Speaker 1: Lute flows. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to soft web Radio Special Operations, Military Nails
Speaker 1: and straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2: Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another wonderful episode
Speaker 2: of soft Rep Radio. I am your host, rad and
Speaker 2: before I introduce today's guest, I want to mention our
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Speaker 2: read something. Man, it's good for you. So, without further ado,
Speaker 2: I have the one, the only, the legend, Bruce right
Speaker 2: with me today. Welcome to the show. Bruce and I'm
Speaker 2: going to introduce you here, So go ahead and say
Speaker 2: hi everybody.
Speaker 3: Hi, everybody, thank you for having me in your home.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Here we go. So, according to US Medicine, the
Speaker 2: US veteran population, predominantly older males, are at high risk
Speaker 2: for chronic lymphocitic leukemia, especially if they had exposure to
Speaker 2: agent orange or other herbicides during military service. Bruce Wright,
Speaker 2: Vietnam War veteran and chair of the cl Society Patient
Speaker 2: Advisory Board, was diagnosed with CLL in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: and at the time, resources were limited as to what
Speaker 2: the next steps for treatment would be. Luckily, he was
Speaker 2: strongly encouraged by a friend to join a CLLL support group,
Speaker 2: which led him to become a part of CLL Society,
Speaker 2: a leading authority for chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients, families, caregivers,
Speaker 2: and medical professionals. Today, Bruce is a chair of the
Speaker 2: organization's Patient Advisory Board, offering support to veterans facing a
Speaker 2: similar story to his own to ensure that they have
Speaker 2: the right tools to plan for treatment and advocate for
Speaker 2: themselves within their newfound diagnosis. So today's podcast is going
Speaker 2: to be speaking with Bruce and all things that relate
Speaker 2: to CLLL, such as his own personal story as a
Speaker 2: veteran diagnosed with CLLL and how CLLL society offered him
Speaker 2: support at a time when research and resources were as
Speaker 2: readily available as they are today. What a journey you're
Speaker 2: living through, Bruce, and welcome to the show again.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. I
Speaker 3: enjoy this kind of dialogue and getting the word out
Speaker 3: to other veterans. It's most important. It's one of my
Speaker 3: old pushing it forward and helping people as I go
Speaker 3: on with life.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's also fair to say that you're seventy nine years.
Speaker 3: Old in January fifth.
Speaker 2: In January fifth, as the little.
Speaker 3: Kids on the block say, we're the oldest couple on
Speaker 3: the block. They always built a half year. So you
Speaker 3: do that when you're young and when you're old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, right right, And so when you when
Speaker 2: you joined the military? How old were you when I.
Speaker 3: Joined the military? I was eighteen years old. I graduated
Speaker 3: from high school and my grades weren't all that good.
Speaker 3: I was Upstate New York, very small, farm oriented, countryside
Speaker 3: south Syracuse, New York, and didn't know much about the
Speaker 3: military and took an extra year after high school to
Speaker 3: get ready for college. Things like college boards. I didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about it. I was too busy playing football
Speaker 3: and wrestling. And then through that avenue I was able
Speaker 3: to pick up an appointment to the Naval Academy. And
Speaker 3: what did swear in the Naval Academy in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: three and entered in peace and graduated in war. And
Speaker 3: I was fortunate during the first summer President Kennedy came
Speaker 3: out to talk to us. Most impressive motivational man. We
Speaker 3: lost him a couple months later. I marched in his
Speaker 3: Cortege procession as he was going to be interred. So
Speaker 3: we made a quite a more impression on us young
Speaker 3: people to this day.
Speaker 2: To this day core memory for you, and I mean
Speaker 2: just like probably helped inspire you. You know, a general
Speaker 2: or Admiral McRaven. I reallyst said, you know, make your
Speaker 2: bed every day during an annancement speech. Recently, you know,
Speaker 2: it's trended all over the internet. And even though I
Speaker 2: wasn't at that ceremony, that is something that was powerful
Speaker 2: that just can sit with you. And I can only
Speaker 2: imagine having you know, JFK. The President. Yes, yes, it
Speaker 2: being I'm Berlin or standing right there a donut. Okay,
Speaker 2: the man himself.
Speaker 3: And regarded to Avam mcgraven, I've met him, know him.
Speaker 3: He gave the eulogy. A classmate of minds, a fellow
Speaker 3: seal I passed away, a seal who I introduced him
Speaker 3: to his wife, and I was in his wedding holding
Speaker 3: up the sword and stayed with him throughout the life.
Speaker 3: They lived down in Coronado South in San Diego. I
Speaker 3: live up in Orange County near mission vehicle, and so
Speaker 3: we saw each other on a social basis as well
Speaker 3: throughout his entire life.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that. That's awesome. Yeah again,
Speaker 2: I literally make my bed, not just for me to
Speaker 2: come lay down in it, but so when my wife
Speaker 2: come homes from a hard day at work, she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: she've for her feet up too. There's something about that.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, Well, that's a very very small world in
Speaker 2: that life. Now, in the Navy, in sixty three, you enlisted,
Speaker 2: as you know so many other young men did, including
Speaker 2: my father, joined the Navy at seventeen, went in around
Speaker 2: sixty eight sixty nine. You see on a frigate as
Speaker 2: a radio guy. So he was a Morse Code did
Speaker 2: it all, you know, and then that translated to his
Speaker 2: green berets when he crossed over and became a radio
Speaker 2: guy in the SF teams.
Speaker 3: But well, you dad, start a good service because my
Speaker 3: first tour of duty was on a destroyer and I
Speaker 3: would often stand the watch underway, and the guy I
Speaker 3: stood it with was the communications officer, and so I
Speaker 3: always had an insight into the messages coming and going.
Speaker 2: It's like your it's like your internet right there, he's
Speaker 2: your Internet. He's like, Hey, what's going, what's the what's
Speaker 2: the weather. He's like, well, sir, this just came in.
Speaker 2: He's like update me. Oh wow, yeah, that's crazy. No.
Speaker 2: And also my dad was succepted to our got agent Orange.
Speaker 3: Well it's a clue nobody wants to be in no,
Speaker 3: And I'd say to him, welcome home, brother, And we
Speaker 3: didn't get a good welcome, and we came home with
Speaker 3: a secret inside of us which took decades. Takes decades
Speaker 3: with most veterans to manifest itself in various forms.
Speaker 2: It does, and it did. It started to manifest. He
Speaker 2: had like a lot of different complications that was attributed
Speaker 2: to you know, being exposed to Agent Orange and Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and you know, from like scleloderma, tightening of the internal organs,
Speaker 2: to like all sorts of just crazy stuff that just happened.
Speaker 2: You know. The skin cancer that he had to have
Speaker 2: is like some things removed off of his cheeks and
Speaker 2: his nose, and you know that starts to come at him.
Speaker 2: And you know, and then my mom is the caregiver,
Speaker 2: right and we love her and rest her soul. So
Speaker 2: she's wheeling him all the time at the VA, you know,
Speaker 2: breaking her back, pushing him around. As he's gotten bigger
Speaker 2: and can't get much more. You know, it can't be
Speaker 2: running marathons no more. So he starts to take on
Speaker 2: all these broad I've seen it, you know, first hand, firsthand,
Speaker 2: which is why I was so excited to have you
Speaker 2: come on and talk about CLLL and get this out
Speaker 2: there about Agent Orange and our veterans who are still
Speaker 2: dealing with it. It's out there.
Speaker 3: By the way, when I tell anyone I cross with
Speaker 3: for this discussion, you can never call me too much,
Speaker 3: text me too much, or email me too much if
Speaker 3: you want to talk more about it, or learn more
Speaker 3: about it, or want to have continuing conversation regarding it.
Speaker 3: It's a constantly changing scenario for this type of cancer,
Speaker 3: and we're fortunate with that because the medicines keep getting
Speaker 3: better and better and we benefit from that. When I
Speaker 3: was diagnosed with it, when I checked with doctor Google,
Speaker 3: which is what the VA doctor said, when I said,
Speaker 3: what is CLLL And he said, google.
Speaker 2: It right, that's all I got, go down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And doctor Google said, I was. I had five
Speaker 3: years and so as a rabbit hole twenty fourteen. But
Speaker 3: you're talking to me today.
