June 11, 2024 • 19 mins
Charley Foley tells his origin story of Flags For The Flagless, his non-profit organization dedicated to raising American Flags, and how a chance meeting with former NFL All-Pro Linebacker Donnie Edwards along with a constant reminder of empty flagpoles on his police beat, led to his current mission to help people and communities fly the American Flag.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
My name is Charlie Foley. I am a retired Tucson
Police officer. I served twenty years with that agency. I
retired about two years ago. I did most of my
time on patrol. I was also a member of the
department Swat team for five years. I won numerous awards
(00:28):
during that career, but as soon as my twenty year
mark came up, I retired and I have been retired
now for almost two years. About eight years ago, I
started a nonprofit organization called Flags for the Flagless. How
that came about is that I was inspired by a
(00:49):
gentleman I met by the name of Donnie Edwards. Donnie
Edwards is a retired professional football player who is giving
back to his country, giving back to society. Even though
you know, here's a guy who was at the collegiate level,
a very experienced Division one player, goes onto the NFL
as an excellent NFL player, and what does he do.
(01:11):
He keeps giving back to his community. I met Donnie,
talked to him, and I had a six hour drive
back from San Diego to Tucson, where I live, and
it hit me, you know, here, I'm certainly not a
Division one athlete or a professional athlete. But you know,
I was a patrol cop for twenty years at that time,
fifteen years I was a member of the department Swat Team.
(01:33):
I have received a Medal of valor some other awards.
I wanted to do more. There was something that I
wanted to do more to give back to my community
than you know, a couple of awards. It's not about that,
you know, I wanted to do more. So. I grew
up in a very patriotic family. My father is passed
on now. He is a marine. My mother's family was
(01:55):
on the mining business up in Montanna. It just brought
up to a pre a Maria Love America and it
it got my attention to empty flagpoles. As I'm driving
around in my patrol car in downtown Tucson, I started
seeing all these empty flagpoles and I didn't know why.
(02:17):
Some had rope on them, some didn't have rope on them,
and I didn't you know, in my head, I was like,
you know, somebody at one time built these buildings or
put the flagpoles in years afterwards and thought it'd be
a good idea to have an American flag up, or
why are these businesses no longer using these flagpoles. So
there was one particular building that was in my division,
(02:42):
my beat downtown. It's a historic building. Old. It used
to be where trains would stop and they would dump
coal and ice into this building. It was a coal
and ice storage that moved into a place where they
would off road automobiles put it in this place. They
had an elevator that would move the vehicles up and down,
and they'd store the vehicles in this historic It was
one hundred years old. It was almost like a gateway
(03:04):
into Tucson. If you come off the freeway on one
of the main exits and you come into town. Here
is this huge, five story, one hundred year old building.
At the very top. From the ground level, you could
see there was a flagpole leaning on the edge of
the roof, like coming from the roof, leaning on a
parapet out over the street. And I saw it. I said,
(03:25):
you know, here's a historic building. It's a gateway to
the city. I'm going to talk and see what I
can do about putting a flag up on that flagpole.
I thought maybe I would have to get a crane,
or I'd have to get some of the construction business
that could lift me up to get to this pole.
You know, I didn't se any exterior access to it,
so on patrol, I went in and I asked to
(03:47):
speak to the owner or the manager, and the gentleman
came over and said, I'm the manager. The owners I
in right now. You know what can I help you with?
And I began to tell my idea. You know, they
had a flagpole on top of their building. I wanted
to start redressing flagpoles, putting flags up just on it.
I don't want to install flagpoles. You already have the flagpole.
(04:10):
Let me just dress it up, fix it up for you.
So he goes into the story and tells me, you
know that that poll is up on our roof. We
have stairs that get us to the roof, but there's
probably about a twenty foot drop once you go out
that door down to the roof. And that was an
old wooden, rickety staircase which is since gone. Right, it's
(04:33):
been on the elements in the desert for who knows
fifty or sixty years. It's gone, so we have no
access to the roof. So unfortunately, I'm sorry, you know,
we have no access to our roof that way. So
you know, I can't think of a way that we
can help you. I said, you know, kind of dejected.
