From The Great Migration To Global Leadership (Harold Pope)

Harold Pope’s life reads like a map of modern American choices: leave the South, build a home up North, learn the rules of power early, and decide what kind of person you will be anyway. We talk with Harold about being born in Mississippi during the Great Migration era and growing up in Albany, New York with a single mother who becomes a legendary NAACP leader. Her activism is not abstract to him. It is meetings in the living room, standing up to city hall, and a community that still treats her like a rock star even as dementia changes her short-term memory.

From there, Harold takes us into the parts of childhood that don’t fit neatly into nostalgia. A casual night of basketball turns into weapons drawn and a trip to the police station, followed by the whiplash of a supervisor who recognizes how wrong it is. That tension pushes him toward structure and self-protection: Catholic school, a military academy scholarship, and a personal standard he names clearly, integrity above reproach. We follow that code into the United States Army, Signal Corps training, Hawaii assignments, Korea rotations, and the moment he decides to leave after ten years when the political side of war no longer sits right.

The story doesn’t slow down when the uniform comes off. Harold describes a decades-long automotive career with Ford, including a Shanghai international assignment where cross-cultural leadership becomes daily work. He shares what China censorship looks like in real time, why a VPN changes what you can learn, and how history can quietly shape team dynamics across Japan, China, India, and beyond. We also dig into his NAACP involvement in Lansing, why he stepped up as president, and how local advocacy connects back to the same goal he learned at home: treat people like human beings and hold systems accountable.

If you care about veteran transitions, Black leadership, community organizing, ethical leadership, or doing the hard thing on purpose, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the biggest lesson you’re taking from Harold’s story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Today is Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. We're talking with Harold Pope, who served in the United States Army. So good afternoon, Harold. Good afternoon. Thanks for uh coming here and meeting with me today.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

All right.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Well, we'll start out with I think an easy question. When and where were you born? So I was born in uh Mississippi, a small town called Shibuta, uh back in 1960, June 9th, 1960.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Okay. And did you grow up in Mississippi then?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

I did not. All right. We moved um shortly after my birth, uh, we moved um to Albany, New York. Oh. Part of Great Migration where um a lot of um African-Americans moved from the southern cities up to northern cities.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Okay. Do you have a lot of brothers and sisters, or were you an only child? Uh sister. Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Grew up with a sister and um in a single parent household with my mom. All right. Tell me a little bit about your mom. Oh, so my mom, uh, her name is Anne Pope, and she is a legend in Albany. Uh she um she's about to turn 88, and I was recently caring for her. Um, and so um just sent her back home to my sister, uh, and it's timely. Um my mom uh worked on the railroad, worked for the railroad, uh, and also was the president of the NAACP for in Albany for over 20 years, and then served another 20 plus years in a state conference. So she is a huge figure in uh the advocacy world in Albany and is is dearly beloved. Talked about the Great Migration. There's a New York State um museum has a uh exhibition and uh or exhibit, and in that exhibit, uh they have what they call the hats of the great migration, and one of my mother's hats is in that exhibition. And so um she uh got home in time for the uh premier event of it. Uh she's just over the moon.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Just thrilled, huh?

A Mother’s Legacy In Albany

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, just thrilled. 88. 88, 87, about to be 88. She deserves it. Um she is uh she's a rock star. Uh I was home. Um and so when I go home, I help my sister with some of the responsibilities with caring for my mom, and and so I'll take her to the bank, and um tellers will skip the line and call her over. Um motor vehicle, um, she got into a situation where the dealership kind of they screwed her, made her uh buy the car out of her lease, and so out of my out of frustration, I bought the car myself. So um, but took her to the motor vehicle to exchange the paperwork, and uh these two young ladies, you know, you could see them talking and excuse me, sir, can you can you come here? And and I and so I was leaving my mom in line.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Uh, and they said, no, no, bring her too. And uh they said, we'll take care of you. So both of them helped my mom. And they last, yeah. Can't wait to go home to tell their mother, their parents, that they waited on my mom.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

She is a rock star. Oh, she is. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

She absolutely is. She knows everybody, or everybody knows her.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Um, she's got early dementia, and um, so a lot of things she can't remember. Um, short-term memory is horrible. Um, but her long-term memory um is mostly intact. Okay. And so she's got stories. So when she first came to stay with me, a reporter called and said, Hey, I'd like to interview your mom. And so I'm with my mom. I said, Hey mom, um, these people are calling, they want to do an interview with you. She said, Interview me? What do you want to talk about? I said, Well, mom, I guess you you can find that out when they go to interview you. She said, Can we tell them to call me back next week? I said, sure. But that's what we did with them last week. Right. I'm it's it's this is you, this is, you know, if you don't want it, she said, I know. All right, I'll talk to him and she's talking to him, and you know, and she's bubbly and talking about, you know, these cases that she worked on and how she got somebody out of trouble, or how she challenged city council, how she challenged the mayor, how she even challenged the governor of New York. And um, and so she she um she's got these stories. And then afterwards, you know, later that night or the next day, she said, no, was I was I in Mississippi the other day? Did we? I said, No, Ma, but you talked about Mississippi. She said, Well, did we do this? No, no, but you talked to somebody. And so when it brings it, when she brings those memories up, she actually in some ways relives it and feels it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my my grandsons, um we surprised her in New York one time. I said, Oh my god, you guys are here to see me. And then an hour later, she said, Oh, when did you get here? And so, so my grandsons, they were looking at each other and said, Listen, in so many ways it's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Because it's exciting for her every time she realizes that you're here. And so when you hear her repeat herself, she's enjoying the time with you. And just to hear her to ask you when you get here ten times in the same day, that means she's reliving that 10 times.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

She gets that excitement over and over again from her.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, yeah. That's a great way to look at that. Yeah, I have to.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

You know, um, because obviously, as a normally functioning person, it's annoying.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Right. And and so they they um they have great respect for their great-grandmother. I don't think they would be annoyed, but I wanted them to understand. Um, because that could be me in some years, right? And so this is the opportunity to to realize early, you know, what aging looks like.

Childhood Freedom And Hard Policing

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Give them a great example, yeah. So so uh as we talk about memories, you know, what was it like growing up then in Albany with your mom and your sister? And and how was your childhood? Let's talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So remember, I um I think I said I grew up in the 60s and 70s, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Well, the 60s and 70s, what it was like, it was like stay outside, right? Yes, it was like stay outside before you come home, you get back in this house before a street light comes out, and that's real conversation, right? Uh-huh. And so what it was like for me, you know, I was looking at my notes, uh, it was me getting involved in in various programs um that were, you know, designed to give us activities. And one of them, I laugh, was called the Young Marines. Oh. It didn't last long. But there was an organization called the Young Marines. And so, because this is again back in the 60s and 70s, it's a time when cops and robbers, we played cops and robbers, right? Cowboys and Indians. We we you know, we had all kinds of toy guns. Um, and I, you know, and superheroes, I remember being Captain America. I remember taking uh an actual trash can lid, the old galvanized trash can.