Speaker 2: Look at that, you know, so you're rated, right, you
Speaker 2: have a rating to get out of the military. Did you
Speaker 2: have to fight? My dad had to get from like
Speaker 2: sixty to one hundred percent keep going through like an metb,
Speaker 2: you know, to say that agent orange was attributed to
Speaker 2: his that he had the agent orange. Let's talk about that,
Speaker 2: like just getting it, you know, and let me just
Speaker 2: backtrack real quick. Agent orange is a chemical that was
Speaker 2: sprayed onto canopies over Vietnam and an other foliage to
Speaker 2: try to kill the foliage so that we could see
Speaker 2: through the foliage to the ground per se and like
Speaker 2: get rid of all these canopies. That mother nature has created. Okay,
Speaker 2: in the meantime, there's like old footage of guys in
Speaker 2: black and white film and they're like spraying just hoses
Speaker 2: of it from the vehicle, like like a water vehicle,
Speaker 2: like a you know, water buffalo full of it, just
Speaker 2: spraying it, like killing the you know, one hundred yards
Speaker 2: out from there, kills on, just drenched in it.
Speaker 3: There was so much ignorance at that particular time. The
Speaker 3: guy running the navy was a guy named Amro Zumwal
Speaker 3: Elmo Zoomwalt, and his son was involved with the River Forces,
Speaker 3: was sprayed with it and got cancer real quickly from
Speaker 3: it and died very prematurely from it. And it was
Speaker 3: zoom Alt and authorized the use of it. And so
Speaker 3: think of that, You think about what I authorized something.
Speaker 3: It took my son's life way too early.
Speaker 2: It's like take my son, sir, here you go. It's
Speaker 2: like Abraham was going to do that. I think somewhere
Speaker 2: in a Bible. You know, I'm saying, it's like you
Speaker 2: didn't even do it.
Speaker 3: Today's conflicts you're seeing every day on TV two different
Speaker 3: sons of Abraham.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm telling you that it's like Holy Cow,
Speaker 2: take mine. You know it's it. It's like, yeah, holy cow, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Talk about your dad's skin cancer. I've had twenty one
Speaker 3: Moe's surgeries. Those are surgeries where they go in and
Speaker 3: take the skin cancer off and keep taking skin until
Speaker 3: they have a clear field. I've had twenty one of them.
Speaker 3: My nose has been rebuilt twice, my ear has been
Speaker 3: rebuilt once. And that's a definite side effect of having
Speaker 3: cl CLL is a blood cancer, and it caused us
Speaker 3: us to be immune suppressed. And you're sitting there right
Speaker 3: now growing skin cancers where your body's immunity is strong
Speaker 3: enough that it comes up and it goes away. You
Speaker 3: just keep fighting it because your immune system's in balance.
Speaker 3: Ours is not, and so we have no way to
Speaker 3: fight it. So when it comes into us, it gets
Speaker 3: a foothold and we have to cut it out or
Speaker 3: burn it out. Won't stop.
Speaker 2: It just keeps moving through everything. So it has to
Speaker 2: be cut out because it's like whereas like like cancer,
Speaker 2: cancer spreads tumors. Some people might think is cancer. It
Speaker 2: could be a cancerous tumor, but the tumor is more
Speaker 2: of like a hard ball inside of you. That doesn't
Speaker 2: that just moves around your organs, whereas, like my understanding
Speaker 2: of cancer is it just goes through it like you know,
Speaker 2: madam min in, you know, some kind of wicked spell
Speaker 2: of sort of stone from I'm a flu like symptom,
Speaker 2: I'm in you now.
Speaker 3: And it's very insidious in how it gets to that.
Speaker 3: My wife had her thyrite out and she had several polyps.
Speaker 3: But the very smart intercanalogist that took care of her said,
Speaker 3: two of those polyps are developing a blood source. The
Speaker 3: cancer was commanding the body to develop a source of
Speaker 3: blood that got to the cancer so that the cancer
Speaker 3: cells could dump themselves into the bloodstream to go invade
Speaker 3: the rest of the body. Yeah, they had the fyrate
Speaker 3: and polyps taken out before that happened, but that's what
Speaker 3: it's doing. And you don't even know what's going on.
Speaker 2: Scary man, I've had my own scared of polyps. I
Speaker 2: had to go get so my dad was you know,
Speaker 2: he had colon like he had that going on with
Speaker 2: him too. You know so much, dude. It's such a
Speaker 2: sad thing for me to think about. But so I
Speaker 2: went to the doctor at forty and I said, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to get a colonoscopy because I'm predisposed to it,
Speaker 2: you know. She's like, you're young, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I thought I was supposed to get it at forty.
Speaker 2: Everybody's always like get checked at forty. And she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: nowadays it's fifty. But you're predisposed, so let's get you checked.
Speaker 2: So here I go getting it done, and they get
Speaker 2: me out of the room and they told me that
Speaker 2: I had three and a half pole that they removed
Speaker 2: outside of my inside of my colon. I was just
Speaker 2: literally a day over forty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you didn't know about it at all.
Speaker 2: No, And I just was like, I took the initiative
Speaker 2: to go get the oil changed, sir. I was like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to go take myself with my
Speaker 2: insurance and get my filters changed and my oil changed,
Speaker 2: and do these processes and maybe change the alternator like
Speaker 2: we do on our vehicles to get to work while
Speaker 2: we're dealing with these ailments. But yet, why do people
Speaker 2: struggle to go to get themselves checked out? What is
Speaker 2: it that we need to tell these people to go?
Speaker 2: It's okay to go to the doctor, right see.
Speaker 3: On a dialogue with the doctor talk at an equal level.
Speaker 3: He's no smarter and he puts his pants on one
Speaker 3: leg at a time. And you get one that has
Speaker 3: a good dialogue with you. We tell you through the
Speaker 3: cl Society. If you're not getting the information and the
Speaker 3: question to answered to your satisfaction, fire your doctor and
Speaker 3: get another one. Don't stick with this guy for some
Speaker 3: false loyalty. He's not doing you any good.
Speaker 2: What about our veterans that are dealing with the VA
Speaker 2: where you can't necessarily move around too much with that?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like, yes, what do you suggest?
Speaker 2: Is there some services for our veterans to go to
Speaker 2: the VA and just start this process? Is there? Do
Speaker 2: they reach to CLL Society? Is that?
Speaker 3: It's you ask the two prong questions. The first part
Speaker 3: with the VA, remember vas are teaching hospitals. The doctor
Speaker 3: who did the determination, I went in for a regular
Speaker 3: exposure to agent orange joining the registry, which got a
Speaker 3: touchy feeling, an X ray and the blood drawn out
Speaker 3: of that they told me I had two cancers. So
Speaker 3: my fast forward. My first disability findings were two. I
Speaker 3: was two hundred percent disable. Okay, right off the bat,
Speaker 3: right off the bat. Yeah, but it took a while
Speaker 3: to get that because after I fill all those forms
Speaker 3: and stuff with the VA, they said they couldn't find him.
Speaker 3: And I said, wait a minute. This was done at
Speaker 3: the VA. It's all in the VA medical record. What
Speaker 3: do you mean you can't find it. I didn't do
Speaker 3: it with a private doctor. I did it with the VA. Well,
Speaker 3: we don't see it. Therefore, we're going to disapprove your
Speaker 3: request for agent orange exposure. No you're not. Don't call
Speaker 3: me a liar. Don't call me a liar. And so
Speaker 3: the doctor that said google it, he moved on. He
Speaker 3: got his residency training done at the VA for free,
Speaker 3: and he went up to the Washington State. So the
Speaker 3: man filling in for him is what's called the attending.
Speaker 3: It's a senior guy from University California, Irvine. It keeps
Speaker 3: an eye on all little minions. And he was filling
Speaker 3: in till they got another newby and I said, hey,
Speaker 3: I don't want a newby. Do you have any patients?
Speaker 3: He said, no, I keep an eye on these patients,
Speaker 3: these young guys here. And I said, well, I'm your patient.
Speaker 3: So that's what I tell the VET. Ask for the
Speaker 3: attending and tell the attending. I want to be your patient, okay,
Speaker 3: because you're in charge of those little guys, but you're
Speaker 3: the database of knowledge, and we had a great relationship
Speaker 3: for five years. I was watching wait they call it
Speaker 3: for five years. It's a slow growing cancer thing, and
Speaker 3: so you have time to make decisions and how you're
Speaker 3: going to handle it because as you will learn if
Speaker 3: you ever go to our website at the Clsociety dot org.
