November 11, 2021 • 38 mins
Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer Brad Snyder shares his story with host Rob Riggle and how stepping on an improvised explosive device changed his life. He talks about how that experience altered his path, giving him renewed gratitude in everything he does including teaching, competing in the Paralympics, and becoming a first time dad.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence
and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to
Veterans you Should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio
that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered
a call to serve their country in the armed forces.
I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In
(00:25):
this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with
four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and
how their experiences in military service served them in their
everyday civilian lives. In this episode, I'm speaking with Brad Snyder.
Brad served as an explosive ordinance disposal officer in the
(00:46):
United States Navy. That means disarming bombs people. The way
that most people have seen our community is like through
the movie The hurt Locker, where you've got someone with
either a robot or a bomb suit and they have
the ability to get down on top of that device
and then do something to it to put it in
a safer spot. And that was largely my deployment to Iraq.
(01:08):
On his second deployment in Afghanistan, Brad stepped on an
improvised explosive device, which detonated and left him permanently blinded.
In the process of his rehabilitation and recovery, he was
encouraged to try out for the Paralympics due to his
background and competitive swimming. Today, Brad is a five time
(01:29):
gold medalist competing in swimming and para triathlon for Team USA.
Through his experiences, he strives to inspire future generations to
embrace a life of leadership and civic duty. Brad, Welcome
to the podcast. Thank you for being here, Thank you
so much for having me. And before we get going,
(01:51):
I think we'd be remiss if I didn't thank you
for your service as well. Well you're very kind to
say that. But today is about you, Brad, and we
want to hear a story because I think it's one
of the most fascinating stories, truly, one of overcoming so
much and there's so many great lessons and takeaways to
(02:12):
your story that I want people to hear. I want
them to truly understand it, and I want them to
feel what it takes and what the mindset is to
do what you've done. So well, let's just dive in.
If you don't mind, I want to pick your brain
on so many things. Let's start with how did you
come to the military. It's a great question and something
(02:33):
I thought a lot about because I never made a
decision to join the Navy. I think I just grew
up always knowing that I would. Three out of four
of my grandparents we're all in the Navy in various capacities,
all in and around World War Two. My mom's dad,
my grandfather served in the Battle of Midway. He dropped
torpedoes out at Japanese subs and ships. So I just
(02:55):
sort of always knew from an age of like three
onward that I wanted to be like my grandfather and
following his footsteps and join the Navy. Brad had a
choice to make. He had made up his mind to
join the military. But there are three paths one can
take to receive a commission as a naval officer, an
r OTC scholarship at a civilian university, a degree, and
(03:19):
then officer candidate school, or the Naval Academy. I got
to visit the Naval Academy my sophomore year high school.
My uncle was also in the Navy. He was an
O six jag at the time working at the Pentagon
and we went and visited them in Virginia, and kind
of on a whim, he said, you want to go
visit the Naval Academy, And I thought, you know, why not,
(03:40):
and just instantly fell in love with the place. I've
shared this story a handful of times. What I thought
was so cool. Do you watched this brigade of midshipman
they go out for new information. It's just this big
mob of black and white and they all start yelling
stuff that you don't understand at the time. They're doing
accountability or whatever, and they're yelling, and I remember watching
walked by and each of them had their names stitched
(04:02):
on their shirt. And I remember being in high school thinking, man,
how cool is it that they're so important that they
have their name stitched in their shirt? Like nobody knows
my name, my name is meaningless, but here like your
name is really important. And that was really cool to me.
So I first and foremost wanted to go to the
Naval Academy, and I pursued that with quite a lot
of vigor. But my backup plans were go to our
(04:24):
OTC somewhere. Anyway, That's how I kind of dialed in
on the Naval Academy. Brand had just begun his senior
year in high school when the attacks of September eleven occurred,
but that didn't deter him from his call to service.
On September eleven, two and one, I remember I was
(04:44):
in English class and someone ran into the room to say,
turn on the TV. And it was just in time
to see the towers still there but smoking. And then
while we were all watching, the towers came down. So,
you know, I had already wanted to join the Navy.
I felt like I was fulfilling sort of like a
familial duty or a legacy kind of thing. But then
(05:04):
all of a sudden, with the towers coming down, you know,
it's our generation's fight, you know, that's what we were
all signing up to do. It gave my service such
a galvanized purpose, I suppose was the right way of
saying it. Yes, it did crystallize things. Crystallize, that's a
better word. People saw a need and they were ready
to jump in, And I think that's really outstanding. I
think there weren't a whole lot of people who straight
(05:25):
away from you know, stepping up and joining when there
was a time and a need. I think you're right too.
I remember I was in New York on n eleven
and my reserve, you and it. I just left active
duty and my reserving it was activated. I was a
captain at the time, but I remember that the vibe,
if you will, of everybody around, everybody in the city
and the country for that matter. Everybody wanted to do something, anything,
(05:49):
And I remember people were bringing down boxes of clothes
and you know, they just didn't know what to do.
They're bringing blankets, they were bringing things that didn't necessarily
need we needed, nobody needed down there, but they were
compelled to do something. They were compelled to take part
or feel like they could help in some way. And
I felt actually blessed that I was in the service.
(06:11):
So I volunteered to go back on an active duty
and I was able to scratch that itch, so to speak.
I was able to serve because I was in a
position to. But I do remember that feeling across the
country and especially in New York, there was a desire
to serve, to get involved. So I was, I guess happy,
and it felt good from patriotic sense to know that
(06:33):
when the country was in crisis, you know, it was
nice to see people respond for sure, and and you
were obviously one of those people, So thank you for
staying the course. According to the US, over two hundred
and fifty thousand people swore an oath to serve in
the active duty and reserve military forces following the attacks
(06:56):
of not eleven, many of them vowing to make sure
something so horrible never was repeated. Brad continued to follow
his dream and entered the Naval Academy the year following
nine eleven. From day one, life at the Naval Academy
was full speed ahead. Brad had a stacked course load
(07:16):
of engineering classes at seven indoctrination to military culture and knowledge,
and on top of that, he was part of the
academy's competitive swim team. It was an exhaustive schedule, but
Brad balanced at all and never lost sight of the
lessons he learned. It was tough, but it really did
(07:40):
force me to grow up quickly. I learned how to
manage time. I learned how to organize myself. I learned
how to learn quickly. I think that's a real important skill,
especially in the military. And I learned, you know, with
the right amount of those sub skills, you can survive
and you can thrive in an environment like that, and
I think the Navy was definitely a lot like that.
(08:01):
I was always keeping a lot of balls in the air,
and honestly that hasn't stopped. Even transitioning out of the military.
I'm still in exactly that same boat, just trying to
keep everything up in the air. They push you beyond
your perceived limits. We all have limits, we think. We
all think, oh, man, I couldn't do this, or you know,
I could never run a marathon, or I could never
do X, Y or Z. But then when you get
(08:22):
in the military and you start doing things and they
hold you to a very high standard, you realize that
what you thought were your limits are not okay. So
you are working your way through the academy and you
decide to choose an MS. And for those who don't know,
(08:43):
MS means Military occupational specialty. Your job, your j ob
is basically what an m OS is. So why don't
we just say that just just our job. I know,
because the military we make it. We make it so hard,
we have to make everything so unique. You decide to
become an explosive ordinance disposal officer, probably the most dangerous
(09:04):
job in the world. How does that come about? Not linearly,
I'll say that when I got to the Naval Academy,
they started barking in my face and said, what do
you want to do after you go to the navalcadey,
what kind of service do you want to do? What's
your job? And I kind of just looked at him,
like my jobs to be in the Navy, Like I
don't know, what do you want me to say? You
want me to pick? I don't know. You tell me.