I had my hopes up and going in. And as
(04:53):
I'm walking away from him, he says, hold on, here's
the owner, Mark Berman. He owns the building, owns it's
a very high end, exclusive kind of plumbing supply, bathtub sinks, showers.
You know. Here comes Mark Berman, he's the owner of
the company. Heales building. Run it by him and see
if he has, you know, an alternative idea for you. Okay,
(05:15):
So again I go through the whole kind of speech
that I was ready for, right I just I just
want to put a flag up on your flagpole. Your
manager here tells me that you have no access to
the roof. I'm wondering if there's something we can work
together on to see if I can get a flag
up on that flagpole. He says. I'll tell you what,
he says. I'll build a brand new staircase on that roof.
(05:37):
I'll make it out of corrugated steel so we have
access to the roof and put a flag up. Even
to this day, I tell that story and my jaw
it just kind of falls open, you know, you're just like,
just just five minutes ago, you know, my emotions were
even ten minutes, right, I'm high, I'm excited, I got
this idea. Five minutes later, I'm like, crap, Now I'm down.
(06:00):
What am I going to do? And now I'm back
up with the owner saying, no problem, we'll do that,
you know. And I remember calling my dad afterwards and
this is neither here nor there. But he says, you know, Charlie,
that's the difference with someone who works at the building
and somebody who owns the building. Right. Lesson learned, right,
(06:21):
So got all excited again. It took a while, right,
I mean, stairs aren't built, so he had to get
someone to come up there and build the stairs, and
the corgate stairs were done. We got up on the roof.
It was it still is there. It's probably a thirty
(06:42):
foot long heavy steel pipe that is laying against the roof,
and they made it specifically so that there was a
bolt you could take off and then you could bring
back that pole, lay it on the roof to do
what you need to do, and then historically, right, you
(07:02):
raise it back up, lead it on the roof, put
the bolt in so it can't come back and it
just lays on the roof. So at the time, I
had a fellow police officer that was with me that
started this program, and we went up there and got
off all the rust, got our cable for it, got
you know, a pulley at the top. I reached out
(07:23):
to people in the community that I knew that would
be interested in this, so I had some rope donated
rope specifically that has a steel cable down the center
of it. The reason I do that is so that
when these ropes or flags get tattered or old, these
ropes won't break. Once that rope breaks and it comes
(07:45):
out of the pulley, you're sunk. The only way to
get it fixed is to get a scissor lift, to
get a bucket truck, because now you have to get
the very top to re rope it. So I came
up with the foresight to say, look, I want some
sort of cable that there's a steel you know wire
in the middle of it. So that's what we did.
We re roped it with that and the very first
(08:09):
flag which we raised was on flag Day June fourteenth,
I want to say it was two thy and fourteen.
Was the very first flag I put up, and I
picked that date specifically because it was Flag Day. You know,
you talk to people that are older than us, older
than me. Flag Day was an important day to people
(08:33):
growing up of a different generation, right, I mean parades,
lots of celebrations. It was a many fourth of July,
my understanding Flag Day. So I wanted to have this
flag put up on Flag Day and it worked, It
just worked out perfect. I had TV there, TV media
(08:55):
was there, I had you know, print media was there,
and that this program since that first flag has taken
off in ways I never never imagined, you know. I
thought I could be a cop and on my weekend,
my days off, I can kind of keep under the
(09:16):
radar and just identify empty flagpoles around the community, re
rope them and leave. I didn't want a bunch of
I'm not looking for fanfare. I'm not looking for recognition.
It was giving back to my community. Much like a
police officer, we give back to our community and we're
not looking for things. I want to give back to
my country and I'm not looking for anything, right, I'm
(09:38):
not telling people, hey, I'll do this if you donate
X amount or I'll re rope your flagpole. If no,
you've got the flagpole. In my business model, if you
want to call it, that was I want to be
able to approach people who had a flagpole and be
able to say, look, if you have the flagpole, I'll
(09:58):
do everything else. Mike Ivy is a very very dear
friend of mine. He played collegiate football. He lives in
San Diego, which is where I grew up. I was
not born in Sanego, but I was raised in San Diego.
