Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's still Courtney with an army of normal folks.
Speaker 1: And we continue now with part two of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Richard Casper. Right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 1: general sponsors, let's return to Richard on his service in
Speaker 1: a mounted infantry unit in a rock.
Speaker 2: First, I went to two seven Marines, which is an
Speaker 2: infantry unit. And I get there and I start working up.
Speaker 2: I pause because I had the whole story with Harley too.
Speaker 2: I read my Harley cross Country. That's a pretty awesome story.
Speaker 2: I have an old soul, you know. I was like
Speaker 2: nineteen with a Harley. All my friend had crowdra guess,
Speaker 2: but I took that to California with me. There's a
Speaker 2: hilarious story in that, me and my buddy's driving across.
Speaker 2: I did twenty three hours straight at that thing. I
Speaker 2: wasn't supposed to. But anyways, so I get there.
Speaker 1: Did you show up with crotchrot?
Speaker 2: No? I was, I was going.
Speaker 1: Ty three hours on a Harley and you weren't glded.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 1: I was still young and you have still thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so I get to the basis. So
Speaker 2: this is a straight up infantry unit, like they they
Speaker 2: just went to Afghanistan, they just got back and they're
Speaker 2: starting to do their train up and so they look
Speaker 2: at my yeah, yes, date like the damn supposed gown
Speaker 2: on the Marine Corps, and they approached me. After about
Speaker 2: two or three months training up with them, they say, hey,
Speaker 2: there's an issue. You're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: go to Iraq with us because we don't leave for
Speaker 2: Iraq until like January or February of two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: And it looks like you get out in June of
Speaker 2: two thousd and seven, you'll be getting out when we're
Speaker 2: over there, so you can't come with us. And I
Speaker 2: was like, okay, well can I transfer somewhere? Like can
Speaker 2: I go to another unit that's deployed soon? And so
Speaker 2: they ended up sending me the first tanks because they
Speaker 2: had a toe unit, which is pretty much I went
Speaker 2: from ground infantry and mounted infantry. So toes are just
Speaker 2: in humbies like scouting ahead like they have toes and
Speaker 2: scouts and we have a shot of toe I don't
Speaker 2: think in Iraq since the initial invasion. So they're mounted
Speaker 2: with Mark nineteen's and fifty cows and used to become
Speaker 2: mounted infantry, and so I went over there with about.
Speaker 1: Mounted infantry, meaning riding around in Humby's with machine guns
Speaker 1: mounted on top and that kind of yep.
Speaker 2: And so we still get out, we do missions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you roll up, you get out, you do yep.
Speaker 2: So a lot of it, yeah, and a lot of
Speaker 2: it was like EOD clearance, where we'd either help do
Speaker 2: security for some people. Mainly our our whole job was
Speaker 2: to secure the supply lines. So MSR Mobile was like
Speaker 2: the biggest highway that ran through Iraq with all these
Speaker 2: trucks coming on it. So we would constantly every single
Speaker 2: day just drive up and down it, make sure nobody's
Speaker 2: putting in IDs clear and id's. If we find them,
Speaker 2: we call them EOD. We do these side missionsd EOD
Speaker 2: like explosive device people that take a take a part
Speaker 2: of the bombs.
Speaker 1: So there's a crap job.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah, hurt Locker. That movie was about EOD,
Speaker 2: right yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And so in my body does that have those big
Speaker 1: gloves and hoods on and they literally go and how
Speaker 1: many of those guys get blown up?
Speaker 2: Well, uh, that's the thing. On Volentine's Day, you know,
Speaker 2: my coming up. One of my best friends well, not
Speaker 2: my best friend, but he was. He's one of those good,
Speaker 2: good people, didn't drink. Has a twin brother, phenomenal guy
Speaker 2: named Dan Hansen. After infantry went eod and then ended
Speaker 2: up dying two thousand and eight during on Valentine's Day,
Speaker 2: I got the call saying he died because he was
Speaker 2: disarming a bomb and it went off on him. So
Speaker 2: a lot enough, But it is a crap job to
Speaker 2: like one. But it's such a rogue job too, to
Speaker 2: be like, I'm gonna put on the suit that most
Speaker 2: likely will never protect me, and I'm gonna go in
Speaker 2: there and try to disarm this bomb so nobody else
Speaker 2: gets hurt.
Speaker 1: And so you're out there in these finding these things.
Speaker 2: Yep, and I found four for sure.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: I was blown up four times?
Speaker 1: So how do you laugh?
Speaker 2: Because, I mean, being blown up is a crazy experience.
Speaker 1: But okay, we'll stop. Yeah, So this is a part
Speaker 1: that I think is really important for people to grasp
Speaker 1: before we go to the rest of your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: after literally twenty five years of Afghanistan, the First Rock,
Speaker 1: Second Rock, I really, unfortunately think the public is desensitized
Speaker 1: to all of it. I mean, you can only see
Speaker 1: on CNN or Fox, or the empty movies that have
Speaker 1: been made about it, American serviceman service people on patrol
Speaker 1: and bombs going off and see pictures of destroyed humbies
Speaker 1: that hit a roadside. It's called an IUD, right, I
Speaker 1: AD before you start saying, well, that's just what happens,
Speaker 1: and you forget that that's a twenty one, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, twenty two, twenty three year old kid
Speaker 1: inside that thing. And I think we get a sensitized
Speaker 1: to what quote getting blown up is. Can you walk
Speaker 1: me through your whole first experience and let our listeners
Speaker 1: understand what that really is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And so for me because I talk about it
Speaker 2: now for a living, and so it's easy, and I
Speaker 2: remember like dealing my own traumas, like going over it
Speaker 2: and being like, how do you explain it in a
Speaker 2: short form and be okay with it by the bay
Speaker 2: of time. It's just like I was blown up four times?
Speaker 2: Like how much do you want to know about it?
Speaker 1: I want I want people to know because I want
Speaker 1: them to understand. Trauma is an overused word. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we've got people that get talked too bad
Speaker 1: in the breadline of All two and Kroger, and they're traumatized.
Speaker 1: That's not trauma. That may piss you off. That may
Speaker 1: trigger some things that make that's not trauma. Yeah, getting
Speaker 1: blown up, that's got to be traumatic. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 1: just tell me about the day the first explosion went off.
Speaker 1: When you're in a humbye.
Speaker 2: So the first time I got hit, it was November
Speaker 2: seventeen through eighteenth. I know because I had like the
Speaker 2: medical records.
Speaker 1: How old are you?
Speaker 2: I'm thirty nine now, but I was at the time.
Speaker 1: Now were you well?
Speaker 2: Because I did the Camp David thing, I was probably
Speaker 2: twenty one how many people in four of us?
Speaker 1: So it is.
Speaker 2: And there's a driver yep, so there was a driver.
Speaker 2: Actually was that the fifth one? Yeah, there's a driver
Speaker 2: and then what they call a vehicle commander, which is
Speaker 2: the in the passenger seat of the vehicle. And then
Speaker 2: there's a gunner who's like poking his head out of
Speaker 2: the humphy.
Speaker 1: What the machine gun on? Yeah? Which is what fifty caliber?
Speaker 2: It depends where you're at. So ours was a fifty cow.
Speaker 2: But then some are mark nineteens would shoot the grenades.
Speaker 1: And then some are these are heavy duty guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, summer saws, which are light light machine guns. And
Speaker 2: I was the dismount at the time, so I was
Speaker 2: in the back left passer seat, right behind the driver.
Speaker 1: What happened to the back right passenger seat. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: where the gunner hands sit down if he needs to.
Speaker 2: Know there's still like there's a little thing in the.
Speaker 1: So you don't put the guys in these things. You
Speaker 1: put for him.
Speaker 2: Usually always four fifth if there's a squad leader, so
Speaker 2: Eric Kormack, So the squad leader always got a corman
Speaker 2: with them, so that would be the only one run
Speaker 2: around with five if there was in ours, it was
Speaker 2: like that's where you put your packs, your emerise everything else.
Speaker 2: You get stuff back there.
Speaker 1: So there's four of you in this humvy yep. Another
Speaker 1: question I got, and I really want this to be
Speaker 1: I want a visual picture. Yeah. I remember reading early
Speaker 1: on that the American Humbies were not doing a good
Speaker 1: job protecting service members on these things, and you guys
Speaker 1: were actually plating them up yourself on base. Was that
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: The first Yeah, the first part of the war, they
Speaker 2: were By the time we got to us, they still
Speaker 2: weren't super effective. We still have to put like sand
Speaker 2: bags and stuff on the floor to protect the bottom
Speaker 2: because the bottom wasn't protected at all. But we still
Speaker 2: had like the first I think it was the first
Speaker 2: generation armor where the doors still had like bulletproof glass
Speaker 2: and a little outfitting, but it was only the doors,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't the V shaped bottoms. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: ones that came in tyrack, a lot of them didn't
Speaker 2: have doors on them, so they were just like no doors,
Speaker 2: just humvy riding around, just getting vehicles out there as
Speaker 2: quick as possible. And then slowly they started building that building.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, now they have like the V bottom ones
Speaker 2: that are like six feet off the ground and like
Speaker 2: to shape the blast like they actually did the research
Speaker 2: and were like, let's build equipment that would.
Speaker 1: Hand So you're in the first generation kind of protective
Speaker 1: of up armored.
Speaker 2: Yeah we're still you're.
Speaker 1: Putting sandbags on the floorboard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well by that time we could like I was
Speaker 2: not well. I had to put a vest and stuff
Speaker 2: under my because I couldn't. I already had to break
Speaker 2: my seat because so when I became vehicle commander a
Speaker 2: few months or like a month after this incident, I
Speaker 2: didn't fit with my helmet on and my MVG's on
Speaker 2: top of that. So I had to break the passenger
Speaker 2: seat thing and I shoved like a rod back there,
Speaker 2: so I was like lean back and then I have
Speaker 2: to be like like just to put my MVG's on,
Speaker 2: Like I had to ride low in that thing. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, it was hard for me.
Speaker 1: It's not built for right, So these things are not
Speaker 1: especially well built. They're packed full of four guys with
Speaker 1: some rations and the empty seat probably got sandbags on
Speaker 1: the floor or bulletproof vests on the floor. You guys
Speaker 1: are trying to protect yourself and you're out there trying
Speaker 1: to find bombs so your supply lines can get through unfettered. Yep,
Speaker 1: all right, this day, that's the picture of going down
Speaker 1: the road.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So since I was a dismount in this one,
Speaker 2: I don't remember as much as when I was vehicle
Speaker 2: commander because I was up front watching the other three blasts.
Speaker 2: By this time we got hit. And the only thing
Speaker 2: I really remember about this one because I didn't pass
Speaker 2: out on this hit. But when the bomb goes up,
Speaker 2: you don't hear the bomb. You just see a flash
Speaker 2: of light and you kind of like come to. It's
Speaker 2: a really weird moment because I think the explosion is
Speaker 2: so loud that you kind of like don't register it.
Speaker 2: That was like the first one, but then there was
Speaker 2: so much debris instead of it almost felt like the
Speaker 2: vehicle was on fire because all that dust and smoke,
Speaker 2: because as you imagine it blows up, there's like a
Speaker 2: vacuum that's created. And I ended up tearing cartilage in
Speaker 2: my chest just because my mouth was open. So the
Speaker 2: overpressure of it in the cabin of the vehicle, because
Speaker 2: you know where the gunner's at, there's a hole, so
Speaker 2: air rushes in there, and I guess it rushed down
Speaker 2: my lungs and expanded my lungs to a point that
Speaker 2: torque cartilage in my chest. Like that's how bad the
Speaker 2: blast was. But when we get out of it, and
Speaker 2: this is another misconception, it's like where you see people
Speaker 2: like me and you're like, you don't have a brain injury,
Speaker 2: you don't look injured, and it's like it takes a toll.
Speaker 2: Those things protected the shrapnel from coming in, but it
Speaker 2: didn't protect the concussion from coming in and all this
Speaker 2: other stuff that happened. And so everyone on that team
Speaker 2: was there was a few concussions. They didn't actually give
Speaker 2: me a concussion on that one. They just had a
Speaker 2: torque cartilage and all that. But you're just going to
Speaker 2: this little on base medical like Corman and saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: here's what happened to me, and they either sign off
Speaker 2: on it or they don't sign off on it. But
Speaker 2: that one I don't remember near as much.
Speaker 1: As what happened to the other three guys.
Speaker 2: The other one, so they were just concussed. It wasn't
Speaker 2: we get back in the vehicle the next day and
Speaker 2: just go to work.
Speaker 1: What did you run over it? Or was it near you?
Speaker 1: And they remote that one.
Speaker 2: I can't remember which what it was because the other
Speaker 2: three I remember again since I was, I mean, I
Speaker 2: could have been sleeping. I might have been sleeping on
Speaker 2: that one. But the other three being a being vehicle committed,
Speaker 2: tell me about or I didn't remember because the blast
Speaker 2: was so.
Speaker 1: You tore cartilage from the concussion going down your throat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I didn't know. I got out almost like
Speaker 2: I was fine, because after a blast, you get out
Speaker 2: and you look around the truck as if it feels safe,
Speaker 2: you get out. Usually vehicle pulls up next to you,
Speaker 2: so in case snipers come, and so like you go
Speaker 2: assess your damage what you can do after you pull
Speaker 2: up a little bit. And so I remember pulling up
Speaker 2: and kind of like walking back and forth and just
Speaker 2: being like, why's my chest shirt? So bit like out
Speaker 2: of all my body, like why is my chest shirt?
Speaker 2: And I just kept on like kind of like breathing
Speaker 2: in and just being like what what is wrong? And
Speaker 2: I just kind of everyone's like, hey, is everyone good
Speaker 2: in the trucks. Wilder came over. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: my chest hurts a bit, but that's it, and we
Speaker 2: just go back on control like a little bit, but
Speaker 2: not much. It was mainly my chest that I was
Speaker 2: I was really suffering with and everything. Everyone's ears were ringing.
Speaker 2: But because we were able to change out the tire,
Speaker 2: it blew out the tires, but it didn't the it
Speaker 2: didn't go through the block, so the humpy was still functioning,
Speaker 2: and so we just put the new tires on there
Speaker 2: and just kept rolling. But about thirty minutes in, they said, hey,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go back to base just to check the
Speaker 2: whole chess thing. And they checked on it and that's
Speaker 2: when they said it was I don't know what the
Speaker 2: name someone out there does castro finchitis or something like that,
Speaker 2: where I tored cartilage in my chest. But the second blast,
Speaker 2: it was there was a marine that was a vehicle
Speaker 2: commander of the first vehicle, and so we run around
Speaker 2: with four humvees with the squad leader like roughly in
Speaker 2: the third humby. The lead vehicle commander controls our route
Speaker 2: like we're going up MSR mobile, and he chooses where
Speaker 2: we turn round points because you imagine if you turn
Speaker 2: around the same spot, that's where they're going to plant
Speaker 2: an id on your turnaround, and so you have to
Speaker 2: like choose where you're going no other direction. He'd been
Speaker 2: in two seven he was what two seven Marine two
Speaker 2: that came over. He's lost so many people and been
Speaker 2: in so many battles that he was like chewing through
Speaker 2: his leather gloves and as anxiety was getting so bad as
Speaker 2: being the lead vehicle commander, so I took over for him,
Speaker 2: and that's when I got hit three more times. And
Speaker 2: that's where like I could I remember a lot more
Speaker 2: because I was in the front seat. But that first
Speaker 2: blast that happened was it was they call him like
Speaker 2: if you hear the term one thirty or one five
Speaker 2: to five. It's the size of the shell, like a
Speaker 2: shell that would be in a tank that you shoot out,
Speaker 2: like one five to five African was like the big shell.
Speaker 2: One thirties were still pretty big. And if you google
Speaker 2: like one thirty shell military shell, you'll see how big
Speaker 2: these things are. But they'll stack these and wrap them
Speaker 2: up and put a detonator on instead of blown up
Speaker 2: like two of these on your vehicle, and they'd either.
Speaker 1: One five to five shells about the size of like
Speaker 1: a like a it's similar. It's not as fat, but
Speaker 1: it's about same in volume as a like a propane
Speaker 1: gas tank for your grill.
Speaker 2: One thirty is more like a I think a propane
Speaker 2: The one fifties a little bit, a little bit even larger.
Speaker 1: It is thinner, so imagine a bomb that big. And
Speaker 1: then they wrap three or four and yeah.
Speaker 2: But the one thirty is is more like the propane
Speaker 2: tink because it's like a lot bulky or two. And
Speaker 2: so they two they've been two of those wrapped up
Speaker 2: with each other. And when I say we were blown
Speaker 2: up this one, there's only one that was directly underneath us.
Speaker 2: The other two were just to the side.
Speaker 1: Of us.