SPEAKER_04 8:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

I remember taking one of those lids, and I got that as my shield, and I'm running through the neighborhood acting like I'm Captain America. I love Captain America. And uh, and so what it was like was always being outside, always being active. Coming home, being around my mom and the things she did, I was always witnessing her in organizing meetings, her in meetings to talk about protesting um and fighting for causes that uh enriched our neighborhood. Um again, framing it 60s and 70s, New York. Um, very well known that you know, police were closing their case by pinning it on innocent people. And I I I think I thank God that it was never me. I'm very thankful it was never me because I look at, you know, they you know, people are saying they were in a room, interrogation room, and they eventually confessed. And I'm like, how do you do that? But again, that's me on the outside. Right. Not being in that box. And so again, I'm just thankful that that it was never me. Um I had um, you know, my mom is is is so strong that if they knew me and my mom, I would never be bothered. When people didn't know me, um, weird things happened. So I had the police walk up to me. Um we lived in the projects, we called on the projects there um uh high rises, and there's what they call a breezeway. So there's a cutout at the bottom, right? So where it's open and the breeze comes through there. And so it was one night where me and my friends were playing basketball, we came back home and we were walking through the tunnel, the breezeway and bouncing the ball. Well, we didn't realize there was law enforcement in the area, and so the police there and they yelled at us to stop bouncing the ball. And I don't know if it was a random somebody forgot, or it was still in the process of bouncing, or somebody was just being defiant. I I can't remember, but I do remember the police reaction is it came over to us aggressively, drew their weapons, and then threw us in the squad car and took us to the police station. And we get to the police station, and so this is the they were doing this whole community policing thing is a new idea, concept to put the police in a neighborhood and kind of gentler policing, right? Yeah, yeah, because they know everybody right now. And NPU, neighborhood police unit. Never forget. Um, so I go in there, and the death sergeant, lieutenant, whatever it was, he looks at the officer who's bringing us in, and he as we get in the door, he yells at him, What are you doing? Oh, these kids, they were doing this, and they you know they were they were disturbing whatever something that he made up, and the the lieutenant or whatever, he just starts be radiant. You dumbass idiot, son of a bitch. What are you doing? Blah blah. And he says, You see this painting on the wall here, this little picture of the of a NPU and the kids in the neighborhood? He did that. He drew that. And and now you're gonna drag him in here for what? Take these kids, you know, back home and then come back and report to me, right? Something to that effect. And I know we said we're not getting back in the car, we'll walk home. It's in the neighborhood, you know, it's two blocks, we're good. Right. We're good, right? Um, um, because the the NPU they had a contest or it was a class assignment, and we all drew something about it. And um, but and then of course my mom, she rails, you know, and you know, here it is again, over policing, doing things for no reason, no consideration, no thought. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Well, I you know, I want to ask a question about that too. So uh it to me it's like this it's like this, I don't know, what's the word, dichotomy, right? So you have this one guy who is, I mean, overly aggressive. I'm gonna arrest you for bouncing a basketball. You get to the police station and you have this other guy that's like, what are you doing, you idiot? Like it wasn't it, it wasn't, it wasn't bad cop, bad cop. Yeah, it was good cop, bad cop. But if you hadn't drawn that picture, would that desk sergeant have done it had that same reaction?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I have no idea. Yeah, you know, there's there are a lot of things about that that are bizarre because I don't remember exactly because I know I I know that I was not an obstinate child. Yeah. Like that. You know, my fear, this is the truth, my fear was my mother would find out by anything I did wrong. And that's worse than what the police or anybody else are gonna do to me. So, yeah, public facing, you know, you're not gonna see me do something that's gonna get me in trouble, it's gonna get back to my mom. It's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Right. And that's not that's not necessarily a function of your mom, everybody knows your mom. That's a function of you know your mom.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Right? Yeah. Because there's a lot of kids out there that do not have famous moms who live under that same, I would rather go to jail than have my mom find out about it.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yes, yeah, yeah. So that's real talk right there.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah. So, so um, what was school like for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Uh, so I was uh sorry to say I wasn't that obstinate kid, but I you wouldn't see me as obstinate, right? You would see me as my mother's child. Um, but I was like every other kid. If nobody's looking, I'm doing something, right? And so uh there was a time in my life where I ended up hanging with a wrong group of kids, and um we skipped school and we did all these things, and so um I get in trouble getting caught, and then I get home and get trouble. The kids I was hanging with might get in trouble with them because we see other kids doing the same thing, and the typical thing was the fight. So we had fights and uh things of that nature, and so I felt myself going down a bad path, and probably because I heard my mom saying it too, and so it sticks with me. So so I was a good student, went through a period where I was not a good student, where school was not, I was just my mind was someplace other than school. Yeah, and um but I I remember all the trouble I was getting into and coming home and facing my mom. And so I asked my mom, could I go to a different school? My cousin was a year younger than me. Uh she was going to a Catholic school, and so I got into the Catholic school, and that's where I fell in love with school.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

So so I just want to I want to make sure I understand this. Like, most of the time the parents see that the kid is in trouble and make them go to a Catholic school. You were like, Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble. I should probably go to a Catholic school.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

That's a pretty big self-awareness for a young guy.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah. Well, it was also the those weapons I was getting coming home.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, I guess I I guess after a while that gets old, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, it gets old. You know, it was like, oh I can't beat my mom, right? Right. No matter how much I I can fight, and I fought a lot, um, yeah, I'm not I can't fight my mom. Uh and also, you know, I'm sure a lot of other things were factored in. You know, my cousin, um, she, you know, grew into be my best friend. And so so went to the cat school, Father Young, um, all the nuns. Um I I loved it. Uh-huh. I loved it. You know, in fact, my oldest son met Father Young years later. My mom was receiving an award. We live in Philadelphia. We went home and um we were waiting for my mom to come out. And while I was waiting, it was with my oldest son. Um, I saw Father Young and I went up to him and hadn't seen him in years, decades. And um, and we start talking and he looks and he says, Is it your son? I said, Yeah, and he grabbed, he puts his arm around my son. Typical father Young. He puts his arm around my son and he starts walking on my son. Let me tell you about your father. Oh no. He says, Your father loved school. He said, We used to have to kick him out. We used to have to kick him out of school. He would, he, he, he wouldn't leave school without getting his homework done. So his homework was done the day he got the homework. Then he stayed around and whatever was needed. That's back with the the erasers with the channel.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Oh, yeah, the chalkboard.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

I cleaned, I cleaned the board, I cleaned the chalk, uh, the erasers, I straightened out the chairs, uh uh I would talk with the nuns, I would ask questions about the subject, and uh yeah, he said, yeah, we set to kick your dad out of school. So then you fast forward now, I'm getting ready to go to um junior high.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

And um it's uh uh it's it's like a of my mind of you from Shaw Shane Prediction where you're looking overlooking the prison yard, you're like, I don't want to go back to gin pop. And so, so I think I think it was Skyler, who's a junior high, I can't remember for sure, but um I I I didn't want to go to the junior high because I was gonna go back in with all the people that I had distanced myself from.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And so um I went to uh I asked my mom because she sent me to the military academy, Christian Brothers Academy. Uh-huh. And so I asked her, can I go there? And she said, I don't think so. We we can't afford it. And I I mean I clearly begged her enough to where she investigated it. And through the help of Father Young, the school um accepted me under scholarship. So all my mom had to pay for was my uniform.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

That's something. That's something. What what was it that uh what was it I you know, I know you kind of got away from that crowd when you went to school, but what was it that like made you you had a like a change of heart. Yeah. Yeah, what was there anything you can point to or was it just the overall experience?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

