August 20, 2021 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Judy Pearson tells the story of Virginia Hall - a woman who was dubbed "the most dangerous of the Allied spies;" Damon Cox shares how he came out of poverty and abandonment by becoming a full-time video gamer.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Leigh Habib and this is our American Stories,
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from history to business
and everything in between. And we tell your stories too,
because some of our very best have been from the
people who listen to this show, from you. And this
next story, well, it's the story of Virginia Hall. And
(00:33):
she's a World War two spy who overcame both physical
and societal ills during a time when the world seemed
to be tearing itself apart. Literally. Now for her story,
as told by Judy Pearson. Virginia Hall was once asked
(00:56):
why she never told her story. She replied that no
one had ever asked her. In two thousand and three,
I began asking. My quest took me to her niece
in Baltimore newly declassified intelligence records in the National Archives,
then to London, Paris, and across the French countryside. I
(01:16):
conducted countless interviews in English and in French, and read
dozens of personal accounts. What ultimately unfolded was the story
of an incredible woman. She was intelligent, brave, and outspoken.
She was loyal, daring and stubborn, but as a young
(01:40):
woman all of Virginia Hall's energies were directed at becoming
a foreign service officer. At high school graduation, while her
chums were thinking of marriage and families, Virginia announced that
the only way for a woman to get ahead in
the world was with an education. After several undistinguished years
at rad Cliff and Barnard, she went to the Sorbonne
(02:02):
in Paris and then the consul Academis in Vienna, from
which she graduated in nineteen twenty nine. Back in the States,
now fluent in French and German, she applied to take
the Foreign Service exam. The exam consisted of three parts.
The first was written covering all manner of topics, including
(02:23):
the world history, geography, and sociology. The second tested the
applicant's knowledge of a foreign language. Virginia opted for French,
and the third part of the exam, far more subjective,
gave the examiner the power to judge what kind of
officer the applicant would make. Virginia failed, the exam, took
(02:45):
it again and was failed again. It was nineteen thirty
Women had only had the right to vote for ten years,
and the number of female foreign service officers could be
counted on one hand, gender discriminate nation was hard at work.
She told a family friend that if she couldn't get
into the Foreign Service through the front door, she'd try
(03:07):
going in through the back door, and landed a job
as clerk at the American Embassy in Poland. She once
again applied for the exam, but before she completed it,
she was transferred to the American Consulate in Smyrna now Izmir, Turkey.
Here her life changed forever. On a December Saturday afternoon
(03:30):
hunting expedition with some friends in nineteen thirty three, Virginia's
gun accidentally discharged into her left foot. Despite doctor's best efforts,
gangrene set in, and to save her life, they removed
her leg from the knee down. What might have been
considered by some as a life ending event, Virginia saw
(03:50):
as merely a delay in plans. When she was well
enough to travel, she returned home to Baltimore to recuperate,
be fitted with a seven pound wooden prostesis, and a
year later she was back at work, this time at
the American Consulate in Venice, from which she requested to
take the Foreign Service exam yet again, but this time
(04:14):
rather than test questions, a letter arrived informing her that,
according to an obscure statute, amputees were not accepted in
the Foreign Service. The letter concluded by politely asking Virginia
not to apply again, she simply wouldn't fit in. As
Hitler began blazing across Europe, a discouraged Virginia Hall left
(04:38):
her consular job and went to France. Here her leg
was not an issue. She was gratefully accepted as a
volunteer ambulance driver for the French Army. Nor was her
leg in issue. Several months later, when in London, she
was approached by a Special Operations Executive employee the SE.
(05:00):
This undercover paramilitary organization had been created by Winston Churchill too,
as he said, set Europe ablaze. The current war was
unlike any other. The Allies needed extraordinary warfare in the
form of espionage and sabotage. Escaping French military had told
(05:21):
the British that there were many in France who would
be willing to rise up against the Nazis given enough
organization and arms. Leaders who could be infiltrated into the
country were needed, and Virginia fit the bill. The Brits
didn't give a hoot about her gender. In fact, it
was believed that women would make the best spies. This
(05:42):
doesn't surprise those of us who are women, but it
was a revelation to the men. Furthermore, men were being
whisked to Germany as laborers. A man on the streets
in France needed reasons for being there, but a woman
didn't and could travel about more east. Nor did the
Brits care. How many limbs Virginia had lost. Her disability
(06:05):
was unknown to most. She walked only with a slight limp.
At the SOEES training camps, Virginia learned things her Baltimore
contemporaries would never have imagined. I had the good fortune
to interview one of the instructors while I was in London,
Leslie Fernandez, taught s OE recruits, including Virginia, physical combat,
(06:28):
in other words, how to kill. And Virginia wasn't shown
any favoritism because of her missing leg. She wouldn't have
accepted it anyway. The only training she didn't receive was
in parachuting, the primary means by which agents were infiltrated.
It was nineteen forty one and America had not yet
entered the war, Virginia would be free to enter France
(06:51):
as a non combatant, which she did using journalism as
her cover. And when we come back, we'll continue this story,
Virginia Hall's story, The Spy with the Wooden Leg, and
to hear about her grit, her perseverance, and rising above
(07:12):
the odds. Where we love stories like this. The Spy
with the Wooden Leg continues after these messages. Folks, if
you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
(07:35):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
(07:55):
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories.
And when we left off, Virginia Hall was sneaking into
(08:16):
France back in nineteen forty one, not a time actually
to be going into France, and she was posing as
a journalist to act as a British intelligence operative. Let's
return to the author, Judy Pearson. I spent hours digging
through the British National Archives at Kew and the Imperial
(08:37):
War Museum archives in London, both of which were rich
in material. I heard the oral histories of those recruited
agents who had daringly dropped into occupied France where Virginia
and others awaited them. When I arrived in France, after
spending several days digging through the archives in Paris, I
rented a car and took off across the country to
(08:58):
visit firsthand all the cities Virginia had worked from. She
was ultimately sent to Lyon, the center of resistance activities
in unoccupied France, so I went to Lyon as well.
There under her journalism cover, while ostensibly collecting information for
newspaper articles, Virginia was also collecting information about Nazi activities.
(09:23):
Her flat, innocently appearing as that of a hard working writer,
was the clearing house for every British agent who was
sent to central France in nineteen forty one. Through Virginia,
they were able to connect with fellow agents and contact
others to help them. They collected counterfeited money and wireless
(09:46):
radios needed to perform their work. When they were captured
and imprisoned, Virginia worked on their escapes. She organized her
own group of resistance members in Lyons and had contacts
in Marseilles and at the Spanish Board, two places from
which people could disappear should the need arise. She and
her group saved innumerable lives of both downed Allied pilots
(10:10):
kneading passage out of France and agents who were being
hunted by the Gestapo. But it wasn't long before Virginia
herself became hunted. Klaus Barbie, later known as the Butcher
of Lyons, spread the word that a lady with a limp,
an Englishman or a Canadian, was wanted in connection with
(10:30):
espionage activities. His posters announced that Virginia was the most
dangerous of all Allied spies and that everyone should help
him find and destroy her. Virginia's exodus across the Pyrenees Mountains,
the rugged chain that separates France from Spain, was in
November nineteen forty two. The cold and rigorous march would
(10:53):
have been exhausting for anyone, but dragging a seven pound
wooden leg through the snow made it all the more
difficult for Virginia. She hadn't dared tell the Guide about
her leg. He was already grumbling because she was a woman.