(09:25):
I thought the military would order you around. They call
it orders, right, so what are my orders? Just give
me orders? They said, no, you have to pick. So
I spent a lot of time soul searching going around,
and the Naval Academy and the summer programs do a
good job of socializing you across the different arenas of
both the Navy and the Marine Corps. And what I
(09:45):
loved most was actually scuba diving. I got to go
to Navy scuba school and I went back to the
Naval Academy. I said, I found it. I want to
be a scuba diver and they were like, that's not
a thing. Now there is a Navy Diving Corps, but
that's only enlisted, and no Naval Academy officers go into
the Navy diving community specifically or at least directly, but
(10:06):
it is a prerequisite skill for Navy seals and e
O D officers. And then around the my junior year,
I went out on e O D summer camp out
to San Diego, and on day one of e O
D Summer Camp, I went out with our Dolphinsay, so
not a lot of people know this, but we have
a marine mammal program where the Navy utilizes dolphins and
(10:29):
sea lions to do certain things for us. Yeah, it's real,
and it's really cool. As far as I'm concerned. It
feels so double O seven, it feels so James Bond.
Having dolphins work with us to take on the bad guys.
It really is amazing. It's just really tough giving them
a high five because they only have fins, you know.
(10:49):
But to belabor the story, I go out to Point Loman,
San Diego, and the day one of this camp, I
go out onto this twenty one ft Boston whaler and
this dolphin trainer like blows a whistle and the dolphins
jumps out to the water into the boat and then
we drive out, you know, a couple of miles from
shore where we have a training area which is basically
three feet of sea water above a couple of mine shapes,
(11:12):
like their fake minds, and we trained the dolphins on
how to find mine shapes at three feet. Now, we
can't really dive sustainably at that depth, not looking for
stuff anyway, so we can use these dolphins to help
us find potential minds that have been buried or who
have lost their way or found at three feet below
the surface of the ocean. That was day one of
e O D summer camp. The summer camp sold me
(11:34):
and I went back to the Naval Academy and said,
I'm I want to be an EYO D officer. And
I was really worried I wouldn't have the grades to
do it, but I got in by the hair on
my chinny chinchin, and I'm just really grateful. Wow, they
did quite a job on selling e O D, because, um,
you know, explosive Ordinance Disposal. It's just the sound of it.
It's terrifying. I got to see the e O D
(11:54):
you guys work, and I actually saw him work in
real life scenarios and I was always impressed and they
had confidence. Oh my gosh. You know, everybody gets a
little skittish around the things that go boom, and these guys, well,
they instilled confidence and everybody around him. I always felt
like when they showed up, everybody could relax. Truly amazing.
Now you get the job of explosive ordinance disposal and
(12:18):
you deploy, and now you find yourself in tricky situations
because you're actually having to deal with unexploded ordinance or
roadside bombs improvised explosive devices i e D S. So
did you feel like the training you received prepared you
for being in a combat zone? I mean, did you
feel like you were ready when you got there? Yeah,
(12:41):
for sure, but not always directly. What I think is
great about the e D community and the way that
we approached training. We were given frameworks, We were taught
how to think more or less, not necessarily like when
you see this, this is what you do. That kind
of procedural mindset doesn't really work in our community because
you're never going to really they see exactly the same
(13:02):
scenario twice. So what the e D community teaches you
is all the sort of background knowledge you might need
on all kinds of explosives, fusings, different ways of deploying weapons,
but then also how to manage the scenario on the ground.
And again I felt very prepared in how to think
through those scenarios. What became challenging is bringing to bear
(13:24):
the tools that you might want to mitigate those hazards.
And the way that most people have seen our community
is like through the movie The hurt Locker, where you've
got someone with either a robot or a bomb suit
and they have the ability to get down on top
of that device and then do something to it to
put it in a safer spot. And that was largely
my deployment to Iraq. We had a big, giant em
(13:46):
RAB truck with all kinds of gear, a bomb suit,
two robots, all sorts of stuff, water bottle charges, you
name it. I've got all these tools to bring to bear,
but our mission set doesn't always allow for a giant
vehicle in a bomb suit and two robots and water
bottle charges. And that was my deployment to Afghanistan, where
everything that I'm going to bring to my job as
(14:07):
an UNI officer I have to carry with me, so
I really only have a pocket knife and some five
or in Afghanistan. I think you just described what every
military person who has ever served has experienced. You get
wonderful training, we have wonderful equipment, You have all these
wonderful things, but when you're deployed, when you're out on
the street, that stuff just isn't always there. And then
(14:28):
you have to improvise, adapt and overcome, as they say,
and you have to be able to make judgment calls,
and you have to be able to decide what the
best course of action is. And it's not always at
your leisure. You know, you're moving in a very dynamic environment,
very hostile environment. Potentially maybe you only have the information
you need, but you still got to act. So there's
(14:49):
so many X factors that are brought to bear against
what you're doing. Veterans you should know will return after
the break. On Brad's second tour overseas, he was on
(15:15):
a morning patrol, just like the many mornings before, but
this day was different. This day Brad's life changed in
an instant. We were on what I would categorize as
a routine foot patrol from one place to another in
a area of Afghanistan called the Panjwai Valley in two
(15:37):
thousand eleven, and at this particular time, we were not
routinely engaging the Taliban in typical firefights. They were in
very small numbers. They were hiding a lot, and we
were very actively trying to find them. But what they
were doing a lot was the i e ED and
improvised explosive device. They were burying tens of them everywhere.
(15:57):
Every square mile probably had a hand full or so
of these i e d S. It made our job
very difficult. There weren't a lot of places where you
could get to with a vehicle and where we were working,
and the tactical decision we made was for our foot
patrols to always walk like ducks in a row, like
you're always just following the footsteps of the guy in
or gall in front of you, and out in front
(16:19):
of our patrol would always be an EOD tech like
myself or my partner atom clearing with a metal detector.
And at about seven thirty in the morning, I was
halfway back in our patrol, just following along like everybody else,
and up at the front of our patrol there was
a big blast plume that shot up into the air
and we train everybody. When a blast like that goes off,
(16:41):
don't move because where there's one bomb, there's likely many.
You know, it's a very common tactic for there to
be multiple I e d S around each other. We
call them secondaries. When one blast goes off, don't move.
Let the EOD tech myself use my metal detector to
clear some space for a medic to get down to
the casualty. So I pulled out my metal detector, ran
up to the run and Uh. I was really gratified though,
(17:02):
because I looked over and saw my buddy Adam was
just fine. He looked at me about as confused as
I was. But what we learned was two Afghan commandos
had stepped off of the cleared path and landed on
a forty pound I E D, effectively mortally wounding the
two of them. But we didn't know that at the time.
So Adam and I job at that point, it's too
clear space, get the medics down to the casualties, and
(17:24):
then clear a spot for a helicopter to come in
and take those casualties to the hospital. It was really
difficult in doing that, and it was pretty chaotic. We
also knew that there were insurgents in the area who
may now know where we are, so we felt like
the sense of urgency to get off the X. As
we say, we were able to move the first casualty
back about a hundred feet where we were intending to
(17:45):
bring in a helicopter, and then on my way back
to Adam in the second casualty, I made a judgment
call in that moment where to get to Adam. I
was running across grass and I remember thinking, what are
the chances? And I e d spend here so long
that grass is grown on top of it, And that's
exactly what happened. There was a pressure plate buried underneath
where grass had grown over, and that's the one I
stepped on. I was really lucky in a number of ways.
(18:13):
The pressure plate was separated from the actual blast itself,
and that's what saved my life. It blew up in
front of me, not underneath me, and because of that,
it came out of the ground and really just smacked
me in the face, as opposed to blowing up underneath me,
which surely would have taken off my legs, if not
my arms as well. The important part of this story
(18:35):
is immediately following the blast. I knew that I had
been blown up. I knew that it was likely a
forty pound charge, which is a pretty big explosion, and
I had known of other victims of similar sized explosions
who were really in not good shape afterward. And the
fact that I actually could still see I think a
(18:58):
little bit. I looked down and I saw my hand
ends in my feet. There was no obvious damage. I
could still see that I had my feet, I still
had my arms, and that, in my mind, meant that
surely I had died. There was no way that I
was intact. After that, for me, I felt like time
stopped and I remember thinking, for sure, I'm dead, and uh,
(19:19):
that's you know, that's sad. But I I thought about
my whole life, and I thought, I'm proud of the
life that I've lived. I died, you know, serving my country,
and I think that's honorable. And I'm sad that I
won't be able to see my family, but I think
that they'll understand, you know, they'll appreciate what I did.