Speaker 2: So this one was only a car length away from
Speaker 2: us when it blew up on our vehicle, and that one,
Speaker 2: that one hurt, And that one was where they talked
Speaker 2: about my brain injury. Was like, your body moves, but
Speaker 2: your brain stays in the same spot when it's a
Speaker 2: cussion that big, and so the brain knocking against the
Speaker 2: walls what causes a lot of that damage. But that
Speaker 2: was the same way where it's like it blows up
Speaker 2: and you're just like where am I, and you just
Speaker 2: taste burnt dirt. It's weird that you just taste burnt
Speaker 2: dirt in your mouth, and it's just you're just yelling
Speaker 2: if everybody's okay, and you're trying to figure out what's happening,
Speaker 2: and you need to move up, and you hear the
Speaker 2: radio and it's just all chaos. So it's so hard
Speaker 2: to remember those impacts. But the second one was where
Speaker 2: I got out of the truck after we assessed the situation,
Speaker 2: and I remember walking around and I just kept checking
Speaker 2: my leg because I felt like I had trappedelled it. It
Speaker 2: was one of the things where you know your keys,
Speaker 2: you like check your pocket and then magically they're gonna
Speaker 2: appear a five minutes later, so you check your pocket again.
Speaker 2: I was like do I have And I'm like looking,
Speaker 2: is there any blood blood coming out my leg I
Speaker 2: was like no, and my legs got hurt, like they
Speaker 2: just hurt so bad, such a sharp pain in them,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what is this? And then I
Speaker 2: kept checking and kept checking. It kind of like dissolved,
Speaker 2: but the endorphins of like, cause it was the blast
Speaker 2: that made them hurt so bad, But coming out of
Speaker 2: it was like coming out of anything else where. It
Speaker 2: released a bunch of endorsements. You kind of like I
Speaker 2: have a high after being blown up. It's a really
Speaker 2: weird thing that happens. But none of my other body
Speaker 2: parts hurt. But that's like a testament to like our
Speaker 2: chest gear that we had and everything else. Like my
Speaker 2: body hurt a little bit, but nothing like my legs did.
Speaker 2: And that's like one distinct thing I kept remembering because
Speaker 2: it's like a.
Speaker 1: Big all that concussion just going against.
Speaker 2: Your legs yep, and so just it was and it
Speaker 2: was my right one, which was the side that it
Speaker 2: was on, and so it was It's crazy because again
Speaker 2: everyone's like were you knocked out? People who were knocked
Speaker 2: out usually know because it's a very long time. But
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of those where you see
Speaker 2: it in real time in boxing where someone gets hit
Speaker 2: and they kind of go down but they come right
Speaker 2: back to it. They were knocked out, but they hit
Speaker 2: the ground coming back and back up and everyone's like,
Speaker 2: were you knocked out? I was like, honestly, don't know.
Speaker 2: It's just you instantly react when you are conscious again.
Speaker 2: When you're blown up, you're just not in a good
Speaker 2: space obviously, and.
Speaker 1: One of these things ends up with a guy right
Speaker 1: next to you being killed. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: November. I was blown up the first time and talk
Speaker 2: about these are the old Humbies where the where the
Speaker 2: gunner sits, the metal only comes up to about like
Speaker 2: you know, belly button high, and you're just sitting in there.
Speaker 2: This is the time where Army had like automated fifty calves,
Speaker 2: Like you could be sitting inside the Humby and have
Speaker 2: like almost like a video game fifty cows so you're
Speaker 2: not exposed. The Marine Corps with the hand me downs,
Speaker 2: we still had like the metal in no way, so
Speaker 2: your legitimate just popped out of there.
Speaker 1: You're literally on top your torso is above it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole thing is visible. And so anytime we
Speaker 2: come up to something we think is ID, we corded
Speaker 2: it off. So we're on this like ginormous highway three
Speaker 2: lanes this way, three lanes this way, with like medium
Speaker 2: in the middle, and so we see it as we're
Speaker 2: driving up. First vehicle we drive up, we're like, hey,
Speaker 2: ID in the road, and we go off to left,
Speaker 2: go through the dirt, go get a better view of it.
Speaker 2: And I still have video footage of me like filming
Speaker 2: it just to make sure, like get in like the
Speaker 2: thirty two x zoom on my little JVC camera that
Speaker 2: I had with twenty gigabytes of data in there hard drive,
Speaker 2: and I'd zoom in and I was like, okay, that
Speaker 2: looks two fake. So typically if it was a very fake,
Speaker 2: it meant like someone was checking out how we operate,
Speaker 2: like how do we set up, Like how's this unit
Speaker 2: specifically set up? Usually for a future attack, so like
Speaker 2: testing it out. So honestly, I didn't think. I didn't
Speaker 2: have a high sense of like something bad it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, this is them testing what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And so I go cording off on the left side.
Speaker 2: So I'm facing now traffic, and this is a very
Speaker 2: trafficked road of just trucks and trucks and they hate
Speaker 2: obviously being backed up. And so now we have a humbie.
Speaker 2: I'm facing the traffic that's coming at me the humphie,
Speaker 2: and the other side is just still pointed away in
Speaker 2: case someone wants to come across, but they're protecting anybody
Speaker 2: from coming that way. Then the other two of Humbhi's
Speaker 2: courting the other side of the road, so off make
Speaker 2: sure nobody comes. We have this little area secured, and
Speaker 2: that's when we call EOD to come in with a
Speaker 2: little like we have a robot too, a very small
Speaker 2: one that we can first drive up to it to
Speaker 2: test out see how fake this thing is, and if
Speaker 2: we have any thought that it's real, we have to
Speaker 2: call it EOD. We usually do it anyways, just call them.
Speaker 2: So while we were waiting for them to come out,
Speaker 2: and I'm like videoing this thing, and I even like
Speaker 2: get out of my truck because we're far enough away
Speaker 2: from it, but I get out of my I had
Speaker 2: to pee. Most people are like, where do you go bathroom?
Speaker 2: Like we just pee on the tire and so I
Speaker 2: get out and for some reason, and I typically never
Speaker 2: did this, I was like, I'm gonna make myself a
Speaker 2: hard target. And I'm like peeing, but I'm swaying, just
Speaker 2: like because the idea is, if there's a sniper, why
Speaker 2: are they gonna take the shot on the guy who's
Speaker 2: swaying back and forth kind of thing. Just be a
Speaker 2: hard target. And then there's a time too where I
Speaker 2: got my camera and I was getting back in the
Speaker 2: truck and I was like, oh, I'm going to get
Speaker 2: back in the truck just in case the sniper's out there.
Speaker 2: And I closed my door, set it down, and now
Speaker 2: there's a tattoo on my arm that you could see
Speaker 2: that has like angel wings and a cross, and it
Speaker 2: was only at the time it was these angel wings
Speaker 2: in a cross with no and there was a little
Speaker 2: thing here but no name in here. And so my
Speaker 2: gunner at the time, Luke Epsen, before we even went
Speaker 2: to war, I got this tattoo, like right before we left.
Speaker 2: He's like, why do you have that sash open with
Speaker 2: no name on it? I was like, all right, I
Speaker 2: designed this tattoo and I wasn't sure, like I'm probably
Speaker 2: gonna honor one of my family members who dies or
Speaker 2: something like that, someone close to me. But I just
Speaker 2: I loved the design of this and just wanted to
Speaker 2: show my faith and everything. And he's like, uh, would
Speaker 2: you put me on my arm if I died? I
Speaker 2: was like, no, you're a boot like that. So it
Speaker 2: was like that big brother little brother thing. I always
Speaker 2: gave him crap and he ended up being my gunner
Speaker 2: throughout the time that we were there, built an awesome relationship.
Speaker 2: He was a back home his dad's like his dad's
Speaker 2: a deacon now, but they were largely Catholic Christian faith
Speaker 2: and he kind of lost his faith before that. But
Speaker 2: I used to listen to even though you were't supposed
Speaker 2: to listen to music, I'd have Christian music and country
Speaker 2: music always playing. And so one cool thing before he passed,
Speaker 2: he said that he was like, he's like, I'm actually
Speaker 2: glad you're playing that because it brings me back to
Speaker 2: my roots and back home and all that stuff, and
Speaker 2: I feel like I found faith again kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And so, but go back to that time where we
Speaker 2: were sitting there and I shut the door and then
Speaker 2: some cars start creeping up. So every This is the
Speaker 2: problem with the military and the media whole thing, like
Speaker 2: starting to Vietnam, when I mean, it was good that
Speaker 2: people went over there to like for one unjust thing.
Speaker 2: So the military they're like, hey, stop this, we're watching.
Speaker 2: But then it got so oversaturated, and like you said,
Speaker 2: it not only desensitizes people, it puts rules in a
Speaker 2: place that probably shouldn't be there when you have your
Speaker 2: best intentions. So the actual rules like the roes or
Speaker 2: what you cut rules of engagement for if a vehicle
Speaker 2: starts approaching the first step, he has these little flags.
Speaker 2: He waves the flags. So if the vehicle keeps coming,
Speaker 2: he's supposed to now pop a flare, because we had
Speaker 2: little flares in there. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's
Speaker 2: supposed to shoot in the air. If the vehicle keeps coming,
Speaker 2: he's supposed to shoot at the ground in front of them.
Speaker 2: The vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot into like
Speaker 2: the top left windshield. And then they keep coming, try
Speaker 2: the engine block and it finally they keep coming, You
Speaker 2: shoot them.
Speaker 1: Does that do all that in about four seconds?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the issue with it. But it was
Speaker 2: because if someone died and the media just portrayed it
Speaker 2: as like, oh, this innocent person was killed. It was like, well,
Speaker 2: they were going. We had to react to it because
Speaker 2: they were coming at us, and sometimes it was a mistake,
Speaker 2: but the other times it wasn't. So he keeps and
Speaker 2: all I see is his feet next to me, because
Speaker 2: legitimy imagine like you're in a truck with like the
Speaker 2: center council. Imagine someone just putting their feet right there
Speaker 2: next to you, and like every time you try to
Speaker 2: put your elbow up, you hit his leg and you're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 2: be cause they're just sitting there in that little swing
Speaker 2: that they're sitting in. And so I could see based
Speaker 2: off of where his feet are or how high or
Speaker 2: how low he's in the gun. If he like sits
Speaker 2: all the way back, he has to actually like duck
Speaker 2: into the vehicle to not be seen by people. And
Speaker 2: so I was like, Luke, you might as well get
Speaker 2: down while we're here, because just case sniper's Like I
Speaker 2: still didn't think there was a big threat, but I
Speaker 2: was like, just in case, And so I see his
Speaker 2: feet like scoop scoop a little further into the truck.
Speaker 2: But then is his feet go backwards. I'm like, Luke,
Speaker 2: I was like, you want to end up on my arm,
Speaker 2: don't you. He's like it'd be an ar RuView on
Speaker 2: your arm, Corporal Casper. But he just kept getting back
Speaker 2: up to like he just wanted to. He didn't want
Speaker 2: to do the escalation. He just kept on waving the flag.
Speaker 2: I was like, they're gonna keep kind of pushings, like
Speaker 2: there's nobody running just and then ten minutes later you
Speaker 2: shot and killed right beside me, and so he fell
Speaker 2: down into that and we tried to work.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was not the cars, but nope, so was
Speaker 1: the whole idea to put this thing in the ground
Speaker 1: so they could stop you and get shots at you.
Speaker 2: Yep. And so that means that they had eyes on me,
Speaker 2: like just knowing that I was sitting there being a
Speaker 2: hard target that time. And then even I had my
Speaker 2: door open when I was filming because where shot came from.
Speaker 2: As I was filming the propane tank that had to
Speaker 2: be within view of where the sniper was, so he
Speaker 2: might have he might have been just locked in on
Speaker 2: me for a little bit, being like.
Speaker 1: So, do you have guilt that he got it and
Speaker 1: you didn't not?
Speaker 2: I mean I'm more of guilt because I could have
Speaker 2: actually made him get down. But again, he's a good
Speaker 2: marine doing his job and it's not like we're both
Speaker 2: fought for it. But if I was just like, I
Speaker 2: could have been one of leaders. You're just like, no,
Speaker 2: get in and get in. Like if I would have
Speaker 2: had hard details that there was a sniper in the area,
Speaker 2: I would have had him locked in there. And so
Speaker 2: that's where that that guilt comes from.
Speaker 1: If our listeners were here, they would see that Luke
Speaker 1: is now on that tattoo yep.
Speaker 2: And so I went to Texas where he's from Kingwood
Speaker 2: and close his tattoo shop was Humble Humble, Texas, and
Speaker 2: I got his name as close as I could do
Speaker 2: his hometown.
Speaker 1: See, that's not what getting blowed up sounds light to
Speaker 1: a decent stats public. That's personal. What did you know
Speaker 1: he's dot immediately?
Speaker 2: No, And here's a good thing that going out was
Speaker 2: he didn't even know he was shot. And so that's
Speaker 2: the one comfort I could I brought to his family,
Speaker 2: was uh, because when he shot, he just I just said, Luke,
Speaker 2: are you hit? And he said, I don't know and
Speaker 2: he fell into the truck. So that was the only
Speaker 2: comfort I could bring to his family that he didn't know,
Speaker 2: and that's a comfort that brings to me too, that
Speaker 2: they didn't suffer suffer. And so when they pulled him out,
Speaker 2: I still had the bullets because it went through his
Speaker 2: armpit and threw both of his lungs and embedded into
Speaker 2: his arm. And I had it in my pocket for
Speaker 2: a while because we had to put in a little
Speaker 2: plastic bag for investigation, and so I had the like
Speaker 2: that took his life. He got on the chop We
Speaker 2: didn't know he's dead still because they're working on him.
Speaker 2: They had two corman on him at the time. Another
Speaker 2: army unit heard that someone was shot and they came
Speaker 2: and two people working on him. They got him on
Speaker 2: the chopper. We went off to try to find the dude,
Speaker 2: couldn't find anybody, and then they called us back to
Speaker 2: base and that's when they told us that he passed away.
Speaker 1: What happens when you hear that, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: It's just for a split second, everyone just breaks down.
Speaker 2: But then you realize that there's no days often more,
Speaker 2: and we just I just had to put someone else
Speaker 2: in the gun the next day and go out there
Speaker 2: and act like we didn't hate everybody and just go
Speaker 2: to work. So his best friend was there too, that
Speaker 2: was with him when he died. Now he's in the
Speaker 2: gun where his buddy just died, and I'm got to
Speaker 2: control everyone and be like, okay, let's go and patrol tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Money gonna sound like a horrible question, but I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't not ask it. Who cleans the truck up?
Speaker 2: We do? We do that, we clean the truck up?
Speaker 2: We do?
Speaker 1: You're cleaning your buddy's blood out of that truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're to I didn't have to vehicle commander,
Speaker 2: and that's selfish of me, but I was just like,
Speaker 2: you know, clean the vehicles and so what.
Speaker 1: Happens when people loose limbs and stuff? Same game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's actually an incident the sugar factory for
Speaker 2: two seven where the guys that I served with. This
Speaker 2: is the deployment I didn't go on, but when they
Speaker 2: came back from where there's an id set off at
Speaker 2: a door that instantly killed ten marines and they had
Speaker 2: all the guys get up and they had three different
Speaker 2: black bags, one with green tape, one blue tape, one
Speaker 2: with red tape. So if you found a body part
Speaker 2: you put in the red tape. Blue was gear and
Speaker 2: green was gun, and so.
Speaker 1: You're picking up their friends parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we written songs about that. It's crazy to think
Speaker 2: that this is what they're mentally holding on to that
Speaker 2: people don't see. It's like nobody else does. There's no
Speaker 2: cleaning crews. There's no like investigative crew to come in
Speaker 2: and like clean, swab and do all that stuff and
Speaker 2: then have a profane, a trained professional coming and swee everything.
Speaker 2: It's the people who run it.
Speaker 1: So the kid that's sitting in that gun the next
Speaker 1: day when you're going out, he knows Louke died in
Speaker 1: that spot the day before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was with them when it happened.
Speaker 1: How do you approach that knowing you are literally any
Speaker 1: moment from being dead.
Speaker 2: You don't. You go through it. And this is the one.