Speaker 3: At the top level, we all have CLLL. Go down
Speaker 3: one level, and each one of us is different. Our
Speaker 3: treatment's different, how it manifests within our bodies different. So
Speaker 3: we're the same at the title, but below it, we're
Speaker 3: individually treated. And it takes specialists, guys who hematologists, blood
Speaker 3: doctors who focus on that understand what's going on in
Speaker 3: your bloodstream because we don't have dumors. It's in our blood.
Speaker 3: It's in our boat and your boat marrow is your
Speaker 3: factory of life, and it will block the boat marrow
Speaker 3: and you're dead.
Speaker 2: It's so true, and it just gets in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does. And here's the thing, and I would
Speaker 3: pass on to the veterans. The second part is if
Speaker 3: you come to the cl Society, we purposely designed it
Speaker 3: being no cost to you. Do all the work we do,
Speaker 3: all the fact finding, we constantly update, We put on
Speaker 3: lectures and webinars, we go visit people and educate them.
Speaker 3: The only thing that costs a patient is their discretionary time.
Speaker 3: It's your time. Just put it here, and we're always
Speaker 3: updating it. And it's so far beyond what you can
Speaker 3: find on the website. Doctor Google doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: Come to us, man. You know, I've been told don't
Speaker 2: do the doctor Google thing. You know, it just takes
Speaker 2: you down the worst rabbit hole because you never cleared
Speaker 2: your cookies and cash on your computer in the first place, right,
Speaker 2: So it's going to pull up everything that you're used
Speaker 2: to looking for and it's gonna Yeah, you talk to
Speaker 2: the health professional because I was just simply sick and
Speaker 2: that was it. COVID is it? COVID is at this
Speaker 2: And it's like you might have, like, I don't know
Speaker 2: something cancer and I think I just have a cough.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I had the fortune of of me a gentleman
Speaker 3: who's a pair of rescue during Vietnam, and he got
Speaker 3: pretty banged up and he survived being intubated on COVID.
Speaker 3: A lot of intubated people didn't make it because of intubation,
Speaker 3: and we have a family to take care of. I'm
Speaker 3: the chair of the Patient Advisory Board, which gives the
Speaker 3: patients the input and the oversight and on an equal
Speaker 3: basis with the doctor's Advisory Board of the same organization.
Speaker 3: Again we're equal, okay, and we're looking for the equity
Speaker 3: of treatment and care and information and that's fun. I'm
Speaker 3: also the military lays on as We've set up a
Speaker 3: landing platform on the website, all free to say, like, Hey,
Speaker 3: you're a VET and you get a certain disability. Guess
Speaker 3: what you get your mileage paid? When you go to
Speaker 3: the BA, you get more disability. Hey you don't have
Speaker 3: a copay anymore. Hey, registration on your car could be free,
Speaker 3: like in the state of California. Hey you can get
Speaker 3: a break on your taxes in California on your house,
Speaker 3: and on and on and on. Because the VA is
Speaker 3: very onerous, they don't tell you that at all. Don't
Speaker 3: tell you.
Speaker 2: No, they don't, so we know they don't. They make
Speaker 2: you satisfind everything. Yeah, they do. You know. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you want to figure out how to get your home
Speaker 2: loan or you want to figure out how to do
Speaker 2: all these things. You can call them, but you have
Speaker 2: to like really get down and dirty, and you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes seek advocates and advocate someone who can help you.
Speaker 2: And like that's what you're talking about. Your CLL would
Speaker 2: help advocate for somebody, and the VA allows you to
Speaker 2: have an advocates.
Speaker 3: Here's another thing we have. We have an ability to
Speaker 3: talk with an expert. Let's say you have a doctor
Speaker 3: says we have a blood cancer and da da da
Speaker 3: da da mem No man only sees five or ten
Speaker 3: patients a year. The doctor I see see seventeen hundred
Speaker 3: a year. Be as amna's roster. Okay, we have the
Speaker 3: expert access. It's called with cl Society. You take your
Speaker 3: medical records and the findings that you own from that doctor,
Speaker 3: you send it in to us and make an appointment.
Speaker 3: One of the doctors on the expert staff that we
Speaker 3: have reviews it and holds a face to face just
Speaker 3: like we're doing now, and talks about your particular disease,
Speaker 3: with your particular existing laboratory results and what it really
Speaker 3: means from an experst position, and gives you advice what
Speaker 3: you should do next and how much it costs bubbcus.
Speaker 3: Where can you get this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right nowhere at c LLL Society is where, yes,
Speaker 2: sirside dot org, dot org. It's a dot org cell
Speaker 2: society dot org. Now, now let me ask you something
Speaker 2: about it. You said you were on destroyer. Did I
Speaker 2: catch that?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: So I ask airborne guys all the time. Do you
Speaker 2: ever have like a mishap with your parachute? You know?
Speaker 2: But the ocean? She do you prefer? Have you ever
Speaker 2: thought you were going to go down to Davy Jones's locker.
Speaker 3: I was an a typhoon for four days and the
Speaker 3: eighteen guys that would eat together, only three of us
Speaker 3: could eat. I am blessed by the fact that I
Speaker 3: don't get seasick or air sick. And so I was
Speaker 3: the gunnery officer on the gunery three five and fifty
Speaker 3: four's and the gun laying radar, gun directors and stuff.
Speaker 3: We did see dragon ops off of North Vietnam all
Speaker 3: the way down of Bungtown in the south and providing
Speaker 3: gunfire support as a long barrel gun five minutes fifty
Speaker 3: four and the story of life is a very unique life.
Speaker 3: And I changed from that. I did one tour with that.
Speaker 3: We arrived in d Nang shortly after ten, and I
Speaker 3: went ashore with a skipper so we could be upbriefed,
Speaker 3: and I hung with the Marines at the Nang which
Speaker 3: is where they stored the AO, and that was my
Speaker 3: first exposure in sixty eight. Then my skipper was a
Speaker 3: wonderful guy. He's like McRaven, just different, a different avenue.
Speaker 3: And when I said, he no, skipper, I want to
Speaker 3: go fly, And the Chief Naval Operations asked if we
Speaker 3: could anyone out there in the fleet's and the rest
Speaker 3: and make application and if found physically qualified, you'll have
Speaker 3: orders to flight school. And he said, I'll sign it,
Speaker 3: I'll recommend it. And we had to do it because
Speaker 3: I was deployed. They couldn't take me off the ship
Speaker 3: or that was required to stay there. I couldn't leave
Speaker 3: and leave gap the billet we call it. But he
Speaker 3: supported me one hundred and fifty percent, and he understood
Speaker 3: because he had started as an aviator and then they
Speaker 3: put him in a three's He was a coursetair pilot,
Speaker 3: Pappy Boyington plane okay, and then it flew in pantles
Speaker 3: in the Korean War, and he put him in the
Speaker 3: A three, the sky Warrior, which was at the worst
Speaker 3: carrier safety record. He said, I don't want to fly.
Speaker 3: It going to kill me. They said, you don't want
Speaker 3: to fly, you don't fly. So he changed mid course
Speaker 3: from flying the driving ships. He retired as a three
Speaker 3: star admiral. He had his act together and he was
Speaker 3: very people oriented. He was he was the model for
Speaker 3: you to follow.
Speaker 2: And model for you to follow. What a good thing
Speaker 2: to say. And I don't mean to say the A
Speaker 2: three is the intruder, it's the A six. I just
Speaker 2: get excited when I hear Navy A three and I
Speaker 2: just thought of the intruder. But yes, you're right, Pappy Boyington,
Speaker 2: I totally understand no flight of the intruder of the book. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm a.
Speaker 3: Good friends with the author. He was in the same
Speaker 3: air wing that I.
Speaker 2: Was on and I love that movie, the one of the.
Speaker 3: Many books he's written. He's still around today. And what
Speaker 3: we would do before we go on an alpha strike
Speaker 3: over the North, we'd always have these big gaggles of briefs.
Speaker 3: He'd be there. And the guys that flew in the
Speaker 3: A six they had big wheelbarrows because they had no protection.
Speaker 3: They flew single ship low at night, you know, using
Speaker 3: their system to stay alive, and they had no way
Speaker 3: to fight back, and we had a six guys. The
Speaker 3: guys hit, you know, just getting ready to go in
Speaker 3: and with a missile and they had playing with upside
Speaker 3: down and they had to punch the button to get
Speaker 3: rid of all the ordinance because there were heavy ordnance.
Speaker 3: They are heavy bombing in my time. Numbers of bombs
Speaker 3: on board.