I I think it was overall experience of always finding myself in a bad situation.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

So no matter what I did, because you know, now you know now that I'm hanging with these kids, the expectation is I'm with them. And if I'm not with them, then for them, I'm against them. Right. So, yeah, when I stepped out, when I I had to avoid coming across them. Because now they want to bully me. Uh, you know, and you talk about bullying, and I I just had a wherewithal. So I'll give you an example. I learned how to swim. Because hanging with my friends, we would skip school and go to the Turkish bathhouse. Nassiest thing you could ever do. But anyway, went to the Turkish bathhouse. And so we're we're swimming in the Turkish bathhouse, and they like the horse play. And so it's just a matter of whose turn it is that they want to pick on.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Right? And so I'm tall. And the way the pools are built, you know, they drop. So I would get in the pool, and when I realized they were getting ready to pick with me, I would walk my way out to that edge. Yeah. And so some of them they were, you know, tall enough that they could come out there with me. So then I had to go further, and I learned uh because that I learned how to uh tread water.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

And so they couldn't give me. And so that that, you know, um yeah, Turkish bathhouse, whoof, that's I got bad stories about that place.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah, you you look back and you wonder what was I thinking.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Oh yeah, clearly. I mean, I won't even tell you the one story uh that I can remember. But anyway, yeah. Uh it it was the it was the environments I found myself in. I said, I I don't like these, you know. It's probably my mom. Um she didn't seem the type, but probably my mom saying, you know, you keep down this path, it's just gonna get worse. You know, um, and I'm listening to her and the stories that people are getting in trouble. And one of the things that the police would do is they would bring up, you know, some minor incident.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

You know, uh, he got caught uh because we would um actually by the Catholic school there was a warehouse, and they provided um refreshments for the for the theaters. And so, like at lunchtime when everybody left, they left, you know, they didn't close the doors. Um doors stayed open so trucks could back up and they can load it. Well, at lunchtime there's nothing going on, and people were somewhere else eating lunch, and so we would run in and grab, you know, these big bags of candy and stuff, right? Uh-huh. So if I got caught with that and they recorded it, and then later I was in a more serious incident, they would say, There you go, he's a trouble kid.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah.

Integrity As A Life Rule

SPEAKER_01 22:03

And so I remember hearing those stories about people in trouble and the things we're facing, how the cops were trying to equate something that happened five years ago or whatever, to why they did something that they weren't even in the city for. So listening to things like that probably helped me say I don't wanna I don't want to find myself in that path. And um, and so m moving into the military environment, integrity um is my go to word, integrity. Which has a huge meaning. Right. And then later, actually in the military, attaching a word or the phrase above reproach. And that's how I live my life. You know, I won't take the, I won't take the easy way if the easy way is the wrong way. I'll take the easy way if it's the easy way and still gets it done correctly. Right. But if there's anything about the easy way that is inappropriate, I'm not going to do it. I don't want somebody to say, you know, you shouldn't have done that. I don't live my life like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Did you feel any pressure to not succeed from your peer group?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

No.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Like was there any any any jealousy or any retribution for you being successful and maybe some of them not being as successful as you?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

So we lived in a I'd say we lived in the projects.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I went to the military academy. So going to the Catholic school, that was nothing. I don't even think I wore. If I wore a uniform, it was something that was dull.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Oh, but now you gotta wear a uniform to go to the okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Now I gotta go. So I'll tell you. Um I guess I felt I felt I was a smart enough kid where I knew when I s when I first started going to school, I couldn't let people see me in that uniform.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

So I had they had they had no duffel bag. So my uniform was in my duffel bag. I caught the first bus. The crack of dog, I caught the first bus. Because we were on a system where you got a bus pass.

SPEAKER_04 24:13

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

It was on the first bus. Take that first bus downtown. And then I'd wait for the bus that went on my route. And of course the bus and the driver, he'd be there 20 minutes early, sitting in there eating his breakfast or whatever. I'd get on that bus and I would change into my uniform. And uh I remember there was something that happened that I couldn't change. Maybe coming home and um I I I caught help. Oh yeah. You think you're better than everybody else? You go into that school, da-da-da-da-da. You ain't no better than anybody else. I had other people saying, hey, good for you. Good for you. But um, you know, the one saying that, you know, you're not better than anybody else, that was what you hear the most. Right. Um, but because I had a mother like I had, you know, I had the wherewithal to walk with my shoulders up. Um, you know, and you know, if if if you see me, I love to dress. Uh it's because of the military academy.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I wore a tie. I could now tie anybody with a tie. Um, my uniform, my gig line couldn't be touched. Yeah. Throughout my military career either. So I went in the service. Um, we go to the basic uh officer basic training. Um, if it were a nine-week course, I was elected super trooper seven of those weeks. So weekly, you know, um uniform check, you know, and and I learned to self-check.

Commissioning And Signal Corps Beginnings

SPEAKER_02 25:59

Now, did you go into the military right out of high school? College. Right out of college. So uh so where'd you go to college after uh University of Dayton.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

And what'd you uh get your degree in?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Uh photography. Oh. So my design.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

So I'm gonna be critiqued on all of this.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

So my so my so my desire was to be, you know, because I I'm watching Vietnam. My uncle is a Vietnam vet, Air Force. And uh he when he got out of service, he brought his family and they live with us and spent a lot of time, you know, with him and listened to his stories. So, so, so, and then he told me about the uh combat journalists.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

And that's what I went, that's why I joined the service to be a combat journalist. Okay. Which they disbanded.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Um so what year would this have been?

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Um, I went active duty in '82. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

All right. So did you enlist at first or did you you went right into the officer candidate program?

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Um so graduated um and a couple hours after getting my diploma, I got my um commission. Okay. Yeah. So my my uh announcement was uh um a tent card, so you open it up, and the bottom page was the um my uh diploma announcement, and the top page was my commissioning ceremony. Oh, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Very nice. Yeah, very nice.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

So now you're so I wanted to be uh combat journalist, and um with that not no longer being on the table um or the numbers being so low, uh still went signal core, which is communications.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Yeah, right. Yeah, right. And that was a time when Signal Corps was still pretty busy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Yeah.

Hawaii Assignment And Korea Training

SPEAKER_02 27:49

And uh so your fresh new commission lieutenant, what was your first assignment?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Scofield Barracks, Hawaii, 25th infantry to busy.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

You know, it's funny, that's where my uh my son was at when he was in the infantry. Yeah, he didn't see much of Hawaii because he got sent to Afghanistan or he got sent to uh Iraq. Yeah, but uh yeah, he was there. So so how was Hawaii for him?

