Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
Veterans Archives is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information. www.veteransarchives.org
Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
From Military Ranks to New Beginnings with Dane Songer
What happens when life takes you from challenging beginnings to serving in the military, facing personal upheavals, and ultimately finding peace in civilian life? Join us as we sit down with Dane Songer, a United States Navy veteran and former Michigan Army National Guard member, whose story is a testament to resilience and the power of personal growth. From a childhood marked by frequent moves and financial struggles to pivotal moments in his military career, Dane's journey is one of navigating life's unpredictability with determination and heart.
Dane opens up about the complexities of balancing career and family, sharing personal battles such as gaining custody of his children amidst legal and financial hurdles. His narrative reveals the raw and honest truth of the sacrifices made for both service and family, highlighting the challenges of military deployment and the support system that kept him grounded. Despite the tumultuous path, Dane’s experience is enriched with valuable leadership lessons and a commitment to building a stable future for his loved ones.
But the story doesn't stop there. As Dane transitions to civilian life, we explore how he turned obstacles into opportunities, from managing fast-food restaurants to planning a new business venture with his wife. With stories of family bonding, travel adventures, and the pursuit of expertise, Dane's life after the military is filled with hope and gratitude. Listen in for an inspiring conversation about resilience, love, and the relentless pursuit of a fulfilling life beyond service.
Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, october 29th 2024. We're talking with Dane Songer, who served in the United States Navy and the Michigan Army National Guard. So welcome, dane. Glad to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, glad to be here.
Speaker 1:All right, so we're going to start out simple, like I said before we got started. When and where were you born?
Speaker 2:I was born on April 3rd 1976 in Elyria Memorial Hospital, that's in Elyria, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland.
Speaker 1:Okay, so did you grow up in Ohio? Then I did not. Oh, all right. So what happened after you were born? What do you remember?
Speaker 2:I have memories from when I was like real young, but from my understanding my mom got pregnant with me and she talked this guy named Clarence into marrying her. She was only married to him for 18 months, so I don't really know him very well, and the reason why I bring that up is because I don't know my biological father. I don't know his name, I don't know anything. And then, when I was about three years old, my mom moved to Michigan to go to John Wesley College in Owasso, and on the site where John Wesley College used to be is Baker College, now of Owasso.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And when I was four, I moved to Michigan. Obviously, I didn't have anything to do with it. I stayed with my grandparents for a year, and so I was born and raised in Shiawassee County.
Speaker 1:Okay, did you live like actually in Owasso then?
Speaker 2:When we first moved up here we lived in Owasso, where the one dorms are. There used to be a brick house. I know we lived in there for a little while Right next to the college, where the street kind of Vs off. There's a house in the V we lived in there that actually caught on fire and we had to evacuate. I remember that. I remember the night it caught on fire I ended up staying. You know, I was only like four years old, ended up staying in the girls' dorms and it was kind of like a sleepover party.
Speaker 1:You know, they were feeding me all kinds of snacks and I don't know.
Speaker 2:They made it into a fun time because our house just burnt, you know.
Speaker 1:They were probably pretty excited to have a little kid there anyway, weren't they? I?
Speaker 2:don't know. I was too young to pick up on those kind of things. You know what I mean, but I remember they were nice and they kept feeding me snacks and and um, I don't know, um.
Speaker 2:I don't remember everything, but I just remember my emotion was that it was fun yeah yeah, um, I grew really poor so I lived in more houses than I was years old by a lot throughout my childhood. Okay, um, I know I went to the first half of kindergarten and at Emerson and Owasso. Second half I went to Elsa Meyer and Corona and then they wanted to hold me back because they said my coloring like I didn't color within the lines was was what my mom told me. She said no. So when I was in first grade my first grade teacher treated me really, really bad. So she took me out of there, sent me back to Ohio and I finished first grade in Ohio.
Speaker 2:My grandmother was my teacher, so my grandfather was a preacher and in there in his church they had a school that had preschool through eighth grade. So I finished first grade in that school. My grandma taught kindergarten first and second. Then I went back to Elfsemeyer for second grade. Through fifth grade, sixth and seventh grade I went to Corona Middle School. In eighth grade I went to Owasso Junior High. Then ninth grade through twelfth grade I went to owasso high school. Okay, so I pretty much grew up in michigan. So I kind of grew up at the. The dominant team back then was, uh, university of michigan. They seemed like they were winning at everything. So I've been a University of Michigan fan, but I've got a lot of uncles and cousins and they're all OSU fans. That's got to be a little difficult at the family reunions.
Speaker 2:So most of my life we spent teasing each other and stuff about the school.
Speaker 1:I do want to back up a little bit. I just had a couple quick questions. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Speaker 2:So when my mom married Clarence, her first husband, she had a son with him, so I have a half-brother. And then when my mom moved up here, she married a man named mert parlette and he was in the 144th mp okay that's.
Speaker 2:It's significant to talk about that because, um, when I was a kid and when he was in the 144th, you know, they they did one weekend a year and their two weeks at Grambling and they'd have family day, and on family day we'd shoot like blanks out of the M60 into the side of the hill, get to shoot the M16 with blanks into the side of the hill, obviously supervised, because we're only like little kids. But the one thing I admired is it seemed like those guard units were like family, because a core group of guys would spend like 15 years together, right and um, I don't know, um, throughout my all the turmoil in my childhood, um, um, I, I guess my whole life I've longed to be a part of something that was like family, stable, stable like you, people you could rely on, and um, so when I first joined the navy, my grandfather told me not to join the military. He he's like go to college, don't join the military. So I tried that. But because I grew up so poor, I wanted to make money now. So I'd be working like two or three minimum wage jobs. Like you know, I worked at Hardee's, I worked at Little Caesars, I worked at McDonald's, I worked at Taco Bell. I worked at I don't know, just all these little going nowhere kind of jobs, and I was more worried about working those jobs than focusing on school. So I wasn't doing too well in school and I wanted to get married, because when I was 12, which is around the time my mom divorced her second husband I figured if I ever wanted to have a big family that I would have to make my own. So when I was 20, I wanted to get married and so I ended up marrying my first wife so that I could support her and have insurance and stuff.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about actually joining the National Guard and I didn't know how to join the Guard. It seemed silly or whatever. It seemed like you would just go to a Guard place. They usually got recruiters there, which I know now, but back then I really didn't know that much. So I went to the recruiting center and the office that was by the door was Navy and there was Senior Chief Lewis and he's like no matter what branch you go in, you got to take the ASVAB, so he's. So I was like, all right, I'll take the ASVAB, so he's, um. So I was like all right, I'll take the ASVAB and I was um as soon as I graduated high school, um, I moved to Ohio to be near my grandparents. My grandparents, when I was young, always made me feel loved. Um, and in my whole life, the three people that made me feel loved was my my grandpa, my grandma and my current wife. So I wanted to be closer to them. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I wanted to start pursuing, pursuing my life. And when I say that it's because most of my life I never knew what I wanted to do. And, um, like, even when I went to college, they have these aptitude tests and I would take it. And then I'd be like, okay, what, what, what am I, what should I do? And they're like what do you want to do? Because I scored so high in everything. They're like you can do whatever you want. And I'm like I came here to figure out what I wanted to do and you're not helping me. But because I wanted to get married and one of my goals was to have a big family, I went down. I took the ASVAB. I got a 98 on the asvap.
Speaker 1:So the navy they wanted me to go nuke yeah, I was gonna say I used to be a navy recruiter.
Speaker 2:So the minute you said that I thought, oh, they're gonna want him to be a nuke, yeah, so you know there's like 30 grand is your sign-on bonus at the time, plus you'll make e5 and I don't know what it was, but it was a ridiculous amount of time, like two years, three years, yeah, really quick. It was super quick. They gave it to you to keep you in, to get you at a pay rate, you know, to try to keep you. But they were like boot camp is this many months? Then your A school is like 18 months and then when you get out of A school we got to get our money out of you. So you're going on a deployment which would be another six months.
Speaker 2:So I was looking at like two and a half three years that I would be away from my wife and that wasn't my goal. My goal was to build a relationship with my wife. So I was like I'm not joining this, I just want to join the national guard. So they were like what do you want to sign today? I was like I used to be pretty religious. I was like I want to be able to go to church on Sunday. I want a job where I help people and I want to be able to be home that I can develop a relationship with my wife and make kids. So they offered me a job in the IS which was like in the Navy at that time. It was like a detective. I guess you sometimes go undercover on a ship just check for hazing, or you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Kind of like the investigative services investigative services or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess if you're a recruiter you know, and when I say I asked now people think oh, it like information or whatever.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't like a computer thing. Then they offered me a yeoman in the tar program. So, and then they offered me personnelman in the tar program. They're like you really should choose yeoman because then you're like a secretary to the officers, you'll get to move up quicker because you're in the, you're in the light more and they. They said, if you're a personnelman you're like a counselor to the enlisted Right. So I chose personnelman because I was like man, I could help the enlisted people in some way or another. Yeah, so I chose to be a personnelman. I was in the TAR program, which is Training, administration and Reservist. So because of that, to me that was similar as being agr in the guard.
Speaker 2:And um, truthfully, everything my recruiter told me was true. He didn't lie to me. You know how you hear stories about recruiters lying or whatever. Everything he told me was true. He never misguided me or anything. So I went to boot camp and I don't know when I was there. They offer everybody do you want to try out for the SEALs? I physically could have did the number of push-ups. I physically could have did the sit-ups and the run. You know what I mean. Yeah, I could have made it past the preliminary test. I don't know about anything else after that, but part of me when I look back thinks maybe I should have tried.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just don't know if you don't try. I do want to say something, though, and this is what's interesting to me is, as we're talking when you went to college, you didn't know what you wanted to do, but I kind of think you did know what you wanted to do. You wanted to start a family, you wanted to make money, you wanted to do?
Speaker 2:you wanted to start a family.
Speaker 1:You wanted to make money.
Speaker 2:You wanted to give them security um and so you knew what you wanted to do.
Speaker 2:But college just wasn't going to offer that, yeah, and so the military did. What made it hard was um, I don't know, you're a little bit before me when I was going through school, alls they preached, was if you want to get a high-paying job, you got to go to college. And they're showing us all these numbers, but what they don't tell us about college at the time was the people that went to college that made those big dollars is because their parents were rich, they had connections to get them those jobs. And the people like me you go, you get the degree. You don't have the connection to get your foot in the door to get those high paying jobs. So you end up doing what you would have did even if you didn't go to college. But in my mind I always thought because I was really good in school, like I, I, I, my grades were, I was always in like the top 10 of my class, uh huh, no-transcript. So they didn't just like give us formulas, they made us prove them, like through proofs.
Speaker 1:Right, you can't just show the answer, you have to show how you did it, right.