At one point she was able to radio London to
tell them she was on her way out of France.
(11:15):
She mentioned that Cuthbert, her clever nickname for her leg,
had become quite tiresome. The recipient of the message, ignorant
of the leg's name, wired back that if Cuthbert had
become tiresome, she should have him eliminated. At the end
of the grueling thirty mile journey, Virginia was arrested in
(11:35):
Spain for not having papers. She was imprisoned for six weeks,
released only after her former cellmate, a Barcelona prostitute, was
able to get word to the British consulate that she
was being held. By the time Virginia had returned to
England in early nineteen forty three, a new intelligence organization
(11:56):
had been born. Its name was the Office of stret
Tegic Services the OSS. It was patterned after the Sooe
with one exception. It was pure bred American led by
a hero from World War One named General wild Bill Donovan.
Virginia was desperate to get back into the fight, and
(12:18):
transferring to the OSS made sense since she was an American,
but there was a concern she was now a hunted
woman whose sketched picture had been spread throughout France. A
return could only be facilitated if she were disguised that
of an old peasant woman fit the bill. On her
(12:43):
second trip to occupied France, Virginia's intelligence and ingenuity served
her and saved her many times. This time she acted
as her own radio operator, setting up numerous resistance cells.
Three months after returning to France, the greatest armada the
world had ever seen crossed the Channel for the D
(13:04):
Day landings. When the signal was given, her resistance cell
went into action, cutting off Nazi supply lines and disrupting
their communications, all in a successful effort to aid the
Allied invasion of Europe. By the fall of nineteen forty four,
all of France was liberated. During Virginia's second stint in
(13:26):
the country, she had had the pleasure of leading fifteen
hundred resistance volunteers who killed one hundred and fifty Nazis
and captured five hundred more. Her team had sabotaged numerous
transportation and communication links. Virginia's leadership and sang Froi was
not only admired, it became legendary. They called her Lamadon
(13:51):
the Madonna. Gia was awarded the Member of the British Empire,
the French Quadriguerrevech Palm, and the American Distinguished Service Cross,
the only woman in World War Two to receive that
(14:12):
American distinction. But Virginia wasn't interested in accolades. She wanted
to continue her work in espionage. Although the OSS had
been dissolved, Virginia was one of the first women on
board the new intelligence agency, known as the Central Intelligence Group.
It became the Central Intelligence Agency in December nineteen forty seven.
(14:36):
But the new world of intelligence was very different from
the one Virginia had previously been a part of. Communism
was the enemy now, and as one observer put it,
Joseph Stalin made Hitler look like a boy scout. Virginia
wanted desperately to become an operative again, willing to undergo
whatever training was necessary, but at the advanced age of
(14:58):
forty one, looked upon as old school. Her skills were
outdated and her aggressiveness was offensive to the younger men
who were her superiors. Her experience was dismissed as not pertinent.
After all she'd been through and all the sacrifices she
had gladly made. Once again, Virginia Hall didn't fit in.
(15:27):
Virginia had married Paul Goyo in nineteen fifty, a French
American she had met toward the end of the war.
She accepted mandatory retirement from the CIA in nineteen sixty six,
and she and Paul moved to a farm in Barnestown, Maryland.
They raised poodles, gardened, and grew old together. Virginia died
(15:47):
in nineteen eighty two, and Goyo followed five years later.
She was never bitter about the fact that her career
hadn't begun or ended as she would have liked. Rather
chose to remember the magnificent days in the Middle, the
days when her clever mind and brave heart helped defeat
fascists bent down world domination and a special thanks to
(16:21):
Judy Pearson And by the way, her book about Virginia
Hall was called Wolves at the Door, The True Story
of America's Greatest Female Spy. And I had never heard
that story, and I'm a big World War Two buff
and it doesn't get better than a story like that.
I mean, the woman accidentally shoots her foot off and
(16:43):
for most people that's it. She gets turned down once twice,
but is determined to be a member of the Foreign Service,
eases her way into France when most people will be
running from France as the Nazis coming up occupy the country,
and all to le Klaus Barbie, the butcher has her
(17:03):
as the most wanted person in the Nazi regime when
it comes to spies. Certainly, what an impact she had
her life, What an example, and by the way, to
be the only woman to win the American Distinguished Service Cross.
I don't know why more of us don't know this story,
(17:24):
but that's what we do here on our American stories.
And my goodness, what Judy Pearson did hear? The author?
I mean, she literally walked in Virginia Hall's shoes, traveled
all over Europe just to honor her story. And these
are the kind of writers and researchers we love to
put on the show Virginia Hall story, the spy with
(17:44):
a wooden leg here on our American stories. This is
(18:10):
our American Stories when we tell stories about just about
everything here on this show, as you know, and today
we have a story from Damon Cox. He was born
in Arkansas and then moved to Ponatak, Mississippi. He's sharing
with us his life as a semi professional video gamer.
Here's Damon. I started off playing video games as a kid.
(18:33):
We were like a super super poor family. We lived
in a trailer out in front of mine, Mimi's, and
Papa's house, so there wasn't really much to do, so
video games was kind of a way to escape. My
parents used to have Atari in Nintendo, so it was
just a thing that I used to play with a lot,
and it was just something I really really enjoyed. And
once I started getting into like more of the shooter
(18:55):
based video games, friends would come over and I would
play them and I would be Thelm and I was
just the best one out of our little friend group.
And then later on we would eventually move and get
internet and I was able to play online and I
was able to beat multiple people, like all around the world.
And then eventually I decided to start running some like
(19:16):
game battle tournaments, which are online tournaments, and I was
able to win some of those and it got some
recognition and some traction from some of the top players,
so I was able to play with them. And then
one day I finally just got up the courage to
go into Halo four AGL Nashville and I was able
to compete in Nashville. At Nashville, I was I think
(19:38):
thirteen fourteen. I walked in and it was a little
game studio like game arcade type thing, and there was
hundreds of people there, and I was just really excited
to be there, and then also getting to meet all
these people that I've been playing with online and kind
of like my heroes at the time. It was really
cool seeing like all of them and being able to
(20:01):
see that they're like one of us in a way,
so I was able to play with them, and then
I got to go on mainstage and compete. And seeing
like you're gamer, picture and everything like that brought up
and having like fans like kind of say your name
and stuff was a really big moment for me. Especially
at like thirteen. It is just, yeah, no one's ever
(20:23):
doing that. And I was pretty much the youngest one there.
There may have been a couple who were around my age,
but everyone else was about sixteen to twenty years old,
and so I just was kind of like the short,
little skinny guy who was just there to play video games.