And then I actually felt like, for sure, my grandfather's
(19:40):
coming to grab me. Like my grandfather who died when
I was eleven, my hero, he's gonna come take me
whatever happens after you die. But then I didn't die.
I came back. That's just amazing. It's amazing to me
that those thoughts were in your mind, that you are
(20:02):
actually walking through those thoughts, that whole process after just
being blown up, in that slowed down, in that shock
state probably you were in, you still had the ability
to process, and these were the things that occurred to
you in that moment. It's unbelievable. Please continue. Yeah, and
(20:23):
to your point, what's wild about it. It's been a
decade now, it's been a long time, and I've been
able to piece little things together, and I've talked to Adam,
who wasn't far away. All of that occurred in a
matter of seconds. So Adam starts yelling at me. He
knew that I had been in the blast. He yells,
his voice starts coming through the fog to me. I
remember yelling back at him. And what's crazy about it is,
(20:45):
you know, a moment ago, I was okay with dying
and now I'll come back to life. But now I'm
really afraid because I knew I had taken the blast,
I had taken it to my face and all of
a sudden, I was aware that my face isn't right,
something's wrong with it. I'm bleeding, it doesn't feel right,
and I remember kind of starting to panic, like I
don't want to be here. I don't want to be
in this moment. I'm afraid of what is happening. And
(21:11):
Adam got to me, and I remember grabbing him by
his kit and I said, how bad is it? And
he said, I'm not gonna lie to you. Your face
is pretty left up, but the rest of you looks fine.
Do you think you can stand up? And at that moment,
I felt this really strong urge like disappointment, frustration, anger,
all at once, where I committed like the ultimate sin
(21:33):
as far as a team member, I made our life
worse out there by stepping on that, I e d.
I was kind of letting my team down to some extent.
I'm in the way now, like we're already in a
bad situation. Everybody's life is on the line, and now
I'm holding us up. As soon as his partner could
(21:54):
clear landing zone from MEDEVAC helicopter, Brad was airlifted from
the blast zone. He went to sleep in Afghanistan and
woke up and Walter Read National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland,
one of the premier military hospitals in the country. With
the extent of his injuries, Brad was on heavy pain killers, which,
(22:14):
on top of the trauma he endured, made for a
foggy first few months back state side. It's really hard
to make sense of it all, and it takes a
little while. Like when I first was hurt, I'm like
super confused, but I'm picking up little details. I'm obviously
(22:36):
back from the battle space. I'm alive. Something's wrong, though,
so I have to keep going into surgery. I don't
know what's wrong, but the surgery is making me better,
so that sounds fine. And really you're just so tired.
I just want to go to sleep, but I couldn't
sleep because of all the drugs, and so I'm kind
of like in this constant state of almost like Fight Club,
I guess, like the movie, like you're kind of constantly
(22:57):
confused and maybe living this multiple life thing. But through
those three weeks I was able to sort of gather
I'm blind, but it didn't make sense because I could
see everything in my head. But then finally the surgeons
were able to make clear they were saying, basically, there's
one last surgery you're going to have to do, and
we're gonna hopefully save your vision. Remember asking the surgeon
what are the chances, and he said, you have less
(23:18):
than one percent chance of being able to perceive light
and dark with your right eye. We have to remove
your lefts you'll see nothing on the left side. And
I was, like, less than one percent to perceive light
and dark like man, that is not an encouraging prognosis.
So I knew that. To me, and I'm blind and
a spoiler alert, that surgery was not a success. I
(23:39):
have no light perception whatsoever. But I want to blow
past that because for me, the acceptance of the blind
thing was certainly not welcome news. But in comparison to
the I thought I died a week ago thing, I
was just really happy to be alive, and I was
sort of relieved to not be on the battlefield anymore,
(24:01):
to know that I wasn't going to have to go
back out on emissions. I wasn't taking my life into
my own hands. I'm essentially safe. Now I'm gonna have
to figure out this blindness thing. But to the point
you made earlier about the military forcing you outside of
your comfort zone nearly constantly. I felt very confident, like
I've figured out a lot of stuff. I figured out
(24:22):
how to jump out of aircraft. I've figured out how
to scuba dive. I figured out how to make things
blow up. I figured out how to not make things
blow up. I'm gonna be able to figure out this
blindness thing. I wanted to get out of the hospital
as quickly as possible and start crushing something so that
my family and my friends could understand I'm gonna be fine. Now. Well,
(24:42):
this is a powerful mindset you're describing. I mean, it
really is, and you shouldn't be taken for granted. I
mean to be in your situation and to have that
mindset of Okay, I've overcome so many things. I know
I'm behapable of overcoming things. Now it's my new reality,
so that mindset of okay, well, let's figure it out.
Let's get to work. I love that. I absolutely love that,
(25:04):
because I don't want anybody to take that for granted.
I mean, you just lost your sight in a violent fashion,
and now you are out there saying, okay, this is
my new reality. I accepted. I'm going to push forward,
and by the way, you found some amazing ways to
do that, to transition and find purpose. Can you describe
(25:25):
to me some of those things as you move forward
in your journey, as you leave the hospital and leave
the military. I got really lucky. Two thousand eleven was
a while ago, but sadly we had still been at
war for some time, and we had a lot of
injured folks going through. Walter Read and somebody a while
ago had the great idea that sports is an awesome
way for vets to help figure stuff out again after
(25:48):
an injury like this and get those competitive juices going
and find purpose and go through that adaption loop you
just described, Like, let's start figuring it out. Let's start
at the basics again. I kind of gravitated towards anybody
was like, let's get going. So I was doing some
of my rehab in Florida, where I'm from. I was
actually at the v A in Tampa, Florida, and on
(26:10):
my first trip out of the hospital, a bunch of
my old friends were getting together. We had this thing
called like First Friday. We're downtown, they like lock off
a block and everybody drinks and it's a fun time,
and my swim coach was there, and he's this gruff,
older fella, and he just kind of in his own
way of not wanting to dwell on the negative part
of this instance, he was like, so, well, I see
(26:33):
you at practice tomorrow. And I thought, yeah, it captures
what I want to do exactly. I want to just
go back to normal as quickly as possible. I'll go
to practice. So I showed up literally that next morning,
and he just blew past anything that had already happened.
And I don't want to talk about Aghanistan, I don't
want to talk about bombs or anything. I've got it
(26:53):
all hooked up for you. I've got this scuba mask
that will go over your eyes because my eyes were
still tender and kind of messed up at the time.
I got these pool noodles that I can attach to
the sides of the pool, so you don't bang your
head now, just hop in this lane and go ahead
and get going. It was exactly what I wanted. It
was a sense of freedom for me. I think my
family was able to see, like, yeah, he looks like
(27:14):
a dufus in that scuba mask, but everything's fine. This
is Brad it's the Brad we know, and I can
see that nothing's going to hold him back sort of thing.
I can imagine. The sense of independence is back, the
sense of individualism is back, and striving and working and exerting,
it all comes back. I bet when you're in that lane. Yep, exactly.
(27:40):
So now you're you find the water, you find your
way back to swimming, which you were obviously a competitive swimmer,
and you keep going. Like Forrest Gump, you just kept running,
you know, you just kept going and you kept climbing.
Tell us about that, because you made it to the
Paralympics and you did quite well. I'm talking to a
(28:02):
multi time gold medalist. I'm fascinated about this part of
your journey, and and also not just the physical accomplishments
in the water, but the psychological journey as well that
goes along with that. If you don't mind sharing, no,
I don't mind it all. And it's a crazy story,
and I just wanted to show folks that I'd be
all right, and that was kind of where it started.