Speaker 2: This is the grandest part of the military and the
Speaker 2: worst part of the military at the same time. As
Speaker 2: they train you how to not be vulnerable and to
Speaker 2: lose all emotion kind of thing while you're going through
Speaker 2: the process of war, but they don't give it back
Speaker 2: to you when you're done. So when I was over there,
Speaker 2: the only thing that saved us on a lot of
Speaker 2: trips was because this immediate reaction to requests. We were
Speaker 2: driving one night and so we don't have we don't
Speaker 2: run headlights at night, so we have night vision goggles,
Speaker 2: which don't work very well. You only seem like maybe
Speaker 2: twenty feet in front of you have these little bit
Speaker 2: ir lights on the front of your humby, and my
Speaker 2: driver's drive in. I'm sitting there in the pasture seat
Speaker 2: just like trying to stay awake, like looking at the
Speaker 2: road and instantly and this is crazy too, because you
Speaker 2: just go up, you just make loops. But all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, right there in the middle of of the
Speaker 2: road was a bob and I just l left as
Speaker 2: loud as I can, and the driver just goes left
Speaker 2: and then he's like, what he didn't see it. I
Speaker 2: was like there was an ied But it was that
Speaker 2: instant obedience to order that saved our life right there,
Speaker 2: because that was like homemade C four, like Russian style
Speaker 2: Sea four, packed into this little what they call speed
Speaker 2: bumps because it's like a metal with a little bitty
Speaker 2: loop like speed bump, and they put what they sorry audience,
Speaker 2: they call them anal beads. They're these little bitty uh
Speaker 2: like what do you call it saw blades that are
Speaker 2: just separated by two little pieces of cardboard and then
Speaker 2: they wrap them up so the moment that if you
Speaker 2: drive over them, the two metal pieces connect and it
Speaker 2: completes a circuit. So they usually when they put this
Speaker 2: speed bump on the road, they throw them out this way,
Speaker 2: so even if you swerve you hit those, it still
Speaker 2: blows up, not directly under for some reason why they
Speaker 2: put this one on. They put them over the top
Speaker 2: of it, and so luckily we swerve left. But it's
Speaker 2: that like when they strip away the Marine Corps at
Speaker 2: vulnerability and teach you, like just to go and go
Speaker 2: and go and not think about it. That's why we
Speaker 2: succeed when we do go to war. But that's also
Speaker 2: why we're killing ourselves when we come home from war,
Speaker 2: because they don't then say, well, here's how to remap
Speaker 2: back to the normal.
Speaker 1: It maybe because they don't know how to remap. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's the reality of driving a hum v around
Speaker 1: a rock in Afghanistan and fighting in these wars. And
Speaker 1: remember we're still talking about twenty one twenty four year
Speaker 1: old kids, yep, and your brain's getting right oled your
Speaker 1: body's getting beat up. And I'm glad you said talked
Speaker 1: about how head traum works because that's the same thing
Speaker 1: in football. Actually, if you get slobber knocked in football,
Speaker 1: your head moves, but your brain stays still. So what's
Speaker 1: happening is your brain spats around on the inside of
Speaker 1: your skull and getting bruised and traumatized. And it's why
Speaker 1: there's now in football concussion protocol And until your concussions over,
Speaker 1: you can't go back and play football because your brain
Speaker 1: has to recover. But you're sidd't. Yeah, military guys aren't
Speaker 1: because they go, oh yeah, your bells wrung, get back
Speaker 1: on humd and if you get four explosions, your brain's
Speaker 1: irreversibly affected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they had they did have rules at least
Speaker 2: even when I was there. I think the rules privately
Speaker 2: changed now, but like for the better. But even the
Speaker 2: rule back then was if you had a concussion, first concussion,
Speaker 2: it was like yet twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Off, that is about two and a half weeks short.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then if you get your second concussion, that's when
Speaker 2: you get to do I think a week and then third,
Speaker 2: third or two weeks and then third concussion means you're out,
Speaker 2: like you're unfit for duty because it's too.
Speaker 1: Many times you have four.
Speaker 2: Well, the first one, yeah, they didn't think. They didn't
Speaker 2: say I had a concussion.
Speaker 1: There's no way if you tore cartlage in your chest
Speaker 1: that you were not concussioned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they didn't say it. So I was on
Speaker 2: the road with zero at that time. And then January
Speaker 2: is like January's second was the first time I was
Speaker 2: hit it with the concussion. And I still remember this
Speaker 2: because I was sitting there thinking it was only sixteen
Speaker 2: hours off and they put me back on the normal
Speaker 2: shift because they're like, it's close enough to twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: So I didn't really get any time off, but I
Speaker 2: remember it being like, man, if I get blown up
Speaker 2: right now, he's gonna get a lot of trouble for
Speaker 2: putting on here the next day, So that that twenty
Speaker 2: four hour went through and I didn't get blown up,
Speaker 2: but the second day this is like people always say
Speaker 2: I'm lucky. I'm like, you don't even know why I'm
Speaker 2: so lucky. The second day of that as I was
Speaker 2: supposed to be recovering and I'm on patrol first vehicle.
Speaker 2: We're rolling down and a proof of smoke just comes
Speaker 2: up beside us, and I didn't see what the gunner saw.
Speaker 2: He say, hey, Gooba cast bro. I think someone just
Speaker 2: shot at us or something. I saw this proof of
Speaker 2: smoke come up, and so I go, we're outlaw. I
Speaker 2: was like, hey, outlaw too. Can you check the burm
Speaker 2: over here? My gunner says there was a proof of smoke,
Speaker 2: and so he looks. He's like, dude, that's a bomb.
Speaker 2: And he's like okay, So we cordon it off call eod.
Speaker 2: It was two one five five stacked with white phosphorus.
Speaker 2: So this is like napalm. This is if that would
Speaker 2: it would we would have been dead, completely dead. The
Speaker 2: only thing that saved us was whoever connected it. The
Speaker 2: blasting cap was the only thing that went off because
Speaker 2: they didn't make the circuit.
Speaker 1: They pushed the button when you were BA was on our.
Speaker 2: Truck and nothing. It was just the proof And so
Speaker 2: that was amazing for us. But it was something that
Speaker 2: I didn't even reflect on until really later on, when
Speaker 2: people are like, man, it's lucky that you didn't get work,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, you know, what's really lucky? At that
Speaker 2: time that little proof of smoke went off because I
Speaker 2: didn't even we didn't even realize we weren't. Just like
Speaker 2: in the moment in the military, you're not like, oh
Speaker 2: I could have died, I could have done this years like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that was insane. We almost got blown up.
Speaker 2: Like that's how we process it.
Speaker 1: So now it's time to start working new way out
Speaker 1: of the Marines and you're told you have a brain injury.
Speaker 2: I actually wasn't told I had a brain injury.
Speaker 1: Okay, well tell me how that worked.
Speaker 2: So before this is the funny thing too. I had
Speaker 2: to extend. I don't think I've said this. I had
Speaker 2: to extend to go to war. I didn't actually meet
Speaker 2: when they first sent me to first Tank Battalion with
Speaker 2: first toes. They said I didn't make their deployment either.
Speaker 2: So I asked if I could extend in the Marine Corps,
Speaker 2: just even a few months, And I'm like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: could extend if you just want to do a month.
Speaker 2: And extend a month, I was like, I did not
Speaker 2: know that, or I would have done that with two seven,
Speaker 2: but thanks for telling me now, And so I extended
Speaker 2: one month in the Marine Corps just to go to war.
Speaker 2: So that was a whole nother hurdle. But then because
Speaker 2: I did that and they knew I was getting out
Speaker 2: the moment I touched down, I had to do my separation.
Speaker 2: They call it like steps and taps. I had to
Speaker 2: do that before I even left for Iraq. So, which
Speaker 2: is stupid anyways, because you're supposed touchdown or just have
Speaker 2: this time to like, you know, learn how to do
Speaker 2: resumes and stuff. And I did that before I even
Speaker 2: went to war, because they were just trying to you know,
Speaker 2: cut costs and be like, just do it now so
Speaker 2: we can get you over there. So the whole time,
Speaker 2: I was considered unfit for duty. So within four months
Speaker 2: of me being in Iraq, I couldn't work my normal
Speaker 2: job anymore. But I still was in Iraq. I was like,
Speaker 2: see you why for duty? Just because of the rule
Speaker 2: three concussions you're out rule. I got it and so,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know that my brain is was that bad.
Speaker 2: There was signs of it, but I didn't know the signs.
Speaker 2: I just figured they're the smart ones. So if they
Speaker 2: kept saying we're probably gonna send you to Ballad to
Speaker 2: get a cat scan, that's where they'll find out if
Speaker 2: you have any brain damage. Nothing. They never sent me.
Speaker 2: I just kept going throughout my days like normal. They
Speaker 2: just kept never sending me. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I must be good. But they'd put me on I'd
Speaker 2: be on this COC like the command center that was
Speaker 2: on Camp Fallujah, just as like a runner, and they'd
Speaker 2: be like, hey, go get Corporal Johnson from Hutt two
Speaker 2: to two. But the moment he said two two, I
Speaker 2: forgot the corporal's name. And then he'd say I'd be like,
Speaker 2: what was that, Gunny? And he'd say it again and
Speaker 2: I forget. I was like, what was the number? And
Speaker 2: he say the number and I forget the name. I
Speaker 2: was like, what was his name? And then he'd say
Speaker 2: that he just he'd get so pissed at me. I
Speaker 2: thought I was gonna get in trouble. So I started
Speaker 2: only learning the number because then i'd run there. There'd
Speaker 2: be two guys names on there. But hey, Gunny, once
Speaker 2: one of you up there, and then let him decide
Speaker 2: once you go up there. So I should have probably known,
Speaker 2: but I also thought I was just blown up a
Speaker 2: bunch of times. It's gonna take a minute for me
Speaker 2: to be unrattled so well for the rest of the
Speaker 2: three months goes by, and I fly back to the
Speaker 2: States and I get home in twenty on Palms, California,
Speaker 2: and I start checking out of the Marine Corps. Within
Speaker 2: the first like three days of me being home for more,
Speaker 2: I'm checking out going. I went to medical and just
Speaker 2: said like, hey, will you sign off on this? And're like,
Speaker 2: do you need to be seen by us? I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't think so, because nobody ever saw me then,
Speaker 2: and so I just had them sign off and I
Speaker 2: left the Marine Corps. So I didn't know I should
Speaker 2: have been medically retired. I still haven't been, but I
Speaker 2: just left and took six months off of just trying
Speaker 2: to find out what the next step was, and I
Speaker 2: knew it was college. But then after like six months
Speaker 2: is when I decided to go to the VA, and
Speaker 2: that's when I ended up getting diagnosed with it.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back when you get back. Do you
Speaker 1: have survivors? Gill? No.
Speaker 2: I didn't feel anything. It was not in like a
Speaker 2: bad way, didn't feel it like numb. They sit And
Speaker 2: I didn'tlearn until afterwards that PTSD doesn't even kick in
Speaker 2: until like one hundred and ninety days or plus out
Speaker 2: because it's like the think of whole reality shift. So
Speaker 2: I was just so happy to be home in like
Speaker 2: next phase of my life?
Speaker 1: What do I do?
Speaker 2: And kind of I felt pretty normal even coming home,
Speaker 2: even because you reflect on it and you feel like
Speaker 2: you're a bad person because you don't feel anything. You
Speaker 2: don't you don't feel anything that your friend. Do you
Speaker 2: feel it? Obviously you can't. It's hard to bring up.
Speaker 2: You can't talk to people. But you don't feel it,
Speaker 2: feel it like you think you would in the first
Speaker 2: initial stage of getting back. And I think that's because
Speaker 2: excitement's out weighing everything else. Your excitement levels are so
Speaker 2: high that it's kind of depressing everything else. So you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm back home. My mom came to see me, my
Speaker 2: girlfriend at the time came to see me. Like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this. We're gonna travel across the country.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna eat Taco Bell. It's been like seven months
Speaker 2: and I hate Taco Bell. And you start getting so
Speaker 2: excited that I think you're suppressing them until it all
Speaker 2: just hits you at once. And that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know the numbers, but I think during that time,
Speaker 1: how many servicemen a day were committing suicide.
Speaker 2: So it's the numbers now they say is roughly there's
Speaker 2: roughly twenty suicides a day, and that's military and veterans,
Speaker 2: mainly veterans, is like seventeen points something of that. The
Speaker 2: other ones are active and reservist. But that's just to
Speaker 2: say that's including active.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like number three for active or something. But
Speaker 2: that's only the VA study. So there's something called American
Speaker 2: Warrior Partnership out of Atlanta that did another study, a
Speaker 2: deeper dive where they partner with university you think of Alabama,
Speaker 2: and they went down to the Corner Report because what
Speaker 2: happens is if you don't have a suicide letter, they
Speaker 2: don't count as a suicide of a veteran. So if
Speaker 2: you get in a car accident or overdose or anything else,
Speaker 2: it's not suicide, it's an overdose. They're very black and
Speaker 2: white on that. But the Corner Report went down to
Speaker 2: like they actually went they searched every veteran who died.
Speaker 2: They went down to the path of being like is
Speaker 2: this most likely a death? So what they found was
Speaker 2: in their study that it is minimum of twenty three
Speaker 2: suicides a day in the veteran military is but it's
Speaker 2: most likely up to forty three because the people who
Speaker 2: didn't have notes still had all the indications that they've
Speaker 2: and I've seen this through the work we do with Creative.
Speaker 2: It's where someone was like, hey, before this program, I
Speaker 2: was going to have a rock climbing accident. I wasn't
Speaker 2: gonna leave a note. I didn't want my kids to
Speaker 2: know I killed myself. I was just gonna say, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: your mom fell off a rock. And so I know
Speaker 2: that they don't lead notes all the time. And so
Speaker 2: they did this big study that shows that most likely
Speaker 2: it's anywhere between the twenty three and the forty four
Speaker 2: number a day. Currently, that's.
Speaker 1: Between two and twenty five hundred service people annually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were safer in war than we were at
Speaker 2: six thousand people died in that twenty year war.
Speaker 1: Right, and now you're losing five times as many service people, yeah,
Speaker 1: at home than you did in theater. So the war
Speaker 1: continues to kill service But.
Speaker 2: That's the thing too, it's not even the war. Suicide
Speaker 2: is as a whole as up and a lot of
Speaker 2: that goes back, like childhood suicide and all that, and
Speaker 2: so I think these later states suicide, we're seeing a
Speaker 2: lot of non combat people who are killing themselves, a
Speaker 2: lot of active duty people who've never seen anything that
Speaker 2: are killing themselves. And so it's so hard to pinpoint
Speaker 2: it now where it's at. Back then it was pretty
Speaker 2: high because people didn't know how to deal with it,
Speaker 2: But now the numbers only keep growing. I think it's
Speaker 2: because a whole social like econotic, like the when iPhone
Speaker 2: came out, I was a part of the I was
Speaker 2: honored enough to be invited to the Province Task Force
Speaker 2: before it was inside the government. And so if you
Speaker 2: don't know, one of the things that Trump put in
Speaker 2: place was like this thing called Province Task Force, and
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be outside of the VA government. It's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a bunch of entities so that nonprofits
Speaker 2: get together and other people and solve veteran suicide. Drew
Speaker 2: a bunch of like however, it is, just try to
Speaker 2: solve it. I was the only arts nonprofit at the
Speaker 2: table at the time, which I thought was awesome. I
Speaker 2: went to DC met with all these people. It's like,
Speaker 2: this is gonna be great. So we started doing this
Speaker 2: like work up and then now it's been pulled into
Speaker 2: the administration. After the next administration came in, they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's pull this back in to the government. Good and
Speaker 2: I've been excluded from it. But when I was there
Speaker 2: the first time, they said, what we're really tackling is
Speaker 2: not veteran suicide. We are going to tackle that, but
Speaker 2: we're going to figure out why it's happening, and we're
Speaker 2: going to sprinkle that into everybody else. And they showed
Speaker 2: us statistics where like the highest rate of suicide in
Speaker 2: or highest rate of death in like Arizona somewhere from
Speaker 2: thirteen to sixteen year olds is suicide. It was a
Speaker 2: crazy number. And they showed us the correlation between like
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight up and suicides in every single population.
Speaker 2: So what we're ultimately trying to solve wasn't just better suicide,
Speaker 2: it was everybody's suicide. So I think that's where sometimes
Speaker 2: these I do want to preface this not war always,
Speaker 2: but it is there is an issue, and it's a
Speaker 2: military is the biggest.
Speaker 1: Part of the issue, even if it's twenty two No,
Speaker 1: I know you can cut that number to fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: hundred percent.
Speaker 2: No, a lot of it is fatter. A lot of
Speaker 2: the venters that we deal with is from war specifically.
Speaker 1: So you've got a brain injury, you're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out life, and you want to go to college, and
Speaker 1: now enough time has pass that you're suffering from PTSD.
Speaker 1: Did you ever consider suicide?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, but my faith in God was
Speaker 2: the one thing that kept me above water when I
Speaker 2: if zero was killed myself and a hundred was me
Speaker 2: before war. I was at a nine when I first
Speaker 2: went well, it was during college when I was in
Speaker 2: my deepest, darkest place. But I was like in a
Speaker 2: nine and I was hovering there. But again, it was
Speaker 2: just my personal faith that I was just like, I'm
Speaker 2: never gonna do this. But I thought about it a
Speaker 2: lot of times, but I just was like, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna do this.
Speaker 1: That's dark.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was a lot of thought. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was hurting. I was everything, like I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I went from him again, not that it's a big
Speaker 2: deal in the kid twenty two person class, but I
Speaker 2: was prom king. I was class clown. I went and
Speaker 2: guarded the president of the United States. I went to war,
Speaker 2: and I'm a twenty two year old, Like what other
Speaker 2: twenty two has a life like that kind of life
Speaker 2: experience of what I went through. And now I'm bouncing
Speaker 2: in a bar with a brain injury and I can't
Speaker 2: learn new technical skills and I have debilitating anxieties that
Speaker 2: I can't leave the house for some reason. I didn't
Speaker 2: know why I was anxiety about, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: for the longest time I would. So I went to
Speaker 2: college at first, like normal, I went. I wanted to
Speaker 2: study business business school, right business entrepreneurship at this community college,
Speaker 2: because again we didn't have money. So I was like,
Speaker 2: I knew, I'm going to community college route, then I'll
Speaker 2: probably do a four year of college with the GNI bill.