And but honestly, I felt so at home because everybody
there was just so nice, so outgoing, just just happy
to be around one another who shared the same interest.
(20:45):
Ended up winning, and I came back and surprised my
parents with the fifteen thousand dollars check. At first, they
were kind of iffy. My mom was definitely like kind
of like, okay, maybe you can't do something, but my
dad was like, I don't know about this, and it
was so a lot of people really didn't know anything
about it, so my dad definitely was not on board yet.
But my mom started like, okay, maybe you can play
(21:08):
and everything like that. But at the same time, like
what thirteen year old is going to get a full
yes from both parents, then yeah, let's just spend more
time playing video games. Not many people are going to
like being able to convince their parents now. Right now,
it's becoming more of a common thing because like Fortnite
is allowing this opening for like three million dollar tournaments,
(21:31):
so a lot of parents are actually like buying coaches
and stuff like that for their kids to try to
get better at video games. Just like baseball, you'll hiring
pitching coach or anything like that. That's what they're doing
for video games now. So it's kind of like becoming
the norm. But definitely ten years ago, it was not
even like an idea to have someone literally come home
(21:55):
and go, you know what, I want to not go
to school anymore. I want to do video games full time.
There's no way that would slide ten twenty years ago.
Whenever I was like first like diving into video games
a lot more. I would try to play eight to
ten hours a day. I would literally come home, throw
my backpack on the ground. I would try to do
my homework on a like on the school bus on
the way back, just so I had more time to
(22:17):
play video games. So I would get home and start
playing video games. Well, my parents got off work, they
were like, why didn't you, like go hit with your brother,
or why didn't you shoot basketball or go outside and
just kind of play around in the woods. And I
was like, well, I wanted to play video games. Well,
my parents would say, like, we'll go outside and play
play outside with your brother and everything and then after
(22:38):
you play for a little bit, you can come back
in and play video games. So I would go outside
pretty much just try to stall Tom until I can
come back in and play video games. And then whenever
I finally got to start competing in tournaments and started
to win, I found out I was kind of good
at it started making a decent amount of money. I
ended up making about one hundred twenty five twenty grand total.
(23:00):
I was able to help pay for my first vehicle
and help pay for my first like three years of college.
Now that doesn't mean that I always made good decisions
with the money. I also splurged on differently, like gaming accessories,
Like I always wanted the newest and the best stuff,
so I got a new headset, a new monitor, to
custom controllers. So I definitely didn't make the smartest decision
(23:23):
with the money, but I was able to make a
couple of good decisions where it doesn't look as bad
that when I talk about it. So I competed all
the way up to fifteen and like fifteen, sixteen years old,
and then I kind of just started diving into sports
a lot more. So I started playing baseball. I played
varsity baseball, so we made it to State and we
(23:44):
ended up losing State, and that kind of was like, Okay,
maybe baseball isn't going to be the best for me.
So I ended up transition into bodybuilding. So whenever I
was younger, my dad ended up just running away from us.
My last memory, we were at a stoplight and he
opened the door and took off running, like like just
(24:06):
took off running. Whenever we got home, there was actually
police officers who ended up taking my mom off of
a miscommunication because my real dad like pinned these charges
on my mom, and so she ended up going away
and we're just was stuck in the trailer until our
mama came and got us. My mom all had this
(24:29):
guy like come over and take care of us, and
he ended up becoming my real dad. After my mom
got out of jail, they hit it off real good
and they got married and then after that they adopted me.
It's not really something I remember a whole lot of
I remember the adoption part, but the age is kind
of like a little iffy for me. I don't remember everything,
(24:50):
but my brother definitely doesn't know anything at all, And
it was just something that I had to like step
up and like be the big brother for it and
like try to show him something else to take his
mind off of. Like, so we just threw ourselves into competition.
So competitions was always the thing that kind of helped
me escape, Like that thrive to be better was always
(25:11):
something that I wanted to do, and it kind of
just rubbed off on my little brother. So we competed
in many different things. Like my brother did cage fighting.
We grew up doing different mma stuff. I played baseball,
he played football. I don't feel sorry for myself at all.
We found a dad who was literally ten times better
than what the real one was supposed to like ever be.
(25:34):
Like the dad I have now has made me into
something that I am like so proud to be. Literally
the actions of my real dad made me just thrive
to want to be better to try to help out
my mom because like he just ran away and like
it was like we weren't good enough. So I was like, well,
I'm going to be good enough for this family. So
(25:57):
I want to just make my mom proud and make
my dad proud. That's all I want to do. Whenever
I was trying to become a professional game or we
needed a place at a certain ranking. We ended up
placing outside that rinking, and it kind of brought me
down because I put everything I had into that time
and I just wasn't good enough to win. So I
(26:19):
kind of just got realed down and was like, you
know what, maybe it's time for me to kind of
like pin this up and try something else. That's whenever
I went to bodybuilding, Like that's when bodybuilding was kind
of like Mike Skate now. So I ended up selling
all my stuff. Actually I sold my custom controllers, I
sold everything, but my monitor monitor was the only thing
I kept. But bodybuilding kind of helped me escape because
(26:42):
of how like the schedule was, wake up early to
workouts a day, meal prepping, eating every like two and
a half hours. And you're listening to Damon Cox and
what a unique voice and what a unique story video
gamer aspect, no doubt is unique, but my goodness would
happen to him as a young man watching his father
(27:04):
just ditch him and ditch the family. When we come
back more of Damon Cox's story here on our American Stories,
(27:39):
and we continue with our American Stories, and we've been
listening to the story of Damon Cox and his life
is a semi professional gamer. After a few years of
video games, he decided to give them a break and
try something new bodybuilding. I started off on everything whenever.
My friend wanted me to come spot at him one
(28:00):
day at the gym, so I went up to spot him,
and after we got done doing a chess press, he goes,
let's say, i'm much you can do. So I was like, okay,
let's see what I can actually do, and we put
it twenty five. I'll definitely be able to do that.
And I failed miserably at it, and I was like, okay,
I need to start working on this. So I started
eating me just alive inside of like how weak I was.
(28:22):
I was one hundred and thirty five pounds my beginning
of my senior year, and this is when I started
working out. My friend's dad just bought a gem, so
there was no excuses not to work out, so I
started working out with all of them. And then by
the senior year, I was one hundred and ninety seven
pounds and I had stretched marks out of the wazoo.
(28:42):
So I put it on a lot of size, but
it was through intense training. Like intense training at least
six days a week, sometimes seven days a week. They
ended up getting in a good coach and he was
able to show me how much water to take in,
how much food to take in. But we needed to
do a bulking series because I was a little bit
like smaller at the time. So we did a sixteen
(29:04):
week bulk and I was on fifty two hundred calories
at first, and it seemed like a lot, but I
wasn't gaining as much weight as he wanted to, so
he actually bought me up to seven thousand calories total.