(28:23):
Someone along the way, though, it was pretty quick to say,
you know, have you thought about going to the Paralympics,
And something to the effect of do you realize how
lucky you are to be injured in a Paralympic year,
And I thought, well, that's a crazy way of looking
at this whole thing. Yeah, that's okay, sure, okay. And
that actually kind of baked in this idea that there
(28:43):
was a sense of urgency to get into the Paralympics,
because you know, I was injured in September. You sort
of needed to have certain things done by that February.
And I actually hadn't left the hospital yet. I was
still in what they called blind rehab. I was in
a v A in Augusta, Georgia, and they were teaching
me the various skills of how to be blind, and uh,
they were allowing me to leave the hospital again every
(29:05):
so often to go swim. I actually went to a
swim meet and I got in the Paralympics. We call
it get classified. It's not the way we think of
it in the military. Classified in the Paralympic sense means
a doctor looks at you and assesses what disability category
you are by virtue of the fact that I'm completely
blind on what's called an S E leven in swimming,
That means I compete against other people who are completely blind.
(29:27):
Once I was classified, I went to a meet. I
swim what I assessed to be a really crappy race.
I got out and everyone was super excited because they're like,
that was the fifth fastest blind swim of the world
this year. Dang right out of the gate. Yeah exactly.
I was like, well, I could do better than that.
I know I can do better than that. That kind
of got me hooked, and I thought, well, let me
(29:47):
get back into my old thing and let me start
training at this and one thing led to another, and
before I really realized what was going on, I was
in London. The craziness of this whole thing is that
on September seven, two thousand eleven, is the day I
lost my vision in Afghanistan. Going into the Paralympics in
(30:08):
London on September seven, two and twelve, I was going
to be swimming for Team USA in the four freestyle,
and uh, I want a gold medal for Team USA.
And it was just a really crazy way to bring
everything full circle and really in the best most extreme
way possible, I was able to prove what I wanted
(30:29):
to show folks is that this blindness thing is not
going to be something that confines me or keeps me
from being who I want to be, from being successful,
or from being a valuable part of society, or something
along those lines. And that's what I've come to love
about the Paralympic movement just in general, is that it
really gives athletes of all kinds the ability to inspire
(30:49):
that in our society. And it's been so cool. It's
been such a cool journey to be on since two
and twelve. Since in the leap and the months following
his injury, Brad has continued to push towards excellence, training
for the Paralympics, competing in multiple games and bringing home
multiple gold medals to show the world there's nothing he
(31:13):
can't do. From London to Rio, I felt like if
I were a sports fan, of which I am, and
I looked at that narrative, that story I read the
Brad Snyder story and on ESPN dot com or whatever,
I'd look at that and be like, well, it's clearly
a fluke, Like it was an accident. Maybe the competition
wasn't that good that year, or maybe you know, by
(31:34):
virtue of the fact that it was only one year
of being blind, maybe he had an advantage. So I
wanted to go back to Rio and prove and like
earn it, you know, dedicate myself to the craft of
swimming blind for four years and go back to the
Paralympics and crush it. And I was able to do that.
I won three golds in Rio and broke a world
record that had been there for a long time. But
to your point about like if you're not growing, you're
(31:56):
dying kind of thing, I finished that experience and thought,
I want to keep going, but I need to redefine
the challenge. For me. It's not about winning. I'm not
doing this to win. I'm doing this to you know,
make myself better and hopefully inspire other people to be
better and all of those things. So I wanted to
redefine the challenge. I got into triathlon to start back
at the bottom and work my way up, just like
(32:18):
I had learned to do in the military. Day one
of triathlon, I know nothing about triathlon. By year five
of triathlon, I want a master triathlon, and I certainly
don't claim to be a master. But we were able
to win a race in Tokyo under high stakes, and
that was an incredibly cool experience. Brad is currently pursuing
(32:39):
a PhD in public policy at Princeton University with the
goal of returning to the Naval Academy as a professor
and coach, eager to share his story and lessons learned
with the next generation of America's leaders. Throughout this whole
conversation that we've just been having, I think you've been
(32:59):
really good at pulling out these little moments from my
background where I have learned really important lessons on how
to not only push myself, but navigate challenges, navigate adversity.
And I happen to think that, you know, our future
generations of military officers and military personnel really need that
sort of stuff to navigate the challenges of tomorrow. And
(33:20):
that's my new goal as I want to go back
to the Academy and coach and teach midshipman so that
when they face those challenges, when they face the same
kind of stuff that I faced in Afghanistan, they have
the ability the nuts and bolts of what they need
to navigate that and thrive despite it. Brad, your your
journey is inspiring you. You've put a lump in my
throat many times during this conversation because I'm just so
(33:45):
in awe of you and your ability to be so positive,
your mindset, to have this wonderful growth mindset. I just
wish there were more people like you out there. One question,
I guess a final question, is there or any other
lesson that has struck you something that is critically important.
(34:07):
It's kind of a two part thought, but they revolve
around each other. The thing that I think is the
most important that I do remind myself from time to
time is I want to start everything from a sense
of gratitude. Having a near death experience, I recognize how
precious every day is. Every day I wake up is
a day I might not have woken up, And I
owe it's all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice
(34:28):
and everybody who's served, and clearly my grandparents and all
that I owe it to them to make the most
of this moment, because the moment that I have to
live in this country and be free is because of
all those sacrifices, and I'm grateful. So that's like my
point of orientation. And then in sharing that, I know
that it's tough. Sometimes you're going to encounter some barriers,
(34:48):
some obstacles, and you really need to have something that
helps you reignite that passion. And over the years, I've
had a lot of different things that have helped me
kind of keep going and keep moving forward. And something
that I was me thinking about while I was raising
in Tokyo for me as my baby daughter who's not
born yet, I want to be the best dad I can.
I want to be the best human possible to be
(35:09):
a role model for my daughter, but also like show
her the way on you know, how to take charge
and how to navigate adversity and how to own your
life in a way that's positive for you. And I
call that an anchor thought. You know, everyone's got to
have an anchor thought. You said it exactly, used the
right words. We all need something that's gonna light that
fire in our heart and keep us going because let's
(35:30):
face it, like we're all gonna face challenges. We're all
going to run up against these barriers, and none of
us want to let that defeat us. So we've got
to find a way to break through those things. And
all of us need a reason to kind of reorient
ourselves towards gratitude and making the most of every moment
and I'm really excited that I get to share that
with my daughter in March. That's fantastic. Gratitude is a
(35:51):
cornerstone to any happy life. It's absolutely mandatory. It's the foundation,
and it's a good reminder for everyone to have that gratitude.
There's always something, no matter how bad it is for you,
there's something to be grateful for. Wow, brat I have
enjoyed talking to you today. You have enlightened me on
so many things. Your journey is so powerful, such a
(36:13):
great story of triumph, of overcoming in such a major way.
I'm talking to a gold medalist right now. I respect
that so much. I'm so proud of you. I'm so
happy for you and your family. Thank you for spending
time with me today and our listeners and being very
open and very honest about your journey, the pain and
(36:33):
the triumph. So thank you, God bless you, and keep going.
I can't wait to hear what the next chapter is
going to be. Thank you so much, Rob, It's been
my pleasure, and you two as well. Keep charging. Thanks
again to Brad Snyder for his service and for joining
us on this podcast. And congratulations to you and your
(36:54):
wife on expecting your first child. I have no doubt
you will make your daughter in predibly proud. Thanks for
listening to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring
stories of perseverance and camaraderie. Check out all our episodes,
including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome
(37:17):
incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast.
We would love to hear from you. You can listen
to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you
(37:37):
Should Know as a special four parts series from I
Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show
is written and produced by Molly Soccho, Nikia Swinton, and
Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited,
sound designed, and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stillo.
