14,095 --> 01:06:17,974
all this complex, legs, shoulders.

1533
01:06:18,391 --> 01:06:18,849
It is.

1534
01:06:18,849 --> 01:06:21,811
And it's a basic move to get to certain
different ones when you're.

1535
01:06:21,852 --> 01:06:23,437
Yeah, snatching. Whatever.

1536
01:06:23,437 --> 01:06:26,482
But yeah, the swing is by far away.

1537
01:06:26,482 --> 01:06:29,485
One of the first things you need to learn,
but you needed to learn to do it, right?

1538
01:06:29,485 --> 01:06:30,569
Yep, yep.

1539
01:06:30,569 --> 01:06:33,239
Otherwise you have that lower back.

1540
01:06:33,239 --> 01:06:35,950
Got to reach out like you're hiking a foot
like a football up.

1541
01:06:35,950 --> 01:06:40,121
And then don't put the kettlebell doesn't
go below your knees or you're covered.

1542
01:06:40,287 --> 01:06:42,665
Your hands can't go below. That's right.

1543
01:06:42,665 --> 01:06:46,210
But the more the kettlebell stays
right up tight there. Yep.

1544
01:06:47,253 --> 01:06:49,255
And it's your hips that move it out.

1545
01:06:49,255 --> 01:06:51,716
And then just a little squeeze them
and snap them in.

1546
01:06:51,716 --> 01:06:54,635
Yeah. And that actually
has been helping my knee pain.

1547
01:06:54,635 --> 01:06:59,682
Because if you strengthen your your glutes
and your hips and your hammies.

1548
01:07:00,266 --> 01:07:03,310
Yeah that does alleviates takes away
some knee pain.

1549
01:07:03,310 --> 01:07:04,645
So swings.

1550
01:07:07,356 --> 01:07:09,066
Deadlifts

1551
01:07:09,066 --> 01:07:10,317
just a basic move again.

1552
01:07:10,317 --> 01:07:13,779
And your, your hips, your upper shoulder,
your trapezius muscles.

1553
01:07:14,113 --> 01:07:17,116
Now getting engaged with the deadlift
with the kettlebell.

1554
01:07:17,575 --> 01:07:18,617
I really like the pulls.

1555
01:07:18,617 --> 01:07:21,328
Now to where I feel it. Right here.

1556
01:07:21,328 --> 01:07:22,079
Oh yeah.

1557
01:07:22,079 --> 01:07:26,542
Get that to get them lats pulls
and then the press presses.

1558
01:07:26,542 --> 01:07:26,792
Yeah.

1559
01:07:26,792 --> 01:07:30,463
And very important that you draw
the line down the middle. Yep.

1560
01:07:30,671 --> 01:07:32,590
My stay on your thunder
because you're, you're

1561
01:07:32,590 --> 01:07:34,133
you know you're you're doing a great job.

1562
01:07:34,133 --> 01:07:36,677
You're the the trainer.

1563
01:07:36,677 --> 01:07:37,803
So I must have trained you well.

1564
01:07:37,803 --> 01:07:39,847
Yeah. You it was great.
It was a wonderful.

1565
01:07:39,847 --> 01:07:42,850
Yes, it was a wonderful, workout.

1566
01:07:43,017 --> 01:07:45,186
20 minutes, dripping wet. Yeah.

1567
01:07:45,186 --> 01:07:46,687
What else can you ask for?

1568
01:07:46,687 --> 01:07:49,023
In and out after cardio.

1569
01:07:49,023 --> 01:07:51,776
Intense burn, a lot of calories

1570
01:07:53,110 --> 01:07:54,153
doing that.

1571
01:07:54,153 --> 01:07:55,029
So check them out.

1572
01:07:55,029 --> 01:07:56,697
Go to the JCC.

1573
01:07:56,697 --> 01:07:57,239
I'm doing it.

1574
01:07:57,239 --> 01:07:59,408
As for coach or Mike or. Yeah.

1575
01:07:59,408 --> 01:08:01,160
Upcoming events. Share them.

1576
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:03,788
Thursday at 4:00 at the JCC.

1577
01:08:03,788 --> 01:08:06,040
I'm doing a kettlebell
pump up this Thursday.

1578
01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:08,959
Yeah. What time for clock

1579
01:08:08,959 --> 01:08:09,877
o'clock in the afternoon?

1580
01:08:09,877 --> 01:08:12,713
I won't air by then.
But you got any future ones after that?

1581
01:08:12,713 --> 01:08:15,341
No, not not planned right now.
This is just see how it goes.

1582
01:08:15,341 --> 01:08:16,383
All right.

1583
01:08:16,383 --> 01:08:18,761
4:00 Thursday. I think I can make that.

1584
01:08:18,761 --> 01:08:19,595
I gotta check my skin.

1585
01:08:19,595 --> 01:08:22,598
Like demonstrating. Yes. Okay.

1586
01:08:22,640 --> 01:08:23,182
Oh, yeah.

1587
01:08:23,182 --> 01:08:25,101
I used to basically teach
a couple basic moves

1588
01:08:25,101 --> 01:08:27,853
and then put together a couple flows
and just let people go through it.

1589
01:08:27,853 --> 01:08:29,563
Maybe 30 minute
it's going to be 30 minutes.

1590
01:08:29,563 --> 01:08:32,316
It'll make sure he does it safely.
Yeah. Yeah.

1591
01:08:32,316 --> 01:08:35,528
Just kind of explain it and get people
interested in it.

1592
01:08:35,945 --> 01:08:37,530
Love it, love it.

1593
01:08:37,530 --> 01:08:39,198
I got an upcoming event. Hopefully.