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah. And if it's anything like the movie,
Speaker 2: which I'm pretty sure the movie with Willem Dafoe, you know,
Speaker 2: Flight of the Intruder Man, when we go offline, we
Speaker 2: should link up and see if we can get him
Speaker 2: to come on the show and even have you back
Speaker 2: and you have a threesome.
Speaker 3: Time you can, like I said, you can email me,
Speaker 3: call me and text me anytime.
Speaker 2: That would be so awesome. No. I was talking to
Speaker 2: an F eighteen pilot in New York a few years
Speaker 2: ago and we were just doing quotes the whole time.
Speaker 2: Was like let's go downtown. He's like, I love that
Speaker 2: movie and I was like, oh dude, you know, stop
Speaker 2: by the way.
Speaker 3: And just another insight you can talk about another time,
Speaker 3: you know. Top Gun one and Top Gun two. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm a Top Gun graduated as well. Oh that's awesome,
Speaker 3: And I can give you a lot of insights to
Speaker 3: Top Gun one because it was being filmed while I
Speaker 3: was out there flying at Mayor Martin.
Speaker 2: Will tell me something, tell us, give us something, give
Speaker 2: me tell me something.
Speaker 3: No, you can't ride your motorcycle down the runway going
Speaker 3: like yay. Like that two when Kelly McGillis turns him
Speaker 3: down in the bar because she has a date with
Speaker 3: a guy named Perry, and so he gets rebuffed by her.
Speaker 3: The camera goes over because Perry's back was by the camera,
Speaker 3: and the camera goes over and Perry's sitting there and
Speaker 3: she's at the table and he's handing her a menu
Speaker 3: to look at and he's got silver hair. That's my
Speaker 3: commanding officer. Oh, Pete Peterdrew. He was a technical advisor
Speaker 3: on the film. I can tell you the volleyball game
Speaker 3: was filmed for two and a half hours. But the
Speaker 3: director was on a roll and the producer was giving
Speaker 3: him grief because it was money chang ki chink chink
Speaker 3: for all the hours of all the support and things,
Speaker 3: and it was filmed for five hours, and that beefcake
Speaker 3: was one of the major sellers for people to be
Speaker 3: recruited to go fly in the Navy.
Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent. That top gun. I mean. I
Speaker 2: remember my cousin, my older cousin, I was younger, and
Speaker 2: he had it on his wall and he had like
Speaker 2: a fourteen Tomcat with all of its ordinance expounded out
Speaker 2: on the on the poster, and he just had a
Speaker 2: heart murmur so he could never be you know, and
Speaker 2: he just always had that on his wall. And I
Speaker 2: was just like, oh, big cousin, you're so cool that
Speaker 2: you're right. It did. It inspired generations still today of
Speaker 2: folks who want to take up you know, the wings.
Speaker 2: And I tell people when I talked to him, you
Speaker 2: want to fly, They're like yeah. I was like what
Speaker 2: They're like, they're like a fixed wing and it's like
Speaker 2: or anything, huh, just anything, just fly something, huh. They're like, yeah, anything,
Speaker 2: just fly hell whatever? Hey cool.
Speaker 3: In the Air Force, for example, you're a pilot and
Speaker 3: it depends where the next orders send you the needs
Speaker 3: of the Air Force. And I remember in Vietnam with
Speaker 3: some of the forward air controllers, flew with them, threw
Speaker 3: them over bad guy territory, and that's another story too.
Speaker 3: But they were going back. Some of them. They had
Speaker 3: been like f one o five drivers, f one o
Speaker 3: one drivers, and their orders post Vietnam were to be
Speaker 3: fifty two's buff They said, gotta go fly buffs. Now
Speaker 3: in the Navy, you're in a pipeline. I was put
Speaker 3: in the pipeline, flew f fours. I could change, naybe
Speaker 3: would let you change, but you had to do the
Speaker 3: dance and then they would do it. And I, for example,
Speaker 3: flew with the guy who was a helicopter pilot, and
Speaker 3: that was interesting because he wasn't used to fast airplanes
Speaker 3: and so he was behind the airplane. You know, I
Speaker 3: had to be kind of awake because I didn't want
Speaker 3: him to take me down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like that, You're like were coming in for Atlanta.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, about thirty feet off the deck of that.
Speaker 2: I'm awake.
Speaker 3: You get this thing slow enough? Why doesn't it go down?
Speaker 2: I can't park? How come I can't pull over? Yeah,
Speaker 2: because you're strapped to a rocket. Broh God, And you
Speaker 2: just got to turn and up and down and just
Speaker 2: keep And that's a whole nother body exercise that's just
Speaker 2: sucking you up those g's and you know, trying just
Speaker 2: to turn and yank and bank and shoot the watch. Right,
Speaker 2: it's a big watch.
Speaker 3: You're always shooting the watch and it's a big watch, right.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, sorry here I learned that from F sixteen
Speaker 2: pilot when I was flying simulators and we were we
Speaker 2: turned the Great Salt Lake in Utah here on the
Speaker 2: simulator into a pirate cove. And so as we're flying
Speaker 2: the F sixteens from Hill Air Force Base over to
Speaker 2: the Great Salt Lake, we're blowing up pirate ships that
Speaker 2: were down below. It was quite interesting how they train,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: We we get creative regardless of what service you're in.
Speaker 3: We get created sure, and it's it's helped to pass
Speaker 3: the time. We have gallows humor. We have to do
Speaker 3: that to keep our sense and sense of ability about us.
Speaker 3: And we lament when we lose a fellow flyer. You know.
Speaker 3: The hardest part is we lost some on the Enterprise
Speaker 3: and then you have to go in and you have
Speaker 3: to clean out the room. You got to pack things
Speaker 3: up and send them back. Stuff like that. And it's
Speaker 3: not the only ship that had that. And I was
Speaker 3: fortunate enough to make two additional cruises or two three
Speaker 3: deployments total, first on a destroyer, then two more on
Speaker 3: the carrier USS Enterprise sweet Air Wing fourteen, and they've
Speaker 3: got two hundred and twenty combat missions. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 3: I've been good fortune to go to the top gun.
Speaker 2: And would you retire as what was your what'd you
Speaker 2: retire as?
Speaker 3: A commander? Five?
Speaker 2: Commander five? Yeah? Right, it's like two general, right, it's
Speaker 2: like lieutenant colonel yeah. Okay, yeah, you're right, it's just
Speaker 2: right five or six? Seven? Yeah, I got you. That's
Speaker 2: that's respect right there. Commander.
Speaker 3: Thank you, you're very kind. It's it's y all one
Speaker 3: fraternity and it's it's men and women. And one of
Speaker 3: the things I did when it took me three years
Speaker 3: to get my disability properly settled with a VBA. You
Speaker 3: have VHA, which is the healthcare people, which are great people.
Speaker 3: You have the VBA. They are the ones that determine
Speaker 3: your disability rating. They also oversee the health and welfare
Speaker 3: and care of the cemeteries. It took me three years,
Speaker 3: and I made a vow and paying it forward that
Speaker 3: I wouldn't let that happen to another VET, just my
Speaker 3: life's course. So when I joined the CL Society, they
Speaker 3: I said, I'm a veteran, and any veterans got questions
Speaker 3: of sending to me. Well, not just CL Society, which
Speaker 3: I got a lot from, right, even members of my group,
Speaker 3: the Patient Advisory Board, the guys VET. And he says, geez,
Speaker 3: I'm saying about trying to increase this promise, said, let's
Speaker 3: talk about it, let's get it in. And he got
Speaker 3: his disability increase as a problem increased, right, and he
Speaker 3: rated an increase and it came through, and he's happy
Speaker 3: as a plan at high tide.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're one hundred percent disabled veteran, there's
Speaker 2: benefits not only for you though, but for also for
Speaker 2: your children if they're still living at home with you
Speaker 2: to go to school.
Speaker 3: Yes, the thing is actuarily will pass. First, it benefits your.
Speaker 2: Wife, yes, exactly, it does one hundred percent. And you
Speaker 2: know what again, though, if there is a child in
Speaker 2: the home who has disabilities as well, yes, and that
Speaker 2: child can be given try care for life, yes, sir, okay,
Speaker 2: it can be ordered by a court to be given
Speaker 2: to that child, so that child could have a fiduciary
Speaker 2: that child or can have somebody oversee it. So let's
Speaker 2: say your a mother and a father, and you know
Speaker 2: you've dealt with a lot of this stuff and you
Speaker 2: got your one hundred percent rated, you can fight to
Speaker 2: the VA to get a fiduciary to make sure that
Speaker 2: when you pass on that your children get your benefits.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a classmate who has that problem and
Speaker 3: is a firstborn flies for Army, Army, Air National Guard,
Speaker 3: and he was a swift cooke guy during Vietnam. My
Speaker 3: classmate and another guy who was in a different airway
Speaker 3: on a different carrier to Kidiowk, and he would take
Speaker 3: the admiral down. The three star Avrol three star VL
Speaker 3: ran the war from the water and the three star
Speaker 3: admiral a three star general from the Air Force ran
Speaker 3: the air war. And they meet Saigon applying the consent
Speaker 3: and all that stuff. And he came down with several problems.