(38:00):
Tw
Please be advised the following episode contains references to violence
and may not be suitable for all audiences. Welcome to
Veterans you Should Know a podcast from My Heart Radio
that celebrates the men and women who have honorably answered
a call to serve their country in the armed forces.
I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In
(00:25):
this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with
four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and
how their experiences in military service served them in their
everyday civilian lives. In this episode, I'm speaking with Brad Snyder.
Brad served as an explosive ordinance disposal officer in the
(00:46):
United States Navy. That means disarming bombs people. The way
that most people have seen our community is like through
the movie The hurt Locker, where you've got someone with
either a robot or a bomb suit and they have
the ability to get down on top of that device
and then do something to it to put it in
a safer spot. And that was largely my deployment to Iraq.
(01:08):
On his second deployment in Afghanistan, Brad stepped on an
improvised explosive device, which detonated and left him permanently blinded.
In the process of his rehabilitation and recovery, he was
encouraged to try out for the Paralympics due to his
background and competitive swimming. Today, Brad is a five time
(01:29):
gold medalist competing in swimming and para triathlon for Team USA.
Through his experiences, he strives to inspire future generations to
embrace a life of leadership and civic duty. Brad, Welcome
to the podcast. Thank you for being here, Thank you
so much for having me. And before we get going,
(01:51):
I think we'd be remiss if I didn't thank you
for your service as well. Well you're very kind to
say that. But today is about you, Brad, and we
want to hear a story because I think it's one
of the most fascinating stories, truly, one of overcoming so
much and there's so many great lessons and takeaways to
(02:12):
your story that I want people to hear. I want
them to truly understand it, and I want them to
feel what it takes and what the mindset is to
do what you've done. So well, let's just dive in.
If you don't mind, I want to pick your brain
on so many things. Let's start with how did you
come to the military. It's a great question and something
(02:33):
I thought a lot about because I never made a
decision to join the Navy. I think I just grew
up always knowing that I would. Three out of four
of my grandparents we're all in the Navy in various capacities,
all in and around World War Two. My mom's dad,
my grandfather served in the Battle of Midway. He dropped
torpedoes out at Japanese subs and ships. So I just
(02:55):
sort of always knew from an age of like three
onward that I wanted to be like my grandfather and
following his footsteps and join the Navy. Brad had a
choice to make. He had made up his mind to
join the military. But there are three paths one can
take to receive a commission as a naval officer, an
r OTC scholarship at a civilian university, a degree, and
(03:19):
then officer candidate school, or the Naval Academy. I got
to visit the Naval Academy my sophomore year high school.
My uncle was also in the Navy. He was an
O six jag at the time working at the Pentagon
and we went and visited them in Virginia, and kind
of on a whim, he said, you want to go
visit the Naval Academy, And I thought, you know, why not,
(03:40):
and just instantly fell in love with the place. I've
shared this story a handful of times. What I thought
was so cool. Do you watched this brigade of midshipman
they go out for new information. It's just this big
mob of black and white and they all start yelling
stuff that you don't understand at the time. They're doing
accountability or whatever, and they're yelling, and I remember watching
walked by and each of them had their names stitched
(04:02):
on their shirt. And I remember being in high school thinking, man,
how cool is it that they're so important that they
have their name stitched in their shirt? Like nobody knows
my name, my name is meaningless, but here like your
name is really important. And that was really cool to me.
So I first and foremost wanted to go to the
Naval Academy, and I pursued that with quite a lot
of vigor. But my backup plans were go to our
(04:24):
OTC somewhere. Anyway, That's how I kind of dialed in
on the Naval Academy. Brand had just begun his senior
year in high school when the attacks of September eleven occurred,
but that didn't deter him from his call to service.
On September eleven, two and one, I remember I was
(04:44):
in English class and someone ran into the room to say,
turn on the TV. And it was just in time
to see the towers still there but smoking. And then
while we were all watching, the towers came down. So,
you know, I had already wanted to join the Navy.
I felt like I was fulfilling sort of like a
familial duty or a legacy kind of thing. But then
(05:04):
all of a sudden, with the towers coming down, you know,
it's our generation's fight, you know, that's what we were
all signing up to do. It gave my service such
a galvanized purpose, I suppose was the right way of
saying it. Yes, it did crystallize things. Crystallize, that's a
better word. People saw a need and they were ready
to jump in, And I think that's really outstanding. I
think there weren't a whole lot of people who straight
(05:25):
away from you know, stepping up and joining when there
was a time and a need. I think you're right too.
I remember I was in New York on n eleven
and my reserve, you and it. I just left active
duty and my reserving it was activated. I was a
captain at the time, but I remember that the vibe,
if you will, of everybody around, everybody in the city
and the country for that matter. Everybody wanted to do something, anything,
(05:49):
And I remember people were bringing down boxes of clothes
and you know, they just didn't know what to do.
They're bringing blankets, they were bringing things that didn't necessarily
need we needed, nobody needed down there, but they were
compelled to do something. They were compelled to take part
or feel like they could help in some way. And
I felt actually blessed that I was in the service.
(06:11):
So I volunteered to go back on an active duty
and I was able to scratch that itch, so to speak.
I was able to serve because I was in a
position to. But I do remember that feeling across the
country and especially in New York, there was a desire
to serve, to get involved. So I was, I guess happy,
and it felt good from patriotic sense to know that
(06:33):
when the country was in crisis, you know, it was
nice to see people respond for sure, and and you
were obviously one of those people, So thank you for
staying the course. According to the US, over two hundred
and fifty thousand people swore an oath to serve in
the active duty and reserve military forces following the attacks
(06:56):
of not eleven, many of them vowing to make sure
something so horrible never was repeated. Brad continued to follow
his dream and entered the Naval Academy the year following
nine eleven. From day one, life at the Naval Academy
was full speed ahead. Brad had a stacked course load
(07:16):
of engineering classes at seven indoctrination to military culture and knowledge,
and on top of that, he was part of the
academy's competitive swim team. It was an exhaustive schedule, but
Brad balanced at all and never lost sight of the
lessons he learned. It was tough, but it really did
(07:40):
force me to grow up quickly. I learned how to
manage time. I learned how to organize myself. I learned
how to learn quickly. I think that's a real important skill,
especially in the military. And I learned, you know, with
the right amount of those sub skills, you can survive
and you can thrive in an environment like that, and
I think the Navy was definitely a lot like that.
(08:01):
I was always keeping a lot of balls in the air,
and honestly that hasn't stopped. Even transitioning out of the military.
I'm still in exactly that same boat, just trying to
keep everything up in the air. They push you beyond
your perceived limits. We all have limits, we think. We
all think, oh, man, I couldn't do this, or you know,
I could never run a marathon, or I could never
do X, Y or Z. But then when you get
(08:22):
in the military and you start doing things and they
hold you to a very high standard, you realize that
what you thought were your limits are not okay. So
you are working your way through the academy and you
decide to choose an MS. And for those who don't know,
(08:43):
MS means Military occupational specialty. Your job, your j ob
is basically what an m OS is. So why don't
we just say that just just our job. I know,
because the military we make it. We make it so hard,
we have to make everything so unique. You decide to
become an explosive ordinance disposal officer, probably the most dangerous
(09:04):
job in the world. How does that come about? Not linearly,
I'll say that when I got to the Naval Academy,
they started barking in my face and said, what do
you want to do after you go to the navalcadey,
what kind of service do you want to do? What's
your job? And I kind of just looked at him,
like my jobs to be in the Navy, Like I
don't know, what do you want me to say? You
want me to pick? I don't know. You tell me.