1594
01:08:39,198 --> 01:08:41,659
Maybe you're free. Bring the grandkids.
But we're doing friends.

1595
01:08:41,659 --> 01:08:44,120
A Feeny night at the, Wolfpack game.

1596
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:46,205
Saturday, February 21st.

1597
01:08:46,205 --> 01:08:47,957
It's a hockey.
You ever been to Wolfpack hockey?

1598
01:08:47,957 --> 01:08:49,291
I'm not going to walk back.

1599
01:08:49,291 --> 01:08:51,544
Come on. Sonar is going to come by.

1600
01:08:51,544 --> 01:08:53,420
We're getting swag from Pink Flamingo.

1601
01:08:53,420 --> 01:08:56,632
It's Ninety's night,
so we're going to get some neon headbands.

1602
01:08:56,632 --> 01:08:58,008
It's going to be a great night.

1603
01:08:58,008 --> 01:08:58,843
We'll share the link.

1604
01:08:58,843 --> 01:08:59,760
30 bucks.

1605
01:08:59,760 --> 01:09:02,721
Saturday, February 25th.

1606
01:09:02,721 --> 01:09:04,098
21st. Oh, boy.

1607
01:09:05,599 --> 01:09:08,936
1930 1930, military time.

1608
01:09:09,728 --> 01:09:11,063
Maybe you got somewhere to put that.

1609
01:09:11,063 --> 01:09:14,066
That's for you.

1610
01:09:15,901 --> 01:09:18,904
Again, it was an honor. Oh.

1611
01:09:19,029 --> 01:09:20,948
Our models. Be a good friend.

1612
01:09:20,948 --> 01:09:24,577
Pick up trash, hold the door,
give compliments and be charitable.

1613
01:09:25,202 --> 01:09:27,413
You know, don't be a Blue Falcon.

1614
01:09:27,413 --> 01:09:30,166
Yeah. Don't want to do that.

1615
01:09:30,166 --> 01:09:33,335
So our motto
today is just be a good friend.

1616
01:09:34,712 --> 01:09:36,505
Don't be a blue falcon.

1617
01:09:36,505 --> 01:09:39,091
You know what a blue falcon is?

1618
01:09:39,091 --> 01:09:40,593
Did you ever encounter blue falcons?

1619
01:09:40,593 --> 01:09:43,596
How did you treat blue falcons
like Paradise?

1620
01:09:44,430 --> 01:09:44,763
Yeah.

1621
01:09:44,763 --> 01:09:48,434
No that's you I mean, when you see
somebody treat somebody like that,

1622
01:09:49,226 --> 01:09:52,938
I mean you always did to to to
make themselves be better or look better.

1623
01:09:53,147 --> 01:09:56,150
Yeah. That's that's unconscionable.

1624
01:09:56,358 --> 01:09:58,944
I mean, I don't I have very little.

1625
01:09:58,944 --> 01:10:00,863
Oh, yeah. He's getting serious.

1626
01:10:01,947 --> 01:10:02,781
It's my intense look.

1627
01:10:02,781 --> 01:10:04,116
Yeah. No, it's.

1628
01:10:04,116 --> 01:10:08,245
So all you listeners out there
don't ever, ever be a Blue Falcon.

1629
01:10:08,245 --> 01:10:10,372
Go ahead and look that up.

1630
01:10:10,372 --> 01:10:11,332
Any closing remarks?

1631
01:10:11,332 --> 01:10:13,167
I had a wonderful time chatting with you.

1632
01:10:13,167 --> 01:10:15,711
I really appreciate this. This is fun.
Thank you.

1633
01:10:15,711 --> 01:10:17,630
Thank you. Doing a podcast.

1634
01:10:17,630 --> 01:10:20,633
But you have made it so easy. First one.

1635
01:10:20,925 --> 01:10:22,676
Yeah. First one ever. Nice.

1636
01:10:22,676 --> 01:10:23,594
Who's a better interview?

1637
01:10:23,594 --> 01:10:26,180
Me or Dennis? House.

1638
01:10:26,180 --> 01:10:28,891
You know, I'm going to go on a limb
and say you are.

1639
01:10:28,891 --> 01:10:30,476
Let's go here.

1640
01:10:30,476 --> 01:10:33,270
You know, this is this has been a
Dennis had like five minutes for me.

1641
01:10:33,270 --> 01:10:34,355
You know, that was it.

1642
01:10:34,355 --> 01:10:35,940
Yeah.

1643
01:10:35,940 --> 01:10:37,733
He's got to do a lot of people,
a lot of things.

1644
01:10:37,733 --> 01:10:40,402
Yeah. He's an amazing person I love him.

1645
01:10:40,402 --> 01:10:42,696
Yeah. Podcast guest number 25.

1646
01:10:42,696 --> 01:10:46,700
Go back quite some time
and then he hosted our trivia on episode

1647
01:10:46,700 --> 01:10:51,080
50 for our celebration 38 year 138.

1648
01:10:51,163 --> 01:10:56,126
No, 158 158 158 Colonel Mike Carberry.

1649
01:10:56,710 --> 01:10:58,087
Awesome.

1650
01:10:59,922 --> 01:11:01,257
I think we hit him on the head.

1651
01:11:01,257 --> 01:11:04,093
We'll say be a good friend on three, one,
two, three.

1652
01:11:04,093 --> 01:11:06,303
Be a good friend.

1653
01:11:06,303 --> 01:11:06,553
friends.

1654
01:11:06,553 --> 01:11:10,057
A free

1655
01:11:10,057 --> 01:11:14,353
day. Hey!