At the end of it. I was eating so much,
so much I would wake up hungry throughout the night,
and I had peanut butter next in my bed, and
I would literally wake up, do like two bites of
peanut butter and just roll over and go to bed.
(29:26):
And then after this we decided to do a cutting
phase so I can get ready for a show. So
during my cutting phase, though, we had a little scare.
I left a shaker bottle out in the car overnight,
and the very next morning I went up to make
a protein shake. I couldn't find my shaker bottle, so
I went out to the car. I got it. Didn't
(29:47):
think nothing of it. I just rinsed it out and
then made my protein shake. Well, about two days later,
I started throwing up really bad, and it was honestly
the worst span of my life. My organs. I felt
them contracting and actually like coming up, and then I
ended up passing out and my roommate found me in
a trash can and brought me to the hospital. Well,
(30:08):
the shaker bottle had black mold in it, and I
was drinking out of it and I ended up infecting
like six of my organs, and they say, like thirty
minutes to an hour, I would have died. So after
that they told me it would take two months to heal.
I gave it two weeks, got back into the gym. Well,
going into the show, I wasn't as defined as I
(30:29):
was due to the sickness, but I still looked okay,
and so I placed second in that show. And it
was something where I was like, okay, I was able
to blame it on something else instead of just me.
I was like, okay, I was sick, so let's say
how good I can actually do this. So the next
year I took off of college so to become a
(30:49):
professional bodybuilder at the time, you needed a place at
least top three in a state show and then go
to Nationals in place in a national show. So my
whole goal was to literally just go to Nationals. So
we competed in the Southern Classic to compete. I ended
up placing second there. It was not even close, honestly,
(31:10):
kind of like, let me know that I wasn't going
to be able to make it far without steroids, and
I decided I wasn't going to do steroids, so I
was time to just give up on that. But when
Fortnite came out, I literally played one game and I
was like, Okay, I've got to I've got to do this.
After I played that first couple of games of Fortnite,
I was like okay, And literally the next morning went
(31:31):
out bought a headset, controller Xbox because I started back
playing like ten hours a day. And when Apex came out,
I just dove straight in and I was running game
battles off the start on that game and just still
doing that, just making SETI and come off that game.
So right now a lot of colleges are trying to
(31:52):
make teams for like different esports teams because they see
how big that it's taking off now because like recently
Legal Legends actually had more viewers than the Super Bowl,
So people are starting to like figure out, Okay, maybe
video games were kind of here to stay, so it's
getting a lot of attention now. So a lot of
(32:14):
colleges are actually handing out scholarships for their like sports teams,
so they're esports team. So it'll be really exciting to
see like how much video games progress in about five
to ten years. So a lot of people look at
gamers as just antisocial people who don't want to go outside,
usually unathletic. They just like penem as like they're in
(32:35):
their mom's basement playing video games. Whenever I was going
to these tournaments, I figured out a lot of them
played sports. A lot of them are just very very outspoken.
They love just talking to you and meeting new people
and everything. So it was crazy to see how different
the stereotypes are now. Of course, there's gonna be like
antisocial people, like even in sports today, Like there's gonna
(32:58):
be players who don't want to go in front of
the camera, just like video game players. Like there's a
lot of people who maybe like they come from a
background like me, who didn't take it as well as
I did, and they had a rough like growing up,
so they go, Okay, maybe like I want to stay inside,
I don't really want to talk to people all that much.
But video game players, from what I got to know
(33:19):
them as, they were very outspoken. They loved meeting new people,
loved being around a community who love video games. The
best I've ever felt was during video games. Compared to
playing in the State Championship of baseball, being on stage
and bodybuilding, and being on stage for video games. Video
games is by far the best feeling I had. There's
(33:42):
something about being on stage with ten other gamers and
having five hundred to a thousand people watching you. You
turn around and you see this big screen and it's
your screen was brought up there because maybe you made
the play of the game, and everybody like channing. You're
like gamer tag, so my gamers was hyper, so everybody
like chanting hyper. It was just one of the best feelings.
(34:05):
It felt like I was I did something, I accomplish something.
There is definitely people that I look up to that
I know that I will probably never be as good at,
but that's not really a mindset that I like to have.
I like to literally see someone who's better than me
and be like, okay, well let me try to match
that skill level. So whenever I watch someone play, I
literally look at them and I'm like, Okay, what are
(34:26):
they doing different? What is their decision makings that are
making them like dis elite player? It pretty much like
each me alive that why am I not that good?
So I start practicing more. If they're doing mechanic that
I'm not doing, or they're playing on a setting that
I'm not playing on, then I swapped to that and
I'm trying to match them, but not only match them,
(34:47):
be better than that. Seeing like five ten people who
were literally light years ahead of me is amazing because
it's still a learning experience for me. I figured like, Okay,
I'm getting really good at this because like right now,
I'm like with on Xbox, I'm within the top thirty
in the United States. And then right after my I
(35:08):
broke my hand, I realized how short this can actually
be for me as a career. Having a backup plan
in a main career is still the like the main
thing I need to have a priority on. So I'm
trying to figure that out and gaming is literally just
the secondary just to pay bills right now while I
just finish up my degree. So I probably play about
(35:31):
five to six hours a day right now, But there
is days where I do play more and there is
days that I do play less. But I try to
play at least five to six hours a day. That's
the only way to pretty much stay consistent at the
top level. And I think that's a low number actually
because back in the day, whenever I was competing, I
was playing for about eight to ten hours a day.
But it seems like a lot. Everybody's like you're sitting inside.
(35:54):
But if you think about it, I mean, like how
much does your son play baseball? Like they have probably
double this is like I did. When they get home,
they're probably throwing the tennis ball against the wall, trying
to like work on groundballs, going outside, hitting wiffle balls
and stuff like that. So it average is about the same.
If you want to be the best at something, you
got to put the hours in. So that was That's
(36:15):
something that I definitely see changing though as I'm trying
to like work my way into strengthing conditioning side, because
I would love to be a strength conditioning coach. So
finishing up the college degree and getting a good job,
that's kind of my new mindset. I would love to
take my dad to a UFC fight in Madison Square Garden.
(36:39):
That's like my dream bucket list to give him. And
my mom's always wanting to go to Hawaii. So my
new goal is it's not be a pro gamer, not
be the pro bodybuilder. It's literally just give each of
them something that because they gave me everything, so now
it's like I want to do that for them. So
that's my new like kind of sport. I guess is that.
(37:04):
And you've been listening to Damon Cox and what a
delight from gamer to bodybuilder and back to gaming. Fortnite
just grabbed him. Plus the life filled with steroids didn't
really appeal to him. Smart kid, really smart kid and
now a young man and gaming well it's becoming a
national well it's become a national sport like it or not.