Speaker 2: So I start going and I failed my very first
Speaker 2: business class, and that was the first sign of that
Speaker 2: there was a bigger issue than I knew about. Because
Speaker 2: I didn't have to use my brain for six months.
Speaker 2: It was like I took my Harley to surgis. I
Speaker 2: just rode around. I didn't have to really fully function
Speaker 2: with my brain. It was just a normal day to day.
Speaker 2: And so now I'm in school and I sign up
Speaker 2: for this hybrid class, which is online. You're in class
Speaker 2: every Monday, but you do online stuff, and I could
Speaker 2: not get There was a process where I was like,
Speaker 2: I never remembered where to go like online even how
Speaker 2: to even once I figured out how to go online
Speaker 2: to get it, I didn't know where in there. And
Speaker 2: I just ended up failing that class so miserably that
Speaker 2: that's when I went to the A hospital. I was like,
Speaker 2: I think there's something else wrong with me. And I
Speaker 2: go through the whole process and they ended up diagnosing
Speaker 2: me with tramic brain injury. And back then when they
Speaker 2: don't know how to talk about it, they're just pretty
Speaker 2: much like, oh, yeah, so if in two years you
Speaker 2: don't see any like anything better, you're probably gonna be
Speaker 2: like this rest of your life. Like that was their thing,
Speaker 2: not like right, yeah, so I have a time or
Speaker 2: two years and we're good, uh and so, but they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: you're probably not gonna learn new technical skills. Your left
Speaker 2: brains injured, so your short term memories like jacked up,
Speaker 2: you're all this stuff. You're my speech at the time,
Speaker 2: I did a lot of um my roll index was
Speaker 2: broken in my head. I couldn't find words and all
Speaker 2: these issues. And so now I'm thinking like, wow, I
Speaker 2: can't do a lot of even though I look like
Speaker 2: I'm you know, working a lot very fit, I still
Speaker 2: my body doesn't function that way. I'm still very much injured.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, well, I can't get like
Speaker 2: a heavily physical job even though I look like I can.
Speaker 2: And then I can't learn new technical skills, like I'm
Speaker 2: a piece of crap, Like what can I do? And
Speaker 2: so even in Illinois, they make you do speech classes.
Speaker 2: And this is when I found out I had anxieties
Speaker 2: really bad. I'm supposed to do speeches in front of
Speaker 2: these eighteen nine year old kids. Nope, they don't have
Speaker 2: any kind of you know, life, and like they haven't
Speaker 2: done anything like high school four months pretty much high school.
Speaker 2: This is their first writing class, speech class. And I'm
Speaker 2: back here, this veteran serve four years gard the president,
Speaker 2: and all we have to do is write a little
Speaker 2: report and then go up in front of class and
Speaker 2: read that report. Seems easy, right, Well I got debilitating
Speaker 2: anxiety to the points where I had to do one
Speaker 2: on one speeches my speech teacher. I had to go
Speaker 2: tell her that I had, Like there's a kid who
Speaker 2: had autism like on like on the like I don't
Speaker 2: want to be around people style that still would get
Speaker 2: up in front of class and do something. And then
Speaker 2: there was me who, when you look at me, every
Speaker 2: part of me should have been able to go up there.
Speaker 2: I couldn't and I couldn't get over that. And that's
Speaker 2: part of the reason why like even contemplats suicide because
Speaker 2: I was like, what am I gonna do? Like if
Speaker 2: I keep like if I'm broken physically and I'm broken mentally,
Speaker 2: just what is there in the world for me and
Speaker 2: so and.
Speaker 1: Who's gonna want to be around me? Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I just cause the anxiety.
Speaker 2: It was in anticipation anxiety. I didn't even know what
Speaker 2: it was. It was the idea that I was going
Speaker 2: to be in front of class, speaking in front of people.
Speaker 2: And I think it ultimately comes back from being blown
Speaker 2: up by not knowing who was blowing me up. And
Speaker 2: so I'd be just driving every day like normal, then boom,
Speaker 2: and then I was just sitting in my truck when
Speaker 2: my gun I was boom killed. And so I think
Speaker 2: it was anticipation anxiety that is I was in the
Speaker 2: front of the class, or if I was the first
Speaker 2: person walking in or something like, something could happen to me.
Speaker 2: So I never knew what it was though, and that's
Speaker 2: where a lot of suicide comes from. It was because
Speaker 2: we never asked why why am I getting anxiety?
Speaker 1: I never even thought about that. What about just driving around?
Speaker 1: Didn't you drive around and have flashbacks? And so it's
Speaker 1: not flashback, passed a thing on the sidewalk and freak.
Speaker 2: So I didn't know that was happening, but it was happening.
Speaker 2: So you're subconscious, don't so yours? And this is the
Speaker 2: important thing that I get to tell veterans, is like,
Speaker 2: you're subconscious. Like so they taught me. There's this really
Speaker 2: cool article that described it the best and they broke
Speaker 2: it down Barney style. So they said, you have Barney. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they broke it down Barney style. They said it you
Speaker 2: had your foret very simple, very simple, your forefront of
Speaker 2: your brain and in the back end of your brain.
Speaker 2: And one's like your your uh how did they say it?
Speaker 2: But I think it was just like forefront of the
Speaker 2: back end of your brain. And so your forefront of
Speaker 2: brain is like what we're doing right now, we're talking,
Speaker 2: we're doing all this stuff, but if anything happened, someone
Speaker 2: came in here or shooter came in, we'd all go
Speaker 2: into a fight or flight brain, which is actually separate.
Speaker 2: It has no emotion, it doesn't attach motion. It's just
Speaker 2: if you're trained well enough, you go and fight. If
Speaker 2: you don't, you come back. And so in that brain
Speaker 2: is where like if you killed someone overseas in a
Speaker 2: fight firefight, and then you come back out of it
Speaker 2: and you're like, I didn't I didn't care that I
Speaker 2: killed that person in the moment, like I didn't feel anything.
Speaker 2: So you your brain starts talking to each other. Little brain,
Speaker 2: big brain starts to me like big Brain's like, why
Speaker 2: didn't you feel compassion? Why do you kill that person
Speaker 2: not feel anything? Then your wear brains just like I
Speaker 2: don't know, like I don't know why I did. So
Speaker 2: you're having this internal discussion or subconscious like are sometimes
Speaker 2: to picks up on everything. That's why we have anxiety
Speaker 2: before we think of like why am I about to
Speaker 2: get anxiety? So that anxiety subconscious was telling me when
Speaker 2: I was driving to school, then I was going to
Speaker 2: be blown up. But the forefront of my brain is
Speaker 2: just like I'm going to school, So my body's reacting
Speaker 2: to my subconscious and my mind's reacting to like what
Speaker 2: I'm doing that day.
Speaker 1: Which is so interesting. That's how that that's how you
Speaker 1: don't understand it, but you can't get your body to
Speaker 1: do what you wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what leads to suicide. Is that whole why?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Why is this happening? And never trying to discover And
Speaker 2: that's where my next choice in life is what saved
Speaker 2: my life and saved a lot of other vendors' life.
Speaker 2: Since then was I decided to do art, I decided
Speaker 2: to take.
Speaker 1: So okay, so yeah, So, first of all, that is
Speaker 1: so freaking gosh. I don't want to say it's interesting
Speaker 1: because it's horrific, but it is interesting. It's horrifically interesting.
Speaker 1: I guess that so many of our young men and
Speaker 1: women who served us come back to the United State
Speaker 1: with that very thing going on in their brains, and
Speaker 1: somehow they're trying to at the same time fighting all
Speaker 1: these internal struggles. They're trying to re enter a normal,
Speaker 1: civilized society and they're having a hard time finding their
Speaker 1: place in it. And who do they talk to? Because
Speaker 1: unless they're sitting there with a buddy who's been through it,
Speaker 1: nobody can really I can hear you, and I, for
Speaker 1: God's sakes, I empathize with that. But there's no way
Speaker 1: you can tell that story to someone who doesn't experience
Speaker 1: it and think that we actually get it. So now
Speaker 1: you're also isolated. So you've got anxiety, you've got things
Speaker 1: going on, you've got suicidal tendencies. You have to feel isolated,
Speaker 1: and you can understand why people would say I'm hanging
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I get it was so bad. I got
Speaker 2: anxiety about getting anxiety one time, and I still remember
Speaker 2: it because I make is same sandwich like I legitmate
Speaker 2: wouldn't leave house unless it was absolute need, ran out
Speaker 2: of all food supplies, and I was. I was trying
Speaker 2: to get job interviews. It's still like in that moment
Speaker 2: where you're like, you knew you had some issues, but
Speaker 2: you had to be successful, try to as hard as
Speaker 2: you could. So I was gonna go to a job interview,
Speaker 2: and I was making like a sandwich for the day,
Speaker 2: just like malooney and cheese sandwich, probably through ketchup on there.
Speaker 2: Because I was that type person like ketchup.
Speaker 1: That's disgusting, nasty dude, that was my jam. I will
Speaker 1: not feel bad for you. I will empathize with everything
Speaker 1: you've said except for that disgusting to that have information.
Speaker 2: So I'll be eating this awesome sandwich.
Speaker 1: There's nothing awesome about maloney and.
Speaker 2: And uh about before I was going to this job interview,
Speaker 2: which I was getting anxieties because of the job interview, right,
Speaker 2: but I was eating the sandwich when I was getting sure.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about thea you were going to have from
Speaker 1: the Bolooneian barbecue.
Speaker 2: I was well trained. This was at least my thousands sandwich.
Speaker 2: So the next day, when I had nothing to do
Speaker 2: besides probably game with my buddies, was making a sandwich.
Speaker 2: I started making the sandwich, and my anxiety came. Why again,
Speaker 2: because my body remembered, you know, the body keeps a score.
Speaker 2: My body remembered getting anxiety the previous day making the sandwich.
Speaker 2: I was getting anxiety because I was getting anxiety. Wow,
Speaker 2: it was like and that's where I think people will get.
Speaker 1: Caught up as just to make it literally cristy.
Speaker 2: Because they think, like what and so that's that's honestly.
Speaker 2: When I was like, something really has to change. And
Speaker 2: that's again when I went to I was still in
Speaker 2: college even though I was failed my classes, and I
Speaker 2: was sitting there taking again, optimism goes a very long way,
Speaker 2: and I was sitting looking back saying, Okay, I guarded
Speaker 2: to the President of the United States and had a
Speaker 2: really high clearance. So now that I am going to college,
Speaker 2: what I did learn and the separation program was you
Speaker 2: don't really need the degree you're going for unless it's
Speaker 2: very specific, like obviously, if we're gonna be doctor, you
Speaker 2: need a degree, but if you wanted to even go
Speaker 2: law enforcement, you didn't actually need like a law degree,
Speaker 2: like law enforcement degree. If you wanted to be executive
Speaker 2: director of a non probably you don't have to go
Speaker 2: through non off of management school. You just need a
Speaker 2: degree because it shows people that.
Speaker 1: Get will to go yeah, and you can commit and finish.
Speaker 2: And so I was thinking, Okay, I have the background,
Speaker 2: which is what most people don't have, like top TOI
Speaker 2: your security clearance, experience guard than the president. Now I
Speaker 2: just need a degree and I could be an FBI
Speaker 2: AGENCYIA agent, whate a three letter agencies and just be
Speaker 2: And I thought that might bring me normalcy again as
Speaker 2: being in a place where maybe combat something like that.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, but what can I do
Speaker 2: to get a degree now that I have a brain
Speaker 2: injury and I can't really do so and I have anxiety?
Speaker 2: So where can I go be with people who I
Speaker 2: don't want to talk to they don't want to talk
Speaker 2: to me. Maybe I'll be an artist.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, coo, are you kidding?
Speaker 2: I'll sign up for some art classes so I don't
Speaker 2: have to talk to these kids who don't want to
Speaker 2: talk to me. I don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1: Dude, a six foot five veteran rolling in with a
Speaker 1: bunch of eighteen year old and I had a Harley.
Speaker 2: I had Harley cut off more cutoffs than I did
Speaker 2: shirts with sleeves on it. And I was like thirty
Speaker 2: pounds heavy and it's working all the time.
Speaker 1: That well, but the artists crowd can be a little
Speaker 1: eclectic and all that. So but I just got to
Speaker 1: believe one thing did not look like.
Speaker 2: No, when people see me walk in this room, just
Speaker 2: like what is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: But it was good because again they didn't want to
Speaker 2: really talk to me. I didn't want to talk to them.
Speaker 2: There's no like, I didn't have to use my brain
Speaker 2: that much. So I thought, you know, I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll just paint some things, eat some crans like marine stew.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So the only one that knew I had disabilities was
Speaker 2: a teacher because I had to report, like, hey, if
Speaker 2: I anxieties want to leave the room or not show
Speaker 2: up to classes, probably because something's happened on a PTSD
Speaker 2: flare up kind of thing. And so I'm learning drawing
Speaker 2: and painting and it's going well. I go to my
Speaker 2: gunner's grave every single year. I go to Houston to
Speaker 2: visit his family. I didn't know his family before he
Speaker 2: was killed. Sales afraid to call his family back when
Speaker 2: you can still they still had some you know, you
Speaker 2: flip through the books and find some people and UH
Speaker 2: call him up and just you know, I left a
Speaker 2: voice message saying, hey, you don't know me when I
Speaker 2: served with your son, and I'm coming to his grave
Speaker 2: on the day he died, and so I just want
Speaker 2: to know. I was being in town and they called
Speaker 2: me and they said, you need to stop by your
Speaker 2: house if you're coming. So I went there and I
Speaker 2: haven't I've never not gone. I haven't missed a year
Speaker 2: going to his grave and December spend time stayed his
Speaker 2: family's house, spend time with him.
Speaker 1: Do you have a wump in your throat walking up
Speaker 1: to this kid's family? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: The first few times, the very first time, because I
Speaker 2: was legit, I was in charge of him when he died,
Speaker 2: so I could have got a slap in the face.
Speaker 2: They could have been wanting, you know, me to come
Speaker 2: there for retribution, or it was going to be something different.
Speaker 2: And I'm so glad they are who they are because
Speaker 2: I remember getting out of that truck and my uncle shake.
Speaker 1: I would be so freaking nervous I was. That was anxiety.
Speaker 2: That was the most nervousness I've ever had. I had
Speaker 2: one phone conversation with him saying I was coming to town.
Speaker 2: They said, we're having a awake, like a celebration of
Speaker 2: life for Luke. So please, We're gonna be at our
Speaker 2: neighbor's house across the street. Just come over when you
Speaker 2: arrive and pulled in and she was like, are you rich?
Speaker 2: And I was like yeah. She gave me like the
Speaker 2: biggest mom hug ever, and at that moment, I knew
Speaker 2: everything was.
Speaker 1: Gonna be all right, and so did they want to
Speaker 1: know everything?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't, like they they kind of well she
Speaker 2: did specifically only because there she heard. It was a
Speaker 2: few years after that, like the first year, I just
Speaker 2: wanted to be like I served with him, no nothing else.
Speaker 2: Second year I came, Third year I came, and I
Speaker 2: think it was the third year where I just had
Speaker 2: to tell her that was the lump of the throat,
Speaker 2: like I need to tell her that her son didn't suffer,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know how much detail I'll get in,
Speaker 2: but I need her to know that she that he
Speaker 2: didn't suffer, like that was the main thing. And then
Speaker 2: come to find out that, you know, the other brains
Speaker 2: that served with him, he was engaged at the time.
Speaker 2: They decided when they came home to tell his fiance
Speaker 2: that like he said your name when he died, like
Speaker 2: try to bring her come by, which is all crap,
Speaker 2: which but that got back to the mom. And so
Speaker 2: imagine you're the mother of him thinking that another lady
Speaker 2: was like coming out of his mouth when he died,
Speaker 2: not his own mom. And so it's like this idea
Speaker 2: that like the is so I never wanted her to
Speaker 2: feel that, so I had to tell her. So I
Speaker 2: ended up telling her the whole thing, and she's like,
Speaker 2: I knew it. I knew that if it was any
Speaker 2: woman's name coming out of his mouth at the end,
Speaker 2: it was going to be his mom's name. And so
Speaker 2: that was the thing that I just felt so good
Speaker 2: that I got that off my chest because now she
Speaker 2: knows that he just didn't know.
Speaker 1: Once are again, these are not conversations that people are
Speaker 1: supposed to have telling parents about how their children die, No,
Speaker 1: and reliving it. Yeah, all right, so you're an art class.