Speaker 2:Well, it's not just that. So you got a formula to use for like conic sections or whatever. You know what I mean. But you don't. They don't just give you the formula. They have you prove the formula so that you know where the formula comes from and then you use it to get the answer Right. So before you just start doing 100 problems with the formula, they have you go through and prove a formula so you know where it comes from and it's not just some magic thing out of the sky. So that way you know how, how. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:They taught you very similar to, like the, the military. I'll give you an example when I went to computer school, um, they could have just taught us, like, how to operate the computer, or they could have just taught us how to troubleshoot, but instead we had to learn programming so we understood how the programs ran through the computer. We had to learn about the circuit cards because, even though we didn't repair them, we had to know how they worked. And so I I get what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Like I can have this formula, but if I'm getting the wrong answer and I don't understand the formula, I don't know where it's broken yeah and so that's so they taught us like like, when I see certain math problems, I don't just see numbers and letters, I see what it represents. So I'll see like a line shooting off, or I'll know that it's like part of a cone, so it's gonna look like this, or you know what I mean right, you can visualize what that friend was trying to tell you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because of the way that they taught, the way they taught it. They taught us, like why would you need this? Because this represents that you know. I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 1:I get what you're saying. The other part of that too is that for math, I think you have to have a certain kind of a brain like your brain works a certain way to understand math in the way that you're visualizing it, and for some people you can. My daughter has this, this issue. So my daughter is very good at math, math and chemistry. Like she gets it, and she would tutor people and she would get very frustrated because they did, they weren't understanding it the way that she understood it. Like not everyone can understand it that way, just like not everyone should go to college. Everyone has a different way that they do things. But I understand what you're saying, not because I can do it, because I'm not that great at math, but I remember my daughter saying I don't understand why they don't get it. Like this just is what it is, and it would frustrate her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to tutor people and never frustrated me because I knew more than one way to explain it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, Usually, I don't know. I guess there, you know, cause there's more than one way to do almost every math problem.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, two plus two is always going to equal four, but there's a lot of different ways to to break that up, right? Yeah, put it in simplest terms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the other thing too is I would say, I think that those guidance counselors did people a disservice by pushing them to college, because I think the military and the trades, um, um, a lot of people, that's what they're built for and not necessarily to go to college. So, to your point, lots of people went to college and lots of people ended up flipping burgers at McDonald's with a college degree because they they didn't have the, the, the means to do anything with that college degree. Um, also, when things really went sideways, even the people with the connections couldn't get jobs with college degrees. So you saw a lot of people working in the service and fast food industries that had really great college degrees, because that's what they were pushed to do, where they may have excelled had they gone into the military.
Speaker 2:So so, yeah, so, um, I ended up choosing personnel men. I went to bootcamp, they, I went in as an E1. They meritoriously advanced me to E2 at the end of boot camp and then I got to go home for a week. They sent me home and it didn't cost me any vacation time, none of my leave, because they gave me harp orders. And Senior Chief Lewis was real cool, I think I went to a school with him one day. The rest of the week I just got to spend time with my wife and hang out until I left. And I went to Meridian, mississippi, for three months.
Speaker 1:Now was that unaccompanied? Your wife was still at home when you went to Meridian.
Speaker 2:Mississippi. That's correct. Okay, yeah, because it was an A school, which you know is kind of like an extension of boot camp. It's not as strict as boot camp, but you're still got a stand watch, or you know what I mean uniforms got to be good, bed's got to be made, got a stand watch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all that fun stuff you're.
Speaker 2:You're still learning, you know military discipline, stuff like that. Uh, she did get to come down and visit me when I was down there. We ended up going horseback riding, stayed in a hotel for the weekend. You know, I got a pass to stay in a hotel for the weekend, um, so everything was pretty good. I was like, um, I was really close to getting meritoriously advanced out of A school a second time. Another guy beat me out just by a fraction of a percentage.
Speaker 2:And then I went to my first duty station.
Speaker 2:It was Naval and Marine Corps Readiness Reserve Center in Norfolk, which is, I think it was like first or second largest at the time.
Speaker 2:I was there for four full years, full four years. Wow, yeah, that's a long tour, even for TAR, because they usually rotate every two and a half three years. Because they usually rotate every two and a half three years, but they let me extend to stay there because I went to school at ITT Tech and got an associate's degree in electronics engineering and while I was there, the one cool thing about it being at the Naval Reserve Center in Norfolk, about it being at the Naval Reserve Center in Norfolk, is I got a huge view of the Navy at how how it works on on many different levels and which translates to how the military works on on so many levels. Because, um, like, the whole time I was there, I did pay, but you get to know about the units. They talk to you, they're friendly to you because you do, Because, like the whole time I was there, I did pay, but you get to know about the units.
Speaker 1:They talk to you.
Speaker 2:They're friendly to you. Because you do pay Right, you're an important person in their life. Yeah, so I got to know we did pay for SEAL. Team 4 has a reserve unit. I got to do that. There was special boat squadron units, acu units, which is hovercraft units. As a matter of fact, one of my friends reenlisted on one of the hovercrafts, so that was like a cool thing for them.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the Reserve Center Norfolk was on Little Creek Base. So Little Creek you know it's an amphibious base, I don't know, I just got a large view of the navy. There was like command units that we did pay for, did for the naval hospital, cbs we had, um, the number of units changed constantly but anywhere. I think the smallest number of units we supported was 92, the most I remember us supporting was like 97. So that's a wide range. The other cool thing that was cool about the reserve center in norfolk is that, um, you know a lot of these small reserve centers. They just go to a building, they work on courses and do drill and ceremony or you know what I mean just like small stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, at at the Reserve Center in Norfolk they actually went to the active duty units and practiced their job.
Speaker 1:Right. So they got to really understand what the Navy was about from a reserve perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they actually got to do something that actually helped the military, rather than just sitting in a room doing courses or whatever, being ready if they got deployed. You know what I mean, because even if you're in a small reserve center, when it comes time to deploy, they could still pull from those pools.
Speaker 1:Right, so did you start your family at this time?
Speaker 2:Yes, so when I was in that area before my wife moved down with me, she had our first son and she had him at. Lakeshore Hospital, which is real close to Cleveland. I think it was in Avon Lake, I don't remember In the city, and then she had my daughter, which was we ended up using a civilian hospital instead of using Naval Hospital, Portsmouth and at so she had it in Chesapeake. My daughter was born in Chesapeake.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then I don't know me and my first wife started having problems and I don't know. I thought we were getting a divorce. She moved back home, I moved into the barracks. I ended up having like a one-night stand with a female sailor, so I had a child with her. Oh boy, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but when that happened she ended up moving back down and then we tried to work it out. So I have two kids that are two weeks apart, from two different women. Okay, so usually when I tell people the age of my kids, they're like oh, you got twins, no. And then they're like how does that happen? I'm like guys can make babies faster than women and then they're like eventually they, oh, it clicks right yeah, the light bulb clicks so, um, I, um, I don't know.
Speaker 2:It was like I was getting ready to get out of the navy. You know, my four years were up and um, it's craziest thing. It's like, um, I was usually number one in my command, like if you look at all my old evaluations yeah I was usually marked number one and because it was a naval reserve center, norfolk, and the reserve center was um as big as it was, our commanding officer was a captain, which is you know in the navies in 06 right like a colonel in the army.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, when he signs your, it has more pull than like if a lieutenant or a captain in the army, you know, right, right. So I didn't even really want to take the test because I'm like I'm getting out, I'm like, you know, I don't, I need to work on my family or whatever, but they're like, no, you have to go take the test. So that morning I went there. I took the test in like 15 minutes it was only a couple of minutes from my work and my chief was administering the test. That was in charge of the thing. He saw me come in and get the test.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he saw me leave or not. You know I just filled it out like abracadabra, right, and then I showed up. I showed up at my, at the office I worked in and pay office and, um, my coworkers, you know they were all E fives and I was E four and they were like songer, you're supposed to be taking the test. It's like I already took it. Chief saw me there, I've already turned it in, I'm done, and some of them were upset because they they're, I don't know, we. We had probably like eight people in my office and they were betting on if I would make it or not, in which cycle? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:If I prefer second or third cycle. And you know I just walk in that quick, Take the test and leave, I don't care yeah. I'm getting out Right and I ended up making it. I ended up making E5. And it had to have been. I don't know how I passed the test.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it had to have been because of my evaluations, you know, because evaluations hold a big sway yeah, for anyone listening like at the time it's it's the test score, but then you're evaluating everything figures into, like this overall score, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was like a 300 p tier, which is a very small part, right, but it's still a part. You know, I, I, I, I got my associate's degree, which counted for more extra points you know and my evaluations.
Speaker 2:I was usually marked number one in the command. I actually won blue jacket of the quarter for um red comm, region six. So I got had a letter of accommodation from Admiral drew for winning it because it was she's the one that awarded it, or you know what I mean. It was her command that awarded it yeah.
Speaker 2:And yeah. So when I made E-5, my chief was like hey, I used to be stationed at Reserve Center Baton Rouge. It's a lot of fun. You should give it another couple of years, extend or whatever, and go down and try it out. So he talked me into it in a moment of weakness. I extended and took orders to go to Reserve Center Baton Rouge, which we only had technically. We had five units there and one of them was a VTU unit. I don't know if you're familiar with how.
Speaker 1:I'm not. What's a VTU unit?
Speaker 2:So VTU stands for Voluntary Training Unit.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And you're like who's going to work for the government for free Right? Vtus are usually made up of officers, usually like 04, 05 and above, and they volunteer to be in these units so they can get retirement credits. But it also keeps them when I say active, like active reserve, until they can find a unit that they can be like commanding officer or executive officer. So it's like a holding spot where they can still get like retirement points and be in a position to take a position that's paid.
Speaker 1:And then get promoted to right in there.
Speaker 2:I'm not that sure, I don't. You know, I'm not a hundred percent sure about how the promotion works in a VTU, but they might be able to. But the higher you go, the harder it is to find a position. Yeah, so that's probably part of the reason why the vtu exists is to help them in their career, in case. But obviously, the higher you go, the harder it is to find a spot so you have this moment of weakness, you uh, you extend extend what's going on with the family at this point?
Speaker 2:like we're decided to try to work it out and we go to baton rouge and I start working there and I let her find where we live. You know what I mean? Yeah, and yeah I don't know. She found us junky places to live and I don't know. I ended up working out a lot. I'm having troubles at work and because I have troubles at home, Right, it carries over naturally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so finally I talked her into moving home and she so she moved back to Ohio and around that time, I think my mom was having health issues because her third husband was having health issues, so the stress was causing her to have health issues, you know, yeah, so I ended up after being in it's actually like five years, ten months and like 28 days or something. So that's why I just tell people it's like six years in the Navy because, who wants to hear five years? 10 months, 28 days a month, yeah.