Speaker 3: We were working with and unfortunately for him, as pancreas
Speaker 3: gave up completely and I was helping it him and
Speaker 3: his wife getting the steps of the disabilities that he
Speaker 3: had earned. And he passed And once you passed, they
Speaker 3: won't process him anymore. But he had gotten forty percent
Speaker 3: about over one hundred percent disability, and his wife to
Speaker 3: this day gets diic dependence and demity compensation because his
Speaker 3: death was relayed to agent orange exposure. And it's approximately
Speaker 3: a half of the disability that he would have gotten.
Speaker 3: But its cost of living, and it's FA's free.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And so you know it's a benefit
Speaker 2: that's there. And if you're listening right now, you should
Speaker 2: reach out to to you know, Bruce here, and just
Speaker 2: for myself, you know, we can tell you what's up.
Speaker 2: It's easy. I'm always available as well. I get reached
Speaker 2: out to often, Bruce. Like three in the morning, someone
Speaker 2: hits me up, like you awake, bro, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: who are you? How you doing? He's like, I'm just
Speaker 2: not thinking right.
Speaker 3: Well, you know there's a certain good feeling after, you know,
Speaker 3: And I do it all for free. No, there's no compensation,
Speaker 3: And I tell them when you've gotten it, just let
Speaker 3: me know. And the cost is your discretionary time to
Speaker 3: call me so we can celebrate together and do the
Speaker 3: happy dance.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, you know, that's right.
Speaker 3: That's all. And some of them I have ten support
Speaker 3: groups with society. They have me doing the chair of
Speaker 3: the PAB. They have me. I oversee leaders of support
Speaker 3: groups throughout the United States and i have ten of
Speaker 3: them i have oversight with. And I'm also the laison
Speaker 3: for the military people. So when the things come in,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a jack of many trades. To use
Speaker 3: me as you need me. And I've had the vets
Speaker 3: at certain places say when they finally have helped them
Speaker 3: through and they get their rating, they say, I'll take
Speaker 3: care of our group. Let me relieve you. I've got
Speaker 3: the watch, give me the baton. You don't need to
Speaker 3: worry any veterans to come to this group. I'll coach
Speaker 3: them like you coach me. It's a brotherhood, sisterhood. And
Speaker 3: I've helped me else too. You know, it doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be Asian Orange, it could be something else. I mean,
Speaker 3: I've had the good fortune of meeting a gentleman who's
Speaker 3: an Air Force veteran who's a Holocaust survivor. Think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was French four years old, his sister was fourteen.
Speaker 3: The Nazis exterminated the oldest brother and his parents. He
Speaker 3: came over here as an orphan wanted to pay back.
Speaker 3: Enlisted in the Navy, got an appointment the Naval Academy,
Speaker 3: went to the Air Force as intel and I spent
Speaker 3: some time in some interesting intel places on exchange. I've
Speaker 3: been to the Kampanam, I've been to Uban, I've been
Speaker 3: to Udorn and over in Thailand, and I've seen results
Speaker 3: of his work. And the guy is still with us today,
Speaker 3: just turned eighty six, and he has col He's had
Speaker 3: it for years and he's still with us. And he's
Speaker 3: part of the cl Society groups out of San Francisco,
Speaker 3: but likes to zoom with our group down here in Ork.
Speaker 2: County, oh Man. Any holocausts four years old. Yeah, French
Speaker 2: parents taken out of this earth for no real reason.
Speaker 3: It's profound. I've been profoundly affected ever since. I always
Speaker 3: bring it up because it's it's that we want to
Speaker 3: talk a survivor. Look at that guy.
Speaker 2: Well, my condolence is to your friends, for your friend's family.
Speaker 2: I just want to put that out here there for sure,
Speaker 2: you know, And I should probably tell you welcome home
Speaker 2: as well from nom you know, and just just to
Speaker 2: let you know that, you know, on behalf of a
Speaker 2: grateful nation. Welcome home.
Speaker 3: You know, thank you. People will often say to me,
Speaker 3: thank you for your service, and I'll say it was
Speaker 3: my honor.
Speaker 2: You were worth it right there. You go who you're
Speaker 2: battling for? Man, you know, Yeah, exactly, cross paths with
Speaker 2: these people in live. They don't even realize that. You know,
Speaker 2: you dealt with a four day typhoon.
Speaker 3: You want to book to read. There's a book called
Speaker 3: Halsey's Typhoon. Go read that destroyers sank during that. It
Speaker 3: was well MacArthur was going back into the Philippines and
Speaker 3: Admiral Bull Halsey was in charge of all the carriers,
Speaker 3: and then typhoon came upon the Philippines. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: three destroyers sank.
Speaker 2: Oh, those are huge. The ocean just wants what it wants,
Speaker 2: though Davy Jones's locker, I.
Speaker 3: You never conquered the ocean.
Speaker 2: You respect it, That's right. I was just watching something
Speaker 2: on a on a social media other day and it
Speaker 2: was like, where else can you jump off of a
Speaker 2: submarine into the world's deepest ocean trench? This shows the
Speaker 2: submargers just jumping off having a water day over the
Speaker 2: Marianas Trench, you know, and it's got their little booies
Speaker 2: don't go that far. But what about that far.
Speaker 3: Well, as you probably didn't see it in there, but
Speaker 3: around the brook are here guys with rifles for the
Speaker 3: shark watch.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sharks. Yeah, bro, that's deep.
Speaker 3: The ship, you know, the ship will stop and they'll
Speaker 3: just kind of hover and they'll have a swim day,
Speaker 3: swim call, and then they have a steel barbecue or
Speaker 3: steel deck barbecue just out on the fantail though, take
Speaker 3: a day off from work at sea, cook hot dogs,
Speaker 3: hamburgers and French fries and all that stuff, and just
Speaker 3: have a thing. You can't drink beer, drink a lot
Speaker 3: of soda. It's all paid for.
Speaker 4: And then but what's what's pollywog all about? What is that?
Speaker 4: I've been one. You're a pollywog until you have crossed
Speaker 4: the equator polywogg, and you have to go through an
Speaker 4: initiation of becoming a shellback. But through that is a
Speaker 4: whole day of harassment.
Speaker 3: Right around the equator time, like we were off coming
Speaker 3: off the Yankee station, we went down to Singapore. Singapore's
Speaker 3: two degrees north of the equator, so the ship dips down,
Speaker 3: so it's officially at the aquator. And we have a
Speaker 3: big celebration on that on the deck and they take
Speaker 3: everybody from from E one to ten. Doesn't make any difference.
Speaker 3: Everybody go out there and you're crawling your hands and knees,
Speaker 3: and you get the kick Neptune and Queen so and
Speaker 3: so and then the baby. And on the carrier there
Speaker 3: they use a lot of grease, like for the resting
Speaker 3: deer cables and stuff, so things slide and the cables
Speaker 3: don't wear and break. And this guy back in those days,
Speaker 3: we didn't have a weight restriction and you have to
Speaker 3: maintain a certain body mask. And so the Buddha's baby
Speaker 3: or uh baby was like a Buddha he had and
Speaker 3: it was all gung grease and grease out of the
Speaker 3: cables and stuff. And you had to kiss the baby's
Speaker 3: belly and when he take the head like this, they
Speaker 3: go like this.
Speaker 2: Just a big old belly.
Speaker 3: Yea. At that time, I had a beard. We could
Speaker 3: have beards in the Navy in that day. And I
Speaker 3: had a beard, and it took me a week to
Speaker 3: get all that stuff out. I wasn't going to cut it.
Speaker 3: I was not going to cut that beard.
Speaker 2: No, it's going to wash that right, out of your hair?
Speaker 2: Why why did they get rid of the beards in?
Speaker 2: It's kind of a nice thing, don't you think it is?
Speaker 3: It goes. It's an ebb and flow. Zoom all aderal
Speaker 3: Zoomah was the one who came out with it. And
Speaker 3: you know, the intermediate level command structure wasn't happy with it.