(10:21):
So Mike Ivy and I have been friends for thirty years,
if not longer forty years, and so every couple of
months I would take a drive out to San Diego
to see my buddy and go home and catch a
Chargers game or catch a Padre's game or whatever it was.
So one morning, Mike and I go to breakfast and
(10:44):
he says, Hey, I got a buddy that's going to
join us, a guy named Donnie Edwards. So we got
to talk talk some business, you know whatever. Okay, never
met him, I don't really know who he is. So
Donnie Edwards walks in and we just started talking, right,
I mean, we had breadfist. He has now retired from
the NFL, and I asked him, I said, so what
(11:04):
do you do with your days? You know, like I
said earlier, here's someone who is one of the best
in the world at what he did. Right, you're a
professional football player and not just sitting on like you're starting.
Your your number is retired, You're in you know, ring
of Fame and all this rich circles of fame and
all that. He was one of the best at what
(11:26):
he did. And he says, you know what, I start
a nonprofit where I give back to veterans, and I
give back to veterans, particularly at the time this was,
you know, ten years ago World War II veterans. And
at the time, I said, oh, like Honor flight writer,
you've taken a group of guys back to Washington, d C.
And making sure they see the memorial. And no, no, no,
(11:49):
he says, I'm taking groups of men and women back
to where they fought their battles. I'm taking groups to
Iwo Jima. I'm taking groups to France, to Normandy. I'm
taking groups to you know, Germany where they fought. This
is what I'm doing. I'm giving them thanks, and I
(12:10):
am I have the arrangements to take these veterans before
they die, back to where they fought their battles. Holy crap.
And again. So then now from San Diego to where
I live, that's a six hour drive all by myself,
(12:31):
lots of time to think it was. It was very
poignant time. I mean, it was a game changer meeting him.
And it sounds silly, I know, but I compared kind
of where I was in my life to what Donnie
had done as a swat operator, a metal avaled recipient.
I'm a firearms instructor, I'm a rifle instructor. I'm instructing
(12:53):
cops on how to do tactics, and I'm saving lives. Okay,
there was something I needed to fill myself, to fill
my soul with more than that. Right, copwork was tough work,
and I don't mean laborious, I mean mindful work. So
to find something to give back to my country that
(13:16):
I wasn't looking for recognition. I didn't want any sort
of accolades for it. That made me happy, right to
fill my time on my day's off or so, I thought,
let me just put up American flags, you know. And
it wasn't under a certain presidential inauguration. It wasn't under
any sort of that had nothing to do with it.
(13:38):
It's just where I was in my life, what I
was doing, who I met, That's what inspired me. It
wasn't a political agenda, it wasn't a religious agenda nothing.
I have no connections to anybody in the flag business.
I have nothing. It was something I just wanted to
do on my own to give back, and that's how started.
(14:00):
It was that conversation with Donnie and what he has done,
what he did previously to what he's doing now inspired
me to start the ball rolling for putting my organization together.
You know, I didn't join the military. I was lucky
(14:22):
enough that financially I had a family that could send
me to college, and I wanted to make money. I did,
you know. I grew up in a part of town
or around people that their families did very well for themselves,
and I wanted to continue that. I wanted to make money.
I knew that there were cops in my family, but
in my head, I can't make any money doing that.
(14:44):
That's a job, you know's it's not it's thankless. You
barely get by, you can't really support a family. It
was tough. I'm like, no, I'm gonna go to college,
I'm gonna try to make a bunch of money and
be successful. Well, I went to college married, I was
very successful. You know what, It's not dollars cracked up
(15:04):
to me. I never had to go to the bank.
I never had to use an ATM. I had cash
all the time on hand. And so a time came
up during that where we had a business and a
lease was coming up, and I said, you know what,
let me just test. Let me just test for the
department and see what happens. Right, So I went down.
(15:27):
At the time, there was five hundred other people that applied.