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Hawaii was beautiful. So you get there, you know, you um bad sponsor. Sponsor, you know, when you when they bring you in, they could put you up in a hotel for X amount of time and then snap. My sponsor, he blew the pooch. You know, nothing about my arrival time changed. So my date was my date. And I end up my first night, I ended up staying at his place with with his girlfriend, his Korean girlfriend. And it's like, I'm on the couch. Of course, I don't know anything. Right. Now it's not a North Shore, so there's a plus, but I might wake up on somebody's couch, you know. And uh, and I have I don't do that. You know, I go I'm going to a conference this weekend, and people tell me, hey, you want to share a room? Hell no, I'm not sharing a room. Uh-oh. Sharing a room with my wife if I'm sharing with anybody other than that.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

And um, so yeah, he he he blew that. But anyway, I get to Hawaii, and it is just beautiful. The weather, every day is beautiful. Uh, and then um another beautiful thing about Hawaii, Team Spirit, which is an exercise in Korea. So um we we round out one of the um uh infantry brigades, and then of course the Sipman Corps, we would take a pretty you know a good amount of our resources uh to support the exercise. And um so got to go to Team Spirit four times, uh, and it was it was a great break from Hawaii. Now, of course, we get there in February, it's freezing cold. Yeah um, you know, the the design is to be there at the thaw, um, which is when predictability that North Korea would attack. And so so they would do the exercise so that so that forces were in place that if that were to occur, so it would stand as a deterrent, so it wouldn't occur, but if it occurred, you know, we're already in place and prepared. Right. And uh so I was like, gee, that's fun, I think. And um, so we go through the exercises, but you learn, you know, you know the military, it's all about training. And so we did some good training.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Oh, it sounds like it. Yeah. Now, how long were you in Hawaii?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Uh three plus years. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Yeah. All right. And was that the extent of your time in the service then?

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Or you stayed in for So I stayed in for 10 years. Oh, okay. Came back, went to the advanced course. Uh-huh. Um, so I got my promotion. Actually, I pinned my captain bars on in Korea uh during my last team spirit, came back, and uh, and then shortly after that, um uh went to the Signal Corps, um, officer basically training excuse me, advanced training at Fort Gordon. Um and um actually started a family there. So I um uh I fought for and and received um Fort Gordon as an assignment. Okay. As my follow-on assignment.

Marriage Fatherhood And Single Parenting

SPEAKER_02 31:17

So you served your family there, so you gotta tell me how did you meet your wife? So what was that all about?

SPEAKER_01 31:22

So so I had um one child while I was in college. Uh-huh. And so coming back, uh, I knew I was going to court to fight for custody of hips. Um, I met my wife in Hawaii. Oh. Yep. She's from Maryland. She was in Hawaii with friends, and we met there. Came back, and then shortly, so she came back when I came back. So I flew into San Francisco and I drove, and she drove with me. Uh, and then after leaving her, getting ready to go to Fort Gordon, found out that she was pregnant. And so uh I'm an honorable person. Yeah um, that's the way I was raised, and so started my family, got married in Georgia, started my family there.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

Now, did you get custody of your I did?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Son or daughter?

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Son. Okay. Two sons, um, and then now two grandsons.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. How was it having two boys then?

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Uh were they You know, as a soldier, you know, with young kids, I lived on base. Yeah. I was living a dream. Yeah, that was it was beautiful. I mean, I was I was every bit the the model soldier at base. You know, everybody knew me. Um, they knew me as a family man, respected, you know, it was a good feeling.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

And uh it also gives your it kind of gave your kids a different environment to grow up in as well, didn't it? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Yeah, yeah. They got sick quite a bit. I'll bet. And then as I left the service, um we divorced. Oh so I um ended up being a single parent with my oldest son.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

So you know, uh there's something I I when you have a dad as a single parent, it's uh saying I I uh for a while had my daughters and um there's I don't know something about that bond that you got with your child when you're the when you're the dad and you're the only parent.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, it's different. Yeah, and it's can I leave my phone in here?

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Oh your phone's right on the right behind you there.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Uh so I take note.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Um yeah, it is a special bond. And um and of course, so my so my son struggled through high school. My mom was busy telling me, oh, it's because you're busy dating. My dating has nothing to do with that boy's school work. And um uh I need a girlfriend in my life because I have no maternal instincts. And so, I mean, he went through school, he he had Lyme disease. And then right after he cleared the Lyme disease, he had a staph infection. And it's like, what's going on with this kid? I said, I don't know, but it ain't my fault. So going through school, he was well liked, but he wasn't doing his work. And the teachers weren't telling me. And so I find out, you know, we spent a weekend working on his project, and a week later I'm talking to the teachers, yeah, he never turned it in. Why didn't you tell me? And we go and it's in his locker.

unknown 34:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

And I'm looking at him, why didn't you turn it in? Back when it was cool not to be smart, I guess. And um, so teachers loved him, um, so they wouldn't tell on him, and uh, and so then he he finally graduated and left. People talking about going to college, said, and he college, high school kicked his ass. So I know college is he's not he's not mentally ready for college.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

He ended up going into the army, uh-huh, signal corps. Oh yeah, enlisted. Yeah, and he did 10 years as well. Very nice. Yeah.

Why He Left The Army

SPEAKER_02 35:11

So what was the deciding factor? You're like you're halfway through a military career at 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

What what storm, desert shield, going to Kuwait fighting over oil, yeah. Didn't want to be that pawn. You know, I said, you know, I've learned something. I've done 10 years, committed, you know, always wanted to be in the military. Um, I did 10 years, but at that 10-year mark, things happen and show me the political side of the manipulation of the military. You know, so same thing we see today. We're fighting over oil. Right? We're fighting over oil and you know, make it make sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Um it's almost like the last the last war that made sense was like World War II. Honestly.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

I mean, that's how it feels sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, yeah.

Ford Career And Shanghai Move

SPEAKER_02 36:08

And that doesn't that doesn't mean that the folks who served in all of those. It's not the people. Right, that's right. We're not talking about that part of it. Right, right. It's the political side of it. So, so uh I mean, what'd you do after you got out the army then?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Went to work for Ford Motor Company. Okay. Uh so it went automotive, spent 32 years in the automotive industry, largely with Ford, but with other companies as well. But yeah, um not a bad move. Um in fact, it was almost like being in the army. I I got to move around. So I started with them in Philadelphia and then moved to Dearborn. A few years after I was in Dearborn. So let me see, I got well, I moved to to Michigan in '99 in 2005. Um was on an international assignment living in Shanghai.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Oh, that's rough.

SPEAKER_01 37:00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

So how'd you like that?

SPEAKER_01 37:05

I loved it. Um, yeah, I traveled throughout Asia. Uh, my first so I did an assignment in Korea while I was in active duty. Um, and of course, all the trips over from Hawaii for Team Spirit. So it gave me a chance to go to um Korea, non-military.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

And uh it was I also used Korea as my number one spot for barber. So being in China, they don't cut um hair like mine. Right. And so I I found myself, I got lucky going to Singapore. Some guy just happened to cut, wasn't afraid to cut hair, so he cut hair. Yeah. He had confidence, he did a good job. Um, and but then I would, you know, I'd be I'll be traveling all over and I'm taking my clippers and I'm just you know clean sweeping my head.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

But then I got a uh uh fortunate enough to book a trip to Korea and I said, I know where I'm going. I'm going, I'm going down to Itawan. I got a lot of barbers in Itawan.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

You know, I I honestly never never knew that was a thing, but my daughter uh went to uh cosmetology school and she cuts hair, and she's one of the very few people out there that know how to cut your hair. Yeah, you know, and so she's built up this clientele of folks who come to her because not many people know how to cut African-American people's hair. I didn't know that. Like I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

So obviously African-American barbers can cut African-American people.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

But when you so you go to Shanghai, so I went to a place, it was like a Bidal Sassoon, uh-huh. And my my man, he's got the, he's got the he's he's doing this, cutting my hair with the scissors and everything. And I get back home, I'm like, what the hell? And uh and I get my clippers and I just you know do a zip line. Right. And no style, but it's manageable, yeah. Um, but just hilarious. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Is that you know, is that is that really really part of the um part of the whole bar like barbershop culture? Like that's where everybody meets, that's where everything gets talked about. Like if you want to know what's going on, you go to the barbershop.