Speaker 2: So now I'm an art class. I have this photo
Speaker 2: of me and his grave that my uncle took when
Speaker 2: I was sitting there, and I just loved it. It
Speaker 2: was like I was my hand on his grave, it
Speaker 2: was the tattoo with his name on it. It was
Speaker 2: me just kneeling there. And so in this class, I
Speaker 2: wasn't you're not supposed to do You don't need to
Speaker 2: do conceptual things or just you could copy photos, you
Speaker 2: could do whatever kind of you I want. You're just
Speaker 2: learning at this point. It was like I think by
Speaker 2: that time, it was drawing too or painting too, and
Speaker 2: I'm doing chalk pastel, and I have this photo of
Speaker 2: me and in my gunner's grave that I'm just doing
Speaker 2: by myself in the corner again, don't want anybody to see.
Speaker 2: And I'm coloring in everything skin tone this way's supposed
Speaker 2: to be, the cami shorts, the black shirt, his headstone.
Speaker 2: Everything is an exact replica of the portrait or the
Speaker 2: photo that I have next to it. And my teacher
Speaker 2: comes up behind me and he said, hey, I know
Speaker 2: you're probably gonna do the background green because it's grass.
Speaker 2: I see it here. But I just want to challenge
Speaker 2: you to do painted a color that wouldn't grass, would
Speaker 2: never be like it never be this color, Because if
Speaker 2: you do something like that, you gotta imagine that your
Speaker 2: art's gonna live where you're not. So if it's sitting
Speaker 2: up in a room somewhere and you're not there to
Speaker 2: explain it. If you want that person viewing it to
Speaker 2: know that you're a part of this piece, you need
Speaker 2: to have a conversation with him. So and I first
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't understand any of that, and I
Speaker 2: still barely understand it. I'm like, that sounds stupid, Like
Speaker 2: I don't want to mess up this drawing because it's
Speaker 2: really good. It's like it's like the best I've done yet,
Speaker 2: and it is my first time doing chalk pastel. Every
Speaker 2: part of me was saying, don't do it because I'm
Speaker 2: going to ruin this piece. And I ended up getting
Speaker 2: red and just I did everything red behind it, just
Speaker 2: because I'm good marine follow rules, did everything read, not
Speaker 2: knowing why. And then it comes to critique time, and
Speaker 2: I was so art dumb. I didn't know what critiques were. Really,
Speaker 2: I just you know, I put up my piece. The
Speaker 2: other kids put up their piece, and then he's like, Richard,
Speaker 2: do you want to talk about your piece? I was like,
Speaker 2: uh no, thank you very much. I'm not gonna talk
Speaker 2: about like Richard, do you want to talk about anything.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm in hope. That's why this is my piece.
Speaker 2: Like that's why I'm here.
Speaker 1: I'm here not to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then they say, students who had no idea
Speaker 2: about my life, like what do you think about Richard's piece?
Speaker 2: What do you think he's saying? And then each one,
Speaker 2: one by one is like, I think you put Redd
Speaker 2: in there because you you're so angry your buddy died.
Speaker 2: And I didn't put his name on there. Anything I
Speaker 2: put I actually put on the thing John fifteen thirteen,
Speaker 2: which is no great or yeah, no great love has
Speaker 2: a man than to lay down his life for a friend.
Speaker 2: And so I didn't put any names on there, like
Speaker 2: it was somebody just put that piece up there. They said.
Speaker 2: Another person's like, I think you put red in there
Speaker 2: because you love this person. Another person said, oh.
Speaker 1: I'd representing love, which I'm sitting here being glorious thing
Speaker 1: thinking it represents.
Speaker 2: But that was the third person. The third student said,
Speaker 2: I think you put red in there because you saw
Speaker 2: his blood. You are with this person when he died.
Speaker 2: And I'm sitting here thinking, holy cra these eighteen night
Speaker 2: tel kids. You know nothing about me. And I felt
Speaker 2: like I was connected to for split second, I felt
Speaker 2: like they were a battle body because I didn't say
Speaker 2: anything and they heard everything. And so now I found
Speaker 2: a way to talk about my issues without actually talking
Speaker 2: about them, which is my biggest issue.
Speaker 1: And you were speaking through your art and I was speaking.
Speaker 2: Through my art. So I was like, what is this
Speaker 2: voodoo witchcraft that just happened? Like like how did how
Speaker 2: did you know? And I talked to my teacher more
Speaker 2: about it. He's like, that's what conceptual modern art is
Speaker 2: supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to hide symbols,
Speaker 2: use color that evoke emotion that has different meaning, and
Speaker 2: tell a story without actually telling a story. And that's
Speaker 2: what really good artists accomplished by doing it. They don't
Speaker 2: tape bananas to walls. They do other things that like
Speaker 2: really evoke emotion. And because there's the whole thing like
Speaker 2: never go to art, like you don't go all the
Speaker 2: way to that side of it. You have to stick
Speaker 2: in this middle ground where everyone can understand it. And
Speaker 2: that's where I was going. I was like, imagine I
Speaker 2: used one color to tell that story. Imagine if I
Speaker 2: understood every color and every pattern and everything, Like what
Speaker 2: stories could I tell? And get off my chest? And
Speaker 2: so I just dove deep into this idea of like
Speaker 2: art and how I tell my story and I started
Speaker 2: everything from that point. I was taking creative writing classes,
Speaker 2: I was doing every kind of art form to really
Speaker 2: trying to dive into it. So here I am this
Speaker 2: community college because I have no money, and this like
Speaker 2: gi Bill is paying for it, Okay, But then someone
Speaker 2: from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, not
Speaker 2: the Art Institute. It's like the global chain, like the
Speaker 2: School of the Artist to Chicago, where Georgia O'Keeffe went,
Speaker 2: Walt Disney went there. Disney, right, yeah, Walt Disney went there.
Speaker 2: Hugh Hefner, if you're that type of fan, he went
Speaker 2: there too. So a lot of artist, a lot of
Speaker 2: big alumni went there. And so they were like, this
Speaker 2: is like the Harvard of Art schools art institutions. And
Speaker 2: they came down and talked about what their school was,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, this is in my backyard.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm gonna apply there. And I tell
Speaker 2: my teacher that and he's like, whoa.
Speaker 1: He's like, this is Harvard.
Speaker 2: He's like, you either just have a lot of money
Speaker 2: and you can get in there probably, or you study
Speaker 2: art your whole life. Like it's those two demographics they
Speaker 2: typically get even in Harvard. I have a lot of money,
Speaker 2: no people, or you're super super super smart. And so
Speaker 2: he's like, so I just don't want to break your heart,
Speaker 2: like I wouldn't go up there. So me optimist, I
Speaker 2: was like, that's the only school I'm going to apply
Speaker 2: for after this. So I applied for the school. I
Speaker 2: go up through my portfolio review, which every other student
Speaker 2: up there has thirty pieces of art like that was
Speaker 2: like the maximum was like, and it's sixteen to thirty.
Speaker 2: I pull up with like twelve and eight of them
Speaker 2: are still lives, like where you just take a piece
Speaker 2: of fruit and color it in like that would because
Speaker 2: I didn't have any concept material because I just discovered heart.
Speaker 2: So I go up there with my portfolio review on
Speaker 2: review day and they give it like a they have grading,
Speaker 2: and that one was fully just being graded on like
Speaker 2: draftsmanship and so like he's good enough to at least
Speaker 2: apply for the program based off of his skill set.
Speaker 2: And so then it was the whole like interview, go
Speaker 2: up there with my portfolio again to talk.
Speaker 1: To miss special in the Marines.
Speaker 2: It was the same kind of process, and so I
Speaker 2: go up there and I don't remember what her name,
Speaker 2: but I remember was a female was talking in the
Speaker 2: ministration office and I was showing her and she was
Speaker 2: looking at my pitiful, you know, placement of all the things,
Speaker 2: and I was like, Linda, Linda, Linda, listen, no.
Speaker 1: I was just like.
Speaker 2: She was like, you are obviously good at dude, like drawing,
Speaker 2: paint and all this stuff. But what we really are
Speaker 2: heavy on are like the next big artists, like concept ideas,
Speaker 2: modern art, all this stuff, which this is just lacking.
Speaker 2: You have like two pieces that really touch on that.
Speaker 2: And I had to be like, listen, I am either.
Speaker 2: I was just discovered art for the first time ever
Speaker 2: and it's completely changed to save my life. But here's
Speaker 2: what I want to create with your school. I want
Speaker 2: you to know what it feels like to be blown up,
Speaker 2: but without being blown up. I want you to know
Speaker 2: what loss of innocence in the war looks like when
Speaker 2: you have to save a life, take of life, be
Speaker 2: blown up. I was like, and I only think I
Speaker 2: could do that through your school. I was like, I
Speaker 2: could show people what this is. And so she called
Speaker 2: in someone else and that guy came in and listened
Speaker 2: to my shpiel again and they're like, okay, let's give
Speaker 2: him a shot, and they let me into that school.
Speaker 2: The issue was I had the old Montgomery jibill, which
Speaker 2: doesn't pay for private tuition, and so I knew at
Speaker 2: that moment it was another crossroad. Like God put so
Speaker 2: many different crossroads in my life where I just kept
Speaker 2: taking that hard path because it was okay. The state
Speaker 2: of Illinois actually has this veteran grant and the jibill
Speaker 2: paid me, So I was actually getting paid to go
Speaker 2: to school because I was double dipping, and that's what
Speaker 2: most people do. Know. It wasn't illegal, but I was
Speaker 2: doing it both of them. But knowing that I was
Speaker 2: gonna go to the school meant I forfeited both those
Speaker 2: the Illinois grant didn't cover and the gibuild didn't cover.
Speaker 2: So I knew at that moment, and I was with
Speaker 2: I was with a relationship for five years, and so
Speaker 2: I knew that if I moved to Chicago and went
Speaker 2: to the school, that that would be off and that
Speaker 2: I would go on extreme debt. And but I knew
Speaker 2: that it's kind of like you put the mask on
Speaker 2: yourself before you help someone else. There was no way
Speaker 2: I could help anybody in my life without helping myself first.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I'm going to go and I
Speaker 2: went there and that happened. I went extreme into debt,
Speaker 2: and then even my mom, who didn't have much money,
Speaker 2: pulled money like nine thousand out or four to one
Speaker 2: k just to support the stuff that I couldn't support
Speaker 2: outside of the government grants that I got. She's just
Speaker 2: a saint for doing that because she didn't have any money.
Speaker 2: She pulled it out of her house. And so I
Speaker 2: got into that school and I just pushed at it
Speaker 2: and it was just it was one of the hardest
Speaker 2: times in my life, but I knew it was something
Speaker 2: I had to do.
Speaker 1: How long?
Speaker 2: So I was there for two and a half years,
Speaker 2: is what you're saying, Like, how a long? Guys said, yes,
Speaker 2: two and a half years. And that was truly You
Speaker 2: imagine when I said, like, I went to an art
Speaker 2: school like everything you imagine, like the skinny jeans, skinny cigarettes,
Speaker 2: blue hair, like that's the school I had. Actually, it
Speaker 2: was like reverse Bulliam. I was like an elevator and
Speaker 2: someone's like, why.
Speaker 1: Are you here?
Speaker 2: Like they were picking on me for being there, and uh,
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm just.
Speaker 1: Bigger than you. No.
Speaker 2: I was just to me, I just hear do art
Speaker 2: just like you are. Because I was still very recluse
Speaker 2: and just didn't want to speak to people and do
Speaker 2: stuff because I still had such bad anxiety. But being
Speaker 2: there completely changed me. It's what I call the worried
Speaker 2: brain to artist brain transition, where I learned to tap
Speaker 2: into my subconscious like what you mentioned earlier. Driving to school.
Speaker 2: Did I feel like I was blown up? No, none
Speaker 2: of us do. But when I found out as an
Speaker 2: artist that that's why I had anxiety. So I do
Speaker 2: art around it. I could take photos of everything I
Speaker 2: saw on the way to school and put it up
Speaker 2: on the board. And now you knew as a civilian
Speaker 2: what I saw when I came into class. Just a
Speaker 2: bunch of bombs.
Speaker 1: At some point, you did ceramics.
Speaker 2: That was at the school. I didn't know what ceramics were. Again,
Speaker 2: I was so are dumb?
Speaker 1: I did drink coffee out of it, That's what I said.
Speaker 2: My roommate was like, I'm in the ceramics apartment. I
Speaker 2: was like what it was like pound plates, glasses and
Speaker 2: cups together, Like what do you do? It's like, no,
Speaker 2: it's clay. I was like, Oh, that's what happens. Like
Speaker 2: you get clay and you get to play with it,
Speaker 2: like because even my high school didn't have clay, and.
Speaker 1: So and no doubt your parents were buying play does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he was like it's all free, So
Speaker 2: you can come down here with me when I'm when
Speaker 2: I'm in this class, when my first semester I had
Speaker 2: my drawling collage, all these classes and I go down
Speaker 2: there with him and I start just playing with clay,
Speaker 2: and it brought me back to childhood, where're like everything
Speaker 2: you made looked like something different, and so you just
Speaker 2: kept building, destroying, building destroyed, and I was like, for
Speaker 2: three hours, I didn't think about war. That's weird because
Speaker 2: I always think about war or something. And I felt good, again,
Speaker 2: what is this voody wiscraft? Like what just happened to me?
Speaker 2: And so that's all I signed up for it. I
Speaker 2: didn't know what I was going to create. I wasn't
Speaker 2: good at it. I just said. That was the cool
Speaker 2: thing about that school was no matter what you went
Speaker 2: in on, you could do whatever you wanted. You can
Speaker 2: come in on painting and ended up being a performance artist.
Speaker 1: And they're still dealing with anxiety and PSD and all that.
Speaker 2: And so that now was my safe zone. That was
Speaker 2: like that physical theory there, like just being able to
Speaker 2: mend and mold and not think about anything. So everything else.
Speaker 2: I put as many ceramics classes as I could on there.
Speaker 1: So that's what I might talking about, being blown up
Speaker 1: with ceramics.
Speaker 2: Not at first, it was just like, you know, what's
Speaker 2: crazy too, is you dive in your soap. Kind of
Speaker 2: the reason we do the things we do in our
Speaker 2: daily life is because of everything in our path, but
Speaker 2: most of it is so subconscious we don't even know it.
Speaker 2: And a perfect example of this is in my studio.
Speaker 2: I have all these pieces I'm building and I start
Speaker 2: from scratch. A lot of the is like I'll create
Speaker 2: something and I'll coil it up and build what I
Speaker 2: see and create some sort of military like something about me.
Speaker 2: I'll find it while i'm building. And this one time
Speaker 2: I had this piece and it had like four little loops.
Speaker 2: I started. I built this thing real big, and I
Speaker 2: put it up on this table and my instructor comes
Speaker 2: in and I have this like coffee cup in my
Speaker 2: hand that I go, I turn, I set it on
Speaker 2: the the my art piece, and he's like, why'd you
Speaker 2: do that? And I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: He's like, why'd you set that coffee cup up there?
Speaker 2: Is that a table? It's like, no, that's my art
Speaker 2: piece that I'm making. He's like, yeah, but is it
Speaker 2: a table? And I was like, no, it's one of
Speaker 2: my art pieces. He's like, then, why'd you set your
Speaker 2: coffee cup up there? He's like, your body's gonna react
Speaker 2: for your mind es. He's like, your body and your
Speaker 2: mind are telling you this. And I looked at it
Speaker 2: and I was like, holy crap, this is like a
Speaker 2: legit pedestal coffee tape. I was just creating designs and
Speaker 2: building it up, but it was legitibly something to put
Speaker 2: other art pieces on. And it was that moment where
Speaker 2: I was like, we do this in our daily lives.
Speaker 2: Anxiety and everything else is that way? If how I
Speaker 2: explain and I always say, like find your why, whether
Speaker 2: it's a fake why or not, because imagine We're in
Speaker 2: a room of one hundred people and I come up
Speaker 2: to you and I'm like, hey, this person's gonna or
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, one of these people is gonna try
Speaker 2: to kill you. That's anxiety. That's when you're like, no
Speaker 2: matter how well you're trained, you're gonna process like one
Speaker 2: hundred different people. What am I gonna do? We're the exits.
Speaker 1: How do I do?
Speaker 2: Like, that's your body. But if I gave you the
Speaker 2: same scenario and I said, that person in the back
Speaker 2: of the room is the one's gonna try I kill you,
Speaker 2: you have a whole different reaction. You're like, oh that person,
Speaker 2: the door's over here, you start. You're more calm in
Speaker 2: that process because you know what's going to be doing that.
Speaker 2: So when I was driving to school, it was the
Speaker 2: chaotic why. It was like, why is my body reacting
Speaker 2: to this? I didn't see anything. I was just why
Speaker 2: am I getting sick? Why am I doing this stuff?
Speaker 2: I became an artist. It was also identified it. Once
Speaker 2: I identified it, I did photos of photo art piece
Speaker 2: around it, which then got rid of it. So because
Speaker 2: I knew the why, I was able to attack the why.