Speaker 1:Six years is a lot quicker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, six years and um, um. I ended up getting uh, um RH three, uh discharge for um, so I could move home and help my parents, right?
Speaker 1:so at this point you have how many children yourself? Three, three, so two with your wife and uh, one with with this other yes lady. Okay, all right, so you move back home. Are you living with your wife at this point?
Speaker 2:no, so she, she remember, uh, when I graduated high school, actually, that my after my last day, that night I moved to ohio. I didn't even go to my graduation ceremony and um, so I met her in ohio, so she moved back to ohio. My mom lived in michigan. She's lived in michigan ever since she moved up here for for college. She just never left, just kind of lived in Michigan. She's lived in Michigan ever since she moved up here for for college. She just never left. She's kind of lived in the same area.
Speaker 2:So I moved back up here and I move in with her and then, um, when I come up, I get my, I get the kids, I have them with me. And um, I, I actually filed for divorce after I got out of the Navy, okay, um, I actually filed for divorce after I got out of the Navy, okay. And um, yeah, there was a lot of messed up stuff that she said she's. Some of the stuff that she said was, uh, she was jealous of the kids, cause she thought I loved the kids more than her, which is crazy, cause he seems like you would want a loving father for your kids.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other thing she said that really stuck out was she said she pretended to be what she thought I wanted so that I would be interested in her and marry her. And I was like man, it's got to be miserable.
Speaker 1:To not want to be married to the person you're married to. And then what an awful thing to say to somebody.
Speaker 2:No, but to pretend to be somebody else and not be yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm like. I don't get that To me. Whether you like me or not, I'm always myself. Yeah, like people that I like. They're like, oh you could never be me. But then the people I don I like they're like, oh you could never be mean.
Speaker 1:But then the people I don't like. They're like man, he's a real. You know what I mean. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I know, I know what you're saying and so I don't know. So I ended up filing for divorce and then I had custody custody of the kids through the, through the divorce. But the courts ended up awarding her custody because they tend to favor the mom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started going to school at u of m in flint. I was working at a bar as a bouncer and um, was that celebrations? Uh, they used to have the radio station there twice a week. Twice a week we'd have like tons of fights because the place was so packed oh yeah I don't know. I swear there was more people in there than fire code, like when the radio station was in there I can only imagine well, um, after a few years of that, um, during that time I was kind of depressed.
Speaker 2:Um, I was drinking a lot. I was dating this girl and she's like you're drinking too much, and I broke up with her because the alcohol was more important. Well, I don't know, I just didn't want anybody telling me what to do, but I don't know, I don't want to say what to do, but I don't know, I just didn't want anybody telling me what to do. I don't know, I don't want to say what to do, but I didn't want anybody telling me what to do, I guess, yeah, and then one day, my ex-mother-in-law, who hated me because my ex told her family a bunch of false stories, right, and I never stuck up for myself because I didn't care about her family. I'm not going to talk to them and stick up for myself, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I say a lot and I noticed. So she called me and says, hey, these kids aren't being taken care of, you need to get custody. So I quit going to school at U of M Flint and I quit working at the bar because I didn't think it looked good to the courts. I worked at Taco Bell in Owasso when I was in high school. So I went there. I was like, hey, can you bring me on as a sourd manager? And um, the people who were in leadership at that store were the same people that I worked with at an even level back when I was in high school. And they're like, yeah, we'll bring you on. So I started working at Taco bell. And, uh, people are like, why would you admit to working at taco bell? But, um, it was important to me because that's the job I used to get custody of my kids right. So when people are like taco bell, why would you bring it up? You were in the navy, you were in the army you're a construction worker.
Speaker 2:You've done this cool stuff. Why would you bring up this job that people don't respect? And to me it was respectable and, um, out of 72 stores, the store that I worked at was number five as ranked number five and on all the metrics that they used. They didn't just use sales, but all the metrics put together right satisfaction, all those other things that they use.
Speaker 1:They didn't just use sales, but the all the metrics put together right, satisfaction, all those other things that they look at, yeah, Secret shops, your your food costs like, how much food are you wasting hours worked.
Speaker 2:Your hours Couldn't be too low. They weren't. Obviously they don't want them too high, right. So they had to be within a range and if you're not in that range, then you're either not providing service to the customers or you're wasting manpower. So they had like what they called squares and they used them for bonuses and stuff like that and yeah. So when I started with Taco Bell, all sourd managers have to go and see the market training manager for orientation and get you trained up or whatever. And that's where I met my current wife.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I was at that orientation, there's me and another person and she's like this orientation, we're going to fly through it. It's going to be like an hour and a half, you'll be out of here but you'll get paid for three hours because we just, you know, we talked, we had similar um, like the people we knew, the places, we hung out. It's like I don't know how we didn't meet before then. It's like our lives like should have intersected somewhere before, right, and um, yeah, um, my life was kind of a mess, obviously, because it's not like I was financially secure, yeah, and her life was a mess because she was going through a divorce.
Speaker 2:I just got done with the divorce and she was kind of lost in her way and she was just trying to enjoy herself to. You know, sometimes when people get in pain, they just want to enjoy the moment, you know, just escape it. So she was kind of in that. When I say that she wasn't like using drugs or nothing, but you know she wasn't paying her rent. You know she'd go out a lot rent. You know she'd go out a lot. Um, so when we met each other, um, one of the things like um I don't know if you ever heard of the five love languages yes, I have.
Speaker 2:So, um, hers is words of affirmation. So when I first met her, I was like man, you're really screwing up. And I was the only person that told her that. Everyone else was like just stay strong, you're doing good. And she wasn't. But because I was truthful with her, that made her fall in love with me, even though I had to say, hey, you're really screwing up.
Speaker 1:She appreciated the honesty.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did she appreciate it at the time?
Speaker 2:She appreciated it at the time because not only did I say that, but I was like this is what you should do. Like I started telling her like stuff to do and she was like this close to being fired. She was like real close to losing her apartment. She was like behind to being fired. She's this like real close to losing her apartment. She was like behind on her rent and when I came into her life she ended up taking, she ended up doubling the sales and it's the store that she was at and, with all those metrics, the reason why I pointed out I was number five, the reason why I pointed out some stuff from earlier or, you know, said some stuff from yeah, is because it affects my life in the future right so that, um, some of those things I mentioned will be more relevant as we go on.
Speaker 2:But, um, she ended up turning that store around. She ended up um doubling it, doubling the store's sales. It was doing like 500 and some thousand a year. She was doing having it do over a million a year in sales.
Speaker 1:That's a huge change.
Speaker 2:That's a huge change and her store was actually number one. She ended up making taking her store to number one, which was, you know, kind of crazy because I was coaching her and how to do it, but she's the one that did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And uh, yeah, it was kind of amazing.
Speaker 1:So how long did you date before you got married?
Speaker 2:It was about just under two years.
Speaker 1:Okay. Did she have children from her previous marriage?
Speaker 2:She did. She had um at the time I met her um. When I first met her at that orientation, her oldest daughter was eight and then her youngest daughter was eight months.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And, to be truthful, like in her youngest daughter's first three years of life, even though I came into it at eight months I spent more time with her daughter than anybody else, more than her biological dad, more than her herself, and, um so um, I basically raised her kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, when I tell people I have seven kids, um, I include her too, because I raised them Right. So I have five biological and two stepkids.
Speaker 1:So you did? You end up getting custody of the of your two children then from your ex-wife.
Speaker 2:I did, you know. I started the process and one day, like you know most, of my life I struggled financially.
Speaker 2:I've never really made a lot of money and so I couldn't go. Well, every time I would try to go see the kids, my ex would give me a hard time, and then sometimes, you know, like almost every time I'd have to call the cops and then half the time the cops would enforce it, half the times the cops would say we can't enforce nothing. You got to go through the courts and get a specific whatever.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean? It's civil, not criminal. Yeah, basically yeah.
Speaker 2:Civil, yeah. And so there was a period where I didn't get to see my kids for six months. But before that it's like every time I'd get my kids they had lice and I was months. But before that it's like every time I'd get my kids they had lice and I was like trying to treat their hair. You know what I mean treat, wash their clothes and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But when I didn't get to see him for six months, when I went down and got him and I drove straight to the doctor's office and, um, the lice in my kid's hair was so bad when I looked in the rearview mirror I could see him jumping off and unfortunate for somebody else, but fortunate for me three months before that my lawyer found an article where a little girl in Flint died from complications of lice because the parents wouldn't take care of it. And then when I went to the doctors, she wrote how bad it was and then verifying the time, because one of her defenses was oh, that happened while the kids were with him Right, it was your fault.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was my fault. They tried to blame it back on me, but from the time that I picked up the kids to get to Michigan, took them to the doctors. There's no way they would have got lice that bad in four hours, right, and anybody knows that. So, but because there was, because my lawyer had documented where it could be life-threatening, and then I had it documented from the doctors how bad it was, my lawyer got an ex parte order where I got immediate custody. And then, what's crazy is, I ended up joining the guard and I got custody permanent custody of my kids two weeks before I left for deployment.
Speaker 1:Wow, Wow, that's, that's good timing actually yeah, yeah, well. Well, it kind of sucks because my wife only got to meet him a few times and now she's caring for primary caretaker now right yeah, yeah, and so now she's got four kids because she has her two and you have your two, right, or is there are kids involved here?
Speaker 2:well about that time, um, we had a son, okay, so she had five kids, five kids you're getting that big family that you wanted, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, five kids wow yeah, so well. I mean I told you earlier, I have seven total right, so you have, uh, the one, so do you get? Did you ever get to see the child that you had down in Norfolk?
Speaker 2:So when she married her first husband he would. He was like on my side to help see it. But then she divorced him, married another guy and then she was getting ready to go on a deployment and I was like, hey, while you're on deployment, I want my son. She got so upset at me because she had three kids from three different dads but she didn't want her kids to be separated, Right? So she got, so she wouldn't let me see him and I didn't have the money to fight that because I was going through custody battle with my ex, Right, and I don't know if it sounds like a lot or not, but it cost me 20 grand for that whole custody battle and I didn't make a lot of money.
Speaker 1:20 grand is a lot of money anyway. I mean that's a lot of money. Yeah, Worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, a lot of money, yeah, okay. So you joined the Michigan National Guard and, like two weeks after you get your kids, you're getting ready to deploy so, um, we're planning on getting married, so I end up joining the guard, and part of me always wanted to be a part of the guard because of my mom's second husband right from that time of going to the family days and doing all that stuff and seeing how he interacted with his I don't know battle buddies or you?
Speaker 1:know what.