Speaker 3: But he was a top level and he said, this
Speaker 3: is it. And I took advantage of that. You wear
Speaker 3: an oxygen mask and you don't get a good seal.
Speaker 3: You showed in the Navy you're on one hundred percent
Speaker 3: oxygen from the minute you climbing the airplane to the
Speaker 3: minute you land. Yeah, air force uses diluted demand and
Speaker 3: the problem is if your oxygen quits on the airplane,
Speaker 3: you don't know it because you're still breathing. But you're
Speaker 3: breathing air doesn't have enough oxygen in it.
Speaker 2: Those British, though, today, they still got some beefy stashes
Speaker 2: on them. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: They've got some like chops and they're not too worried
Speaker 2: about their air seal. I think.
Speaker 3: I wasn't worried. I think you're more invincible the younger
Speaker 3: you are, But so the polywog is a a bat
Speaker 3: who has not crossed the equator, okay, And so he
Speaker 3: goes through the initiation. And then we did it on
Speaker 3: the next deployment, second deployment on the carrier, and now
Speaker 3: it was a shellback, so I was overseeing what was
Speaker 3: being done and there, so, yeah, it's all the way along.
Speaker 2: So were you like King Neptune? Then at one point, no, no.
Speaker 3: We there was always someone in the crew that could
Speaker 3: fit the billet much better than weekly I see. But
Speaker 3: for us were standing on the side watching it.
Speaker 2: But they it's amazing, just giving a good all looking
Speaker 2: good boys looking good, looking good, because.
Speaker 3: It's just like you bring up the coffee cup. To
Speaker 3: recent article on military dot com is a good place
Speaker 3: to find information for all military types.
Speaker 2: It's free.
Speaker 3: And uh, they were talking about how come you don't
Speaker 3: ever wash a Navy cup. You don't do it, especially
Speaker 3: with the Navy chief. Don't wash my cup. I like
Speaker 3: the flavor that comes out of it. It may be
Speaker 3: very gnarly, and it was a white cup at one time,
Speaker 3: and now it's staying black because I never wash it.
Speaker 3: But don't do that. And I ran into an Air
Speaker 3: Force guy I worked on the beach to the stealth
Speaker 3: bomber and the guy that was working in the group
Speaker 3: I was in was a B fifty two guy, and
Speaker 3: he was, yeah, I don't. I don't wash my cup either,
Speaker 3: and he said I like that navy tradition. I said,
Speaker 3: that's fine by me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And it kind of makes sense, especially if
Speaker 2: you just fill it up. Just keep filling it up,
Speaker 2: because you get that yeah, Patina and that whole you know,
Speaker 2: exactly exactly exactly. Don't clean my cup. They still got
Speaker 2: some sugar into that I found from two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Don't do it. I know there's a grain in there, right,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right. Oh man, oh man. So being an
Speaker 2: officer on a ship, does that get you different menu options? Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah. They the cruise mess, even unlike the destroyer, it
Speaker 3: is actually pretty pretty stunning, and we were required to
Speaker 3: check it out whenever we had duty. That's see your import.
Speaker 3: We would eat in the cruise mess, for example, to
Speaker 3: make sure the quality stayed there. And they had pretty
Speaker 3: creative people. They are cooking out of cookbooks. They're this thing,
Speaker 3: you know, standard Navy issue cookbook. But they were training
Speaker 3: cooks and chefs and stuff you could get all the
Speaker 3: way to Chief on that and the food was always
Speaker 3: good and it was there was never anyone saying, you know,
Speaker 3: I've given you a certain you can't get any more.
Speaker 3: You keep going back and it's same. On the carrier.
Speaker 3: They we had what we called the Dirty Shirt, which
Speaker 3: is a cafeteria up for just under the flight deck.
Speaker 3: Because I've flied two to three times a day each
Speaker 3: each mission was two forty five to three point fifteen
Speaker 3: in length and get a quick turnaround and have to
Speaker 3: get something to eat, hit the head and then breathe
Speaker 3: even go out and do the next one. And so
Speaker 3: they had a cafeteria thing so you can go in
Speaker 3: with your flight soon, which as the day wore on,
Speaker 3: especially over in the golf of Tonkin, is really sweaty.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like, dude, you need to change that.
Speaker 3: But that's how we ate and that was right. That
Speaker 3: was very relaxed because out where you could see on
Speaker 3: and eat, which is the same setup that was on
Speaker 3: the cruise mess for tables and chairs and stuff. They
Speaker 3: had over here a cooler and there was ice cream, unlimited
Speaker 3: ice cream.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was like, where's that ice cream? Ice cream,
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Dan ice cream, you got it, you got it.
Speaker 2: Someting to make a smile.
Speaker 3: And by the way, you know Lieutenant Dan Gary Sinise
Speaker 3: is quite a supporter of veterans as you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Foundation Dan Band a couple of times. My wife and
Speaker 3: I attended that with fantastic performing and a good time
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: What a life changing movie for him to play Lieutenant Dan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because I mean like Top Gun, right, same
Speaker 2: kind of you know, Mojo is what's come along with it.
Speaker 2: Just an influence and people all recognize him from that,
Speaker 2: not from his other shows, but Lieutenant Dan and the band, right,
Speaker 2: he's even got Lieutenant Dan band. Yeah, I mean he's the.
Speaker 3: Bass guitar on it time. That's an instrument. Another thing
Speaker 3: on Top Gun the failure of the F fourteen that.
Speaker 2: Killed Goose, Yes, the spin out.
Speaker 3: It was a true failure mode that the F fourteen
Speaker 3: could get because the Navy didn't pay the money to
Speaker 3: do spin testing. They took wooden models and dropped them
Speaker 3: off a tower, and the wooden models didn't spin, so
Speaker 3: they said, well, the F fourteen won't spin. Ah. I
Speaker 3: forgot one thing. The F fourteen's engines are not together
Speaker 3: like the f fource. They're off center line thrust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: So if you if you killed this engine, usually it
Speaker 3: coughs and sputters and quits. Well, the throttleers are up.
Speaker 3: Then this one's spinning you around. The force spector turns
Speaker 3: you right around and you're in a spin. And you
Speaker 3: can't get out of a flat spin with an F fourteen.
Speaker 2: No, So they brought that into the movie. Huh, that's
Speaker 2: what they did.
Speaker 3: And when he ejected that, he ran into the canopy
Speaker 3: and the canopy killed him. Right, that can happen. That's
Speaker 3: a single cannopy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was spinning it the he was behind him,
Speaker 2: so by the time it opened, it shows him hitting
Speaker 2: in the back. I mean, you know, Maverick gets out.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing. Where they were doing all that.
Speaker 3: It was over desert area. If you look at that,
Speaker 3: that's an operating area that does exist in southern California
Speaker 3: and Arizona. And where did he get rescued. He was
Speaker 3: rescued in the ocean, totally.
Speaker 2: Mavericks flas spinning out to the sea, sir.
Speaker 3: Two hundred and fifty miles away, two.
Speaker 2: Hundred fifty miles away. And then my Dad's like, oh,
Speaker 2: shark repellent. I was like, oh, is that what the
Speaker 2: green stuff is? Because when they land in the water,
Speaker 2: you know, He's like, shark repellent. Yeah, yeah, And I
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, I love having my military dad telling
Speaker 2: me these types of that's cool little things and you know,
Speaker 2: be able to influence my head like that. So thanks, Dad,
Speaker 2: appreciate you.
Speaker 3: That's good. It made the mark because we don't have
Speaker 3: much of that today and so you grew up with
Speaker 3: oversight and you took it to heart and acknowledge it
Speaker 3: and commit to it, and that doesn't happen nowadays, and
Speaker 3: so you're to be recognized for that.
Speaker 2: Good for you. Thanks, I appreciate.
Speaker 3: Past wet year in the forties. I'm in soon to
Speaker 3: be seventy nine. You have the baton. I don't have it.
Speaker 3: I've passed it to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, sir. I'll steward it as best I can.
Speaker 2: Everything that I take.
Speaker 3: I can see that in you, and I hear that
Speaker 3: in you.
Speaker 2: So I'm yes, thank you, yes, and that I can
Speaker 2: only do this to my family. Yeah, that's all I know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I do have a lot of the modern thoughts,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm growing up with technology. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I grew up in this you know, modern age that
Speaker 2: you say seems to be getting a little bit less
Speaker 2: personable and like less you know what about your neighbor
Speaker 2: kind of attitude and more like just yourself. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: kind of think.