Speaker 1: It's interesting say that your body and your subconscious speaks
Speaker 1: to you before your brain does. That's the big brain,
Speaker 1: little brain. Then I have a business version of that,
Speaker 1: but it translates to everybody metaphorically, which is have you
Speaker 1: ever had something bad happen and your immediate first reaction
Speaker 1: is myknew I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, Well, that
Speaker 1: is a reminder that when you made the decision that
Speaker 1: worked out poorly, your subconscious was telling you not to
Speaker 1: do it, yep, but your ego overroaded your psyche's ability
Speaker 1: to tell you not to do it. But you did
Speaker 1: it anyway, which is why when something goes bad and
Speaker 1: you think to yourself, I knew I should have done that.
Speaker 1: Your ego was overriding your subconscious yep.
Speaker 2: And you probably never actually heard yourself say it.
Speaker 1: You never heard yourself say it, but you just remember,
Speaker 1: you know, And when you say that, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes a really lot a ton of sense. The difference
Speaker 1: is I'm talking about making a decision about selling a
Speaker 1: load of lumper for a price versus another price. You're
Speaker 1: talking about the decision about twenty two year olds that
Speaker 1: have come home with horrific experiences, wondering or not if
Speaker 1: they should try to continue on with life or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. So you transition out of art
Speaker 1: and you're graduating, and I've read you said I'm eighty
Speaker 1: five percent, which means you're covering and arts help and
Speaker 1: you recover, and then you think, well, if that helps me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I talked about that nine being a nine,
Speaker 2: and to me, it's like after our school and learning
Speaker 2: how to tell my story, and I did four years
Speaker 2: of being able to do that through music. I started
Speaker 2: teaching myself guitar because I was like, well if I
Speaker 2: want to if I could write down my fuddy story,
Speaker 2: why can't I just give a tune and walk away,
Speaker 2: so that now you could hear his story. I don't
Speaker 2: have to cry in front of you. You could just
Speaker 2: hear it that he lived and I walk away. And
Speaker 2: so I did four years of this where I was
Speaker 2: writing his story, trying to write make music, making art
Speaker 2: about my brain injury and everything else I was going through.
Speaker 2: So when I graduated and I was at like an
Speaker 2: eighty five percent back to normal Richard, and I was
Speaker 2: able to go out and do things and not be
Speaker 2: a stress. I still had anxieties and some other stuff,
Speaker 2: but I was back to livable, like one hundred percent
Speaker 2: livable Richard, but eighty five percent truly me. And I
Speaker 2: looked back and I said, well, it was just the
Speaker 2: education around, like the process I'm telling you, like finding
Speaker 2: your why and like baby stepping in tell your story
Speaker 2: and saying everything without saying anything. That was the process
Speaker 2: of education. Not art therapy, music therapy. It was art education,
Speaker 2: music education, and just utilizing it in the right ways.
Speaker 2: And so I go through this whole process and now
Speaker 2: I'm like, Okay, now I'm gonna do it. I'm going
Speaker 2: to join the FBI, joined the CIA, I even went
Speaker 2: to like a government hiring thing, And I really looked
Speaker 2: back and I was like, how selfish of me to
Speaker 2: think that I just discovered something that doesn't really exist
Speaker 2: the way that it should exist. And I wouldn't pursue
Speaker 2: this to help other people who are not going to
Speaker 2: see this as an option. I didn't see this as
Speaker 2: an option. I would have told you day one, I'm
Speaker 2: never gonna do that. It's because I fell into it.
Speaker 2: So then I was like, well, how do I make
Speaker 2: people fall into this? And can I even create a
Speaker 2: program in just a few days or a few weeks
Speaker 2: that is as impactful as my four years of figuring
Speaker 2: this out? And so through the process, I was sitting
Speaker 2: here thinking, well, I only told was able to tell
Speaker 2: my story through song because I met a guy at
Speaker 2: a bar who's doing a writer's round and he has
Speaker 2: nine number one hits. I think he wrote Alan Jackson's
Speaker 2: first number one here in the Free World, and he
Speaker 2: wrote like Sangria and Highway, Don't Care, Tim Mogol, Taylor Swhip,
Speaker 2: all these all these epic songs, and I just approached
Speaker 2: him one day at the bar I worked at and
Speaker 2: I was off that time, and he was doing his
Speaker 2: round up in Chicago, and I said, Hey, I've been
Speaker 2: trying to tell my story through song for a year
Speaker 2: and I just can't write. I can't put Luke on
Speaker 2: a pedestal he needs to be on. If I come
Speaker 2: to you in Nashville, just drive down there, will you
Speaker 2: sit with me and help me tell my story? Because
Speaker 2: there's to be easier way to do this than me
Speaker 2: trying on my own. You obviously doing this for a living.
Speaker 2: And he said yeah to me and nobody from Chicago
Speaker 2: just like okay, And I didn't know how big of
Speaker 2: a deal that actually was. Two months later, I come
Speaker 2: down there and we write a song and a half
Speaker 2: in like three hours. So the first hour and a
Speaker 2: half we had a song and I'm sitting here, I've
Speaker 2: been trying this for a whole year and you took
Speaker 2: my words and put it in a song an hour
Speaker 2: and a half. This is insane. So now that experience,
Speaker 2: on top of me graduating and being like I'm almost
Speaker 2: back to normal, was like, how do I now just
Speaker 2: bring veterans to Nashville to tell their story because it
Speaker 2: absolutely saved my life. And so that was the process
Speaker 2: that my brain was going through when I decided that,
Speaker 2: I was like, I wanted to start a nonprofit that
Speaker 2: helped veterans heal through the arts and music.
Speaker 1: Which is phenomenal. So now, after we got the extensive
Speaker 1: background and unbelievable story, Richard Casper founded Great Events. But
Speaker 1: the first year it was really just six or seven
Speaker 1: or eight guys.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and I technically co founded it. There's a
Speaker 2: lovely lady named Linda Tarsan who's in Chicago, who's a philanthropist,
Speaker 2: who I didn't know how to start a nonprofit and
Speaker 2: I was just having lunch with her one day. That's
Speaker 2: a whole another long story how we got to lunch,
Speaker 2: but just having lunch one day after I wrote with
Speaker 2: a veteran saying like, oh I wish I could just
Speaker 2: turn this into something where I could save more veterans.
Speaker 2: She's like, Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And so she helped me understand it's good.
Speaker 2: So she had five board members come on, I had
Speaker 2: a few of my friends and veterans come on, and
Speaker 2: then we started Creatives in twenty thirteen. So I always
Speaker 2: like to make a note that she helped me co
Speaker 2: found Creative a's because we never, you know, truly do
Speaker 2: these things on our own.
Speaker 1: So tell me about how it went that first year,
Speaker 1: which just.
Speaker 2: So it was only nine I think nine total veterans
Speaker 2: through the songwriting program because that's all we had money for.
Speaker 2: And I would just like as veterans came in, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't find them. I would be like, Okay, we're now
Speaker 2: going to go to Nashville together because I didn't live
Speaker 2: in Nashville, and each time we went to Nashville, I
Speaker 2: would recruit more songwriters while I was with the veteran
Speaker 2: so i'd have one group. The first group that officially
Speaker 2: wrote with us outside of Mark writing with me was
Speaker 2: the band called Blackjack Billy, and two or three of
Speaker 2: them were number one songwriters like in their own right,
Speaker 2: they wrote songs but also did music. So I met
Speaker 2: them in Florida when they're performing, just said, Hey, I
Speaker 2: want to bring veterans to Nashville. You write with them?
Speaker 2: They said yes, So like are.
Speaker 1: You telling veterans? Look, man, I know I've been there.
Speaker 1: You can't tell your story too much, anxiety, too much everything,
Speaker 1: But you can tell your story without having to speak
Speaker 1: up to the public by putting it down and having
Speaker 1: a song about it, so what I do or some
Speaker 1: of them looking at you going dude, you're not well.
Speaker 2: No, At first, it was like my I knew who
Speaker 2: was suffering from my friend group, and I would just
Speaker 2: be like, hey, do you want to go to Nashville
Speaker 2: and write with the number one?
Speaker 1: You write you out to guys that you're close with
Speaker 1: me at.
Speaker 2: First because it was like the refer like we always
Speaker 2: know who's suffering with our friends, and so the first
Speaker 2: person ever to go through it was more of like
Speaker 2: a a he knows he was like a tester, but
Speaker 2: he is what like a tester to see if this
Speaker 2: program actually would work? But he also he lost his
Speaker 2: leg overseas, has sixty percent burns over his body, in
Speaker 2: his face, and he did not like telling his story.
Speaker 2: So he is the perfect person for me to approach
Speaker 2: to see if he didn't even do something like.
Speaker 1: This, was he ashamed? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's he would probably never stay ashamed. He's
Speaker 2: just hard working.
Speaker 1: He just doesn't want to Why did he want to
Speaker 1: tell him?
Speaker 2: He's one of those guys he just doesn't talk like no,
Speaker 2: that doesn't affect.
Speaker 1: Me, Like he's like he still had an internalized yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and honestly it doesn't like his physical He
Speaker 2: doesn't want you to be like, treat him different because
Speaker 2: he's lost his leg. He still climbs towers like with
Speaker 2: his leg like that. He'd yeah, he is salted or
Speaker 2: just doesn't want you to treat him differently. Not that
Speaker 2: he hasn't processed a lot of this stuff, more like he's.
Speaker 1: But still he's carrying that story and something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: SI's probably creating anxiety and PTSD, right, and you see that.
Speaker 2: And so I go to him and I'm like, dude,
Speaker 2: you want to come to Nashville with me. We're going
Speaker 2: to write a song with a number one songwriter and
Speaker 2: tell your story through it's And he trusted me because
Speaker 2: he knows my story and I know his story. And
Speaker 2: I was like, don't worry, I'm going to be through
Speaker 2: the whole process. I'm gonna be with you when you're
Speaker 2: writing and everything. But he's like, I've never heard of
Speaker 2: yes from him so fast because his love for music.
Speaker 1: Was so great awesome.
Speaker 2: So when I talk about what we do and anybody,
Speaker 2: if you want to serve anybody, if you could outweigh
Speaker 2: their anxieties and depression. With excitement, you can get them
Speaker 2: to do almost anything. And so when I'm like, you
Speaker 2: want to come to Nashville write on music road with
Speaker 2: a number one songwriter, it's so hard. That's like a
Speaker 2: bucket list thing then nobody could do. So yeah, I'll
Speaker 2: do that. But also, we're gonna tell your story. But
Speaker 2: don't worry, I'm gonna be with you the whole time.
Speaker 2: So I work with them on an idea and everything
Speaker 2: we're like building up. I'm like, this is what we're
Speaker 2: gonna say. We're we got it keyed in. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna speak for you when we get in there.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna ask you to tell you like about
Speaker 2: the song. And that's another psychological thing you do. You
Speaker 2: don't say, hey, tell your story. You say, hey, tell
Speaker 2: them what the song's gonna be about, which is their story,
Speaker 2: but they see it as a song.
Speaker 1: Kind of like kind of like, hey, Richard, you don't
Speaker 1: have to talk about your art, but we'll tell you
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same thing like love blood yeah, or if you
Speaker 2: have background or if you poured my when I poured
Speaker 2: my heart into that art, it's like, oh, well, this
Speaker 2: art is saying everything for me, or I could talk
Speaker 2: about my art piece, like if you were all looking
Speaker 2: at me.
Speaker 1: Oh, because now you're not talking about you. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the art yep, So I can be which
Speaker 1: is a degree of separation.
Speaker 2: It is you're separation. You're projecting it onto there, which
Speaker 2: makes it a lot safer because there's no communication to
Speaker 2: you directly.
Speaker 1: So that's what's happening with you.
Speaker 2: That's what's having a song because it's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: talking about my song, not the time my friend died,
Speaker 2: but you're talking about the time your friend died. But
Speaker 2: it's the song idea, so and oddly it's healing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so he was talking about how it doesn't it's
Speaker 2: called until it feels like home because he walked through
Speaker 2: Hell for so long it felt comfortable to him, and
Speaker 2: so when he came back home, he's like, this is
Speaker 2: comfortable to me. I know it's weird to say, but
Speaker 2: I was trained for this and this is what I do.
Speaker 2: So now I feel uncomfortable being home because Hell felt
Speaker 2: so much more comfortable to the kind of reverse roles,
Speaker 2: which is weird to think about. And he wrote this
Speaker 2: song and he loved it so much. He sent it
Speaker 2: to all those people he couldn't talk to, and I
Speaker 2: had his like sister.
Speaker 1: So like friends and family that he couldn't talk to.
Speaker 1: He just set the song and like, listen, if you
Speaker 1: want to understand, just listen to a song.
Speaker 2: No, he didn't even do that, because I call it
Speaker 2: tricking them into healing, because he didn't know he was.
Speaker 2: He was so excited. He just had a song he
Speaker 2: wrote in Nashville. He was sentenced to everyone, like I
Speaker 2: just wrote this song in Nashville.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: It's like check it out.
Speaker 1: And uh So he didn't even know he was telling us.
Speaker 2: No, he kind of is the subconscious thing, like he
Speaker 2: knew he needed to get this out, but the forefron
Speaker 2: of your brain's just like I need to share this
Speaker 2: with everyone, Like I wrote a song in Nashville.
Speaker 1: With another way, you're seeing this or you're sitting there
Speaker 1: bobbing your head up and down going I'll be damn
Speaker 1: this work.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like within knowing. And he was the first
Speaker 2: person to say that three hour Ryne session helped me
Speaker 2: more than eight years. I've been at the VA Hospital
Speaker 2: and like stuff like that where I'm just like there's
Speaker 2: magic here, like for him to him too, just to
Speaker 2: even come down here, be willing to come down here.
Speaker 2: I was like, I think I just found something that's
Speaker 2: gonna help a lot of veterans who aren't seeking help.
Speaker 2: Because if you go back to those suicide numbers, even
Speaker 2: if you based off the twenty suicides a day, fourteen
Speaker 2: of those twenty don't seek help. So fourteen of those
Speaker 2: twenty don't even go to the VA or go to nonprofits.
Speaker 2: So you're talking about a group of people who don't
Speaker 2: want to be helped and are not searching help. So
Speaker 2: you can have the you can have a program that's
Speaker 2: one hundred percent effective and eighty percent of people aren't
Speaker 2: coming to it, So how do you build it so
Speaker 2: that you make them come to it? And that's what
Speaker 2: this was.
Speaker 1: So after that first year of helping eight or nine.
Speaker 2: And after the first three, it was people I never
Speaker 2: knew before, and that was really cool, the first veteran
Speaker 2: to pip out for the.
Speaker 1: First three guys, So that first year, even that the
Speaker 1: remainder of those nine.
Speaker 2: There were all just people who heard through the Great
Speaker 2: Fighter were like Jesse was like, my cousin is really suffering.
Speaker 2: He was in Afghanistan and he lost a buddy and
Speaker 2: I call that dude, and that dude would be like, hey,
Speaker 2: my buddy I served with is suffering. And then organically
Speaker 2: people just started applying out of the woodwork, just being like, hey,
Speaker 2: I did this is my last option. I don't have
Speaker 2: any other resort, but I just want to I want
Speaker 2: to come to Nashville write a song. Was the process,
Speaker 2: and the moment I picked up the phone, I'd say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm Richard. I was blown up four times. I watched
Speaker 2: my friend get shot and kill beside me, What did
Speaker 2: you go through? So instantly breaks that ice, and they
Speaker 2: feel comfortable enough to say, tell me what they said
Speaker 2: or what they went through. And they tell me things
Speaker 2: probably sixty percent of the time, they tell me things
Speaker 2: they never told anybody, not even their family or the
Speaker 2: Marines they served with, like whatever it was because I
Speaker 2: was a stranger who understood them, kind of like when
Speaker 2: you call it, if you called Sucson Hotline, you're more
Speaker 2: open to talk to a stranger than someone who knows
Speaker 2: you because you feel like you're not going to be
Speaker 2: like judged for it. And so when they told me that,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, you know what, a really cool song
Speaker 2: idea would be about, and then we go into it
Speaker 2: and I'd get them so excited about their own story
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, dude, that would be a good story.
Speaker 2: That would be a good song. I'm like, you know
Speaker 2: who I paired you up with. This guy has six
Speaker 2: number ones and they're like, oh my gosh what. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: and we're paying for your flights, your food, you're housing,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to spend the whole time with you.
Speaker 2: It's like your new battle buddy. So it was just
Speaker 2: it was awesome.
Speaker 1: So now you're doing the song thing, but what got
Speaker 1: you out of it really was art.
Speaker 2: And so now you say, well, because we didn't have
Speaker 2: enough money to do anything outside of like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because these guys aren't paying for you're raising.
Speaker 2: From the get go, because there's friction points for receiving help.
Speaker 2: Some of the frictions money, some of the frictions like again,
Speaker 2: your anxiety is too bad, so you need excite me
Speaker 2: to way you're anxiety in order to get over. Some
Speaker 2: of us need battle buddies. We need to know what
Speaker 2: it's like to have someone to go through something we did.
Speaker 2: So I had to have a battle buddy and financially
Speaker 2: everything had to be paid for. So that was day
Speaker 2: one a no non starter for me. If we didn't
Speaker 2: have a nonprofit that didn't do that, then why even
Speaker 2: start one. And within the first nine veterans, we helped
Speaker 2: one Native American marine from the Foothill Tribes of Montana.