Speaker 2:I mean fellow soldiers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And how it seemed like it was a family thing. You know more family oriented. But when I joined in 2005, I signed the paperwork, I go to my first drill I get activated for Hurricane Katrina, my first drill. Yeah, on my first drill, I get activated for Hurricane Katrina, my first drill. So I was kind of lucky though with the Hurricane Katrina thing, because with me being in a 360 third it's a personnel support detachment I end up getting activated to work at the jock.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I worked at the JFHQ and then I had the night shift, so I don't think you could think of a more boring job than that. So I'm doing 12 hours from right after they bed down till right before they get up, right? Not a lot going on. Nothing going on, so the um no-transcript. Oh, why am I forgetting the rank?
Speaker 1:Did you have a colonel or a captain?
Speaker 2:So, like a colonel's a bird, he's got the silver oak leaf.
Speaker 1:Oh, so that's a lieutenant colonel.
Speaker 2:Lieutenant colonel yeah.
Speaker 2:So we had a lieutenant colonel was overseeing the night jock and because it was so boring, we rotated naps, we rotated PT time. I mean we're still there. If something happened, then we just, you know, we wake each other up or whatever. But nothing ever happened.
Speaker 2:And um, the uh captain that was in charge of um the admin you know the uh personnel guys um, I'm drawing a blank on his name, but he's like I'm going to put you in for an AM and I was like no, I was like, uh, as I did with show up, which I know for some people that's worth at least an AMm because you showed up or whatever. But that's when I first started getting um. So, like, when I was in the navy, I got two navy achievement medals and I earned those, like it was, those were earned, right, they were hard to get, hard to get, yeah. But in the army I feel like they just hand out awards based on your rank and they hand them out like candy, like I didn't feel, like I don't know didn't feel like you deserved it yeah, I don't know yeah I don't know, maybe deserved.
Speaker 2:It is the right thing right it's like, uh, they don't know. It's like what is this worth?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know right if I've given out a hundred of these, there's a difference than if I'm giving out 10 of them. Yeah, yeah, no, I understand that yeah.
Speaker 2:So I did Hurricane Katrina, so I show up. For after a few months of that I ended up going to a drill and they brought me in straight conversion. So I was a sergeant.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't do any kind of uh, um, crossover training or anything like so, um, you know, I don't know, that'll come in maybe a little later, but um, so I go to drill. We're planning on getting married in March. My son was born in November. I went to drill in December and in December they pull all the E fives into a room and they said you're getting deployed. We can't tell you when and we can't tell you where, but you need to get your shit together. It's the exact words they used.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, we ended up getting married in January. So we ended up getting married in January. It was very small, like it was her parents, my parents, pastor and his wife, me and her and our newborn baby, which he was born in November, and so I ended up not leaving until July. So we got married again in March, okay, and my grandpa married us, because I don't know if you remember earlier he's a preacher yeah, he married us and we had like a big ceremony which actually started a little tradition for us is that we had the big ceremony.
Speaker 2:Tradition for us is that, um, we had the big ceremony and then we had a smaller party after that at the amvets, where we used the dance floor, was able to get drinks real cheap and they let us have our reception there for real cheap. And then we had our after after party, which was like our closest tight-knit group, which was there's only like eight, eight of us or nine of us. Yeah, and, um, we ended up partying until like four in the morning. So we kind of celebrate both those anniversaries that's awesome though yeah, that's great, and I end up uh, getting deployed.
Speaker 2:Um, I mowed out of, uh, out of Fort McCoy and um, some of the notable stuff from there is. You know, I'm six foot and um, when I went there I weighed like 195. So I might've had a little extra. Like right now I weigh 205. So it's not much more than what I am now or much less than what I am now. No one calls me fat or anything.
Speaker 2:But they had contractors that did the food and all my military experience. I go up I'd be like, can I get times two on that? And they'll give me times two. But the contractors were like, no, we're only contracted to give you this much. And when I left Fort McCoy after two months I weighed 155. Wow, I was like this, on the verge of being sickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of weight to lose in a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 40 pounds in two months, wow. And then when I deployed over, I ended up being stationed in Al-Aslim and um, I got um, I don't know cross assigned from my unit to battalion. So I worked in the joint operation center there and I'm allergic to the sun so I thought being out in the middle of the desert would kill me, right, Because I don't do well in the heat either. So the first two weeks I was there they have give you, like constitution, time for you to get used to the heat and stuff. And I'm not exaggerating, like, if you look it up on Google it says the average temperature is 117. But the average temperature when I was there was like 130.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what year were you there?
Speaker 2:I went in 2006 and then I came home in 2007.
Speaker 1:So we were there at the same time. Oh, really I was in Mosul, northern Iraq. Oh, gotcha Flew in and out of Ali As-Saleem a couple of times.
Speaker 2:So yes, I remember the heat, yeah yeah, and the hottest it got that they recorded when I was there was 148. Yeah, the people who left when we replaced them, they said the hottest it got for them was 150. So it did get cold, like in part of the year it would get down to like 37 or whatever at night, but in that one square mile, let's see. I left it once to go to the dentist at the Rock, which was another part of Al-Aslim.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many you know Al-Aslim's huge and it's got like little compounds, like I was on the LSA, which is like one little square mile, and then next to us, you know, to us, the Australians had a camp, the Seabees had a camp next to us, the Air Force had a camp, the Kuwaitis had a camp. On there. There's a bunch of camps that make up Al-Yasaleem. And the only time I left the LSA in one year's time was I went to the dentist once my wife talked me into. They had these day trips where you could go into Kuwait City. I did that once, got to see the Kuwait towers, and then I went home for like two weeks of leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like your mid-tour leave time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know. It was an amazing deployment, one of the funny stories, because I told you they did me direct conversion. I didn't have any kind of cross training or anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I came in, I came in as an E6, as a petty officer first class, yeah, and I didn't even know how to wear my uniform.
Speaker 2:It was that bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you, brother so, um, you know, I'm a sergeant e5, backbone of the army, right and um, I'm working directly when I say directly.
Speaker 2:Um, there was a sergeant major and his desk was right behind mine and then there was an E six that had her desk right behind mine. There was two E fives and then we had our E four and below, like, right, like below us, it was um, a stepped, stepped up and we had huge screens in front of us and we're overseeing operations of Ali Asselin for the I don't want to just say the army, because we were sending all kinds of people in and out of theater and we were overseeing them going into OIF, oef and North Africa, and so underneath us we had, if I remember correctly, it's like seven or eight different units. So the units we had, we had, um, an admin unit that was overseeing inbound. We had an admin unit that was overseeing outbound. We had a customs which was usually run by when I was there it was run by the Navy that we oversaw.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, we had a KBR which operated the buses. We had an infantry unit that was escorts, so like if they had to go to KCIA or back, you know they'd run escorts. So we had these different units that we had to oversee. If they had a problem it was our problem to help them right.
Speaker 2:Lots of moving parts, lots of moving parts and um, the e6 that I worked for, sergeant hollinger she, um, was a very amazing person in the sense that she was very good at networking and figuring out how stuff works. And she figured it out and she taught me and I looked at myself as being like the pack mule, so I did a lot of the bulk of um carrying a lot of work and um, she was the one, but I did what she taught me.
Speaker 2:she's the one that came up with the plan and how to work it okay um, but what's funny is I worked basically right under that sergeant major coming from the navy and e9's a master chief right, so I kept like hey, master, sergeant and him. All he sees is I'm an e5 in the army, so I'm disrespecting him.
Speaker 1:How the hell don't you know what his rank is? How do I not know what that rank is? I knew he's9.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the first thing that comes to my mind in E9 at that point was Master Right, and it's like if you gave me a written test I could figure I know, like I would write down Sergeant Major's E9. But in just when I think E9 at that point, I was thinking Master Sergeant right, yeah, and that didn't go very well, no.
Speaker 2:You know, after about 150 push-ups I remembered what Sergeant Major was, but my direct. Like Sergeant Hollinger, she was so good at networking, she knew I was prior Navy, she knew that I wasn't doing it to be disrespectful and she talked to him yeah and, believe it or not, um, I got a lot of respect for that sergeant major because he empowered me to do my job well in.
Speaker 1:In reality, even though you were mislabeling his rank, you were being respectful.
Speaker 2:You just didn't know yeah you know what I mean no, yeah, yeah, no, I wasn't doing it to be purposely disrespectful there were some people there that I was purposely disrespectful to well, you have to do that once in a while, don't you?
Speaker 1:oh, I did a lot because yes, sir can mean a lot of things yeah, yeah, oh, it was worse than that I'll bet, uh, some of them.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if it's appropriate to tell on here oh, you can him.
Speaker 1:we got to hear at least one of these stories. It's okay, it's appropriate.
Speaker 2:So, but I want to talk about that, sergeant major.
Speaker 1:No, well, let's talk about him. This is, this is yours, so we can talk about Sergeant major.
Speaker 2:So one of the great things that I liked about him is like he would be like hey, go find out about this. And some of my coworkers were like I don't like him because he don't know. He don't know how to do what we know how to do. So like he don't know how to input the data he didn't need to. That wasn't his job, right, but what I? The reason why I respected him is like when I first got there, I'd go and I'd be like, uh, have to talk. You know, I'm an e5, I'm gonna talk to e6s and e7s. I'm like, hey, um, what's going on with this situation? Like we're, we're, we're having a problem here and they'd they'd, in not so many words, be like get the fuck out of my face right, because you're just a serge sergeant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just an E-5. And then I'd be like, okay, go back. And he's like, what's going on? And I'd be like, hey, they told me just basically get out of there or whatever. So he would walk there with me. Now a sergeant major has got to walk out of the AC, go into another AO and find out for himself why this is going on. So, and find out for himself why this is going on. So I'd be standing behind him, normal, and these E6s and E7s would be at parade rest and the Sergeant Major would be ripping them one. And so next time I go there I'm like, are we going to work this out? And then people became real nice to me Well, you carried the authority of that Sergeant Major.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, and he enforced that. I carried that authority. I never, I never abused it, like even when I was in the pay office. Like if someone, like if they, if they did their drill, I would do everything I could to get them their pay. Like, um, maybe if, even if I had to stamp chief's name on there to approve it, if they deserved it, I wouldn't do it to like, oh, can you hook me up with this? I would never cheat. I never cheated or anything like that. You know what I mean. I wouldn't hook anybody up, that didn't do the time or whatever, but I did Sometimes. That's probably one of the things I learned being at that Naval Reserve Center in Norfolk is uh, I learned how to forge papers for good.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 1:Not in a way that's going to get you in trouble. It's something that had to be done, so you did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah so um, but uh, no, I didn't realize how much he empowered me until the end of my deployment, because the new guys came in and I'm like, hey, go down to this LNO find out what's going on with this guy and what we got. You know what's the deal here? Obviously I'm being vague, but so he's an E5. He walks down there to the LNO, he tries getting this information. He comes back. He's like I got nothing. So I was like okay, I'll go with you. So I walk with them down there. I stand at the desk, I don't even say anything. This E7 comes running up and he's like, oh, we got, this Gives me all the, the information. I didn't even say a word, I and uh, the guy's looking at me.