It was in the convention center. They were holding testing
programs down there. Anyway, I got on and I became
a police officer. And I will tell you I took
a fifty percent pay cut, and to this day, I
will tell it's the greatest thing I ever did. There
was nothing greater than loving what you do. And to
(15:52):
me it was another pig turning point is it's not
about money. You do what makes you happy, right, And
so I tell my kids, as long as you're happy,
that's what you need to do. And I can say
that because I've been on both sides of it. Don't
get me wrong, I like to make money. But there
were times in my career as a cop, particularly when
(16:16):
I was on the swat team and they were handing
me a machine gun and they're telling me how to shoot,
how to conduct urban warfare, and they're teaching me how
to I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm getting paid
to do this, right, It was one of those moments.
It was just a great moment in my life. I
was just so happy, right, and even to this day,
twenty years later, I will tell you it's a tough job,
(16:40):
but it's one of the best jobs in the world.
The things I was able to see, the experiences I've had,
I mean, it goes on and on, right, So the
greatest job in the world. So the flag when I
see it, what it means to me is changed over
(17:01):
my lifetime. As a kid, you know, we said the
Pledge of Allegiance to it every day in school, and
it's about honor and respect and veterans. Right. I was
around veterans growing up, law enforcement as well as military.
But as I get a little bit older and I
talk to more people and just you know what the
flag means to me is hope. You have people wanting
(17:25):
to come to our country for whatever reason, and when
they see that flag, it is a sign of hope
for them for a better life, for a way of life.
No matter how terrible we in this country may think
it is, there are people that see that flag and
(17:46):
it brings them hope. And that's what I have come
to grasp and come to believe in, is that, you know,
you see that flag, there's hope for us. There's hope
for this country that no matter what crisis we may have,
we're going to get through it right. We're going to
(18:06):
see that flag and it provides hope to people that
our country is stitch together. That there is bloodshed, but
there's also you know, peace and all fifty stars. We're
tied in this together and we see that flag. To me,
it gives me hope that our country will remain united,
(18:27):
will you know, not be divided. And it allows for
people to know that there is a better tomorrow, that
there is a future and it will and can be
better if we work together.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Flags
for the Flagless. This episode was produced by Charlie Foley
Doug Levy and Jason Whykol. To listen to Charlie's newest episodes,
please download and subscribe through your favorite podcast service, and
if you liked the show enough, leave a review. Your
thoughts would greatly be appreciated. Flags for the Flagless United
(19:08):
Stories of America is proudly produced and distributed by the
eight Side Network
My name is Charlie Foley. I am a retired Tucson
Police officer. I served twenty years with that agency. I
retired about two years ago. I did most of my
time on patrol. I was also a member of the
department Swat team for five years. I won numerous awards
(00:28):
during that career, but as soon as my twenty year
mark came up, I retired and I have been retired
now for almost two years. About eight years ago, I
started a nonprofit organization called Flags for the Flagless. How
that came about is that I was inspired by a
(00:49):
gentleman I met by the name of Donnie Edwards. Donnie
Edwards is a retired professional football player who is giving
back to his country, giving back to society. Even though
you know, here's a guy who was at the collegiate level,
a very experienced Division one player, goes onto the NFL
as an excellent NFL player, and what does he do.
(01:11):
He keeps giving back to his community. I met Donnie,
talked to him, and I had a six hour drive
back from San Diego to Tucson, where I live, and
it hit me, you know, here, I'm certainly not a
Division one athlete or a professional athlete. But you know,
I was a patrol cop for twenty years at that time,
fifteen years I was a member of the department Swat Team.
(01:33):
I have received a Medal of valor some other awards.
I wanted to do more. There was something that I
wanted to do more to give back to my community
than you know, a couple of awards. It's not about that,
you know, I wanted to do more. So. I grew
up in a very patriotic family. My father is passed
on now. He is a marine. My mother's family was
(01:55):
on the mining business up in Montanna. It just brought
up to a pre a Maria Love America and it
it got my attention to empty flagpoles. As I'm driving
around in my patrol car in downtown Tucson, I started
seeing all these empty flagpoles and I didn't know why.