(09:25):
I thought the military would order you around. They call
it orders, right, so what are my orders? Just give
me orders? They said, no, you have to pick. So
I spent a lot of time soul searching going around,
and the Naval Academy and the summer programs do a
good job of socializing you across the different arenas of
both the Navy and the Marine Corps. And what I
(09:45):
loved most was actually scuba diving. I got to go
to Navy scuba school and I went back to the
Naval Academy. I said, I found it. I want to
be a scuba diver and they were like, that's not
a thing. Now there is a Navy Diving Corps, but
that's only enlisted, and no Naval Academy officers go into
the Navy diving community specifically or at least directly, but
(10:06):
it is a prerequisite skill for Navy seals and e
O D officers. And then around the my junior year,
I went out on e O D summer camp out
to San Diego, and on day one of e O
D Summer Camp, I went out with our Dolphinsay, so
not a lot of people know this, but we have
a marine mammal program where the Navy utilizes dolphins and
(10:29):
sea lions to do certain things for us. Yeah, it's real,
and it's really cool. As far as I'm concerned. It
feels so double O seven, it feels so James Bond.
Having dolphins work with us to take on the bad guys.
It really is amazing. It's just really tough giving them
a high five because they only have fins, you know.
(10:49):
But to belabor the story, I go out to Point Loman,
San Diego, and the day one of this camp, I
go out onto this twenty one ft Boston whaler and
this dolphin trainer like blows a whistle and the dolphins
jumps out to the water into the boat and then
we drive out, you know, a couple of miles from
shore where we have a training area which is basically
three feet of sea water above a couple of mine shapes,
(11:12):
like their fake minds, and we trained the dolphins on
how to find mine shapes at three feet. Now, we
can't really dive sustainably at that depth, not looking for
stuff anyway, so we can use these dolphins to help
us find potential minds that have been buried or who
have lost their way or found at three feet below
the surface of the ocean. That was day one of
e O D summer camp. The summer camp sold me
(11:34):
and I went back to the Naval Academy and said,
I'm I want to be an EYO D officer. And
I was really worried I wouldn't have the grades to
do it, but I got in by the hair on
my chinny chinchin, and I'm just really grateful. Wow, they
did quite a job on selling e O D, because, um,
you know, explosive Ordinance Disposal. It's just the sound of it.
It's terrifying. I got to see the e O D
(11:54):
you guys work, and I actually saw him work in
real life scenarios and I was always impressed and they
had confidence. Oh my gosh. You know, everybody gets a
little skittish around the things that go boom, and these guys, well,
they instilled confidence and everybody around him. I always felt
like when they showed up, everybody could relax. Truly amazing.
Now you get the job of explosive ordinance disposal and
(12:18):
you deploy, and now you find yourself in tricky situations
because you're actually having to deal with unexploded ordinance or
roadside bombs improvised explosive devices i e D S. So
did you feel like the training you received prepared you
for being in a combat zone? I mean, did you
feel like you were ready when you got there? Yeah,
(12:41):
for sure, but not always directly. What I think is
great about the e D community and the way that
we approached training. We were given frameworks, We were taught
how to think more or less, not necessarily like when
you see this, this is what you do. That kind
of procedural mindset doesn't really work in our community because
you're never going to really they see exactly the same
(13:02):
scenario twice. So what the e D community teaches you
is all the sort of background knowledge you might need
on all kinds of explosives, fusings, different ways of deploying weapons,
but then also how to manage the scenario on the ground.
And again I felt very prepared in how to think
through those scenarios. What became challenging is bringing to bear
(13:24):
the tools that you might want to mitigate those hazards.
And the way that most people have seen our community
is like through the movie The hurt Locker, where you've
got someone with either a robot or a bomb suit
and they have the ability to get down on top
of that device and then do something to it to
put it in a safer spot. And that was largely
my deployment to Iraq. We had a big, giant em
(13:46):
RAB truck with all kinds of gear, a bomb suit,
two robots, all sorts of stuff, water bottle charges, you
name it. I've got all these tools to bring to bear,
but our mission set doesn't always allow for a giant
vehicle in a bomb suit and two robots and water
bottle charges. And that was my deployment to Afghanistan, where
everything that I'm going to bring to my job as
(14:07):
an UNI officer I have to carry with me, so
I really only have a pocket knife and some five
or in Afghanistan. I think you just described what every
military person who has ever served has experienced. You get
wonderful training, we have wonderful equipment, You have all these
wonderful things, but when you're deployed, when you're out on
the street, that stuff just isn't always there. And then
(14:28):
you have to improvise, adapt and overcome, as they say,
and you have to be able to make judgment calls,
and you have to be able to decide what the
best course of action is. And it's not always at
your leisure. You know, you're moving in a very dynamic environment,
very hostile environment. Potentially maybe you only have the information
you need, but you still got to act. So there's
(14:49):
so many X factors that are brought to bear against
what you're doing. Veterans you should know will return after
the break. On Brad's second tour overseas, he was on
(15:15):
a morning patrol, just like the many mornings before, but
this day was different. This day Brad's life changed in
an instant. We were on what I would categorize as
a routine foot patrol from one place to another in
a area of Afghanistan called the Panjwai Valley in two
(15:37):
thousand eleven, and at this particular time, we were not
routinely engaging the Taliban in typical firefights. They were in
very small numbers. They were hiding a lot, and we
were very actively trying to find them. But what they
were doing a lot was the i e ED and
improvised explosive device. They were burying tens of them everywhere.
(15:57):
Every square mile probably had a hand full or so
of these i e d S. It made our job
very difficult. There weren't a lot of places where you
could get to with a vehicle and where we were working,
and the tactical decision we made was for our foot
patrols to always walk like ducks in a row, like
you're always just following the footsteps of the guy in
or gall in front of you, and out in front
(16:19):
of our patrol would always be an EOD tech like
myself or my partner atom clearing with a metal detector.
And at about seven thirty in the morning, I was
halfway back in our patrol, just following along like everybody else,
and up at the front of our patrol there was
a big blast plume that shot up into the air
and we train everybody. When a blast like that goes off,
(16:41):
don't move because where there's one bomb, there's likely many.
You know, it's a very common tactic for there to
be multiple I e d S around each other. We
call them secondaries. When one blast goes off, don't move.
Let the EOD tech myself use my metal detector to
clear some space for a medic to get down to
the casualty. So I pulled out my metal detector, ran
up to the run and Uh. I was really gratified though,
(17:02):
because I looked over and saw my buddy Adam was
just fine. He looked at me about as confused as
I was. But what we learned was two Afghan commandos
had stepped off of the cleared path and landed on
a forty pound I E D, effectively mortally wounding the
two of them. But we didn't know that at the time.
So Adam and I job at that point, it's too
clear space, get the medics down to the casualties, and
(17:24):
then clear a spot for a helicopter to come in
and take those casualties to the hospital. It was really
difficult in doing that, and it was pretty chaotic. We
also knew that there were insurgents in the area who
may now know where we are, so we felt like
the sense of urgency to get off the X. As
we say, we were able to move the first casualty
back about a hundred feet where we were intending to
(17:45):
bring in a helicopter, and then on my way back
to Adam in the second casualty, I made a judgment
call in that moment where to get to Adam. I
was running across grass and I remember thinking, what are
the chances? And I e d spend here so long
that grass is grown on top of it, And that's
exactly what happened. There was a pressure plate buried underneath
where grass had grown over, and that's the one I
stepped on. I was really lucky in a number of ways.
(18:13):
The pressure plate was separated from the actual blast itself,
and that's what saved my life. It blew up in
front of me, not underneath me, and because of that,
it came out of the ground and really just smacked
me in the face, as opposed to blowing up underneath me,
which surely would have taken off my legs, if not
my arms as well. The important part of this story
(18:35):
is immediately following the blast. I knew that I had
been blown up. I knew that it was likely a
forty pound charge, which is a pretty big explosion, and
I had known of other victims of similar sized explosions
who were really in not good shape afterward. And the
fact that I actually could still see I think a
(18:58):
little bit. I looked down and I saw my hand
ends in my feet. There was no obvious damage. I
could still see that I had my feet, I still
had my arms, and that, in my mind, meant that
surely I had died. There was no way that I
was intact. After that, for me, I felt like time
stopped and I remember thinking, for sure, I'm dead, and uh,
(19:19):
that's you know, that's sad. But I I thought about
my whole life, and I thought, I'm proud of the
life that I've lived. I died, you know, serving my country,
and I think that's honorable. And I'm sad that I
won't be able to see my family, but I think
that they'll understand, you know, they'll appreciate what I did.