(37:24):
And there are a lot of critics. The number of
people doing this, the number of colleges turning these things
into scholarships, it's just happening, and the amount of money
being made in the industry. It's for real, and that
he wants to now take his dad to NYC, to
CUFC at Madison Square Garden, and he wants to take
his mom on a Hawaiian vacation. Tells you the kind
(37:46):
of sunny is Damon Cox. His story a local story
here in Mississippi, here on our American Stories four four
This is Leigh Habib and this is our American Stories,
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from history to business
and everything in between. And we tell your stories too,
because some of our very best have been from the
people who listen to this show, from you. And this
next story, well, it's the story of Virginia Hall. And
(00:33):
she's a World War two spy who overcame both physical
and societal ills during a time when the world seemed
to be tearing itself apart. Literally. Now for her story,
as told by Judy Pearson. Virginia Hall was once asked
(00:56):
why she never told her story. She replied that no
one had ever asked her. In two thousand and three,
I began asking. My quest took me to her niece
in Baltimore newly declassified intelligence records in the National Archives,
then to London, Paris, and across the French countryside. I
(01:16):
conducted countless interviews in English and in French, and read
dozens of personal accounts. What ultimately unfolded was the story
of an incredible woman. She was intelligent, brave, and outspoken.
She was loyal, daring and stubborn, but as a young
(01:40):
woman all of Virginia Hall's energies were directed at becoming
a foreign service officer. At high school graduation, while her
chums were thinking of marriage and families, Virginia announced that
the only way for a woman to get ahead in
the world was with an education. After several undistinguished years
at rad Cliff and Barnard, she went to the Sorbonne
(02:02):
in Paris and then the consul Academis in Vienna, from
which she graduated in nineteen twenty nine. Back in the States,
now fluent in French and German, she applied to take
the Foreign Service exam. The exam consisted of three parts.
The first was written covering all manner of topics, including
(02:23):
the world history, geography, and sociology. The second tested the
applicant's knowledge of a foreign language. Virginia opted for French,
and the third part of the exam, far more subjective,
gave the examiner the power to judge what kind of
officer the applicant would make. Virginia failed, the exam, took
(02:45):
it again and was failed again. It was nineteen thirty
Women had only had the right to vote for ten years,
and the number of female foreign service officers could be
counted on one hand, gender discriminate nation was hard at work.
She told a family friend that if she couldn't get
into the Foreign Service through the front door, she'd try
(03:07):
going in through the back door, and landed a job
as clerk at the American Embassy in Poland. She once
again applied for the exam, but before she completed it,
she was transferred to the American Consulate in Smyrna now Izmir, Turkey.
Here her life changed forever. On a December Saturday afternoon
(03:30):
hunting expedition with some friends in nineteen thirty three, Virginia's
gun accidentally discharged into her left foot. Despite doctor's best efforts,
gangrene set in, and to save her life, they removed
her leg from the knee down. What might have been
considered by some as a life ending event, Virginia saw
(03:50):
as merely a delay in plans. When she was well
enough to travel, she returned home to Baltimore to recuperate,
be fitted with a seven pound wooden prostesis, and a
year later she was back at work, this time at
the American Consulate in Venice, from which she requested to
take the Foreign Service exam yet again, but this time
(04:14):
rather than test questions, a letter arrived informing her that,
according to an obscure statute, amputees were not accepted in
the Foreign Service. The letter concluded by politely asking Virginia
not to apply again, she simply wouldn't fit in. As
Hitler began blazing across Europe, a discouraged Virginia Hall left
(04:38):
her consular job and went to France. Here her leg
was not an issue. She was gratefully accepted as a
volunteer ambulance driver for the French Army. Nor was her
leg in issue. Several months later, when in London, she
was approached by a Special Operations Executive employee the SE.
(05:00):
This undercover paramilitary organization had been created by Winston Churchill too,
as he said, set Europe ablaze. The current war was
unlike any other. The Allies needed extraordinary warfare in the
form of espionage and sabotage. Escaping French military had told
(05:21):
the British that there were many in France who would
be willing to rise up against the Nazis given enough
organization and arms. Leaders who could be infiltrated into the
country were needed, and Virginia fit the bill. The Brits
didn't give a hoot about her gender. In fact, it
was believed that women would make the best spies. This
(05:42):
doesn't surprise those of us who are women, but it
was a revelation to the men. Furthermore, men were being
whisked to Germany as laborers. A man on the streets
in France needed reasons for being there, but a woman
didn't and could travel about more east. Nor did the
Brits care. How many limbs Virginia had lost. Her disability
(06:05):
was unknown to most. She walked only with a slight limp.
At the SOEES training camps, Virginia learned things her Baltimore
contemporaries would never have imagined. I had the good fortune
to interview one of the instructors while I was in London,
Leslie Fernandez, taught s OE recruits, including Virginia, physical combat,
(06:28):
in other words, how to kill. And Virginia wasn't shown
any favoritism because of her missing leg. She wouldn't have
accepted it anyway. The only training she didn't receive was
in parachuting, the primary means by which agents were infiltrated.
It was nineteen forty one and America had not yet
entered the war, Virginia would be free to enter France
(06:51):
as a non combatant, which she did using journalism as
her cover. And when we come back, we'll continue this story,
Virginia Hall's story, The Spy with the Wooden Leg, and
to hear about her grit, her perseverance, and rising above
(07:12):
the odds. Where we love stories like this. The Spy
with the Wooden Leg continues after these messages. Folks, if
you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
(07:35):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith, are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
(07:55):
to learn more. And we returned to our American stories.
And when we left off, Virginia Hall was sneaking into
(08:16):
France back in nineteen forty one, not a time actually
to be going into France, and she was posing as
a journalist to act as a British intelligence operative. Let's
return to the author, Judy Pearson. I spent hours digging
through the British National Archives at Kew and the Imperial
(08:37):
War Museum archives in London, both of which were rich
in material. I heard the oral histories of those recruited
agents who had daringly dropped into occupied France where Virginia
and others awaited them. When I arrived in France, after
spending several days digging through the archives in Paris, I
rented a car and took off across the country to
(08:58):
visit firsthand all the cities Virginia had worked from. She
was ultimately sent to Lyon, the center of resistance activities
in unoccupied France, so I went to Lyon as well.
There under her journalism cover, while ostensibly collecting information for
newspaper articles, Virginia was also collecting information about Nazi activities.
(09:23):
Her flat, innocently appearing as that of a hard working writer,
was the clearing house for every British agent who was
sent to central France in nineteen forty one. Through Virginia,
they were able to connect with fellow agents and contact
others to help them. They collected counterfeited money and wireless
(09:46):
radios needed to perform their work. When they were captured
and imprisoned, Virginia worked on their escapes. She organized her
own group of resistance members in Lyons and had contacts
in Marseilles and at the Spanish Board, two places from
which people could disappear should the need arise. She and
her group saved innumerable lives of both downed Allied pilots
(10:10):
kneading passage out of France and agents who were being
hunted by the Gestapo. But it wasn't long before Virginia
herself became hunted. Klaus Barbie, later known as the Butcher
of Lyons, spread the word that a lady with a limp,
an Englishman or a Canadian, was wanted in connection with
(10:30):
espionage activities. His posters announced that Virginia was the most
dangerous of all Allied spies and that everyone should help
him find and destroy her. Virginia's exodus across the Pyrenees Mountains,
the rugged chain that separates France from Spain, was in
November nineteen forty two. The cold and rigorous march would
(10:53):
have been exhausting for anyone, but dragging a seven pound
wooden leg through the snow made it all the more
difficult for Virginia. She hadn't dared tell the Guide about
her leg. He was already grumbling because she was a woman.