SPEAKER_04 39:48

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

So you think that's part of that?

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Oh, yeah, you have to go to a barbershop. You don't have to go to a bar.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

So so everybody talks about the the bartender is the therapists.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Oh, the barber is a therapist. The barber sees all ages, and you have to go to the barber.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Right. Right? Yeah. He sees you on your best day and he sees you on your worst day.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

Yeah, yeah.

Building A Pan-Asia Team

SPEAKER_02 40:11

And everything in between. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So uh how long were you in uh Shanghai then? Uh a year and a half. Okay. Yeah. And then you came back to Michigan. So was it Ford that brought you to Michigan then?

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Yep. Okay. Yeah. Ford brought me to Michigan. And um it was uh it was four, so you know, Ford Split made Vistion. Right. And so uh, but it was still part of Ford. Um, so I did 25 years in the Ford system. Okay. And um, but yeah, they took me over to Shanghai. So the so the components division is where I largely worked in Ford. Um and uh yeah, they took me over, and my job was to train um all of the they created an organization in Shanghai. My job was to chain train the supplier quality engineers how to work with the supply base, uh, teach them all of our processes and and in and guidelines. And so that would have been on the surface six people. Um, but in reality, there already existed an organization in Asia that did that job, uh, and they were based out of Japan. So so and those are the guys that I had worked with before I went over. So now I go over, so I've got the the group that's based in Japan, so all of them except one was in Japan, the other one was in the Philippines. And so so when I got there, I talked to to our director and said, hey, this they obviously have to work together. And that's not been solidified.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

And so got permission to promote um promote the the the guy in Japan that was leading the team, promoted him to a regional director. And and so, and then I stayed in my role, but worked with in the background for him to help him build his organization. Well, at the same time, we were launching a project in Thailand and sort of needed help. So when I first got there, every two weeks I was in Thailand. So in Thailand, they also brought in a team member from India who was not a part of the whole Southeast Asia, so they wasn't a part of. And so now I'm sitting there and say, hey, this is bigger than I thought. And so I ended up going to India and meeting a team in India, and that's a huge team. There were 35 at them in India, and so at the end of my assignment, I had built a 50 member team who covered all of Asia, and uh it was a beautiful thing, it was a feather in my cap. And uh I learned a lot. I learned about the different cultures and yeah, because that's a cross-cultural team.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

Like they don't all just get along. No, right? You really had to do some some work to make that happen.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Oh, yeah, yeah. So just even the um marriage of um the Japanese leader over the Chinese.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Because there's some bad blood between the Japanese leaders.

Censorship And Daily Life In China

SPEAKER_01 43:35

So the Rape of Nanjing, the Rape of Nanjing is a book, and it's about how the Japanese tried to completely wipe out the leadership of the infrastructure of China. And so at the time, China had four main regions, and let's just call them north, south, east, and west. And so the Japanese went in and they killed the men that were in leadership positions and they took the women as concubines. And so now you fast forward, I'm sitting over there, and the the the lead in China was a woman, and then the lead in Japan is a is a man, and now he's you know the director and sitting with them, and you know, sometimes you don't see it, but then there are moments when you catch it. And it was at her performance review where we caught uh I caught the the big issue.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

And um but I mean I it sitting with Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Korean sitting and having conversations talking about unions and Talking about Chinniman Square. Uh-huh. So, you know, people don't realize we talk about censorship, but living in China, if you're on a generic network, if you Google Chinnement Square, you will not find the massacre at Chinniman Square.

SPEAKER_02 45:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

It's blocked.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Yeah, their Google's completely different than our Google.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Yeah. Yeah, it's filtered. You can't find it. You can't find where the you can't find government atrocities.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

As a citizen. And so working over there as an employee as an international employee, we have a VPN. So I connect. So my my cousin, my mom came over to visit, and she noticed and I said, here. So before I plug into the VPN, I tell her, look up something that's interesting. She looks up Channel Square. Oh, they got flowers, they got this, they got that, they got no tanks. Right. And they got nobody being run over. I said, hold on. So then I connect to the VPN, um, virtual private network that that connects you to a completely different area of a of a network. And first thing that pops up is an image of the tank rolled over uh a Chinese citizen. Right. And uh and she also there was a story about French villas being made, and um um and the government was talking about how it was making money for the farmers, and the government was managing the sales and the promotions and this and that, and the citizens were making all this money, and then you see an interview with a citizen, and a citizen, you know, very, very vocal. This, you know, and obviously in Chinese, we're saying this is not true, and you can see it get cut off. Yeah. And my cousin goes, Hey, what happened to the feed? What happened? I said, Oh, nothing, that's normal. And she said, What do you mean? I said, Well, take a look. And of course, it's it's uh international CNN.

SPEAKER_04 47:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

And so it comes back around, and same thing, you know, got all these pretty images of these um Rivieras being made, and you know, these foreigners moving in, and you know, the farmland before and now after, and the you know, the interview with the government official, and then all of a sudden they got a citizen and they get cut off. I said, it's censorship. It's it's that's straight censorship. It's it's something that we're not used to, but that is the way of life here. Yeah that story will never get out, and it's funny. So she said, so they censor and they're bad at censoring. I said, yes. So I mean, why would you let the first part of the, you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Yeah, you think they would have just cut it completely off?

SPEAKER_01 47:54

But again, that's us thinking, right? Right. That's our Western mindset. Right. So the reality of it is they probably say, show, show a citizen being interviewed, just don't show the interview of the citizen.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Yeah. Right? Yeah. So that's what we're doing. Yeah, see, we talked to your neighbors.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Yeah.

unknown 48:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

You didn't get to hear what they said, but you we talked to them.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Yeah, China was interesting. But I loved it, you know, the food. I cooked a lot because the the food was uh uh not what I'm used to. Uh I remember going to this place called town called Ningbo. And um, so it'd be like going to Chicago and say, oh my god, I can get some seafood, right? So I get there and it's like, oh my god, hairy crab. They're known for their hairy crab, right? So I so I get a hairy crab, and there's a uh they're about this big. So that that's what got me first. Like, oh wow, this is the rave. What's this is all a rave? Yeah, yeah, what's the big deal? Yeah, and it's got hair on its claws. Okay, I get the name, and uh, I have some hairy crab, and uh, and it comes out um freshly freshly exposed, not killed.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

So it's still moving.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Oh. That's terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Well, I'm on an episode of uh Star Trek? No, right.