And then I actually felt like, for sure, my grandfather's
(19:40):
coming to grab me. Like my grandfather who died when
I was eleven, my hero, he's gonna come take me
whatever happens after you die. But then I didn't die.
I came back. That's just amazing. It's amazing to me
that those thoughts were in your mind, that you are
(20:02):
actually walking through those thoughts, that whole process after just
being blown up, in that slowed down, in that shock
state probably you were in, you still had the ability
to process, and these were the things that occurred to
you in that moment. It's unbelievable. Please continue. Yeah, and
(20:23):
to your point, what's wild about it. It's been a
decade now, it's been a long time, and I've been
able to piece little things together, and I've talked to Adam,
who wasn't far away. All of that occurred in a
matter of seconds. So Adam starts yelling at me. He
knew that I had been in the blast. He yells,
his voice starts coming through the fog to me. I
remember yelling back at him. And what's crazy about it is,
(20:45):
you know, a moment ago, I was okay with dying
and now I'll come back to life. But now I'm
really afraid because I knew I had taken the blast,
I had taken it to my face and all of
a sudden, I was aware that my face isn't right,
something's wrong with it. I'm bleeding, it doesn't feel right,
and I remember kind of starting to panic, like I
don't want to be here. I don't want to be
in this moment. I'm afraid of what is happening. And
(21:11):
Adam got to me, and I remember grabbing him by
his kit and I said, how bad is it? And
he said, I'm not gonna lie to you. Your face
is pretty left up, but the rest of you looks fine.
Do you think you can stand up? And at that moment,
I felt this really strong urge like disappointment, frustration, anger,
all at once, where I committed like the ultimate sin
(21:33):
as far as a team member, I made our life
worse out there by stepping on that, I e d.
I was kind of letting my team down to some extent.
I'm in the way now, like we're already in a
bad situation. Everybody's life is on the line, and now
I'm holding us up. As soon as his partner could
(21:54):
clear landing zone from MEDEVAC helicopter, Brad was airlifted from
the blast zone. He went to sleep in Afghanistan and
woke up and Walter Read National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland,
one of the premier military hospitals in the country. With
the extent of his injuries, Brad was on heavy pain killers, which,
(22:14):
on top of the trauma he endured, made for a
foggy first few months back state side. It's really hard
to make sense of it all, and it takes a
little while. Like when I first was hurt, I'm like
super confused, but I'm picking up little details. I'm obviously
(22:36):
back from the battle space. I'm alive. Something's wrong, though,
so I have to keep going into surgery. I don't
know what's wrong, but the surgery is making me better,
so that sounds fine. And really you're just so tired.
I just want to go to sleep, but I couldn't
sleep because of all the drugs, and so I'm kind
of like in this constant state of almost like Fight Club,
I guess, like the movie, like you're kind of constantly
(22:57):
confused and maybe living this multiple life thing. But through
those three weeks I was able to sort of gather
I'm blind, but it didn't make sense because I could
see everything in my head. But then finally the surgeons
were able to make clear they were saying, basically, there's
one last surgery you're going to have to do, and
we're gonna hopefully save your vision. Remember asking the surgeon
what are the chances, and he said, you have less
(23:18):
than one percent chance of being able to perceive light
and dark with your right eye. We have to remove
your lefts you'll see nothing on the left side. And
I was, like, less than one percent to perceive light
and dark like man, that is not an encouraging prognosis.
So I knew that. To me, and I'm blind and
a spoiler alert, that surgery was not a success. I
(23:39):
have no light perception whatsoever. But I want to blow
past that because for me, the acceptance of the blind
thing was certainly not welcome news. But in comparison to
the I thought I died a week ago thing, I
was just really happy to be alive, and I was
sort of relieved to not be on the battlefield anymore,
(24:01):
to know that I wasn't going to have to go
back out on emissions. I wasn't taking my life into
my own hands. I'm essentially safe. Now I'm gonna have
to figure out this blindness thing. But to the point
you made earlier about the military forcing you outside of
your comfort zone nearly constantly. I felt very confident, like
I've figured out a lot of stuff. I figured out
(24:22):
how to jump out of aircraft. I've figured out how
to scuba dive. I figured out how to make things
blow up. I figured out how to not make things
blow up. I'm gonna be able to figure out this
blindness thing. I wanted to get out of the hospital
as quickly as possible and start crushing something so that
my family and my friends could understand I'm gonna be fine. Now. Well,
(24:42):
this is a powerful mindset you're describing. I mean, it
really is, and you shouldn't be taken for granted. I
mean to be in your situation and to have that
mindset of Okay, I've overcome so many things. I know
I'm behapable of overcoming things. Now it's my new reality,
so that mindset of okay, well, let's figure it out.
Let's get to work. I love that. I absolutely love that,
(25:04):
because I don't want anybody to take that for granted.
I mean, you just lost your sight in a violent fashion,
and now you are out there saying, okay, this is
my new reality. I accepted. I'm going to push forward,
and by the way, you found some amazing ways to
do that, to transition and find purpose. Can you describe
(25:25):
to me some of those things as you move forward
in your journey, as you leave the hospital and leave
the military. I got really lucky. Two thousand eleven was
a while ago, but sadly we had still been at
war for some time, and we had a lot of
injured folks going through. Walter Read and somebody a while
ago had the great idea that sports is an awesome
way for vets to help figure stuff out again after
(25:48):
an injury like this and get those competitive juices going
and find purpose and go through that adaption loop you
just described, Like, let's start figuring it out. Let's start
at the basics again. I kind of gravitated towards anybody
was like, let's get going. So I was doing some
of my rehab in Florida, where I'm from. I was
actually at the v A in Tampa, Florida, and on
(26:10):
my first trip out of the hospital, a bunch of
my old friends were getting together. We had this thing
called like First Friday. We're downtown, they like lock off
a block and everybody drinks and it's a fun time,
and my swim coach was there, and he's this gruff,
older fella, and he just kind of in his own
way of not wanting to dwell on the negative part
of this instance, he was like, so, well, I see
(26:33):
you at practice tomorrow. And I thought, yeah, it captures
what I want to do exactly. I want to just
go back to normal as quickly as possible. I'll go
to practice. So I showed up literally that next morning,
and he just blew past anything that had already happened.
And I don't want to talk about Aghanistan, I don't
want to talk about bombs or anything. I've got it
(26:53):
all hooked up for you. I've got this scuba mask
that will go over your eyes because my eyes were
still tender and kind of messed up at the time.
I got these pool noodles that I can attach to
the sides of the pool, so you don't bang your
head now, just hop in this lane and go ahead
and get going. It was exactly what I wanted. It
was a sense of freedom for me. I think my
family was able to see, like, yeah, he looks like
(27:14):
a dufus in that scuba mask, but everything's fine. This
is Brad it's the Brad we know, and I can
see that nothing's going to hold him back sort of thing.
I can imagine. The sense of independence is back, the
sense of individualism is back, and striving and working and exerting,
it all comes back. I bet when you're in that lane. Yep, exactly.
(27:40):
So now you're you find the water, you find your
way back to swimming, which you were obviously a competitive swimmer,
and you keep going. Like Forrest Gump, you just kept running,
you know, you just kept going and you kept climbing.
Tell us about that, because you made it to the
Paralympics and you did quite well. I'm talking to a
(28:02):
multi time gold medalist. I'm fascinated about this part of
your journey, and and also not just the physical accomplishments
in the water, but the psychological journey as well that
goes along with that. If you don't mind sharing, no,
I don't mind it all. And it's a crazy story,
and I just wanted to show folks that I'd be
all right, and that was kind of where it started.