Speaker 2: It costs over two grand just for his flight, which
Speaker 2: is unheard of for the other what we were spending.
Speaker 2: We only raised like eighteen thousand cash that first year,
Speaker 2: and so to think, but I was like, he doesn't
Speaker 2: have access to this, so of course I'm going to
Speaker 2: put him on this list and fly him out here
Speaker 2: and put him up and write his song. So it
Speaker 2: was that. But I knew I needed the art program,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what that looked like yet. I
Speaker 2: just knew I needed to build something. And so I
Speaker 2: went back to that school and to the School of
Speaker 2: the Arts Shoo Chicago, and I was like, I didn't
Speaker 2: know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a
Speaker 2: game plan. Really, I just knew we needed a program.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that program look like, which is
Speaker 2: the worst pitch ever, Just be going there back, you
Speaker 2: want to do something with me? I have an art program,
Speaker 2: but it's not a program yet. We can make it
Speaker 2: a program. It's like the worst pitch ever. And so
Speaker 2: I get a meeting with the vice provis and his
Speaker 2: name's Paul Coffee, and I'm just like, you know, this
Speaker 2: school absolutely saved my life, and I think that I
Speaker 2: could probably build a program that saves other veterans. But
Speaker 2: what I need you guys do is like eliminate the
Speaker 2: whole art background part of it. I want to help
Speaker 2: non artist veterans come through your program. And I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's just pairing up with a teacher or
Speaker 2: something like that and teach them. He's like, you know
Speaker 2: what we do, you could be the teacher. I'm like
Speaker 2: what He's like, Yeah, He's like, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Let's do this.
Speaker 2: You just you get veterans they apply through this program.
Speaker 2: And I'm like blown away how quickly he said yes
Speaker 2: to me, being like, let's just build something on a
Speaker 2: whim and I can be an instructor. So talk about
Speaker 2: kind of like posture syndrome. You know already Garden President
Speaker 2: was kind of crazy. Just be like, I'm guard the
Speaker 2: idea of me, Garden President from Washburn, Now, the idea
Speaker 2: of me not being an artist now teaching at the
Speaker 2: best art school in the country for my program or anything.
Speaker 2: It was just like, what is my life? Like, how
Speaker 2: is this even an opportunity? But it's because I asked
Speaker 2: for it. I asked to be a part of this,
Speaker 2: and I just didn't care because at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, it's like life is saved if I go
Speaker 2: ask and so that's why I was willing to go
Speaker 2: up there and ask for it. And then when he
Speaker 2: said I was a teacher, I just figured I was
Speaker 2: gonna be like assistant, like just be there and help
Speaker 2: guide them. But he's like, well, have you teach it
Speaker 2: and we'll just run it and we do three week
Speaker 2: programming so we could fit it in there. Does that
Speaker 2: work for you? It was like, I guess that works
Speaker 2: for me. So then it was on me to build
Speaker 2: the syllabus and get the program and get the veterans
Speaker 2: recruited and find the money. And so that's what we did.
Speaker 2: Our second year. We ended up running an art program
Speaker 2: with I think six veterans and it was a sole
Speaker 2: Vietnam vet who applied. And that was the thing about
Speaker 2: me too. If you do songwriting, I'm not gonna let
Speaker 2: you do songwriting. I want you to do urt. I
Speaker 2: want to teach you a new skill set to save
Speaker 2: your life. Like, if you're doing songwriting, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It's not gonna work. I don't care how much you
Speaker 2: love it. You need to do something different. I think
Speaker 2: that's where we get in our wheelhouse. We think, like,
Speaker 2: you know, hammer's not gonna fix every problem we have
Speaker 2: in a house. So why is songwriting gonna help every veteran?
Speaker 2: It's not. And so this old Vietnam vet applied for
Speaker 2: a songwriting program. I said, hey, we have this art
Speaker 2: program in Chicago. He's from la I was like that,
Speaker 2: I really love you. Go through because I want to
Speaker 2: teach you a new skill set. And so he's like,
Speaker 2: I actually grew up in Chicago as a dream of
Speaker 2: mine to go to that school, just to go to it.
Speaker 2: And so he applied for this program, went through it,
Speaker 2: and I tell you what, after three weeks he dived
Speaker 2: in ceramics. He called me two months later be like, Richard,
Speaker 2: you don't understand what you lit inside of me. He's like,
Speaker 2: now I'm a part of a seramic collective. I'm going
Speaker 2: to college for He's still to this day that was
Speaker 2: twenty and fifteen. He's still to this day doing ceramics
Speaker 2: and it's phenomenal out in La names Walt phenomenal, like
Speaker 2: completely changed the safest life all because we gave access
Speaker 2: and changed his direction and what he thought he needed
Speaker 2: to what he actually needed.
Speaker 1: And away for these guys to express themselves without having
Speaker 1: to talk about their trump yep, but they're talking.
Speaker 2: They are, And that one is I set up differently too,
Speaker 2: because when I look back, I'm like, I can''t do this,
Speaker 2: Like when I look back at how I started Creativet's,
Speaker 2: I was like, I can't do that like nowadays. Because
Speaker 2: so these were pretty much there's only one person I
Speaker 2: actually served with that was in that group of like
Speaker 2: six actually seven. I had to kick someone out for
Speaker 2: threading to kill someone, but that was a whole other story.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna go to Srama's class and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make this knife and then I it.
Speaker 2: But so they live in the We're paying for their dorms,
Speaker 2: they're housing, their food, their their tuition, everything even food
Speaker 2: for three weeks we're paying for and I live. I
Speaker 2: teach the class, but I also live in the dorms
Speaker 2: with them and I'm their ra so like for a
Speaker 2: whole three weeks straight, I'm like from finding the veterans,
Speaker 2: calling them all, telling them my story, hearing their story,
Speaker 2: buying their plane tickets, flying them out there, being there
Speaker 2: before to prep all the rooms for them. They're living
Speaker 2: in dorms. I'm like getting them situated. By the way,
Speaker 2: I'm your teacher. So nine of them meet me out front.
Speaker 2: We're going to class Monday through Friday, or Monday through
Speaker 2: Friday nine to four. I'll be your teacher. But afterwards,
Speaker 2: if you want to go out like, I'll take you,
Speaker 2: show you Chicago whatever. On the weekends, we buy like
Speaker 2: the city pass so they can go to like architecture tour,
Speaker 2: like feel like actual students, not like people going through
Speaker 2: a program. But on that first day, I do one
Speaker 2: on ones with every one of them, cause it'll be
Speaker 2: a challenge if you don't understand art or want to
Speaker 2: understand art, how to explain Picasso to you, Cause I
Speaker 2: could say, hey, he changed the figure twenty six times
Speaker 2: and he did these colors because of this reason, and
Speaker 2: you're still going it looks like my kid could do that.
Speaker 2: But if you told me about your friend being shot
Speaker 2: in a cornfield meta backed out of a pomegranate field,
Speaker 2: and I showed you what that looked like in Picasso style.
Speaker 2: You'd instantly connect with Picasso. And so that was my
Speaker 2: whole job, was they would come in this room, just
Speaker 2: one on ones, and I would sit there, not like
Speaker 2: back to back. Vendors would come in, they tell me
Speaker 2: their story, and I'd show them what their story look
Speaker 2: like as an art piece, like a modern art piece,
Speaker 2: because once they had that, they said, oh, I don't
Speaker 2: have to paint or sculpt. I could legitimately go to
Speaker 2: a thrift store and buy this piece and then go
Speaker 2: over here and get some clay and then go downstairs
Speaker 2: the wood shop and they'll help me design this coffin
Speaker 2: and like they now had access to it, and I
Speaker 2: just let them run with it for three weeks, thinking
Speaker 2: like an artist, like thinking how to tell their story
Speaker 2: in different ways. Because there's this one marine whose trigger
Speaker 2: was a palmergranate because his buddy died in a palmerrant field.
Speaker 2: So every time he saw one when we went out
Speaker 2: to like target or something, that's when he'd freak out
Speaker 2: and have an episode and have to be like pushed
Speaker 2: away because he was he reacted so negatively towards it
Speaker 2: because he wasn't expecting it. So when he's telling me
Speaker 2: the story about his friend being shot in his cornfield
Speaker 2: and it took thirty minutes for the chopper to get
Speaker 2: off the ground, that's why he ended up dying in
Speaker 2: this Pombrant field where there's more open space, where they
Speaker 2: moved him to. I was like, you can. This is
Speaker 2: as simple as like you going to buy a piece
Speaker 2: of corn and you writing his words, dying words where
Speaker 2: I love my life. I don't want to die.
Speaker 1: I was like, you can write dying words where I
Speaker 1: love my life. I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Because he was shot, gleeding out and this guy was
Speaker 2: stuck holding them. I love my life. I don't want
Speaker 2: to die. I love my life. I don't want He's
Speaker 2: holding them thirty minutes straight of just this till he
Speaker 2: passed away, and so that's stuck in his head obviously,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, you can do this piece of corn
Speaker 2: and you could write his dying words and put a
Speaker 2: pomegranate there. That's as simple as your This huge story
Speaker 2: can be shot here, die words up to the moment
Speaker 2: he died, So use a pomegran to show death. That's
Speaker 2: all I give him, and then they have to go
Speaker 2: out and expand on that they can't use my exact
Speaker 2: art piece. But from that moment on they're looking at
Speaker 2: life so differently. Now every class they go to, whether
Speaker 2: it's three D printing or ceramics or wood chop, they're
Speaker 2: thinking every moment now like, oh I could use a
Speaker 2: wood piece. I could like make a little frame house
Speaker 2: for this thing. Oh I could do this. So what
Speaker 2: Gino did at the end of this and this is
Speaker 2: a beautiful part because he called me three weeks later,
Speaker 2: like when we're setting up because we have an art show.
Speaker 2: I have to show your art at the end of
Speaker 2: the three weeks, and he's like, Richard, I went to jewel,
Speaker 2: I went to Oscar. I can't find I can't find
Speaker 2: a palm grant anywhere. So already in that three weeks
Speaker 2: we healed this.
Speaker 1: The first step was he went being triggered by him
Speaker 1: to go in to look look for.
Speaker 2: Him, because he repurposed the memory of what that Pomeran was.
Speaker 2: Now it's an art piece. Now it's his death. So
Speaker 2: I got to show it in a way, and so
Speaker 2: he ended up doing this plaster mold of his hand.
Speaker 2: He did this like wood board where he wrote for
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, because it took thirty minutes for a child. Together,
Speaker 2: he did a imer for thirty minutes and wrote I
Speaker 2: love my life, I love my life in red paint
Speaker 2: on this wood board. I love And when that thirty
Speaker 2: minute timer went off, he just smeared his hand across
Speaker 2: it and stopped, and then he installed his his hand
Speaker 2: that he had and he had palmergrant seeds that fell
Speaker 2: to the floor to a real pomegrant on the floor,
Speaker 2: and that was his art piece. That's like one of
Speaker 2: the most shit no matter what. You don't even know
Speaker 2: a story. You look at it and you're like wow
Speaker 2: when you see that piece. And this has come from
Speaker 2: a guy who's never done art a day in his life.
Speaker 2: But you just give him the tools of understanding like
Speaker 2: what art can do and how to hide yourself in art.
Speaker 1: What did it do for him?
Speaker 2: For him, it was that way to talk about it
Speaker 2: without talking about it. And so he now he was
Speaker 2: one of my first He was in that same initial
Speaker 2: class with Walt. He was my very first art veteran ever.
Speaker 2: He was just in our office in Nashville, recreating his pomegranate.
Speaker 2: He three D printed it and redoing stuff. He now
Speaker 2: carries an iPad with him where he does procreate all over.
Speaker 2: It's like a drawing thing. He's like every step of
Speaker 2: the way, I just when I feel anxiety, depression or rewar,
Speaker 2: I just go to my I just create art about it,
Speaker 2: and so giving them the tools to attack it from
Speaker 2: here on.
Speaker 1: Year was this for sure?
Speaker 2: Twenty fifteen was technically the first year we had art program.
Speaker 2: It was our second year, but our fiscal year ends
Speaker 2: in July or June thirtieth nine years ago. Yep.
Speaker 1: Veterans from fifty states served one thousand, six hundred, is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 2: A lot more now? We served eight hundred by ourselves
Speaker 2: just last year.
Speaker 1: So what's your total veterans served?
Speaker 2: So it's probably up to three thousand or more. But
Speaker 2: we have fifteen million streams of our music, which we've
Speaker 2: already done study.
Speaker 1: On fifteen million streams, yep.
Speaker 2: And we have studies that show that our music actually
Speaker 2: heals people. We had just recently a Vietnam that hit
Speaker 2: up our Facebook saying I just discovered creative. A's because
Speaker 2: we have our music streaming. He's like, he's like I
Speaker 2: served in Vietnam, serve eighteen years. Your music has helped
Speaker 2: my PTSD so much because I relate to every song
Speaker 2: and he's like eighteen years, four months Vietnam, and so
Speaker 2: we have no idea what the true impact number is.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. I'm going to read this. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: I've been asked if I'm okay, or what it's like
Speaker 1: to be deployed, or what it's like being wounded in action.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to explain. Art gives us the ability to
Speaker 1: express what is hard to put into words. It helps
Speaker 1: us let our emotions go without the uncomfortable feeling of
Speaker 1: someone staring you in the face waiting for response, but
Speaker 1: instead they stare at the piece you created and they
Speaker 1: come up with their own conclusions. It's therapeutic to be vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and it hopefully helps individuals get a better understanding of
Speaker 1: service members. Great events helps bridge that gap. What else
Speaker 1: can you say?
Speaker 2: There's it's powerful arts and option, and that's what most
Speaker 2: people don't know. They don't they're not searching for it
Speaker 2: like I wasn't. They don't fully believe it's gonna work.
Speaker 2: There's another guy who's now our veteran coordinator who to
Speaker 2: this day, every time he says it, it makes me
Speaker 2: want to cry because he's like he we run this
Speaker 2: program now at not just the school there in huge cargo,
Speaker 2: but at Glassdale School of Art in Houston, Virginia, Connwell University,
Speaker 2: Belmont University, and University of Southern California. And that class
Speaker 2: is where he went and he only went there because
Speaker 2: his friend went and he said, Oh, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: go with my buddy and then I'm gonna go eat
Speaker 2: a bullet when I go home. I just my one
Speaker 2: last hurrah with my buddy.
Speaker 1: He's like, arts, are you kidding? He's like arts and
Speaker 1: this guy was literally gonna go with his body to
Speaker 1: this thing and then he was going to kill him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like, this is a good opportunity just
Speaker 2: to spend my last days with my friend I served
Speaker 2: with for free, like paid me to go to USC
Speaker 2: and go to school. Cool. And he's still to this
Speaker 2: day says he was going to eat the bullet when
Speaker 2: he went home, and he's like, I discovered something completely new.
Speaker 2: And he's he's now part of organization. He's our veteran outreach,
Speaker 2: he's our veteran coordinator. So every veteran applies, he calls
Speaker 2: them and tells him a story and then gets them
Speaker 2: involved and stuff. But that's not the only story that
Speaker 2: we've heard from that, like so many people talking about
Speaker 2: writing the suicide letter on the day that we call
Speaker 2: them or other stuff. It's it's insane and more stuff
Speaker 2: like this needs to happen because art truly is an
Speaker 2: option and music is an option. And I hate that
Speaker 2: I treated it the way I did when I first
Speaker 2: got out. And I'm hoping that we create a movement
Speaker 2: that kind of helps everyone understand that they can get
Speaker 2: into it and they can save their life.
Speaker 1: Even though my friends and family do not understand what
Speaker 1: it was like in a rock, I believe my song
Speaker 1: gives them a better understanding of what I went through
Speaker 1: while deployed. Man, I tear up, and I'll read that
Speaker 1: that is a person who loves his friends and family
Speaker 1: who cannot communicate with them. He's enable, and he's walking
Speaker 1: around every day trying to live life with this brokenness,
Speaker 1: and he has to feel relieved of that burden by
Speaker 1: writing a song because he says, my song gives them
Speaker 1: a better understanding of me and what I went through
Speaker 1: while deployed. I mean that's how you get over PTSD.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's how you get it. Just we feel like
Speaker 2: we have to keep it in for multiple reasons, because
Speaker 2: we serve so you don't have to, like the idea
Speaker 2: of most people, serve so you don't have to see
Speaker 2: the evil exists, and so when we come home, we're
Speaker 2: injured because of that evil. If we tell you, it's
Speaker 2: why do we even go and serve for you? If
Speaker 2: we tell you. So, that's one part of it. The
Speaker 2: other part is if I tell you, you're not going
Speaker 2: to understand. And so there's so many reasons that the
Speaker 2: reasons why we don't tell you, But the only way
Speaker 2: we survive is if we tell you. So there has
Speaker 2: to be a creative way to do that, and that's
Speaker 2: what this music does. You have these songwriters who can
Speaker 2: write a song that makes you feel like, even if
Speaker 2: you're not a female, could make you feel like a
Speaker 2: twelve year old girl when you listen to them, because
Speaker 2: you're just like the impact of the music attached with
Speaker 2: the lyrics just make you feel something like even if
Speaker 2: you never went through a breakup and you listen to
Speaker 2: a Dell, you'd be like, oh my God, I know
Speaker 2: what it feels like to be broken up with and
Speaker 2: so music has an impact. And now we're working with
Speaker 2: the best songwriters in the world that don't have to
Speaker 2: even truly understand the situation to write it in a
Speaker 2: way that your family and friends are going to understand.