(02:17):
Some had rope on them, some didn't have rope on them,
and I didn't you know, in my head, I was like,
you know, somebody at one time built these buildings or
put the flagpoles in years afterwards and thought it'd be
a good idea to have an American flag up, or
why are these businesses no longer using these flagpoles. So
there was one particular building that was in my division,
(02:42):
my beat downtown. It's a historic building. Old. It used
to be where trains would stop and they would dump
coal and ice into this building. It was a coal
and ice storage that moved into a place where they
would off road automobiles put it in this place. They
had an elevator that would move the vehicles up and down,
and they'd store the vehicles in this historic It was
one hundred years old. It was almost like a gateway
(03:04):
into Tucson. If you come off the freeway on one
of the main exits and you come into town. Here
is this huge, five story, one hundred year old building.
At the very top. From the ground level, you could
see there was a flagpole leaning on the edge of
the roof, like coming from the roof, leaning on a
parapet out over the street. And I saw it. I said,
(03:25):
you know, here's a historic building. It's a gateway to
the city. I'm going to talk and see what I
can do about putting a flag up on that flagpole.
I thought maybe I would have to get a crane,
or I'd have to get some of the construction business
that could lift me up to get to this pole.
You know, I didn't se any exterior access to it,
so on patrol, I went in and I asked to
(03:47):
speak to the owner or the manager, and the gentleman
came over and said, I'm the manager. The owners I
in right now. You know what can I help you with?
And I began to tell my idea. You know, they
had a flagpole on top of their building. I wanted
to start redressing flagpoles, putting flags up just on it.
I don't want to install flagpoles. You already have the flagpole.
(04:10):
Let me just dress it up, fix it up for you.
So he goes into the story and tells me, you
know that that poll is up on our roof. We
have stairs that get us to the roof, but there's
probably about a twenty foot drop once you go out
that door down to the roof. And that was an
old wooden, rickety staircase which is since gone. Right, it's
(04:33):
been on the elements in the desert for who knows
fifty or sixty years. It's gone, so we have no
access to the roof. So unfortunately, I'm sorry, you know,
we have no access to our roof that way. So
you know, I can't think of a way that we
can help you. I said, you know, kind of dejected.
I had my hopes up and going in. And as
(04:53):
I'm walking away from him, he says, hold on, here's
the owner, Mark Berman. He owns the building, owns it's
a very high end, exclusive kind of plumbing supply, bathtub sinks, showers.
You know. Here comes Mark Berman, he's the owner of
the company. Heales building. Run it by him and see
if he has, you know, an alternative idea for you. Okay,
(05:15):
So again I go through the whole kind of speech
that I was ready for, right I just I just
want to put a flag up on your flagpole. Your
manager here tells me that you have no access to
the roof. I'm wondering if there's something we can work
together on to see if I can get a flag
up on that flagpole. He says. I'll tell you what,
he says. I'll build a brand new staircase on that roof.
(05:37):
I'll make it out of corrugated steel so we have
access to the roof and put a flag up. Even
to this day, I tell that story and my jaw
it just kind of falls open, you know, you're just like,
just just five minutes ago, you know, my emotions were
even ten minutes, right, I'm high, I'm excited, I got
this idea. Five minutes later, I'm like, crap, Now I'm down.
(06:00):
What am I going to do? And now I'm back
up with the owner saying, no problem, we'll do that,
you know. And I remember calling my dad afterwards and
this is neither here nor there. But he says, you know, Charlie,
that's the difference with someone who works at the building
and somebody who owns the building. Right. Lesson learned, right,
(06:21):
So got all excited again. It took a while, right,
I mean, stairs aren't built, so he had to get
someone to come up there and build the stairs, and
the corgate stairs were done. We got up on the roof.
It was it still is there. It's probably a thirty
(06:42):
foot long heavy steel pipe that is laying against the roof,
and they made it specifically so that there was a
bolt you could take off and then you could bring
back that pole, lay it on the roof to do
what you need to do, and then historically, right, you
(07:02):
raise it back up, lead it on the roof, put
the bolt in so it can't come back and it
just lays on the roof. So at the time, I
had a fellow police officer that was with me that
started this program, and we went up there and got
off all the rust, got our cable for it, got
you know, a pulley at the top. I reached out
(07:23):
to people in the community that I knew that would
be interested in this, so I had some rope donated
rope specifically that has a steel cable down the center
of it. The reason I do that is so that
when these ropes or flags get tattered or old, these
ropes won't break. Once that rope breaks and it comes
(07:45):
out of the pulley, you're sunk. The only way to
get it fixed is to get a scissor lift, to
get a bucket truck, because now you have to get
the very top to re rope it. So I came
up with the foresight to say, look, I want some
sort of cable that there's a steel you know wire
in the middle of it. So that's what we did.