SPEAKER_02 49:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Yeah, I was kind of looking forward to being close.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Well, in the in if I'm if I'm not mistaken, Chinese food in China is nothing like Chinese food that you buy here in America.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

You uh order something off of an American Chinese menu, they're gonna look at you like they don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

Um but there and the restaurant was at, it was uh was a was a Western style restaurant, but it had strong leanings to traditional Chinese. So when you read the menu, you can get you know fried rice, but you could also get live crab and stuff like that. And uh so I said, Yeah, you don't have to cook this.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yeah. Yeah. And I draw the line of eating something that's moving across my plate.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Yeah, yeah. And then they just say I got food poisoning in Ningbo.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yeah, that was scary.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

Yeah. Uh there's nothing worse than being out of the country, being sick.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Yeah, yeah. So, but I had a good team, you know. The one young lady, uh, the engineer that I was on a trip with, you know, when they took me to the hospital, she stayed with me. And I remember um in my mind, the person that took off the gurney that ended up putting me on had died. Oh. It's just my mind. I don't know. I don't know if that's true. Um, but when they brought the gurney, they were giving me a put me on a gurney and she she snapped at them in in Mandarin, and they they didn't they hadn't removed the sheets. So they put new sheets on and they put me on, and then the same thing when they gave me an IV. Um they give you an IV and they put you in the waiting room.

unknown 50:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

So she was there, you know, I said, make sure it's good, those are fresh needles and this and that. So it put me in the they put you in the hallway while you sit on your IV. And they've got hooks uh hanging off the ceiling to hang the back.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Oh, like right in the hallway.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

Yeah, right in the hallway. Uh, no, not bad. But when you look at the hooks and you see all the hooks are rusty.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah, I it's a hospital. So then when they then they gave me one bag and they wanted to give me two, I said, I'll go someplace else to get that second bag.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

Uh-huh.

Returning Home With Global Credibility

SPEAKER_01 51:24

Um, because I was flying, I don't know if I was flying back that day or the next day, but so I flew back and then I went to a Western doctor. Um so here's the difference. The hospital they took me to, I think, cost, I think she paid$25,$35. Took me to a Western hospital. That was a seven, eight hundred dollar bill. I was like, but it's okay. Because I got the care that I expected.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

There were no rusty hooks or dirty bed sheets. You know, those are important things to me.

SPEAKER_01 51:59

Those are important things to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

So some extent you get what you pay for.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Yeah. Well, what was it like coming back then to the States after being uh, you know, in China for that period of time?

SPEAKER_01 52:12

It was good. So I had a great boss at the time. So he, you know, the company tells you when you're coming back, make sure you identify your landing spot. You're guaranteed a job, but you gotta you gotta find it. Right. And um, so I I did some tremendous things. I think I did some tremendous work while I was over there. Um I I formed that whole organization. We had an event that all the suppliers in the really in the region came in and we gave them a presentation of the company and um our future and their responsibilities. We had them sign some agreements and and during that, you know, a lot of people from a lot of the leadership in the U.S. came. So I got a lot of exposure like that. Yeah. My boss was new. Um, so when he came over, um, that was his first trip. So he comes over and the roadshow, my hand is all over it, my signature is is all over it, and it's nicely done. It makes him look good, it makes it makes our organization in in uh Asia look good. And so he says, Hey, I got a job for you when you get back. Don't look. But there's no need for you, look, I got a job for you. And um, and he he kept his word. He absolutely kept his word. I really appreciated um having him at a boss at that time um because he said, I want you to know and feel comfortable about your returning to the U.S. And and I did. So I returned in December. My promotion and assignment and a new job was effective in October. So my new pay started in October. I didn't get home until December. Wow. And so so when I came home, uh came home at the time that we were being audited. And so then it was like, uh, are you ready for those audits? Yeah, I'm just gonna observe for a minute, right? I mean, I just got this job yesterday. And matter of fact, I couldn't take vacation, I had to go straight to work. Right. And uh, but I ended up taking over the audit. And and so the old director, who had now been replaced by the new director, uh, she pulled me aside. She said, Hey, you really retreated a lot while you were out of the country, you learned a lot, and it showed during the audit. So coming back was was very pleasant. Um, I uh uh I I so coming back now I have a global presence in the organization.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Right.

Service Mindset In Civilian Work

SPEAKER_01 54:38

So because when I was in Shanghai, um I was the key focus for communication. When when there was a program in Europe that was getting product out of China, I was a go go-to person to talk to. Um the US, so I mean, the company paid for me to have um voiceover IP phone at home. And so I had that phone, and that way I can, you know, join calls in the evening, in the morning from different countries and not um used um cell phone. Um then I had an international cell phone and then I had a US cell phone. So I was pretty well covered in that aspect. Yeah, but I was I was uh internationally known without throughout the company, and I got high marks, and um you know when you're working for somebody and you and you got all that positive feedback, all that positive input, all that positive, those positive exchanges, you do better. Absolutely, right? Because you have more confidence, so you walk with uh more confidence, you deliver with more confidence, and so so so yeah, I did pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

So I'm just curious, you know, you're um while you're growing up, you're watching your mom like as a community organizer uh doing a lot of these things. Do you think that those lessons that you learned from her, not even intentionally, but helped you uh as you were building these organizations and bringing people together? Can you see a parallel between your mom's uh community organization and what you were doing?

SPEAKER_01 56:13

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, um do you think good leaders are born for raised? I I think you have to be raised, you have to experience before you can deliver on key things. And some of us learn faster than others, and so you be you can be a good leader early, and some people don't learn. And so you may never be a good leader. And I think for me, watching my mom, I know for me, watching my mom, it came out. So when I was in college, my CE, I was a president of the black student government. Uh-huh. You know, that was every bit my mom. All the organization, all the relationship, um, all the drive. Um when I graduated, my senior year, my junior senior year, I was well known in the community, the NACP in the community. All those things um were uh at my disposal. I had access to so many, so many people. I got to meet and sit with people like Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Julian Bond, Andrew Young. I had, you know, direct interface with them. Um Tony Brown, who you may not know from The Black Journalist, um, he was in my ear. You know, he helped shape me and my desire to be uh a journalist. Um and and um got me, you know, he he got me on a path to go into uh I think it was 1980, it was called Black College Day 80, where um black students marched on Washington to get funding for HBCUs. Um I was at the march on Washington Um that was led by Stevie Wonder and others fighting for um National Holiday for King. Yeah. Uh I it was one of the coldest days of my life. And I remember marching down the street up to the plaza, had my camera in hand, I'm freezing, shaking, and I'm just taking in the sights and absorbing, you know, the community on a larger level. Uh people from every from everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 58:22

So kind of I I think you could partially answer my next question. That is, throughout your career uh in the civilian world, working for Ford Motor Company and Vistion, did you continue your um community leadership as well?

SPEAKER_01 58:37

I did. So let's talk a little bit about that. I did, and I can even relate it to you know being in the service specifically.

SPEAKER_03 58:43

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

Um, going over to um Korea from Hawaii. So, what does a soldier do at night? Right?

SPEAKER_04 58:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:54

You always, you know, I'm I'm an officer, so I don't I didn't have the curfews, I didn't have the rotation and all that. Uh every night I can do what I'm I can go somewhere, go off base. And um, and so I went off base and went to the ville and sat there and sat in a bar and drank beer with everybody, some OB, some Mickju with everybody, um Soju, you know. Um I watched people, they walked out of there sloppy drunk. And I am not a sloppy drunk person. I don't like that absence of control of myself and my surroundings. So I spent time with the tailor getting my master dress uniforms made. Kids um would come in and I would I enjoy I love kids.