Speaker 2:The other e5 is looking at me, he's looking at this e7, like just, right, treating you like you're the sergeant major basically and then when we walked away, you know he waited till we're a few steps away and he's like the other e5 is like who in the fuck are you right?
Speaker 1:and I was like oh yeah, sergeant major hooked me up yeah, light bulb went off right, yeah, yeah and obviously it was the end of my tour, but uh at that point.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was like man, he empowered me to be able to do a good job, to do my job and whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah so you, you finish up your tour and you head for home. What was coming home like?
Speaker 2:That's something I really wanted to talk about when I was thinking about this, if I prepared for anything. This is something that I really wanted to talk about. So, when you come home, you go to the demob station. You're there for a couple of weeks two, three weeks, whatever and they put you through these classes. And one of the of the things that you know my wife got to go to some of those demob classes and I will say, you know, there's a lot of stuff that the guard does wrong or whatever, but one thing they really I think they kind of did good was, uh, debriefing us on what's normal and what's not, and and um, cause I miss my family.
Speaker 2:The family has always been one of my goals. I've given up a lot to be able to spend time with my kids and my wife and, uh, when I come home from deployment, it's hard to be around them. It is it's hard to be around them. And there's other things that you that you struggle with, and the best way I can describe it to somebody who don't know is you know, for 15 months I didn't drive.
Speaker 2:15 months I didn't cook. 15 months I didn't do laundry. 15 months I did 12 hours a day, seven days a week. For the most part, I did 12 hours a day, seven days a week. For the most part, yeah, and the reason they can get that kind of productivity out of me is because I did one thing and that was my job. My job didn't mean even simple stuff like driving. I didn't really go shopping. Paying the bills I didn't. Well, I don't know, I might have I don't know how much was online back then but I might have did a little bit of that but for the most part, yeah, I only did one thing.
Speaker 2:Now, I multitasked within the one thing, obviously, because to be good you got to some extent, you didn't have any other responsibilities. No other responsibilities. I didn't have to drive the kids to school. So when you come back after you know it's basically 15 months, right?
Speaker 1:With train up yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and, and DMO.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like almost embarrassing to say but you kind of are out of the groove of driving or going to the grocery store or being normal, just being normal, just being normal being normal.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I don't know how else to describe it. It's almost like you're a prisoner of war, and that's part of the reason why I said I didn't leave that one square mile other than those three, three times right is because it's almost like you're a prisoner of war, for obviously you're. The thing that differentiates you from being a prisoner of war is that you have an assignment and you're working, so you're not just sitting in a cell as a prisoner of war. But I didn't leave one square mile and technically there was a buffer zone in that square mile, so I probably didn't leave one square half mile very much.
Speaker 1:Right, right, you didn't have to. I think you know I heard somebody say one time that the people that go on deployment aren't the same people that come home. Yeah Right, does that make sense? Yeah, is that kind of how you felt when you got back?
Speaker 2:I didn't really know that I felt that way, but I did have a lot of anxiety and I did have an embarrassing moment Like I'm, like I can drive these kids to school. So I'm like I'm home, I'm dead. I'm going to stop by Myers and get a donut. It's freaking, raining out. We get to Myers and we're starting to walk in. I'm like, oh crap, I think I locked my keys in the car, so we're out in the rain. We didn't get donuts. And I call a wrecker and when he gets there, my keys in my like, before he does anything, I realize my keys in my pocket. I'm so embarrassed. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm like man this is Do you feel like you're losing your mind?
Speaker 2:a little bit Felt like I're losing your mind a little bit. I felt like I was losing my mind a lot, yeah, and when you first come back to stress and that kind of stuff, the embarrassment, I guess. One thing that helped me is I ended up being on the PDHRA team and then a couple of the people that I deployed with, I seen them and they were talking about how they were having problems with their memory when they first got back and so I felt a little more normal, like it wasn't just me, because that's one thing that's hard about the guard.
Speaker 1:Like when the active duty comes back, they're still a unit, they're still around each other, but when the guard comes back, they just whew yeah, you all go off to whatever it was you were doing before you got yeah, and it's very easy to fall in that trap of you feel like you're the only person that feels the way you're feeling right now yeah. Which is important in what we're doing right now, because other people will hear this story and go shit, I'm not the only guy that ever went through that yeah. I'm pretty normal when it comes to that, yeah, so how did you work through that?
Speaker 2:of that, yeah. So how did you work through that? Well, um, I was really lucky because my wife, when she went to those things, she listened, she heard that it's normal and um, um, um, when I was over there we were in the first year that we were married. We started having marital problems and I went and talked to the chaplain and he had us do the books purpose-driven life and five love languages right.
Speaker 1:You learn a lot about somebody when you do that, don't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so me and my wife did it together. We did it together. Um, I don't know if you remember the internet cafes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, so they're like spend a lot of time on my space in those internet cafes to be honest.
Speaker 2:So it's like five bucks an hour, yeah, to pay for the internet five bucks an hour. So, um, um, around that around the time, um, I would spend 10 hours once a week straight talking to my kids, talking with my wife on one day and then during the week I'd go to the internet cafe and talk to her for like 15 minutes a day and talk to her for like 15 minutes a day, or, you know, throughout the day. We had a nipper's email.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I could email her, and so we would just like little messages, like almost like text, but it would be through email, mm-hmm. And so we went from our marriage being on the rocks to the end of deployment, our marriage was on a pretty solid base.
Speaker 1:Now I don't want to lose this point and that is in my experience. Most of the time people go on deployment, maybe have great marriages, by the time they get home they're wrecked. Or if your marriage is even teetering, when you leave, you get home and it's over. You actually were having problems, went on deployment and fixed your problems yeah, that's different that's different, that's that's you were dedicated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually um. Yeah, it's my wife's dedication, probably more than mine.
Speaker 1:Right, but that motivated you somehow. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So when I talked to the chaplain and we did that book, the Five Love Languages and we started spending time on the internet like through the internet cafe, we called it our date night one night a week. So when I went on deployment and she had our son, I told her she should quit Taco Bell. And part of the reason why was because, you know, I told you she took the sales from $500,000 to over a million. Right, when she asked for a raise early on, I was like, hey, you should ask for a raise. Worst thing they can do is tell you no. They were like we ain't going to give you a raise, but but if you want one, you can go to a million dollar a year store.
Speaker 2:And she's like what if I make this a million dollar a year store? And, um, this is like a high up guy. There's like the owner, another person and there's this guy. So he's like third, yeah, in the hierarchy he's higher than like regional managers. He's like up there and he's like it's impossible, you can't make that store in a million dollar a year store. She's like why not? He's like there's not enough room in the store to hold the food for you to do a million dollars a year. He was right about one thing For one delivery a week, which is what she was getting when. When she, um, when I first met her, one delivery a week, the store wouldn't hold enough food. She was getting three deliveries a week.
Speaker 2:So I, uh, obviously you know she makes it into a million dollar a year store and, um, she's pregnant, she started going to school and um, college, and um, she she's like, hey, this is a million dollar a year store. Now will you give me a raise? So, um, out of the 500,000 increased, increased sales because of our position, we know 20% of it is their profit. It's what they call profit. So you're looking at, she's making them $100,000 a year, right? So they wanted to give her $2,000 a year raise and that was really a slap in the face because for what she was making, she was training people that were in lower positions than her, that were making more. So I was like well, just quit, focus on school. And um, so while I was on deployment, she was going to school and caring for the kids, and so we had the time to work on our marriage In my free time. She was available. So it's not like she had to be dedicated to a job and that, I think, also helped yeah.
Speaker 1:Let her focus on herself a little bit.
Speaker 2:I don't know, with college. Yeah, yeah, maybe with college. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1:It freed her up to take care of the kids all the time but also go to college and get done what she needed to get done.
Speaker 2:Yep. So she ended up getting her bachelor's degree and one of the things that we laughed about it is her bachelor's degree got her the same job she would have had if she didn't get it.
Speaker 2:But um, the one thing about her getting her bachelor's degree that was definitely positive is when I met her, in her own mind and the people in her life was like she's not smart enough to get a bachelor's degree, so her getting a bachelor's degree was like a big yeah f you to people who didn't believe in me and um, she really credits me a lot with motivating her and giving her confidence to be able to do it well and you believed in her yeah you know that's worth something yeah, because what's funny is I didn't have a car and I was like, hey, I'm gonna go sign up for school, can you give me a ride? So she's like, okay, so we get in there and I'm signing up for school. And I I was like, are you going to sign up? She's like me Right.
Speaker 2:So she ends up signing up and I didn't finish, but she did, yeah, yeah, cause I was like man, I'd go from being on the president's list to failing out, because even when I wasn't deployed, like the guard would send me to Fort Peck for this class. Right, they would send me, you know, fort Custer for this class, and it took up a lot of my time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can be difficult and as the op tempo got more and more with the guard, it was no longer one, you know, weekend a month, you know two weeks out of the year. It was almost the opposite for quite a long time. Yeah, yeah, so that's.
Speaker 2:I thought about writing a book called not my father's guard yeah, cause I talked about my father's guard in this but um, the guard I was in was way different. Um, being an NCO I mean, you know, as an E5, I wasn't like a higher NCO, but by the time we had to do a whole month's worth of crap in a drill weekend. I'm not joking when I say like Saturday was an 18-hour day and Sunday is probably a 16-hour day, and that's not the guard like what my father like, not my father's guard. You know what I mean, my father's guard. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And um, we spent so much time and had so much crap to get done that, um, people were getting burnout and getting out, people were getting hurt and getting out, people, even if you were perfectly healthy and sane, just got sick of being around you because in a work environment you didn't have time to blow off steam, didn't have time to bond, right, it was just go, go, go. And um, it was not, not I don't know how else to say but not my father's guard no, well, and you had.
Speaker 1:You know, you had a war in afghanistan, you had a war going on in ira, you had other things that the Guard was being tasked with. There was a period of time, probably from the beginning of the wars until way later on, where if you were in a National Guard unit in Michigan, you probably weren't home. Yeah, you were gone somewhere.
Speaker 2:This way I try to describe to people is like when I, when I, was in, they were on a three year cycle. So every third year you're supposed to be deployed, and then the year before that you're in ramp up year, which was almost like being deployed Right, and then you're supposed to have a year of reconstitution time, but you still had drills and commitments. It's not like you got a year off.