(28:23):
Someone along the way, though, it was pretty quick to say,
you know, have you thought about going to the Paralympics,
And something to the effect of do you realize how
lucky you are to be injured in a Paralympic year,
And I thought, well, that's a crazy way of looking
at this whole thing. Yeah, that's okay, sure, okay. And
that actually kind of baked in this idea that there
(28:43):
was a sense of urgency to get into the Paralympics,
because you know, I was injured in September. You sort
of needed to have certain things done by that February.
And I actually hadn't left the hospital yet. I was
still in what they called blind rehab. I was in
a v A in Augusta, Georgia, and they were teaching
me the various skills of how to be blind, and uh,
they were allowing me to leave the hospital again every
(29:05):
so often to go swim. I actually went to a
swim meet and I got in the Paralympics. We call
it get classified. It's not the way we think of
it in the military. Classified in the Paralympic sense means
a doctor looks at you and assesses what disability category
you are by virtue of the fact that I'm completely
blind on what's called an S E leven in swimming,
That means I compete against other people who are completely blind.
(29:27):
Once I was classified, I went to a meet. I
swim what I assessed to be a really crappy race.
I got out and everyone was super excited because they're like,
that was the fifth fastest blind swim of the world
this year. Dang right out of the gate. Yeah exactly.
I was like, well, I could do better than that.
I know I can do better than that. That kind
of got me hooked, and I thought, well, let me
(29:47):
get back into my old thing and let me start
training at this and one thing led to another, and
before I really realized what was going on, I was
in London. The craziness of this whole thing is that
on September seven, two thousand eleven, is the day I
lost my vision in Afghanistan. Going into the Paralympics in
(30:08):
London on September seven, two and twelve, I was going
to be swimming for Team USA in the four freestyle,
and uh, I want a gold medal for Team USA.
And it was just a really crazy way to bring
everything full circle and really in the best most extreme
way possible, I was able to prove what I wanted
(30:29):
to show folks is that this blindness thing is not
going to be something that confines me or keeps me
from being who I want to be, from being successful,
or from being a valuable part of society, or something
along those lines. And that's what I've come to love
about the Paralympic movement just in general, is that it
really gives athletes of all kinds the ability to inspire
(30:49):
that in our society. And it's been so cool. It's
been such a cool journey to be on since two
and twelve. Since in the leap and the months following
his injury, Brad has continued to push towards excellence, training
for the Paralympics, competing in multiple games and bringing home
multiple gold medals to show the world there's nothing he
(31:13):
can't do. From London to Rio, I felt like if
I were a sports fan, of which I am, and
I looked at that narrative, that story I read the
Brad Snyder story and on ESPN dot com or whatever,
I'd look at that and be like, well, it's clearly
a fluke, Like it was an accident. Maybe the competition
wasn't that good that year, or maybe you know, by
(31:34):
virtue of the fact that it was only one year
of being blind, maybe he had an advantage. So I
wanted to go back to Rio and prove and like
earn it, you know, dedicate myself to the craft of
swimming blind for four years and go back to the
Paralympics and crush it. And I was able to do that.
I won three golds in Rio and broke a world
record that had been there for a long time. But
to your point about like if you're not growing, you're
(31:56):
dying kind of thing, I finished that experience and thought,
I want to keep going, but I need to redefine
the challenge. For me. It's not about winning. I'm not
doing this to win. I'm doing this to you know,
make myself better and hopefully inspire other people to be
better and all of those things. So I wanted to
redefine the challenge. I got into triathlon to start back
at the bottom and work my way up, just like
(32:18):
I had learned to do in the military. Day one
of triathlon, I know nothing about triathlon. By year five
of triathlon, I want a master triathlon, and I certainly
don't claim to be a master. But we were able
to win a race in Tokyo under high stakes, and
that was an incredibly cool experience. Brad is currently pursuing
(32:39):
a PhD in public policy at Princeton University with the
goal of returning to the Naval Academy as a professor
and coach, eager to share his story and lessons learned
with the next generation of America's leaders. Throughout this whole
conversation that we've just been having, I think you've been
(32:59):
really good at pulling out these little moments from my
background where I have learned really important lessons on how
to not only push myself, but navigate challenges, navigate adversity.
And I happen to think that, you know, our future
generations of military officers and military personnel really need that
sort of stuff to navigate the challenges of tomorrow. And
(33:20):
that's my new goal as I want to go back
to the Academy and coach and teach midshipman so that
when they face those challenges, when they face the same
kind of stuff that I faced in Afghanistan, they have
the ability the nuts and bolts of what they need
to navigate that and thrive despite it. Brad, your your
journey is inspiring you. You've put a lump in my
throat many times during this conversation because I'm just so
(33:45):
in awe of you and your ability to be so positive,
your mindset, to have this wonderful growth mindset. I just
wish there were more people like you out there. One question,
I guess a final question, is there or any other
lesson that has struck you something that is critically important.
(34:07):
It's kind of a two part thought, but they revolve
around each other. The thing that I think is the
most important that I do remind myself from time to
time is I want to start everything from a sense
of gratitude. Having a near death experience, I recognize how
precious every day is. Every day I wake up is
a day I might not have woken up, And I
owe it's all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice
(34:28):
and everybody who's served, and clearly my grandparents and all
that I owe it to them to make the most
of this moment, because the moment that I have to
live in this country and be free is because of
all those sacrifices, and I'm grateful. So that's like my
point of orientation. And then in sharing that, I know
that it's tough. Sometimes you're going to encounter some barriers,
(34:48):
some obstacles, and you really need to have something that
helps you reignite that passion. And over the years, I've
had a lot of different things that have helped me
kind of keep going and keep moving forward. And something
that I was me thinking about while I was raising
in Tokyo for me as my baby daughter who's not
born yet, I want to be the best dad I can.
I want to be the best human possible to be
(35:09):
a role model for my daughter, but also like show
her the way on you know, how to take charge
and how to navigate adversity and how to own your
life in a way that's positive for you. And I
call that an anchor thought. You know, everyone's got to
have an anchor thought. You said it exactly, used the
right words. We all need something that's gonna light that
fire in our heart and keep us going because let's
(35:30):
face it, like we're all gonna face challenges. We're all
going to run up against these barriers, and none of
us want to let that defeat us. So we've got
to find a way to break through those things. And
all of us need a reason to kind of reorient
ourselves towards gratitude and making the most of every moment
and I'm really excited that I get to share that
with my daughter in March. That's fantastic. Gratitude is a
(35:51):
cornerstone to any happy life. It's absolutely mandatory. It's the foundation,
and it's a good reminder for everyone to have that gratitude.
There's always something, no matter how bad it is for you,
there's something to be grateful for. Wow, brat I have
enjoyed talking to you today. You have enlightened me on
so many things. Your journey is so powerful, such a
(36:13):
great story of triumph, of overcoming in such a major way.
I'm talking to a gold medalist right now. I respect
that so much. I'm so proud of you. I'm so
happy for you and your family. Thank you for spending
time with me today and our listeners and being very
open and very honest about your journey, the pain and
(36:33):
the triumph. So thank you, God bless you, and keep going.
I can't wait to hear what the next chapter is
going to be. Thank you so much, Rob, It's been
my pleasure, and you two as well. Keep charging. Thanks
again to Brad Snyder for his service and for joining
us on this podcast. And congratulations to you and your
(36:54):
wife on expecting your first child. I have no doubt
you will make your daughter in predibly proud. Thanks for
listening to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring
stories of perseverance and camaraderie. Check out all our episodes,
including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome
(37:17):
incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast.
We would love to hear from you. You can listen
to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you
(37:37):
Should Know as a special four parts series from I
Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show
is written and produced by Molly Soccho, Nikia Swinton, and
Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited,
sound designed, and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stillo.
(38:00):
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