SPEAKER_03 59:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

And so I spent time with the kids so much so that I would end up uh volunteering at the orphanages. That that's so I'm all the way over in Korea, I got all this free time, and I spent my time helping kids with their playtime, straightening up the room, and and and it was an exchange. So I taught them English, they practiced English on me, and they taught me Korean. The funny thing was Korean has a age structure to the language as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

Oh, so you we're talking Korean like a kid.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

I'm in a room and somebody said, You sound like a kid. So Korean guy, you sound like a kid. And I go, oh, and they they told me, well, that's because they're the language they're speaking, is the dialect of a child. Oh wow. That's it. The good news is you understood what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:43

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

And that's a key part of communication, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

And so, but yeah, um I it it it was natural. I, you know, um in in in college, um, you know, I let one of the first marches on campus for Martin Luther King Day. Um, you know, and you know, like I say, you know, in the military in Hawaii, same thing. Um helping provide food to the locals um because it, you know, they were on a the Japanese were on a bubble. They bought up property, real estate, and businesses in Hawaii. Um, the cost of living of in Hawaii exploded, right? Forcing locals to live in camps. When my first week in there uh on the news, one one of the one of the most memorable, heartbreaking things I saw was the state troopers breaking the family up. Living on a living on a park.

unknown 1:01:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

Living in uh those GPE extra largest, huge tents. And they went and the family interlocked arms and they went between uh Samoan and his son. So you got one of the biggest dudes in the world and a big little boy. Yeah. And the police broke him up right there. And it was horrible. That's sad. Yeah, and so right away, you know, uh, you know, I'm looking and I I saw an image of, you know, people giving out, you know, uh care packages. So on the weekends, I spent a couple hours helping them together and delivering care packages. Um, all that is is from my mom, the the urgency to have a desire to be humble and to support those that are less fortunate.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:32

And that's that's every bit my mom. All the programs that she worked on, watching her and listening to her and understanding that side of humanity, it's vital. If you don't have that side of humanity, think about all the people that would be lost. Right. You know, you look at you look at East Lanson and what what you're trying to do with criminalizing homelessness. You gotta stand up for that. You gotta stand up to fight against that. I have a I have a beautiful space to live in. I'm fortunate, I'm blessed. I realize that. Right. Not everybody is is is equally as blessed.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

It's easy to live in a bubble, though, and not realize that there are people who are less fortunate than you.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

Yeah, yeah, I've gone through that. I mean, I've traveled and sometimes I had to collect myself. I mean, um when I first moved to Philadelphia, I was busy focusing on getting myself organized, going through a divorce, um, get myself organized organized from being outside of the military. Yeah, which is difficult. That ain't easy. Yeah, that ain't easy. Then I go to a union shop and you know, I'm in front of the military. Right? So my team in the military, they would roll deep with me, and we we we we could we we could defend ourselves as a group. We would protect each other. But I get I get to a new environment and there are differences.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

You know, and I'm not necessarily looked looked upon as being friendly. I could I can have some friendly exchanges, but I had to learn that that didn't mean that that was my friend or someone who was really befriending me.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

Well, yeah, there's there was definitely a uh us and them attitude, right? Yeah when it came to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

You're not one of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:15

Yeah. So I was fortunate enough that that again people could see in me, my spirit. Yeah. Um, they saw me doing um doing community service in the community, and so they were with me in those elements, but at the same time, there were some that were against me.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

And so so, you know, you catch somebody sleeping, and you know, you know, you I'm a fair person. Hey, you you can't do that, you know. Catch you again, hey, you really, you know, but now you made you're it's a habit, and um what I'm doing is not working with helping you adjust that habit. Right. Start out, my first job was skilled trades uh and janitors. And you know, some of the team members didn't want to adhere. And so so next thing you know, I'm writing them up. And I'm the bad guy. But I mean, I you know, from from being in the military, I recognize doing a job, sometimes you're gonna be the bad guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:14

Well, yeah, yeah. Well, and part of it too is you didn't do that to them, they sort of did it to themselves, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

It was a choice that they made.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:21

Right. Right. Right. People don't want to look at it that way, but that's just that's kind of how it works.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

And it is and it ends up being a game, you know. We had a 10-point system, and so people stay within 10 points. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

I'm gonna hit nine and a half, and then I'm gonna slack off a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

That's real talk.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:39

Try to stess, try to stretch those uh just under 10 points out for a whole year. And then when they start over, it's like yeah, behavior changes. Work, you know, work uh tendencies change because the workforce is doing different things.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:55

Well, and you know that from from working equality, right? If you set the wrong set of metrics, people will meet those metrics but not meet the intent. That's right. You know, the the the intent of the metric is to get uh whatever widget you're making to come out, you know, like it's supposed to, but I could meet all the metrics, it's still not so at the goal.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

The big phrase to the military was ever everybody's gonna take care of what the general's looking at. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Yeah, I'll never I'll forget one time uh uh uh when I was in the Navy, this Fulbird uh captain uh came and he noticed that some piece of brass wasn't shiny, right? And he made some sort of comment about it. And uh for the next two months we spent time chipping all the paint off all of the brass and then polishing all of the brass. And and I mean we never saw the guy again, right? But that's what he was looking at, so that's what we worked on.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:47

Yeah, I remember an old story fire plug story with the journal the the general's taking a walk at a base, and he looks and he says, Why is that fire plug there?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:57

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:58

And so they do a mad scramble, you know. And to figure out why the fire plug was where it was, and you got a whole survey going, and they get together and realize that you know they're gonna move the fire plug and this and that, and uh, and then you fast forward, the general comes back another time, and he says, What happened to the fire plug that was there? And so they go on this whole thing about why they why they moved it based on his comment the first time. He said, I just asked why it was there. Yeah, I didn't ask anybody to move it. How much did you spend on that? Yeah, he said, Yeah, next time ask me before you take that. Of course, everybody was afraid to ask, you know, they're busy working on an answer. So you want to ask them without an answer. Right. And uh he's like, Yeah, I never said move it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

It's assumptions, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Oh, never want to spend all that money just moving a fire plug.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:49

Yeah, right.

NAACP Leadership And Local Accountability

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

Well, you know, that same very something very similar happened in the FBI, right? The FBI director was a stickler for um grammar and proper formatting of memorandums and things like that. And so uh he had received a memorandum about something that was going on with organized crime, and um, you know, he just made a little note on there hey, watch the borders. He meant the border of the memorandum the guy was in. Well, the the prestiga meaned like watch the borders. So they sent all these people to the different borders for whatever reason to go watch the border, yeah. So it always pays to ask to get clarification.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:27

Clarification, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:28

Yeah, absolutely. So I did want to talk a little bit about your time uh with the NAACP, only because I feel like that really, really ties in with your uh upbringing and and what you learned from from your mom. But um, you know, let's talk about how you got involved with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:43