Speaker 1:Right, Well, and if something happened stateside? I mean, it's not really a deployment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's, you know, you can be gone for 45 days or two months or three months at a time and it adds up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It adds up, so you stayed in the Guard right up through 2011.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what prompted you to get out? Because by this time you've got 12 years invested in the military so there were several things.
Speaker 2:One is um, you know my kids were getting to the age they're starting high school, my older you know they split it up older kids and younger kids. My older kids were starting high school and, uh, getting close, they're in middle school, almost to high school. And the other thing was is I really felt stabbed in the back because, with all the election stuff going on, they were afraid of riots and all this kind of stuff. So we were doing different um, riot training, um and stuff like that. And uh, one of our home fees broke down and um, they had me be the a driver because we didn't have anyone else.
Speaker 2:And um, with a lot of the stuff that's going on, without getting too deep, we ended up rolling over the wrecker and they ended up putting all the blame on me when they said they were going to have my back and the way the whole thing went down really wasn't proper, like proper procedure or anything, and I don't know. I felt really stabbed in the back. So, between that and me wanting to be around, like for my kids, that's why I ended up getting out, okay, and um, after that I felt so betrayed. It really affected my selfesteem and I had a hard time finding work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to move this just a little bit closer. Oh gotcha, I got you fading out. Yeah, if you can just make sure you're faced right here, so I can understand that. So you get out of the guard. Did you start looking for work right away?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely, okay, Definitely of the guard. Um, did you start looking for work right away? Oh, definitely, okay, definitely. And um, what's crazy is most of the jobs I was finding paid less than unemployment at the time, so it was like hard to get off unemployment. Um, I was talking with one of my uncles and he said, oh, there's a lot of work in ohio.
Speaker 2:So we ended up, when I got out of the Guard, moving to Ohio and we still had a hard time finding work. Yeah, so in 2012, I ended up being homeless with five kids and both me and my wife were working. We were living out of a campground. So the kids have like, like talking to them. They have fond memories because to them, we were just camping all summer and the owner of the campground ended up loaning me the money I needed to get into an apartment and my wife ended up working two jobs and I ended up being a stay-at-home dad for a while. And because we agreed one of us would try to be a stay-at-home, yeah, but even outside of that, when we were looking at how much, um, daycare would cost, cost, I couldn't find a job that paid that much.
Speaker 1:Right, you'd be working to support daycare, basically yeah.
Speaker 2:So I ended up being a stay-at-home dad for a couple years and what's crazy is during that time, you know like when you meet somebody, they're like what do you do? What do you do? And I would tell them I was a stay-at-home dad. They would be like, oh, you must be lazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's that misconception out there, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now what I will say is that being a stay-at-home parent in my opinion, it's the easiest job I ever had, but I enjoyed spending time with my kids. Being a stay-at-home parent in my opinion, it's the easiest job I ever had, right, but I enjoyed spending time with my kids. Yeah, and I don't know. I never sat the kids in front of the TV while I did dishes. If I was doing dishes, they were sitting on the counter watching me do them, or splashing in the water learning to do it. If I was folding clothes, they were with me and I don't know.
Speaker 2:One thing that annoys me is when people have kids and they turn to whatever that special age is in their mind, whether it's 10 or 12, they think their kids should just know and want to do chores. Whether it's 10 or 12, they think their kids should just know and want to do chores. But they just heard you complain about doing housework for eight, 10 years. They're not going to want to do it. You don't want to do it. They hear you complaining about it. They don't want to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're not motivated to do it. I want to go back just a second, though you were talking about this. I think this is the beautiful thing about children is that you and your wife you're homeless like.
Speaker 1:This has got to be very, very stressful for you it was the hardest time of my life yeah, and you're living in a campground and thank god the kids just saw it, as we were camping this last summer. Like their, their memory of this isn't going to be. They were wondering where their meal was coming from or what they were going to do. They were just out camping.
Speaker 2:The one cool thing about being in the campground is, I stress, all day. I was working at a beef jerky factory. My wife was working as an assistant manager at the children's place, which is a clothing store. Even with both of us working, we weren't really making enough to live. Yeah and yeah, so that was like the most stressful part. But being at the campground, like at the end of the day, you know, we would start a fire, me and my wife would walk through the campground, like you know, just to take a walk. Being at the campground was peaceful, kind of brought peace for a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that was one positive thing about that.
Speaker 1:But um, yeah, um so you get the, you get the money, you get an apartment get an apartment.
Speaker 2:And, um, man, we had like, uh, like five years where it just didn't seem like it was getting better at all and I ended up going to the vet center and getting counseling. I was like I lay out, I made this decision because of this, I made this decision because of this. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? And what I took away from? Her answer was like you can make all the right decisions in life and sometimes life just kicks you in the nuts, right, and that's not the terminology she used. That's my uh takeaway from it.
Speaker 2:But um, um, the one thing that did help me, like from my military service, to help pull me a little bit out of my depression feeling like I was worthless when I did start seriously looking for a job again because my youngest daughter was starting kindergarten and stuff I was going through like I kept every piece of paper the military has ever gave me, and early on in my relationship that annoyed my wife, right. But um, if we needed a birth certificate, it was in in my service records. If we needed a copy of this paper or we needed this information, it was in my service records, you know. And so she.
Speaker 1:I'm smiling only because I have a folder in the safe upstairs that has even down to every single evaluation I've ever had you know like I literally kept everything.
Speaker 2:I think you're probably talking the same right, I'm talking the same, but mine wasn't a folder, mine is a filing cabinet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you probably have a few more things than I do I got a filing cabinet because I saved everything, even dumb stuff, and I got it in copies. I don't know, but I needed some information that's going through the service record and I came across all these letters of appreciation. Now, these meant more to me than some, like some of my awards, because these were people that helped and, on a personal level enough, they were like man, this guy cared. So they wrote me a letter of appreciation from themselves. You know what I mean, yeah.
Speaker 2:So to me, it's like my purpose of even wanting to join was to help people, and seeing these letters of appreciation reading through them, you know it brought tears to my eyes and I was like I am worth something. You know I do have some value, I am capable and, um, but man, you know the job market. It's like they just want there's like they want to rip you down and pay you the least, and you know what I mean. It doesn't matter to them what you think you're worth or what you can bring to the table. In a sense, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're worth monetarily what they say you're worth.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, yeah it's their job, yeah, and you don't have much say in it, right? And um, um, I was, finally, I was like you know, uh, I tried working at a place called hose master and it was a factory. I was doing shipping and receiving, so I was making like 13 bucks an hour and he started me a little bit more because the guy felt for me my situation, you know what I mean. He didn't pay me the minimum, right, and I ended up having to quit that job because my daughter at kindergarten would go for a half day and the person that would watch her for the other half, um, just decided to up and move with, giving us like no notice.
Speaker 2:So I had to call and quit and you have to be there for my daughter, because I wasn't making as much as my wife at that point. And so when she started first grade, I was like I need to find a real job. I went to ITT this was before they closed down, yeah and I was like, hey, you guys said for the rest of my life, you'd help me find a job. So she ended up sending me to the IBEW, the electrician's union International.
Speaker 1:Brotherhood of Electric Workers right, yeah. Yeah, very familiar with them.
Speaker 2:So I went down there and they had the different jobs I could sign up for, because they have more than one, it's not just electrician Right. And I signed up to be a telecommunications technician because that fell in line with my degree Shorter apprenticeship the starting wage was a little bit higher in the short term so I was like I'll do this and so I went through a three-year apprenticeship in Cleveland and I finished that and I was finally starting to make a livable wage and my wife was like man, you got all these benefits, you're making this this much money. She's like I need to get in the union. So she applied to electricians union. She didn't make it the first cycle, so she's like we went to a trades fair and I went through and I was like you could probably do this one. You don't want to be an iron worker, you know. I mean, I went through, I don't know. It's like 12, 14 different trades and so she applied to like five of them and within four months of applying she got picked up to be in the plumbers union and, uh, we got to talking. So we're both in the union. I've been in the union for 10 years. She's been in for seven and um.
Speaker 2:But around the time that she started her apprenticeship she was like six months in, I was just freshly topped out. I was like we should move back to Michigan because your parents are in ill health and, um, I don't want to be the reason. She never lived outside of Shiawassee County until I moved her out to go to Ohio and so she got a transfer. She transferred from the Plumbers Union to the UA, the UA's United Association, which is Plumbers, pipefitters and HVAC, and so she finished her apprenticeship up here and we moved back up here. Um, I was working on a job and, uh, I got along with the guys amazingly well. It's like one of those only couple in a lifetime jobs where you just really enjoy being there. And the guys were like you should become an inside wireman and I was like I get to work with fuckers like you hell yeah, I should right.
Speaker 2:So I applied to be in the um inside wireman and I just finished that apprenticeship last june and uh so you're working with them fuckers.
Speaker 1:Now I do good for you.
Speaker 2:What's crazy is um. The whole crew wrote me letters recommendation, so I had seven letters of recommendation to get in. So I got in right away to the apprenticeship, and two of those guys that wrote me letters are working on the same job as me right now, and that's part of the reason why I chose the job.
Speaker 1:And it's not lost on me that you're part of the international brotherhood of electric workers and these guys it's a true brotherhood. Like they're taking care of you, You're taking care of each other.
Speaker 2:Yes and no. Um, you know, uh, every so often I uh, I will talk to like a psychiatrist, or not a psychiatrist, but a psychologist or or a counselor and, uh, I was really struggling because not everybody is into the brotherhood aspect of it.
Speaker 1:Right, like any place you go, not everyone.
Speaker 2:But it's not even like a small percentage, and one of the things I've seeked my whole life was to be a part of something where people have your back and you can be yourself and I don't know, just have people that you can rely On around you. And it was kind of an eye opener because she says you're expecting brotherhood From people that have no obligation to give it to you and I don't know. That was kind of an eye-opener for me, even even in the IBW. Now, I'm not saying that you can't find brotherhood there, because there's guys in the IBW that are considered to be brothers, but it's a very percentage of the people that I come across you know and um, so, um, I don't know. This year I joined a motorcycle club. Uh, I've been riding motorcycle for for a while now and I uh, and it's a veterans motorcycle club, which is how I know Terry. Right, when you said Terry, I knew exactly who you're talking about. Terry's a big dude but he's so Right.
Speaker 1:When you said Terry, I knew exactly who you're talking about. Terry's a big dude, but he's so nice. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'd want to cross him. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:He's a nice guy. He's a big fan of yours and he promotes um what you're doing here big time.
Speaker 1:I'm glad to hear it I. It was so great talking with him to hear it.