We re roped it with that and the very first
(08:09):
flag which we raised was on flag Day June fourteenth,
I want to say it was two thy and fourteen.
Was the very first flag I put up, and I
picked that date specifically because it was Flag Day. You know,
you talk to people that are older than us, older
than me. Flag Day was an important day to people
(08:33):
growing up of a different generation, right, I mean parades,
lots of celebrations. It was a many fourth of July,
my understanding Flag Day. So I wanted to have this
flag put up on Flag Day and it worked, It
just worked out perfect. I had TV there, TV media
(08:55):
was there, I had you know, print media was there,
and that this program since that first flag has taken
off in ways I never never imagined, you know. I
thought I could be a cop and on my weekend,
my days off, I can kind of keep under the
(09:16):
radar and just identify empty flagpoles around the community, re
rope them and leave. I didn't want a bunch of
I'm not looking for fanfare. I'm not looking for recognition.
It was giving back to my community. Much like a
police officer, we give back to our community and we're
not looking for things. I want to give back to
my country and I'm not looking for anything, right, I'm
(09:38):
not telling people, hey, I'll do this if you donate
X amount or I'll re rope your flagpole. If no,
you've got the flagpole. In my business model, if you
want to call it, that was I want to be
able to approach people who had a flagpole and be
able to say, look, if you have the flagpole, I'll
(09:58):
do everything else. Mike Ivy is a very very dear
friend of mine. He played collegiate football. He lives in
San Diego, which is where I grew up. I was
not born in Sanego, but I was raised in San Diego.
(10:21):
So Mike Ivy and I have been friends for thirty years,
if not longer forty years, and so every couple of
months I would take a drive out to San Diego
to see my buddy and go home and catch a
Chargers game or catch a Padre's game or whatever it was.
So one morning, Mike and I go to breakfast and
(10:44):
he says, Hey, I got a buddy that's going to
join us, a guy named Donnie Edwards. So we got
to talk talk some business, you know whatever. Okay, never
met him, I don't really know who he is. So
Donnie Edwards walks in and we just started talking, right,
I mean, we had breadfist. He has now retired from
the NFL, and I asked him, I said, so what
(11:04):
do you do with your days? You know, like I
said earlier, here's someone who is one of the best
in the world at what he did. Right, you're a
professional football player and not just sitting on like you're starting.
Your your number is retired, You're in you know, ring
of Fame and all this rich circles of fame and
all that. He was one of the best at what
(11:26):
he did. And he says, you know what, I start
a nonprofit where I give back to veterans, and I
give back to veterans, particularly at the time this was,
you know, ten years ago World War II veterans. And
at the time, I said, oh, like Honor flight writer,
you've taken a group of guys back to Washington, d C.
And making sure they see the memorial. And no, no, no,
(11:49):
he says, I'm taking groups of men and women back
to where they fought their battles. I'm taking groups to
Iwo Jima. I'm taking groups to France, to Normandy. I'm
taking groups to you know, Germany where they fought. This
is what I'm doing. I'm giving them thanks, and I
(12:10):
am I have the arrangements to take these veterans before
they die, back to where they fought their battles. Holy crap.
And again. So then now from San Diego to where
I live, that's a six hour drive all by myself,
(12:31):
lots of time to think it was. It was very
poignant time. I mean, it was a game changer meeting him.
And it sounds silly, I know, but I compared kind
of where I was in my life to what Donnie
had done as a swat operator, a metal avaled recipient.
I'm a firearms instructor, I'm a rifle instructor. I'm instructing
(12:53):
cops on how to do tactics, and I'm saving lives. Okay,
there was something I needed to fill myself, to fill
my soul with more than that. Right, copwork was tough work,
and I don't mean laborious, I mean mindful work. So
to find something to give back to my country that
(13:16):
I wasn't looking for recognition. I didn't want any sort
of accolades for it. That made me happy, right to
fill my time on my day's off or so, I thought,
let me just put up American flags, you know. And
it wasn't under a certain presidential inauguration. It wasn't under
any sort of that had nothing to do with it.