So um NAACP has always been uh in the forefront of my life, obviously, because my mom traveled from location to location. Um I've been a member of different areas. Uh and then once once I got here, um, you know, my mind that was that Lance was gonna be a forever home at that point, right? And uh and and so I got active here, uh, changed my my uh annual membership to a life membership. And um and have steadily gone up to the highest level of life membership. So I'm subscribing to the top level right now. Um it was just natural. Um there was a parade going on. I gone to a couple of meetings and then parade came on, so went to the parade and participated in the parade, got my shirt, but you know, also, you know, as part of committing to the overall activism. Started making meetings on a regular basis. Um saw some things I liked, saw some things I didn't like, and this is how I am. I I'm not gonna be somebody on a team complaining about why my team is failing. I'm a person who will step up and do the things that make a difference in the team's success or failure, which could include becoming a leader. So I left for a little bit, I came back and re-engaged with the NACP Lansing, and in my opinion, it was going away from his so far away from his mission that it was unrecognizable. And for me, it was difficult for me to participate in meetings because of the things that were or were not being done. And so I asserted myself, um kind of made myself a parliamentarian and helped manage the meetings in the hope that we would get more work done. And then I uh uh decided just to run for president. And so that's what got me to be president because again, being a part of the organization, not liking the direction it was headed, the thing I needed to do to help, or I knew I could do to help, was to become the president and help modify some actions. And so now you'll see the NAHP more um engaged in the community and vocal. Um in fact, the new president, I was I was proud of him yesterday. He was on the news speaking about the George Floyd memorial that was defaced. Uh-huh. Uh and I'm just happy because you know, before I was president, that that was a rare thing, where now it's common. And so so, yeah, um, that advocacy, don't know if you're familiar with the the two young men that were pepper sprayed in in uh East Lansing.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:47

Um heavily engaged in that where they were wrong. The the police chief made a statement publicly that they were criminals, um, released their names, which was also inappropriate, and and never showed the video from the store that showed that there was no fight. And so you said what you said, but now that we had that video that you chose not to release in the major statement, you had it. You had the same visual evidence that we had to show that there was no fight. And so we pushed and asked for her to resign because she's made racist comments. Her demonstration shows that she is okay with the over policing of minorities. She's okay with that. And that's not okay. I I I tell her, I tell anybody, we're not looking for extra attention. We're not. Right. Treat me like a normal human being. That's all I ask. That's all I ask. If I get pulled over by a cop for speeding, the odds are I'm gonna get a ticket. And that might sound sound normal on the surface. But I talk to my counterparts, they say, I never got a ticket. You ever been pulled over? Oh, yeah, I was pulled over once or twice. Not a lot, once or twice. But you didn't get a ticket. Why? Because the officer used discretion and chose not to give it to you. Right. In my case, the officer will use no discretion and just stick to giving me a ticket. Now I won't sit here and say I've never been pulled over and not gotten a ticket. But I've been absolutely amazed when this happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:31

And I will speak on it. The last ticket I got, I told the police officer he was walking by say, hey, hold on, hold on, I want to share something with you. I said, I want to thank you for a safe and peaceful interaction. I just want to share that with you. Because I I I am thankful for that.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

Because I've seen people get pulled out of cars for traffic violation while they're following the commands and be killed. I don't want to be that person for somebody who thinks it's okay just to be abusive because they have they have a badge.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:09

So do you think at some point before you got involved that the uh NAACP had like lost sight of that? Of those issues, that that there were things that that was going on that because I because I I know that you said like you don't want to be part of an organization, you don't be part of a team and just complain about the direction it's going, right? Either either leave or do something, but you can't stay there and just complain.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:35

So I don't I don't I don't I don't want to put a bad mark on the And I don't mean it that way. No, no, no, you don't. Okay. I I don't want to put a bad mark on it. I'm just saying that I as a as a as a member, uh-huh, I felt we could be doing much better. Fair enough. And and so that was my complaint. We could be doing much better. And and in order to do much better, uh, I felt the need to uh become president. And even now it's funny because the current president, I've been hoping and praying that, you know, he's my first vice president, a good friend of mine, a fraternity brother of mine. He was my vice president when I was a president of the fraternity. Um, but he had been a president there before. And now, you know, him being my first vice president, I had every hope that he would step up into the president's role because I know he is the person that could take it to the next level. So, um, because again, for me, I I believe that building the branch up to a new level was what I was trying, that was my objective.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:34

And then part of my objective was to have somebody in place that could take it to the next level. Yeah. And and and James McCurtis Jr. is that the person I think can do that. Yeah.

Mentoring Youth Beyond College

SPEAKER_02 1:15:44

So I think just to clarify, then it wasn't that they were doing something wrong, it's just you could see that there's so much more that could be done. Yes, absolutely. That makes sense. Absolutely. That makes sense. I I really wanted to clarify that uh for anyone listening. So we've talked quite a bit. I know that you're on a schedule. Um, I I've this has been fast. I think I could sit here and probably talk to you for another couple hours, but we'll do a part two. Yeah, we should. You know, if that wouldn't be this wouldn't be the first time. But before you go, uh, I really just have one more question I'd like to ask you. And that is for someone listening to this story a hundred years from now, what message would you like to leave for them?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:22

All right. So and we're talking about veterans, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:25

Veterans are just in general, like what advice would you have for people, you know, who are listening to listening to your story about your life, how you've lived your life, the things that you've done. Yeah, you know, what what message should they take away from all of that?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:37

So thank you for that. Um, so so for me, you know, part of part of my giving back, part of my service, I mentored a lot of young men. In fact, in Philadelphia, I started an organization. So I went to the Million Man March, um, got a bunch of people together in the plant, took a bunch of men down to Million Man March. We came back excited about what we can do for our community based on what we saw at the Million Man March. What can we do for our community? Came back and I came up with the idea, let's start a mentoring program for young men, focused on the the kids and grandkids of the people who were in the plan. So people who we would know, first draw would you know, focus was on them. And so, with my affinity for mentoring young men, because I have boys, um, I want to say that we always have to encourage our youth to continue growing. One of the things that we make the mistake of is we make the mistake of always thinking college only. We make the mistake of thinking that your kid needs to leave high school and go to college. We need, I ask that people take a breath and realize there are other paths beyond college. The military is one. Trades are another. Right. Right? There are plumbers, electricians that make way more money, right, than a person who has a master's degree. They own their own business at some point, right? Because that's a normal matriculation to own their own business. And they might own their own business and branch out and hire all these apprentices, and now they can expand and do more. All they do is build their own wealth. So I encourage people to keep in mind that as you raise our younger generation, be open to other alternatives. And I get it, when I joined the military, it was my choice. It was at the tail end of a war, so it looked good for anybody else, right? Because there's no conflict.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:54

So you're not worried about your child being deployed forward. But I always was under the impression that that's always an option, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:02

It's always an option because they happen on a dive.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

It's all it's always sitting there.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:06

Yeah, yeah. And so so encourage, you know, work with our youth, encourage them to grow. Whatever path that is, whatever path that is. It could be law enforcement, right? And I I don't want to uh take away from law enforcement either. Uh it's not a profession, and I'm a I'm not against law enforcement. Right. I I'm not against it. But I'm saying law enforcement is another obvious option that young people can go up to. I know coming out of the military, they they uh going to these job fairs, they're like, hey, you want to be a corrections officer? Do you want to work in a prison?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:44

Right. No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:47

But for some people that's what they want to do. For some people it is, and they I mean I've got good friends that had had spectacular careers there. Right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:57

Yeah, to each his own.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:58

Yeah, it's funny because I'm rushing to a meeting to be with the police.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:01

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for taking time out of your your busy day, Harold. I appreciate you coming in and sharing your story with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:08

Well, thank you. Appreciate it. All right, yeah. Absolutely enjoy this, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:13

Well, good. I'm glad. Thank you. I'm glad.