At one point she was able to radio London to
tell them she was on her way out of France.
(11:15):
She mentioned that Cuthbert, her clever nickname for her leg,
had become quite tiresome. The recipient of the message, ignorant
of the leg's name, wired back that if Cuthbert had
become tiresome, she should have him eliminated. At the end
of the grueling thirty mile journey, Virginia was arrested in
(11:35):
Spain for not having papers. She was imprisoned for six weeks,
released only after her former cellmate, a Barcelona prostitute, was
able to get word to the British consulate that she
was being held. By the time Virginia had returned to
England in early nineteen forty three, a new intelligence organization
(11:56):
had been born. Its name was the Office of stret
Tegic Services the OSS. It was patterned after the Sooe
with one exception. It was pure bred American led by
a hero from World War One named General wild Bill Donovan.
Virginia was desperate to get back into the fight, and
(12:18):
transferring to the OSS made sense since she was an American,
but there was a concern she was now a hunted
woman whose sketched picture had been spread throughout France. A
return could only be facilitated if she were disguised that
of an old peasant woman fit the bill. On her
(12:43):
second trip to occupied France, Virginia's intelligence and ingenuity served
her and saved her many times. This time she acted
as her own radio operator, setting up numerous resistance cells.
Three months after returning to France, the greatest armada the
world had ever seen crossed the Channel for the D
(13:04):
Day landings. When the signal was given, her resistance cell
went into action, cutting off Nazi supply lines and disrupting
their communications, all in a successful effort to aid the
Allied invasion of Europe. By the fall of nineteen forty four,
all of France was liberated. During Virginia's second stint in
(13:26):
the country, she had had the pleasure of leading fifteen
hundred resistance volunteers who killed one hundred and fifty Nazis
and captured five hundred more. Her team had sabotaged numerous
transportation and communication links. Virginia's leadership and sang Froi was
not only admired, it became legendary. They called her Lamadon
(13:51):
the Madonna. Gia was awarded the Member of the British Empire,
the French Quadriguerrevech Palm, and the American Distinguished Service Cross,
the only woman in World War Two to receive that
(14:12):
American distinction. But Virginia wasn't interested in accolades. She wanted
to continue her work in espionage. Although the OSS had
been dissolved, Virginia was one of the first women on
board the new intelligence agency, known as the Central Intelligence Group.
It became the Central Intelligence Agency in December nineteen forty seven.
(14:36):
But the new world of intelligence was very different from
the one Virginia had previously been a part of. Communism
was the enemy now, and as one observer put it,
Joseph Stalin made Hitler look like a boy scout. Virginia
wanted desperately to become an operative again, willing to undergo
whatever training was necessary, but at the advanced age of
(14:58):
forty one, looked upon as old school. Her skills were
outdated and her aggressiveness was offensive to the younger men
who were her superiors. Her experience was dismissed as not pertinent.
After all she'd been through and all the sacrifices she
had gladly made. Once again, Virginia Hall didn't fit in.
(15:27):
Virginia had married Paul Goyo in nineteen fifty, a French
American she had met toward the end of the war.
She accepted mandatory retirement from the CIA in nineteen sixty six,
and she and Paul moved to a farm in Barnestown, Maryland.
They raised poodles, gardened, and grew old together. Virginia died
(15:47):
in nineteen eighty two, and Goyo followed five years later.
She was never bitter about the fact that her career
hadn't begun or ended as she would have liked. Rather
chose to remember the magnificent days in the Middle, the
days when her clever mind and brave heart helped defeat
fascists bent down world domination and a special thanks to
(16:21):
Judy Pearson And by the way, her book about Virginia
Hall was called Wolves at the Door, The True Story
of America's Greatest Female Spy. And I had never heard
that story, and I'm a big World War Two buff
and it doesn't get better than a story like that.
I mean, the woman accidentally shoots her foot off and
(16:43):
for most people that's it. She gets turned down once twice,
but is determined to be a member of the Foreign Service,
eases her way into France when most people will be
running from France as the Nazis coming up occupy the country,
and all to le Klaus Barbie, the butcher has her
(17:03):
as the most wanted person in the Nazi regime when
it comes to spies. Certainly, what an impact she had
her life, What an example, and by the way, to
be the only woman to win the American Distinguished Service Cross.
I don't know why more of us don't know this story,
(17:24):
but that's what we do here on our American stories.
And my goodness, what Judy Pearson did hear? The author?
I mean, she literally walked in Virginia Hall's shoes, traveled
all over Europe just to honor her story. And these
are the kind of writers and researchers we love to
put on the show Virginia Hall story, the spy with
(17:44):
a wooden leg here on our American stories. This is
(18:10):
our American Stories when we tell stories about just about
everything here on this show, as you know, and today
we have a story from Damon Cox. He was born
in Arkansas and then moved to Ponatak, Mississippi. He's sharing
with us his life as a semi professional video gamer.
Here's Damon. I started off playing video games as a kid.
(18:33):
We were like a super super poor family. We lived
in a trailer out in front of mine, Mimi's, and
Papa's house, so there wasn't really much to do, so
video games was kind of a way to escape. My
parents used to have Atari in Nintendo, so it was
just a thing that I used to play with a lot,
and it was just something I really really enjoyed. And
once I started getting into like more of the shooter
(18:55):
based video games, friends would come over and I would
play them and I would be Thelm and I was
just the best one out of our little friend group.
And then later on we would eventually move and get
internet and I was able to play online and I
was able to beat multiple people, like all around the world.
And then eventually I decided to start running some like
(19:16):
game battle tournaments, which are online tournaments, and I was
able to win some of those and it got some
recognition and some traction from some of the top players,
so I was able to play with them. And then
one day I finally just got up the courage to
go into Halo four AGL Nashville and I was able
to compete in Nashville. At Nashville, I was I think
(19:38):
thirteen fourteen. I walked in and it was a little
game studio like game arcade type thing, and there was
hundreds of people there, and I was just really excited
to be there, and then also getting to meet all
these people that I've been playing with online and kind
of like my heroes at the time. It was really
cool seeing like all of them and being able to
(20:01):
see that they're like one of us in a way,
so I was able to play with them, and then
I got to go on mainstage and compete. And seeing
like you're gamer, picture and everything like that brought up
and having like fans like kind of say your name
and stuff was a really big moment for me. Especially
at like thirteen. It is just, yeah, no one's ever
(20:23):
doing that. And I was pretty much the youngest one there.
There may have been a couple who were around my age,
but everyone else was about sixteen to twenty years old,
and so I just was kind of like the short,
little skinny guy who was just there to play video games.
And but honestly, I felt so at home because everybody
there was just so nice, so outgoing, just just happy
to be around one another who shared the same interest.