Speaker 2:It was so great talking with him. So, um, I think you know, being involved with those guys, um, I think I found the brotherhood that I've been seeking, yeah, but a couple things is like uh, I'm surprised you didn't ask me this question, but, um, I'll ask it for myself.
Speaker 1:All right, ask yourself this question because I missed something.
Speaker 2:What part of my military service am I most proud of? So the one specific thing is when I got to, when I got to Al-Aslim, and you know they have these big open grinders and people got to sit there until their flight comes and they sometimes are sitting out there 12 plus hours and they're melting. They're melting in the sun on this pea gravel trying to sleep. You know what I mean. And they got to stay out there pretty much because they don't they're not supposed to miss their flight, so they got to be there.
Speaker 1:Well and this is the other thing too, like from from the, from the customer's perspective at that airport there's not really a schedule schedule that anyone knows of. Like, you have to be there because they're going to call you for your flight, but you don't really know when your flight is.
Speaker 2:So on the customer side you don't know, but when I was working there I knew right what the air force gave me and they were usually pretty close to that.
Speaker 1:yeah so I didn't want to interrupt you, but but just to not put too fine a point on it. It was hot as hell there, hot as hell and in your you don't really know where you're going. It's miserable. You can't really sleep, even at night. It's just awful. So you get there and that's the situation.
Speaker 2:That's the situation. I see it, and it breaks my heart seeing these guys trying to sleep on their duffels out in this pea gravel and this heat and I'm sensitive to heat, so it's even more like to me. I have more empathy on that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So once I got to learn my job and I don't know if you remember tent city, yes, so I'm looking through these regulations If tent city gets to 30% full, we're supposed to be on alert. If it gets to 50% full, then we've got to notify air John or higher up, and you know what I mean. So we got all these empty beds, got all these empty tents, and I come up with this plan. I'm like, hey, we've got all these empty tents and I come up with this plan. I'm like, hey, these tents have AC in them, they're out of the sun. They got beds. They got these bunks. They're lined with bunks in there. I'm like, why don't we take four of these tents, mark them off, as that's our holding area, so we'll keep positive control over the soldiers going in and out, so we know where they're at, they can sleep on a, on a soft bed. And air conditioning which, you know, air conditioning over there is only like a few degrees cooler.
Speaker 1:Right, right, it's only 115, not 130.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly. But you start feeling hot inside the ac. You go outside, you stand there for 10 minutes, you go back in and it feels a little cool yeah that's true, that's true.
Speaker 2:So, uh, but you know what I mean? It's better. It's better in so many different ways. And I was breaking down this whole big plan and um, the oic captain books, like, uh, that's a soldier's life, why should we do it? And I'm like they're either just coming from some shit or they're going to some shit. We should take care of them while they're here.
Speaker 2:And I was like I, I broke out this whole plan. I gave him a bunch of reasons and he just kept saying no, no or whatever. You know what I mean. Yeah, like that's a soldier's life. And then he turns around and implements my whole plan. Plus, because he's the OIC, he knows how to get funds. So they end up making bleachers and they end up getting some canopies and stuff made so that the grinder is shaded instead of just being wide open. So he added that part on. That wasn't part of my plan, because I'm coming from no like I'm in my mind, I have no budget, so I'm doing what I can with what I got Right. And he implements the whole plan and takes a credit for it and uh, you know what, though I mean?
Speaker 1:I? To me, that's the military, and the beauty of that is who gives a shit man? It was your plan and you know it.
Speaker 2:I know it.
Speaker 1:And you know that you influence something to help people see. So you got to do what you want to do.
Speaker 2:I did, I did, he did end up doing it. Yeah, and so that part I am the most proud of, because I helped people have it a little bit easier while they were there, and I don't know what times you came through. I don't know how far the plan was along when you came through.
Speaker 1:When I came through I did not sit on pea gravel. When I came through we actually checked in and out of a tent. They were playing movies. I was really hot and tired so I don't remember a whole lot about it, but we were checking in and out of tents yeah, oh, what was that?
Speaker 2:you check in and out of the tents, but then, while you're waiting, they had the area out there um, I never.
Speaker 1:I sat in the hot sun when I first got there, but I don't. I don't recall that being my whole experience so they must have like had started putting your plan in place because I was. I was there in um like may or june of 07 oh, and our plan was mostly in place by then.
Speaker 2:so they already had the the tent squared off by then. Because I got there in October and for me to come up with this plan it was probably late December or January before I realized how everything worked together and to start implementing it. And then by the time we left in October they had you know to where the whole thing had shade, they had bleachers, so it was totally different. By October, but definitely by May they had implemented at least marking off those tents to where they could sit in there and sleep and it was close to the bathrooms.
Speaker 1:You and I were deployed at the exact same time because we I got, I got there, our bog date was october 13th and we I stepped off the battlefield on october 13th and flew home yeah, october 7th to october 7th was ours yeah, so we were there pretty darn close because I heard this a lot.
Speaker 2:For people I don't know what bog is it's boots on ground, bog boots on ground, yep that's when 51 of your unit is on ground. It's a very important date because even if everybody's not there, as long as you get 51, they'll sign off on that letter and that starts your 365 clock yep, and they gave us, uh, an option to leave like a week early, and our commander said no, because if we were there one year, then that qualified us for certain benefits yes and it was worth that extra week.
Speaker 1:Yes, the benefits you didn't want to leave early and you didn't want to leave late. You want to leave right when you needed to leave. So we're still so while we're talking about deployment yes um, you got at least share. I gotta hear one good funny story.
Speaker 2:I don't care how inappropriate it is, okay, I gotta hear it so our battalion got recognized by general petraeus and um because we were getting people out in less than 24 hour average, so they would come check in same day they're gone and cause we could see who's coming in, what flights were available, so we could sign seats and and, like I told you, sergeant Hollinger was a good networker so she could, she, she got a system down and I helped, I helped work it, it and we were pretty amazing as a group. But for some reason our battalion really wanted to shine and kiss butt. So they had like four days of WTT, which is warrior training task, and this is like level one BS.
Speaker 1:Basic, basic, basic crap, real basic crap.
Speaker 2:It's like the dumbest thing ever. And I work night shift and the WTT that needed a hundred percent participation happened during the day, when I was normally sleeping, of course. So you know I wasn't very happy about it and of course they had people out there taking pictures and whatnot. And I talk how I talk and that's important because, um, I seen captain book and he's out there and they're all taking pictures and I went up to him and I'm like captain book, captain book, I was seriously talking like this at this point. I'm like captain book, can I get my picture taken with you?
Speaker 2:I was like to get my I said I'd really like to get my picture taken with you and he's like, sure, so they get the camera ready, and I go down on one knee, like my face is like kind of by his groin right, and I was like I just want to do a natural pose and he turned so beet red he. He turned around and walked away and he's a captain Right. So it's 03, so he had a roommate and I told his roommate about it. He denied the whole thing. But man, did we get a good laugh about that?
Speaker 1:Did you get a good picture? That's the bigger question.
Speaker 2:I don't know about any picture.
Speaker 1:That's too bad.
Speaker 2:But it was definitely funny to me. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And so that's my inappropriate one. But you know, I don't know. I didn't have a problem voicing when I wasn't happy with leadership, yeah. And when it got near to the end of the deployment they start talking about awards a couple months out, because they got to do all the paperwork and Captain Book got put in for a Bronze Star. So technically we were deployed in a war zone. So we get an expeditionary medal and stuff like that, right, right. But you know we weren't taking fire at Al like that, right, and. But you know we weren't taking fire at Ali Asselin, right.
Speaker 2:And when he got his, when he, when I saw that he was getting a bronze star, I wrote him so hard I was like you're going to go home, sit at the VFW next to a guy who earned his bronze star. I'd be making comments like that. I, like I earned as brown star. I'd be making comments like that, like I was. I was really harsh on him, so harsh he gave me a direct order to not mention brown star to him ever again yeah, it's a heck of a direct order, yeah, yeah, well, I want to, um, I want to kind of.
Speaker 1:You know we're going to wrap up pretty soon, but you know, it sounds like things are going well for you now. You've got you, you and your wife are both working, you're part of the union. Um, I'm assuming you got a good place to live now, um, and and things are going well for you. How does that feel?
Speaker 2:Feels pretty good. I only have like one life goal that I made that I haven't accomplished yet, but my wife and I recently have made plans and are taking steps towards achieving that goal. You want to share that plans and are taking steps towards achieving that goal.
Speaker 2:You want to share that I always wanted. Well, going back to when I was going to college and stuff like that, it's like when I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I had a vague idea that I wanted to own a business and become like a multimillionaire, Cause I didn't want to have to be broke, I didn't want to be like, uh, when I say my mother, she's, she's been married four times, so I can't say my parents. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 2:So I didn't want to be like my mother.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to have to be getting kicked out of places because I couldn't pay my rent. And so I'm working on my wife's working on getting her master's in plumbing. I'm working on getting my master's Like, we're actively studying for the test. She's eligible to take her test, I'll be eligible for mine in December. Then we want to work on getting our contractor's licensed and open a plumbing and electrical business and from my understanding, even the small contractors make probably three times what we make now and what we make now we are very comfortable.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I've always been like a mover, like a mover, a doer, um, like when I was stationed at at little Creek, I'd go to DC, I'd go to Richmond, I'd go to the outer banks. When I was stationed in um Baton Rouge, I didn't really like new Orleans, but I went there a few times. Um, I went to Biloxi and went to Gulfport, I'd go up to Jackson and Shreveport, go over to Galveston, houston. You know I'm always doing something. And um, this past year we went on our first cruise in January for our anniversary. Um, we went to to Germany for a week. Um, that was kind of a cool trip because we spent a night in Amsterdam, because that's where we flew in and out of um got to stay a night in a in a castle. It was like 25% hotel and 75% museum.
Speaker 2:Um, we had a layover in London that was 25 hours. So, um, man, a cool story about that? Yeah, tell me about it. Um, you know, we went and did the tourist thing. You know, um, when we got off the tube we were at big Ben. We walked to palace of Buckingham. Buckingham palace, we walked over to tower bridge, which people mistake, and some people that don't know call it London bridge bridge. London bridge is next to it and it's not. It's just a plain boring old bridge. Tower bridge is the big, fancy, cool looking one.