Speaker 3: It's a land of single, single people. I mean, I
Speaker 3: grew up in a neighborhood and I don't believe people
Speaker 3: say it takes a village. It doesn't. But I grew
Speaker 3: up My grandfather was Justice of the peace. He was
Speaker 3: elected thirty two years and as his grandson, I couldn't
Speaker 3: step off the straight and narrow. He'd hear about it,
Speaker 3: and then I learn about.
Speaker 2: It, right, and that mattered, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, But he was the guy that took me out
Speaker 3: and we tap the sugar maple trees in the spring
Speaker 3: and make real maple syrup in his backyard.
Speaker 2: Right right. Delicious and healthy too for you. By the way,
Speaker 2: it's a good recovery fuel for after workouts, maple syrup yah,
Speaker 2: because of boxing. Come on, now I have to learn on, like,
Speaker 2: how do I recover this beautiful body of mine? I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing to impart to the vets that you
Speaker 3: see subsequent to me or should get me on again,
Speaker 3: at least in the col area. We've got something really
Speaker 3: good and everyone should be made aware of it. And
Speaker 3: we keep trying to do that. And we have good
Speaker 3: support from the pharmaceuticals because it's it's a nonprofit organization,
Speaker 3: but we do reach out. We do a lot of things.
Speaker 3: They are constantly working. I helped recruit a couple of
Speaker 3: special doctors. Hey, you specialize and transplants to the bone
Speaker 3: marrow and you specialize in leukemia. Could give me one
Speaker 3: of our list of special doctors experts. They said, sure,
Speaker 3: I'll sign up on a problem. Just got to ask
Speaker 3: the question. So you can take this one group of veterans,
Speaker 3: guys and gals that have CLLL and they can come
Speaker 3: to our organization no charge, and participate at the level
Speaker 3: they want to and be quiet or be talking to
Speaker 3: or join the group like I did. I was so profoundly,
Speaker 3: positively affected. I said, I want to contribute to the
Speaker 3: success of this and they will have a home to
Speaker 3: where they'll be safe, to where they can find the
Speaker 3: right direction for treatment, and where they will meet. The founder,
Speaker 3: who has cl himself, he's a Canadian doctor, had to
Speaker 3: retire because our immune systems compromised. He was seeing the kids,
Speaker 3: and the kids, your kids get all the infections right right?
Speaker 2: All that sure, sure he doesn't need that. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: has to live still too.
Speaker 3: Yeah and so, And they have some recognition at the VA.
Speaker 3: I don't take it away from the VA, but the
Speaker 3: VAS are autonomous EAHVA building its own separate facility. They
Speaker 3: don't cross talk to the degree that one would expect.
Speaker 3: Like if you're out here, you're part of the Providence
Speaker 3: Hospital system. There's four or five different hospitals are all
Speaker 3: under the same umbrella. The VA is not like that.
Speaker 3: They're independent. I go to the Long Beach VA, and
Speaker 3: I've had good luck there.
Speaker 2: You hear that Long Beach those are that's a positive
Speaker 2: review for you, Long Beach VA. You keep that up
Speaker 2: Long Beach. Anybody out there working Long Beach pushing those soldiers,
Speaker 2: their mean and corman and everybody around, Navy sailors, everybody
Speaker 2: in those chairs. You guys keep it up in Long
Speaker 2: Beach and all the other VAS.
Speaker 3: They found they found my cancers. They in for meum
Speaker 3: and it's good. They took care of business with me.
Speaker 3: And then, like I talked to the attending I was
Speaker 3: his only patient. We talked for two to three hours.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's not really common.
Speaker 3: No, no, we really get ten to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it's it's.
Speaker 3: Good that that's there for the VET and we're here
Speaker 3: to help because we're able to focus on something separate
Speaker 3: with Salel Society to the benefit of the entire family,
Speaker 3: because not only would take you the patient, we help
Speaker 3: your caregiver, your spouse to learn what it is to
Speaker 3: be a caregiver. Okay. And we even have couples to
Speaker 3: where each of the couples has a form of cancer
Speaker 3: or leukemia, so they're patient and a caregiver to each other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that doesn't get any better than that. And those two,
Speaker 3: those two people see the same doctor I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, it's it's it's it's it's good to
Speaker 2: have a support group. And you know, if somebody out
Speaker 2: there has served in Vietnam and was exposed to agent Orange,
Speaker 2: let's just point that out. And I'm going to put
Speaker 2: this out here, these numbers if you served from the
Speaker 2: sixties through nineteen seventy one, which was the end of
Speaker 2: the use of agent Orange. Okay, that's when it was
Speaker 2: officially banned by the US you used was seventy one.
Speaker 2: You should definitely be talking about this with someone or
Speaker 2: get a hold of the cl Society or hit up
Speaker 2: your local VA advocate. And then also if you're dealing
Speaker 2: with any types of issues after seventy one, because they
Speaker 2: banned it and they got rid of it in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight by taking it to Johnston Island where they
Speaker 2: quote unquote destroy the rest of agent Orange to get
Speaker 2: rid of it. So if you were involved in any
Speaker 2: of that, Okay.
Speaker 3: Here's a deal. I'm sitting in the dermidologist having stuff
Speaker 3: cut off. The guy next to me was a Marina
Speaker 3: sight of Johnson Island and he had COO and because
Speaker 3: he was stationed there, barrel's leak there on the island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's the.
Speaker 3: Here's the other thing. Expand your paradigm just a little bit.
Speaker 3: Agent Orange was used in Korea and the DMZ Agent
Speaker 3: Orange was used in Thailand. So if you didn't, I
Speaker 3: had one guy who didn't ever touch Vietnam but landed
Speaker 3: in Thailand all the time. We'll use it there too.
Speaker 3: And the couple I told you about, the caregiver and
Speaker 3: patient to each other. He was an army artillery guy
Speaker 3: at his artillery unit was stationed at the DMZ of
Speaker 3: Korea when they were using it, and he has LPL
Speaker 3: which is a niche form of lymphoma stipe, and he
Speaker 3: has one hundred percent disability because he was exposed. He
Speaker 3: didn't go to Vietnam, but he's exposed to this evil
Speaker 3: stuff at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it was created, Yeah, it sure was it.
Speaker 3: We would land in d Nan because han orents. You
Speaker 3: can't land on the ship with ornents to stress the
Speaker 3: airplane or the flight deck was messed up or accident
Speaker 3: or something and or they couldn't get us. Some time,
Speaker 3: we're running on fuel, they have to go get some fuel.
Speaker 3: And we'd sit there and be on the taxiway and
Speaker 3: they have forehead canopies that opened up and had no
Speaker 3: air conditioned on the ground, so it had the canopies open.
Speaker 3: And we're on the taxiway and the helicopters are taking
Speaker 3: off and they're flying right over us. The spray arms
Speaker 3: are out and as it comes over, we're getting wet
Speaker 3: because it's not spraying but it's leaking, and we're going like,
Speaker 3: what's that stuff? Well, it's I don't know it's and
Speaker 3: so it was you know, just poo contact right.
Speaker 2: It was. That's legit, straight up. That's like the guy
Speaker 2: spraying it, except they're just taking off. You know. I
Speaker 2: can only imagine, like, you know, a helicopter filling up
Speaker 2: at a pool to put a fire out and they
Speaker 2: take off and it's still dripping half the pool's amount. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the way it was. And that's it.
Speaker 2: For it to always be a push and pull like
Speaker 2: is it attributed or not attributed, or like did this
Speaker 2: happen or does it exist a prior to enlistment and
Speaker 2: all these different types of things that we have to
Speaker 2: reroove excube to get your benefits. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was very, very hard, and like I said,
Speaker 3: it took me three years, and it shouldn't take any
Speaker 3: of that three years.
Speaker 2: It shouldn't not at all. No, and no, and it
Speaker 2: should not. It should Here's.
Speaker 3: Here's the deal too. Always get the number two pencil
Speaker 3: on line paper and check their math three times. I
Speaker 3: had because they were very coye the way they do it.
Speaker 3: At the end of it, okay, we reviewed and we
Speaker 3: done this. We agree with what you had to say.