(20:45):
Ended up winning, and I came back and surprised my
parents with the fifteen thousand dollars check. At first, they
were kind of iffy. My mom was definitely like kind
of like, okay, maybe you can't do something, but my
dad was like, I don't know about this, and it
was so a lot of people really didn't know anything
about it, so my dad definitely was not on board yet.
But my mom started like, okay, maybe you can play
(21:08):
and everything like that. But at the same time, like
what thirteen year old is going to get a full
yes from both parents, then yeah, let's just spend more
time playing video games. Not many people are going to
like being able to convince their parents now. Right now,
it's becoming more of a common thing because like Fortnite
is allowing this opening for like three million dollar tournaments,
(21:31):
so a lot of parents are actually like buying coaches
and stuff like that for their kids to try to
get better at video games. Just like baseball, you'll hiring
pitching coach or anything like that. That's what they're doing
for video games now. So it's kind of like becoming
the norm. But definitely ten years ago, it was not
even like an idea to have someone literally come home
(21:55):
and go, you know what, I want to not go
to school anymore. I want to do video games full time.
There's no way that would slide ten twenty years ago.
Whenever I was like first like diving into video games
a lot more. I would try to play eight to
ten hours a day. I would literally come home, throw
my backpack on the ground. I would try to do
my homework on a like on the school bus on
the way back, just so I had more time to
(22:17):
play video games. So I would get home and start
playing video games. Well, my parents got off work, they
were like, why didn't you, like go hit with your brother,
or why didn't you shoot basketball or go outside and
just kind of play around in the woods. And I
was like, well, I wanted to play video games. Well,
my parents would say, like, we'll go outside and play
play outside with your brother and everything and then after
(22:38):
you play for a little bit, you can come back
in and play video games. So I would go outside
pretty much just try to stall Tom until I can
come back in and play video games. And then whenever
I finally got to start competing in tournaments and started
to win, I found out I was kind of good
at it started making a decent amount of money. I
ended up making about one hundred twenty five twenty grand total.
(23:00):
I was able to help pay for my first vehicle
and help pay for my first like three years of college.
Now that doesn't mean that I always made good decisions
with the money. I also splurged on differently, like gaming accessories,
Like I always wanted the newest and the best stuff,
so I got a new headset, a new monitor, to
custom controllers. So I definitely didn't make the smartest decision
(23:23):
with the money, but I was able to make a
couple of good decisions where it doesn't look as bad
that when I talk about it. So I competed all
the way up to fifteen and like fifteen, sixteen years old,
and then I kind of just started diving into sports
a lot more. So I started playing baseball. I played
varsity baseball, so we made it to State and we
(23:44):
ended up losing State, and that kind of was like, Okay,
maybe baseball isn't going to be the best for me.
So I ended up transition into bodybuilding. So whenever I
was younger, my dad ended up just running away from us.
My last memory, we were at a stoplight and he
opened the door and took off running, like like just
(24:06):
took off running. Whenever we got home, there was actually
police officers who ended up taking my mom off of
a miscommunication because my real dad like pinned these charges
on my mom, and so she ended up going away
and we're just was stuck in the trailer until our
mama came and got us. My mom all had this
(24:29):
guy like come over and take care of us, and
he ended up becoming my real dad. After my mom
got out of jail, they hit it off real good
and they got married and then after that they adopted me.
It's not really something I remember a whole lot of
I remember the adoption part, but the age is kind
of like a little iffy for me. I don't remember everything,
(24:50):
but my brother definitely doesn't know anything at all, And
it was just something that I had to like step
up and like be the big brother for it and
like try to show him something else to take his
mind off of. Like, so we just threw ourselves into competition.
So competitions was always the thing that kind of helped
me escape, Like that thrive to be better was always
(25:11):
something that I wanted to do, and it kind of
just rubbed off on my little brother. So we competed
in many different things. Like my brother did cage fighting.
We grew up doing different mma stuff. I played baseball,
he played football. I don't feel sorry for myself at all.
We found a dad who was literally ten times better
than what the real one was supposed to like ever be.
(25:34):
Like the dad I have now has made me into
something that I am like so proud to be. Literally
the actions of my real dad made me just thrive
to want to be better to try to help out
my mom because like he just ran away and like
it was like we weren't good enough. So I was like, well,
I'm going to be good enough for this family. So
(25:57):
I want to just make my mom proud and make
my dad proud. That's all I want to do. Whenever
I was trying to become a professional game or we
needed a place at a certain ranking. We ended up
placing outside that rinking, and it kind of brought me
down because I put everything I had into that time
and I just wasn't good enough to win. So I
(26:19):
kind of just got realed down and was like, you
know what, maybe it's time for me to kind of
like pin this up and try something else. That's whenever
I went to bodybuilding, Like that's when bodybuilding was kind
of like Mike Skate now. So I ended up selling
all my stuff. Actually I sold my custom controllers, I
sold everything, but my monitor monitor was the only thing
I kept. But bodybuilding kind of helped me escape because
(26:42):
of how like the schedule was, wake up early to
workouts a day, meal prepping, eating every like two and
a half hours. And you're listening to Damon Cox and
what a unique voice and what a unique story video
gamer aspect, no doubt is unique, but my goodness would
happen to him as a young man watching his father
(27:04):
just ditch him and ditch the family. When we come
back more of Damon Cox's story here on our American Stories,
(27:39):
and we continue with our American Stories, and we've been
listening to the story of Damon Cox and his life
is a semi professional gamer. After a few years of
video games, he decided to give them a break and
try something new bodybuilding. I started off on everything whenever.
My friend wanted me to come spot at him one
(28:00):
day at the gym, so I went up to spot him,
and after we got done doing a chess press, he goes,
let's say, i'm much you can do. So I was like, okay,
let's see what I can actually do, and we put
it twenty five. I'll definitely be able to do that.
And I failed miserably at it, and I was like, okay,
I need to start working on this. So I started
eating me just alive inside of like how weak I was.
(28:22):
I was one hundred and thirty five pounds my beginning
of my senior year, and this is when I started
working out. My friend's dad just bought a gem, so
there was no excuses not to work out, so I
started working out with all of them. And then by
the senior year, I was one hundred and ninety seven
pounds and I had stretched marks out of the wazoo.
(28:42):
So I put it on a lot of size, but
it was through intense training. Like intense training at least
six days a week, sometimes seven days a week. They
ended up getting in a good coach and he was
able to show me how much water to take in,
how much food to take in. But we needed to
do a bulking series because I was a little bit
like smaller at the time. So we did a sixteen
(29:04):
week bulk and I was on fifty two hundred calories
at first, and it seemed like a lot, but I
wasn't gaining as much weight as he wanted to, so
he actually bought me up to seven thousand calories total.
At the end of it. I was eating so much,
so much I would wake up hungry throughout the night,
and I had peanut butter next in my bed, and
I would literally wake up, do like two bites of
peanut butter and just roll over and go to bed.