Speaker 2:Cool looking one yeah, so we were taking the tube back to, because we uh got a hotel room at the airport so we could be there, like not have to worry about transportation getting lost or anything like that. And um, there was this guy. He's dressed in this nice suit, his hair was done well, and uh, he's like, I guess you know, he saw us and somehow could tell we were american brian, because we stick out like a sore thumb, I don't know, but he's like I love americans and I was like where are you from? Because, um, he wasn't caucasian, he. He is uh, middle eastern, yeah, and uh, he's like, um, I'm kurdish. So, uh, you know, part of what we did in oif is in northern iraq. We freed the kurds. Right now I wasn't in northern iraq, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have a part in it you were getting the people there that were going to help yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, I didn't tell him that I was a service member, but like four or five times he was like I love americans and to me that was his way of saying thank you to America. But I didn't tell him I was a service member, nothing like that. Yeah, I, I, but to me I felt like maybe I helped and and helped him, maybe not directly, like I wasn't there and pulled him out and brought him over you know what I mean, right, but, um, that I helped with his situation and he just seemed genuinely thankful.
Speaker 2:And the reason why I say he was in a suit and his hair was done nice is he wasn't asking me for money. He wasn't like I love Americans, can I get a dollar Right? It wasn't like that. He just to me, it was like his way of saying thank you for what we did for them over there. Because you probably know I don't know who would be listening to this might not know, but the Kurds were oppressed by Saddam's regime.
Speaker 1:Yes, so yeah, and they were true fighters too. We worked with the Kurds in northern Iraq and they were. They were, they had skin in the game and they wanted to fight and and all the things that that went on in the support side of the house enabled them to do their job. So absolutely everything that you did was was a direct assistance to the Kurds to everybody really, but to them specifically so, um, yeah, that was kind of cool yeah and um.
Speaker 2:So I you know I didn't really talk to him much or whatever, but um to me. I felt like he was saying thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like it um, I want you to tell me a little bit about the motorcycle club uh that you belong to as well, because I know that a lot of a lot of times, especially for guard memory, we talked about this where you get home and you kind of lost that family that you had when you were deployed for for that long period of time. Tell me a bit about the motorcycle club and how that's helped you well, I've only been a part of it for a few months.
Speaker 2:But, um, I don't know. My wife says when I come home from being with the guys, I'm happy that I feel like I look more like at ease. It's just cool being around people that I can talk to, who can understand, and whatever wild crazy story or whatever wild crazy thoughts I have. It's like they understand. You know what I mean. They don't. I don't feel like I'm being judged and it really is like a community where brotherhood is expected. If you're not being a brother, then usually you're not going to be around. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know, I guess uh, it's hard to say when I've only been a part of it for like four months, or, you know, I'm going on five months.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know. Some of them say this is the best, worst decision you'll ever make because, uh, they become like your extended family, right and um, but yet, um, there's like a um required time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's going to cost you some time, that's inconvenient to you, but in my mind right now I feel like it'll be worth it to uh be inconvenienced at certain times to, if someone's broke down in the middle of the night, to go help them, because if I'm broke down in the middle of the night, they'll come help me right, so family does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so well I have. I have two more questions that I want to ask, um, and the first question is going to sound kind of weird. But, um, you know things are going well for you right now and you've got plans and you've got this goal that you want to accomplish. That I have every belief, just in the short time that we've known each other, you're going to meet that goal, um, but I'm just wondering, when things got really tough, why didn't you just give up? What kept you going?
Speaker 2:Well, um, this is the thing that made it hard for me, but also is the thing that, I guess, made me keep going. Was that, um, when I first, when my wife and I first got involved, I told her there can only be one head of the house and I said, out of being you, that's going to be me If we stay together. I said, but in return, I'll put your needs and the kids' needs before my own. And the reason why it was the hardest on me is because I felt like it was my fault that we were in that position. But what kept me going is I made a commitment to take care of them, right? So I guess that was the thing. It was. Um, I don't know, looking back, knowing what I know now, to like a VFW or some other place, and gotten help sooner.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because I did end up like I wasn't able to pay my rent in that apartment for one month and I went to the VFW. They ended up paying a good portion of my living expenses for that month and then I felt indebted to them. So I volunteered like every other Saturday for for like a year and a half. You know yeah and um. But then they also put me in touch with um, two different people Um one was help trying to help me find a job. They helped me find that job at Hosemaster which I had to go a long ways for, not much pay. And then they put me in touch with I think it was called Veterans Relief I think almost every county in the nation has one and they paid my next month's expenses.
Speaker 2:But besides doing that, I was just hoping that they'd pay my rent. You know what I mean. But they ended up giving me vouchers to buy my kids clothes which I couldn't afford. They ended up like giving me extra vouchers for food because they said that what we were getting from Snap at the time wasn't enough. And I don't know. It was just like I felt happy because it helped me take care of my family, but I also felt like I wasn't trying to get a handout, I wanted to earn what I got. And that's like one of the hardest parts about trying to get help is that I think most veterans were proud we earned, you know we worked, we served. We earned, you know, we worked, we served, and, um, and the army's got the term embrace the suck for a reason.
Speaker 2:you know what I mean yeah, yeah and um, I don't know. When you come out, you, you want to earn what you get, you know. So that makes it hard to ask for help, but I don't know. I think that's what helped me keep going. Second thing I guess another thing is like when me and my wife were struggling, she never blamed me. She's like we're in this together. What's our next step? What way are we going to move? And then I have to come up with something. Right, you keep each other going like we're in this together. What's our next step? What?
Speaker 1:way are we going to move, you know, and then I have to come up with something. Right, right? You keep each other going, though. That's why you're married right and you're a part. It's a partnership, or at least it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so after I came home from that deployment, it's definitely, it's definitely it's been a partnership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're still together. That speaks volumes.
Speaker 2:We're together happily. We're happily together. We've been married for 19 years, coming up in January, and we're happily married. I enjoy being with my wife. I enjoy seeing her every day. We text at every break. Because we're both in the union, our breaks are at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She's definitely my best friend.
Speaker 1:Sounds like you found the right person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or she found me more than the other.
Speaker 1:Maybe a little bit of both, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, being in the motorcycle club, we get road names at certain points and I told my wife when she comes in as my extension into the club I was going to call her either Mary Poppins or just Poppins, because she's practically perfect in every way, that's awesome yeah. But when I say she's perfect, I don't mean it as a slight, I mean it as a compliment, right, yeah, because sometimes when people say she's perfect, I don't mean it as a slight I mean it as a compliment, right, yeah, so, cause sometimes when people say, oh, you're so perfect, they mean it like oh yeah, look at you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't even hear that I didn't hear.
Speaker 1:I didn't hear a bit of sarcasm in that at all. So yeah, is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about at this point?
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know. I'll probably think of it like everyone else say hey, you know I had this happen in my career. I had that happen. Uh, I guess you know part of the reason when I felt like I was stabbed in the back when I was in the one 44th is uh, you know, I was a urinalysis coordinator. They sent me to school for that. I was a safety NCO for the company because they sent me to school and got my OSHA 30 and I my list of additional duties. They I have letters of all of these. I they should have been spread out amongst five people. Right, I was doing all this stuff. Plus, I was like before I got sent back to the motor pool I was keeping track of everybody's what gear they had. I was keeping track. I had it all on computer stuff. When I'd go to AT I'd bring my own printer. When everyone's doing hand reports, my platoon sergeant could hand in a nice printed one that had all the information nicely laid out. Then they wanted everybody to do it Right Like S-O-B.
Speaker 1:Thanks for more work Well, or.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you know how to use this stuff Right. It's not as much work.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's neater, easier to see I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes your reward for a job well done is more work, right? Yeah, I mean I that was my experience, I know what you're saying. Like I remember being like the unit uh safety officer and range officer and uh the environmental officer, and yeah you know, whatever they needed uh, I guess one other thing.
Speaker 2:It's like when I was working at taco bell like not just then like I'm a by the book guy, I follow the rules and uh, it earned me a nickname. When I was working as a, as a, uh, bouncer at celebrations, they called me door nazi because I checked every id. I didn't just let people cut or whatever. You know what I mean, did what you're supposed to do, I did what I was supposed to do, so so I got the nickname door nazi. Then, when I started working at taco bell, uh, I got the nickname taco nazi because I follow the rules you know what I mean yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:But when it came to like Taco Bell, like you know, I started off as a sourd manager and when I took over on nights they were like man, you're a straight laced dude, you ain't going to like it. All the guys at night do pot and they're lazy and all this other kind of crap. But when I got on night shift, what I realized is that these guys thought they were doing a good job, but they didn't know what a good job was. So, you know, I I trained them up and taught them how to tell that they were doing a good job. Um, one of the things is like uh, some of the morning people like morning management or whatever, uh would yell at these you know night guys individually or say that they were being lazy because of this or that, and I was like no, if you want anything to change, you go through me. They're doing what I said. So that's like the first time in their life they had someone stick up for them. They didn't like that. I was making them follow the book at first, but once they realized and fell into the process that I put out for them, when I left, they were like man, we miss you and one of the huge misconceptions if I can get this out there, I probably can't get it out there enough.
Speaker 2:People think, because you're in the military, that the people under you have to listen to you, and while that's partially true, there's still good and bad leadership in the military. So if you tell me to go change that trash and you're a crappy leader, I might just go change the trash, but that's it. But if you're a good leader, then you'd be like oh, I want to do a good job for this guy, so I pick up the garbage around the can, throw it in, make sure it's clean and then change the trash. You know what I mean? Yeah, and that's the difference between good leadership and not good leadership is that you inspire people to do that good job and go that extra step because they want to.
Speaker 1:Right, not because they have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my final question. First of all, it's been a pleasure talking with you tonight. This has been an amazing conversation. Um, you know, if someone is listening to this 50 years from now, um and uh, they're listening to your life, they're listening to your story. They're listening to our conversation right now. What would you want people to take away from that? They're listening to your life, they're listening to your story, they're listening to our conversation right now.
Speaker 2:What would you want people to take away from that? I don't know. I learned so many life lessons. I try to share a lot of them. One thing, even over any of your jobs, whether it's in the military or not, or whatever, you need to focus on your family. You need to learn how to love them.
Speaker 2:Whether it's like the catalyst we use, whether my wife and I give credit to, is five love languages and beyond that, one of the biggest things I probably learned in the Navy and it sounds funny at first, but is that I don't know anything. And when you take that aspect, how do you know? You go to the expert, whoever is knowledgeable in that subject, and get help. You know I'm of the generation where it's a bad stigma to go talk to a psychologist or go get into counseling because that means you're messed up. But if I get the flu, I'm going to go see a doctor.
Speaker 2:If I need help on my taxes, I go see a tax expert. If my car broke down and I'm not a mechanic, I go to a mechanic. So I guess if there's one thing, it's not just to get counseling but, um, if you want to do something and you want to achieve, go to the people who are doing it that know how to do it, Even if you think you know how and then they'll probably tell you. An easier way and that's how you get stuff done is by not knowing anything, and getting people who do know to guide you All right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I'm looking forward to when you've got your shop opened up and you're out there doing your thing. So thanks for being here tonight, Dan. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You're very welcome, thank you.