Speaker 3: There's nothing more to do. So we considered this matter closed. Well, no,
Speaker 3: so I sat down with a pencil and said they
Speaker 3: didn't do the math right. So I did it down
Speaker 3: and make copies and send it to my vso an angel,
Speaker 3: one of my angels. Then she submitted it, and finally
Speaker 3: on the third time, I'm visiting her down in her
Speaker 3: office through the American Legion and I went. She went
Speaker 3: upstairs to where the regional was and talked to the
Speaker 3: supervisor and said, you know, the veterans found another mistake
Speaker 3: that your group is sent him, and here's the proof
Speaker 3: where he's right and your people are wrong. And the
Speaker 3: supervisor looked at it and he said, give it here,
Speaker 3: stamp it's approved. But I'm telling me he's got you
Speaker 3: going to give it to the group. I believe him.
Speaker 3: He proved to me that he knows what he's talking.
Speaker 2: Like, call me a liar, bro, I dare you that's
Speaker 2: what you? Yeah, I wouldn't know. And I'm glad that
Speaker 2: you have to keep pushing for it. You know, your ratings,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to be an advocate for that. Keep
Speaker 2: pushing for your ratings. You can. You know, if you're
Speaker 2: at forty sixty, you should be pretty much one hundred,
Speaker 2: you know, like, why are you half of I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not a bad thing. It's okay to get that rating.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't mean you have the mark of
Speaker 2: the beast on you.
Speaker 3: Or here's some others. You got me on a roll.
Speaker 3: I'm on my box. There's one of the things. I
Speaker 3: have a guy going to and say, well, I've got
Speaker 3: this problem. I have a classmate. He said, I got
Speaker 3: a tumor and have my kidney taken out. And it
Speaker 3: was a great fruit size tumor on kidney. And I said, okay, well,
Speaker 3: you're in the navy thirty years, you're retired, you're on
Speaker 3: a but you win all these different places and you
Speaker 3: got your exposure, and so you're going to submit a
Speaker 3: claim to the VA because you don't get cancer over right,
Speaker 3: and certain kinds of are still growing. And he said, well, no,
Speaker 3: they're probably going to not agree to it. So I'm
Speaker 3: just not going to even submit it. I said, well,
Speaker 3: the VIA you will like you because you don't cost
Speaker 3: any money. But you know what, let the VA make
Speaker 3: that decision, not you.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: So he put it in and he got it.
Speaker 2: That's right, he got it. That's right. So whether you
Speaker 2: were involved in Asian Orange, or you were revolved some
Speaker 2: kind of crazy chemical, or you served in desert storm
Speaker 2: and you've gotten burn pits and Afghanistan and Iraq and
Speaker 2: you're dealing with any types of issues that are not fun.
Speaker 2: But your pride is standing in your way of going
Speaker 2: into the VA. Okay, don't do it when your wife
Speaker 2: has to push you in your sixty five. Do it
Speaker 2: now while you're in your forties, and you can go
Speaker 2: in there today, while you're still able to walk and
Speaker 2: talk and be yourself and get it done and enjoy it, yes,
Speaker 2: till it's like, oh, I really need it now, and
Speaker 2: it's already set in and the onset onset of everything
Speaker 2: has just happened, and now we're just going to carve
Speaker 2: you up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, seriously, seriously, it can give you another anecdotal,
Speaker 3: same deal. And it was a niche problem. That's not
Speaker 3: why the think in the acronyms dish. And this guy
Speaker 3: had this much data on three inches. My full folder
Speaker 3: for the VA is three inches thick of my journey
Speaker 3: with the VA, and he kept presenting it, this is
Speaker 3: the San Diego via And then at first the doctor said,
Speaker 3: I don't believe it is that and the other. And
Speaker 3: he came in and with an intercomologist and everything else,
Speaker 3: and he submitted that. And the doctor came back one
Speaker 3: day and called him back in and said, you've convinced
Speaker 3: me there is a relationship here. I'm going to approve
Speaker 3: your disability. You've got it. And I said, Steve, because
Speaker 3: there are always those who say, well, you're trying to
Speaker 3: gain the system or you're just you know, trying to
Speaker 3: take advantage of something that you didn't earn. Well, as
Speaker 3: I said to Steve the friend, I said, you didn't
Speaker 3: make the decision to get one hundred percent disability, but
Speaker 3: VA made a decision.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: It's not you the did you tell your friend exactly?
Speaker 2: You know what you tell your friend. Don't hate the player,
Speaker 2: hate the game, bro, That's right. Okay, Okay, hate the game,
Speaker 2: the game that veterans have to play, you know. But
Speaker 2: I'm grateful for my home and my VA home loan.
Speaker 2: Let me be honest. Sure right, I would be probably
Speaker 2: renting today if I hadn't had that VA home loan too. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I'm just gonna say, and I just want to say,
Speaker 2: you've been you've been wonderful. I've had you for this
Speaker 2: whole hour and we've just been going and I want
Speaker 2: to keep talking. There's so many stories, you know when
Speaker 2: you start saying fact and forward air controller and like
Speaker 2: I'm like, did you carry a pistol? Like, uh, you
Speaker 2: know under your armpit. Yeah. See, there's so many things
Speaker 2: I would love to so just you know, keep you
Speaker 2: around as long as you want to be, you know,
Speaker 2: hanging out with me on soft rep and bring it
Speaker 2: back and have some stories and pick your brain.
Speaker 3: It's might would be my pleasure, it would be my
Speaker 3: honor you here so well, call back and consulted and
Speaker 3: happy to contribute to the betterment of the brother and
Speaker 3: sisterhood and help people on their journey. And just like
Speaker 3: the people have been exposed such that you get this
Speaker 3: insidious blood cancer. It's not a tumor, can't cut it
Speaker 3: out and it never goes away. It's whack a mole.
Speaker 3: You knock it down. It's not terrible, Okay, you get
Speaker 3: to fight it. You total up my disabilities right now
Speaker 3: and I'm one hundred and eighty percent disable.
Speaker 2: So it gets everybody that raised their hand, everybody that
Speaker 2: raised their hand to say I will fight for this
Speaker 2: country can fight this cancer that they might be getting,
Speaker 2: or any of these problems too. Because you promised to fight,
Speaker 2: you made an oath to fight, you fight for yourself.
Speaker 3: It's like the very rescue guy. He says, I'm an
Speaker 3: oath years ago, I'm still ready to do it. That
Speaker 3: doesn't go away. And I said, you're right, we're on
Speaker 3: the same page. It doesn't go away.
Speaker 2: Both means something in the.
Speaker 3: Old classic it's a brotherhood slash sisterhood that anyone who's
Speaker 3: been there, done that understands that, and it never goes
Speaker 3: away if you cut of the right stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, what a great show, What a great show.
Speaker 3: For having me on. Thank you for consulting and yes
Speaker 3: asking I set this up.
Speaker 2: I can't even have You're so fun to talk to.
Speaker 2: It's it's we can keep going and going and going.
Speaker 2: But I'd rather do it in person or have some
Speaker 2: other like a five hour session with you. Maybe I
Speaker 2: can come over and sleep over and we can hang out.
Speaker 2: If mom says so, you know, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 3: Let me let me tell you that. I'll be happy
Speaker 3: to come back anytime.
Speaker 2: All right, Really, it's my pleasure, of my honor.
Speaker 3: I'm retired. I've got the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I figured, and you know, I've met a lot
Speaker 2: of folks, but there's only so many that could just
Speaker 2: like that, just sit with me, like come hang out.
Speaker 2: That's just like you're cool, bro. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you for your patience in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Oh you know, look at this beard. You see how
Speaker 2: long it is. You know how much patience I have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so much.
Speaker 2: I'm a patient. I'm a patient boy. You there, you go, Well, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna wind down by saying we need
Speaker 2: to check out the CLL Society. This is Bruce Wright,
Speaker 2: a former commander, retired navy aviator uh top gun, awesome
Speaker 2: human being on this earth who helps his normal nextdoor neighbor,
Speaker 2: available on social media probably and you know, thank you
Speaker 2: for being on the show, Bruce, you for having me.
Speaker 2: And to my producer, Anton, I know you're gonna have
Speaker 2: fun editing everything and putting all of these things into
Speaker 2: keywords so we can click on them on the website
Speaker 2: at softwap dot com. So just know that once this
Speaker 2: is all done, sir, we'll have that put up on
Speaker 2: the website and the links will be clickable that we
Speaker 2: talked about because these guys listen to my podcast and
Speaker 2: then go back and re edit it all to make
Speaker 2: it all perfect. So there you go. And with that
Speaker 2: on behalf of Soft Rep and Brandon Webb former Navy
Speaker 2: Seal what's up Navy? And my father former Navy. I say, piece,
Speaker 2: you've
Speaker 1: Been listening to Self Rep Radio