(29:26):
And then after this we decided to do a cutting
phase so I can get ready for a show. So
during my cutting phase, though, we had a little scare.
I left a shaker bottle out in the car overnight,
and the very next morning I went up to make
a protein shake. I couldn't find my shaker bottle, so
I went out to the car. I got it. Didn't
(29:47):
think nothing of it. I just rinsed it out and
then made my protein shake. Well, about two days later,
I started throwing up really bad, and it was honestly
the worst span of my life. My organs. I felt
them contracting and actually like coming up, and then I
ended up passing out and my roommate found me in
a trash can and brought me to the hospital. Well,
(30:08):
the shaker bottle had black mold in it, and I
was drinking out of it and I ended up infecting
like six of my organs, and they say, like thirty
minutes to an hour, I would have died. So after
that they told me it would take two months to heal.
I gave it two weeks, got back into the gym. Well,
going into the show, I wasn't as defined as I
(30:29):
was due to the sickness, but I still looked okay,
and so I placed second in that show. And it
was something where I was like, okay, I was able
to blame it on something else instead of just me.
I was like, okay, I was sick, so let's say
how good I can actually do this. So the next
year I took off of college so to become a
(30:49):
professional bodybuilder at the time, you needed a place at
least top three in a state show and then go
to Nationals in place in a national show. So my
whole goal was to literally just go to Nationals. So
we competed in the Southern Classic to compete. I ended
up placing second there. It was not even close, honestly,
(31:10):
kind of like, let me know that I wasn't going
to be able to make it far without steroids, and
I decided I wasn't going to do steroids, so I
was time to just give up on that. But when
Fortnite came out, I literally played one game and I
was like, Okay, I've got to I've got to do this.
After I played that first couple of games of Fortnite,
I was like okay, And literally the next morning went
(31:31):
out bought a headset, controller Xbox because I started back
playing like ten hours a day. And when Apex came out,
I just dove straight in and I was running game
battles off the start on that game and just still
doing that, just making SETI and come off that game.
So right now a lot of colleges are trying to
(31:52):
make teams for like different esports teams because they see
how big that it's taking off now because like recently
Legal Legends actually had more viewers than the Super Bowl,
So people are starting to like figure out, Okay, maybe
video games were kind of here to stay, so it's
getting a lot of attention now. So a lot of
(32:14):
colleges are actually handing out scholarships for their like sports teams,
so they're esports team. So it'll be really exciting to
see like how much video games progress in about five
to ten years. So a lot of people look at
gamers as just antisocial people who don't want to go outside,
usually unathletic. They just like penem as like they're in
(32:35):
their mom's basement playing video games. Whenever I was going
to these tournaments, I figured out a lot of them
played sports. A lot of them are just very very outspoken.
They love just talking to you and meeting new people
and everything. So it was crazy to see how different
the stereotypes are now. Of course, there's gonna be like
antisocial people, like even in sports today, Like there's gonna
(32:58):
be players who don't want to go in front of
the camera, just like video game players. Like there's a
lot of people who maybe like they come from a
background like me, who didn't take it as well as
I did, and they had a rough like growing up,
so they go, Okay, maybe like I want to stay inside,
I don't really want to talk to people all that much.
But video game players, from what I got to know
(33:19):
them as, they were very outspoken. They loved meeting new people,
loved being around a community who love video games. The
best I've ever felt was during video games. Compared to
playing in the State Championship of baseball, being on stage
and bodybuilding, and being on stage for video games. Video
games is by far the best feeling I had. There's
(33:42):
something about being on stage with ten other gamers and
having five hundred to a thousand people watching you. You
turn around and you see this big screen and it's
your screen was brought up there because maybe you made
the play of the game, and everybody like channing. You're
like gamer tag, so my gamers was hyper, so everybody
like chanting hyper. It was just one of the best feelings.
(34:05):
It felt like I was I did something, I accomplish something.
There is definitely people that I look up to that
I know that I will probably never be as good at,
but that's not really a mindset that I like to have.
I like to literally see someone who's better than me
and be like, okay, well let me try to match
that skill level. So whenever I watch someone play, I
literally look at them and I'm like, Okay, what are
(34:26):
they doing different? What is their decision makings that are
making them like dis elite player? It pretty much like
each me alive that why am I not that good?
So I start practicing more. If they're doing mechanic that
I'm not doing, or they're playing on a setting that
I'm not playing on, then I swapped to that and
I'm trying to match them, but not only match them,
(34:47):
be better than that. Seeing like five ten people who
were literally light years ahead of me is amazing because
it's still a learning experience for me. I figured like, Okay,
I'm getting really good at this because like right now,
I'm like with on Xbox, I'm within the top thirty
in the United States. And then right after my I
(35:08):
broke my hand, I realized how short this can actually
be for me as a career. Having a backup plan
in a main career is still the like the main
thing I need to have a priority on. So I'm
trying to figure that out and gaming is literally just
the secondary just to pay bills right now while I
just finish up my degree. So I probably play about
(35:31):
five to six hours a day right now, But there
is days where I do play more and there is
days that I do play less. But I try to
play at least five to six hours a day. That's
the only way to pretty much stay consistent at the
top level. And I think that's a low number actually
because back in the day, whenever I was competing, I
was playing for about eight to ten hours a day.
But it seems like a lot. Everybody's like you're sitting inside.
(35:54):
But if you think about it, I mean, like how
much does your son play baseball? Like they have probably
double this is like I did. When they get home,
they're probably throwing the tennis ball against the wall, trying
to like work on groundballs, going outside, hitting wiffle balls
and stuff like that. So it average is about the same.
If you want to be the best at something, you
got to put the hours in. So that was That's
(36:15):
something that I definitely see changing though as I'm trying
to like work my way into strengthing conditioning side, because
I would love to be a strength conditioning coach. So
finishing up the college degree and getting a good job,
that's kind of my new mindset. I would love to
take my dad to a UFC fight in Madison Square Garden.
(36:39):
That's like my dream bucket list to give him. And
my mom's always wanting to go to Hawaii. So my
new goal is it's not be a pro gamer, not
be the pro bodybuilder. It's literally just give each of
them something that because they gave me everything, so now
it's like I want to do that for them. So
that's my new like kind of sport. I guess is that.
(37:04):
And you've been listening to Damon Cox and what a
delight from gamer to bodybuilder and back to gaming. Fortnite
just grabbed him. Plus the life filled with steroids didn't
really appeal to him. Smart kid, really smart kid and
now a young man and gaming well it's becoming a
national well it's become a national sport like it or not.
(37:24):
And there are a lot of critics. The number of
people doing this, the number of colleges turning these things
into scholarships, it's just happening, and the amount of money
being made in the industry. It's for real, and that
he wants to now take his dad to NYC, to
CUFC at Madison Square Garden, and he wants to take
his mom on a Hawaiian vacation. Tells you the kind
(37:46):
of sunny is Damon Cox. His story a local story
here in Mississippi, here on our American Stories four four
Host
Lee Habeeb
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