Speaker 2: But other combat vets are going to understand too that
Speaker 2: they're not alone. And that's why we had to be
Speaker 2: in Nashville with these number one singer songwriters. And that's
Speaker 2: why even people like Justin Moore and Granger Smith and
Speaker 2: Randy Rodgers and Craig Campbell, Craig Morgan, Jimmy Allen all
Speaker 2: have sat down with veterans for free just to help
Speaker 2: them tell their stories because they know the impact that
Speaker 2: it has them as an artist and other songwriters to
Speaker 2: actually help them decipher what they went through.
Speaker 1: When you were going through your height of anxiety and
Speaker 1: your PTSD and your brain damage and all the stuff
Speaker 1: that people come back with before your art healing and
Speaker 1: your own self. And I found out you served our
Speaker 1: country and we're passing each other in an airport and
Speaker 1: I look at you and I say, you don't know me,
Speaker 1: and you'll never see again. I say, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: just want to let you know, really appreciate your service.
Speaker 1: Is that a good thing or a bad thing to say.
Speaker 2: Well, it used to be good. I think it's over.
Speaker 2: It's the new hello to veterans. It's like it used
Speaker 2: to mean something because you didn't hear it a lot,
Speaker 2: you didn't truly know who it was. And then there's
Speaker 2: this rise of where that's just your normal response to
Speaker 2: people is like, oh, thanks for your service, thanks for
Speaker 2: I even catch up with sut like, oh your vetter,
Speaker 2: thanks for your service, like instantly. And so there's a
Speaker 2: song actually wrote with Be, a non veteran where in
Speaker 2: the lyric and says, your thinkings don't seem to work
Speaker 2: no more, because now it's just it's just like if
Speaker 2: you say I love you too much, It's like at
Speaker 2: some point it kind of like do you because you
Speaker 2: play delta?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the loading goes this way. People who need extra
Speaker 1: time and assistance, which are old people and assholes who
Speaker 1: want to put their luggage in front of everybody that
Speaker 1: don't need any extra help, but use that as an
Speaker 1: excuse to board the plane so they have a place
Speaker 1: for their carry on. That's number one, and that's one
Speaker 1: of my biggest pet peeves. So I'm glad I got
Speaker 1: to say that. And if you're one of those people,
Speaker 1: screw you and everybody puts their seat down, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: Then then number two are veterans, and then number three
Speaker 1: active or military service, and then it goes to like
Speaker 1: platinum members in first class and then they board. That's
Speaker 1: the boarding thing, so pregnant women and women with a
Speaker 1: bunch of children and people in whelchairs first, and then
Speaker 1: veterans and or active military. And I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times I've been standing in line as those
Speaker 1: guys passed through to get on the plane before me,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're stopped, or they'll turn and talk or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I've always said, you know, hey, man, thanks for
Speaker 1: your service, and I genuinely mean it. I have a
Speaker 1: an enormous appreciation for people like you who gave what
Speaker 1: you gave and struggled with you struggled with to serve
Speaker 1: me and my family. But I am hearing it often
Speaker 1: and I am starting to wonder if it's if it's
Speaker 1: now almost not received well. And that's why I asked no.
Speaker 2: I mean, we usually could tell, though, like who's authentic
Speaker 2: and who's not it's hard sometimes, but most of the time,
Speaker 2: how you do it, you can just tell, you know,
Speaker 2: you to tell when someone's faking something like hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: happy to see you here.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like.
Speaker 2: Here, so usually it was like hey quick, but it's
Speaker 2: like when they stop and they're like hey, by the way,
Speaker 2: like thank you for like I never think you for
Speaker 2: your service, or like when you initial initiate it in
Speaker 2: a certain way where it's not just a meeting. If
Speaker 2: it's meeting, and then you hear it and you say
Speaker 2: thank you. Sometimes it's hit or miss, but when you
Speaker 2: got your way to go thank them, it's a lot different.
Speaker 2: And nowadays that kind of patriotsm died down like it was.
Speaker 2: It was from like too much to now, like you
Speaker 2: hardly ever hear it from people because it's so distant,
Speaker 2: like that war so distant you should and people would
Speaker 2: know like that you're being genuine about it. But you
Speaker 2: know what funny, there's a veteran of brought down. This
Speaker 2: is the first time I ever heard it, and I
Speaker 2: legit thought this was like a pickup line because these
Speaker 2: two ladies came up and thanked him for a service.
Speaker 2: He just looks how he did it he like shook there.
Speaker 2: He's like, you know you were worth it?
Speaker 1: And I was like did you?
Speaker 2: And I was like this is the best pick up
Speaker 2: one ever. You were worth it? And then he's like
Speaker 2: then he felt weird that I was thinking that way,
Speaker 2: because he was like, no, I just feel awkward, Like
Speaker 2: what do you say? And I was like, hey, you
Speaker 2: know they're worth it, so you're worth it. But he
Speaker 2: totally had like Rico like almost like even a week,
Speaker 2: you were worth it. But I was like, that's genius.
Speaker 1: Marine, you know whatever. That's hilarious. If someone wants to
Speaker 1: support creative outs, if someone wants to become involved as
Speaker 1: a songwriter or art teacher for creative outs, or if
Speaker 1: there's someone out there listening to us who served this
Speaker 1: country and is struggling and needs creative ats, how they
Speaker 1: find Richard Well.
Speaker 2: The first step for all those categories is just listening
Speaker 2: to our music, because, for one, by listening to his
Speaker 2: music actually does create royalties.
Speaker 1: For the listen to the music.
Speaker 2: You can listen to on any stream platform Spotify, Amazon, YouTube,
Speaker 2: and you just search creativets as the artist.
Speaker 1: That is that is spelled c R E A T
Speaker 1: I capital v E T S creative.
Speaker 2: Yes, so just creative with the T S on the
Speaker 2: end of it, not a double V, which some people
Speaker 2: will try to do. But we released this through Big
Speaker 2: Machine Records, and we actually have artists singing our songs.
Speaker 2: So the artists will say creative, that's featuring Justin Moore, creative,
Speaker 2: it's featuring Aaron Lewis. Finn Skill is so cool. We
Speaker 2: had Vince Gill do backups on a song with Aaron
Speaker 2: Lows and Dan Timinski and so the idea of that
Speaker 2: too is a veteran here in those voices and be like,
Speaker 2: what's this? Then google us and find out We'll pay
Speaker 2: for their flights here, so like go in their.
Speaker 1: Home pull out.
Speaker 2: We have had one one R and B song, and
Speaker 2: one kind of rap song, one heavy metal song. But
Speaker 2: we're in Nashville, so a lot of people don't know
Speaker 2: we do everything, but we do everything. We'd find we'd
Speaker 2: find the writers who do everything. But that's the first
Speaker 2: step because for one, that music really does heal everyone.
Speaker 2: Whether you know a veteran or you've been with a veteran,
Speaker 2: you're gonna understand them more. If you are a veteran,
Speaker 2: you listener of music, you're gonna felt understand and felt
Speaker 2: like you're not alone anymore. And then as a donor,
Speaker 2: you're just listener music. It's helping build. It's not a ton,
Speaker 2: but it still streams over time that create revenue. And
Speaker 2: then obviously anybody wants to donate on our website creativets
Speaker 2: dot org and donate there and learn more. Same thing
Speaker 2: with veterans for applications on there, and our newsletter is
Speaker 2: an easy way to keep up with all the stuff
Speaker 2: that we're doing. And social media Instagram and everything.
Speaker 1: Eight hundred people social media is at Creative Outs at
Speaker 1: Creative's and eight hundred vets this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was through all of our program We
Speaker 2: do programs down twenty different states with a bunch of
Speaker 2: partners like the National Ability Center and Traf's Mills Foundation
Speaker 2: where we bring out songwriters to locations. We probably served
Speaker 2: fourteen different states last year and gonna help more this year.
Speaker 1: So you wanted to have a Creative Vets like concert
Speaker 1: like Old Farm Aid used to do, remember.
Speaker 2: That we building that. We've had some in Nashville with
Speaker 2: some people, but we're building to actually do a little
Speaker 2: tour or some we go around the country and write
Speaker 2: with people and sing songs. And we've done it like
Speaker 2: Coastguard Base in qy Wes. We've done a show down
Speaker 2: there for the active duty and stuff. But we're getting there.
Speaker 1: Dude, a washed out high school student, last in his
Speaker 1: class from Washburn, Illinois, with siblings, who had issues from
Speaker 1: nowhereville to just wanted to go to the Marines and
Speaker 1: kick indoors. To ended up guarding the president, to coming
Speaker 1: home with anxiety and PTSD and a brain injury. Who
Speaker 1: found art, who found art to save himself and then
Speaker 1: decided he was going to save a bunch of others
Speaker 1: through the same love of music and art and serving.
Speaker 1: I mean, of these eight hundred vets, Richard the math
Speaker 1: says that a third of them would be dead. So
Speaker 1: it's literally saving the lives of the very people who
Speaker 1: gave of themselves to serve us. I cannot, I can't.
Speaker 1: I just can't think of a more noble cause. How
Speaker 1: does it make you feel to know what you're doing?
Speaker 2: Well? That gets me to my ninety five percent? Me
Speaker 2: so that eighty five to ninety five.
Speaker 1: Is all this. It's like, where's the other five percent?
Speaker 2: It'll never come back, But I don't need to come back,
Speaker 2: like we don't all need to be one hundred percent
Speaker 2: all the time. We you know, as we get older,
Speaker 2: like we're not one hundred percent ourselves that we were
Speaker 2: back dates. So being in ninety five is like more
Speaker 2: than enough. Like I could easily survive at eighty five.
Speaker 2: But giving back to these veterans and hearing these stories
Speaker 2: each time, that's why after like over ten years, I
Speaker 2: still talk about it and cry and get enthusiastic and
Speaker 2: speak really fast about all this stuff we're doing because
Speaker 2: it just drives me. With every single veteran who's like
Speaker 2: and I wish I could even get into more stories
Speaker 2: with you, they'd just be You'd just be like yes
Speaker 2: because it feels so good.
Speaker 1: I got one more question. I played chess in high school.
Speaker 1: That's my version, your version of being a six foot
Speaker 1: guy walking in with all the blue red art people
Speaker 1: while lettered in six sports but also played chess. So
Speaker 1: imagine me in the national championship with the chess kids.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I worked out too. I wasn't always old
Speaker 1: and fat, dude, So get over what you're seeing right now.
Speaker 1: But anyway, one of the things actual research says that
Speaker 1: playing chess makes kids smarter It's not that smart kids
Speaker 1: play chess. It's that kids play chess and get smarter
Speaker 1: because your brain exercises it. Literally, It's just like it's
Speaker 1: just like if you do if you do three arm
Speaker 1: days a week, your muscles build because you're using them.
Speaker 1: Your brain does the same thing chess. The strategy, the thinking,
Speaker 1: the long two hours of sitting and making yourself be
Speaker 1: able to concentrate for two hours actually makes you a
Speaker 1: better test taker. It makes you Chess makes you smarter
Speaker 1: over a period of time. As I listened to you
Speaker 1: in the same vein, I kind of wonder if having
Speaker 1: to think about writing a song for an extended period
Speaker 1: of time and express yourself in art, if that doesn't
Speaker 1: help in some weird way repair a damage braining, well.
Speaker 2: The repetition of words do because like the rolodex that
Speaker 2: was broken now I'm recalling, like I forget what the
Speaker 2: number of words the average human uses today, but a
Speaker 2: songwriter uses ten x that. Because every time we're writing
Speaker 2: a song, we're trying to think of what words go where,
Speaker 2: we're trying to find new words. We're legitimately going to
Speaker 2: rhymean dictionaries online, rhymezone dot com and we're trying to
Speaker 2: find rhymes and near rhymes whatever works with the song
Speaker 2: that we're doing. So that's actually what healed most of
Speaker 2: my speech, Like I went to the speech pathologist stuff,
Speaker 2: but it was the songwriting portion. So I think there's
Speaker 2: definitely different parts in there. I know piano playing at
Speaker 2: the early age is the same thing where IQ goes
Speaker 2: up when you're playing piano at a young age. So
Speaker 2: I think it's the combination of the music, how the
Speaker 2: music affects you, like emotionally and resets well that stuff.
Speaker 2: But you can also remap your brain and remap or
Speaker 2: repurpose emotions if you come out of the same dark
Speaker 2: emotion and happy, which is a song. Like the same
Speaker 2: guy who was like my friend died and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: He's crying, but then an hour later he's like, I
Speaker 2: got a song. Every time he thinks about his friend,
Speaker 2: he's going to think about the last time he brought
Speaker 2: up that emotion.
Speaker 1: So he's remapping his emotions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, retrain, repurposing. He's repursing those memories as a good
Speaker 2: one rather than bad one, because now every time he
Speaker 2: thinks about his friend's death, he'll think about the last
Speaker 2: time he brought it up, which was in the songwriting session,
Speaker 2: which was a good memory.
Speaker 1: Ben Carson a neuro surgeon. Ben Carson neurosurgeon, and he
Speaker 1: did the first successful surgery where he took away two
Speaker 1: co joined twins that were joined at the head and
Speaker 1: they lived. And I read one time when he said
Speaker 1: that the three most unexplored realms in humanity right now
Speaker 1: are the depths of the deepest oceans, the cosmos, and
Speaker 1: the human brain that we understand so little about it.
Speaker 1: But he says it can repair itself, it does have
Speaker 1: a way to remap around broken areas, and he's just
Speaker 1: seen it too much. And you know, hearing you talk
Speaker 1: and hearing the story, I can't help but think this
Speaker 1: is not only good for one psyche, but physically it's
Speaker 1: actually good for the brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my left brain is Jambers, so my right brain
Speaker 2: took over. That's my creative side, that's everyone's creative side.
Speaker 2: And so that was a nothing. Going from nine artists
Speaker 2: to the best art school in the country. They said, yeah,
Speaker 2: one part was damaged to another part took over.
Speaker 1: And went hyperactive and got you good at it. Yep,
Speaker 1: what a phenomenal testament to the ability of a human
Speaker 1: being to cope if they remain optimistic and they find
Speaker 1: something that can help them, which is exactly what CREATI
Speaker 1: Vets does. It is, Richard, what a phenomenal story. Do
Speaker 1: you find it all ironic that you came to Memphis
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the strength of music and you
Speaker 1: look around you and you're sitting in mephis Listening Labs,
Speaker 1: which is nothing but a three thousand square foot area
Speaker 1: of music.
Speaker 2: This is awesome. When they when I walked in and
Speaker 2: they told me, I was like, this is a perfect
Speaker 2: spot for what we're doing. They didn't even know we're
Speaker 2: get into it, and I was like, yeah, it's all music,
Speaker 2: like we do music. And now to be in here
Speaker 2: with all music, I mean, there's no better, especially with
Speaker 2: the effects that music has on people, to be able
Speaker 2: to come and listen. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: And this is a lab.
Speaker 2: This is a cool vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool vibe. And it's a it's a uh,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a place that is a testament to
Speaker 1: the power of the very things you're doing with Vets.
Speaker 1: So welcome to the Memphis Listening Lab and Crosstown concourse.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we did this here because it couldn't be
Speaker 1: more appropriate. In my opinion, it feels perfect. Richard, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us, thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: your story, thank you for your candor, thank you for
Speaker 1: the depths of explaining all of it to us, and
Speaker 1: most importantly, thank you for creating creativets and saving the
Speaker 1: very lives of the people who've been on the wall
Speaker 1: so that we can have our freedoms. And I mean
Speaker 1: it with awe sincerity. When I look you down in
Speaker 1: the eyes, I say not only thank you for your
Speaker 1: service when you're overseas, but thank you for your service now.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you make our country a better place.
Speaker 2: Bro. Thank you, you were worth it. What you were
Speaker 2: worth it, You're Jack.
Speaker 1: And thank you for joining us this week. If Richard
Speaker 1: Casper or another guest has inspired you in general, or
Speaker 1: better yet, inspired you to take action by volunteering with
Speaker 1: creative Vets, by donating to them, by starting something like
Speaker 1: it in your own community, or something else entirely, please
Speaker 1: let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You
Speaker 1: can write me anytime at Bill at Normalfolks dot us
Speaker 1: and we will respond. And if you enjoy this episode,
Speaker 1: share with friends that I'm social, subscribe to the podcast,
Speaker 1: rate and review it, Become a premium member at normalfolks
Speaker 1: dot us. All of these things that will help us
Speaker 1: grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll
Speaker 1: see you next week.