(13:38):
It's just where I was in my life, what I
was doing, who I met, That's what inspired me. It
wasn't a political agenda, it wasn't a religious agenda nothing.
I have no connections to anybody in the flag business.
I have nothing. It was something I just wanted to
do on my own to give back, and that's how started.
(14:00):
It was that conversation with Donnie and what he has done,
what he did previously to what he's doing now inspired
me to start the ball rolling for putting my organization together.
You know, I didn't join the military. I was lucky
(14:22):
enough that financially I had a family that could send
me to college, and I wanted to make money. I did,
you know. I grew up in a part of town
or around people that their families did very well for themselves,
and I wanted to continue that. I wanted to make money.
I knew that there were cops in my family, but
in my head, I can't make any money doing that.
(14:44):
That's a job, you know's it's not it's thankless. You
barely get by, you can't really support a family. It
was tough. I'm like, no, I'm gonna go to college,
I'm gonna try to make a bunch of money and
be successful. Well, I went to college married, I was
very successful. You know what, It's not dollars cracked up
(15:04):
to me. I never had to go to the bank.
I never had to use an ATM. I had cash
all the time on hand. And so a time came
up during that where we had a business and a
lease was coming up, and I said, you know what,
let me just test. Let me just test for the
department and see what happens. Right, So I went down.
(15:27):
At the time, there was five hundred other people that applied.
It was in the convention center. They were holding testing
programs down there. Anyway, I got on and I became
a police officer. And I will tell you I took
a fifty percent pay cut, and to this day, I
will tell it's the greatest thing I ever did. There
was nothing greater than loving what you do. And to
(15:52):
me it was another pig turning point is it's not
about money. You do what makes you happy, right, And
so I tell my kids, as long as you're happy,
that's what you need to do. And I can say
that because I've been on both sides of it. Don't
get me wrong, I like to make money. But there
were times in my career as a cop, particularly when
(16:16):
I was on the swat team and they were handing
me a machine gun and they're telling me how to shoot,
how to conduct urban warfare, and they're teaching me how
to I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm getting paid
to do this, right, It was one of those moments.
It was just a great moment in my life. I
was just so happy, right, and even to this day,
twenty years later, I will tell you it's a tough job,
(16:40):
but it's one of the best jobs in the world.
The things I was able to see, the experiences I've had,
I mean, it goes on and on, right, So the
greatest job in the world. So the flag when I
see it, what it means to me is changed over
(17:01):
my lifetime. As a kid, you know, we said the
Pledge of Allegiance to it every day in school, and
it's about honor and respect and veterans. Right. I was
around veterans growing up, law enforcement as well as military.
But as I get a little bit older and I
talk to more people and just you know what the
flag means to me is hope. You have people wanting
(17:25):
to come to our country for whatever reason, and when
they see that flag, it is a sign of hope
for them for a better life, for a way of life.
No matter how terrible we in this country may think
it is, there are people that see that flag and
(17:46):
it brings them hope. And that's what I have come
to grasp and come to believe in, is that, you know,
you see that flag, there's hope for us. There's hope
for this country that no matter what crisis we may have,
we're going to get through it right. We're going to
(18:06):
see that flag and it provides hope to people that
our country is stitch together. That there is bloodshed, but
there's also you know, peace and all fifty stars. We're
tied in this together and we see that flag. To me,
it gives me hope that our country will remain united,
(18:27):
will you know, not be divided. And it allows for
people to know that there is a better tomorrow, that
there is a future and it will and can be
better if we work together.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Flags
for the Flagless. This episode was produced by Charlie Foley
Doug Levy and Jason Whykol. To listen to Charlie's newest episodes,
please download and subscribe through your favorite podcast service, and
if you liked the show enough, leave a review. Your
thoughts would greatly be appreciated. Flags for the Flagless United
(19:08):
Stories of America is proudly produced and distributed by the
eight Side Network
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