Richard Casper: The Secret Weapons of Music and Art (Pt 2)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, everybody, it's still Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Richard Casper. Right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors, let's return to Richard on his service in

(00:34):
a mounted infantry unit in a rock.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
First, I went to two seven Marines, which is an
infantry unit. And I get there and I start working up.
I pause because I had the whole story with Harley too.
I read my Harley cross Country. That's a pretty awesome story.
I have an old soul, you know. I was like
nineteen with a Harley. All my friend had crowdra guess,

(00:58):
but I took that to California with me. There's a
hilarious story in that, me and my buddy's driving across.
I did twenty three hours straight at that thing. I
wasn't supposed to. But anyways, so I get there.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Did you show up with crotchrot?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
No? I was, I was going.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Ty three hours on a Harley and you weren't glded.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
I was still young and you have still thoughts.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, yeah, And so I get to the basis. So
this is a straight up infantry unit, like they they
just went to Afghanistan, they just got back and they're
starting to do their train up and so they look
at my yeah, yes, date like the damn supposed gown
on the Marine Corps, and they approached me. After about
two or three months training up with them, they say, hey,

(01:37):
there's an issue. You're not going to be able to
go to Iraq with us because we don't leave for
Iraq until like January or February of two thousand and seven.
And it looks like you get out in June of
two thousd and seven, you'll be getting out when we're
over there, so you can't come with us. And I
was like, okay, well can I transfer somewhere? Like can
I go to another unit that's deployed soon? And so

(01:57):
they ended up sending me the first tanks because they
had a toe unit, which is pretty much I went
from ground infantry and mounted infantry. So toes are just
in humbies like scouting ahead like they have toes and
scouts and we have a shot of toe I don't
think in Iraq since the initial invasion. So they're mounted
with Mark nineteen's and fifty cows and used to become
mounted infantry, and so I went over there with about.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Mounted infantry, meaning riding around in Humby's with machine guns
mounted on top and that kind of yep.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
And so we still get out, we do missions.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, you roll up, you get out, you do yep.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
So a lot of it, yeah, and a lot of
it was like EOD clearance, where we'd either help do
security for some people. Mainly our our whole job was
to secure the supply lines. So MSR Mobile was like
the biggest highway that ran through Iraq with all these
trucks coming on it. So we would constantly every single
day just drive up and down it, make sure nobody's
putting in IDs clear and id's. If we find them,
we call them EOD. We do these side missionsd EOD

(02:55):
like explosive device people that take a take a part
of the bombs.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
So there's a crap job.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Oh yeah yeah, hurt Locker. That movie was about EOD,
right yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
And so in my body does that have those big
gloves and hoods on and they literally go and how
many of those guys get blown up?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well, uh, that's the thing. On Volentine's Day, you know,
my coming up. One of my best friends well, not
my best friend, but he was. He's one of those good,
good people, didn't drink. Has a twin brother, phenomenal guy
named Dan Hansen. After infantry went eod and then ended
up dying two thousand and eight during on Valentine's Day,
I got the call saying he died because he was
disarming a bomb and it went off on him. So

(03:37):
a lot enough, But it is a crap job to
like one. But it's such a rogue job too, to
be like, I'm gonna put on the suit that most
likely will never protect me, and I'm gonna go in
there and try to disarm this bomb so nobody else
gets hurt.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
And so you're out there in these finding these things.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yep, and I found four for sure.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I was blown up four times?

Speaker 1 (03:58):
So how do you laugh?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Because, I mean, being blown up is a crazy experience.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
But okay, we'll stop. Yeah, So this is a part
that I think is really important for people to grasp
before we go to the rest of your life. Yeah,
after literally twenty five years of Afghanistan, the First Rock,

(04:25):
Second Rock, I really, unfortunately think the public is desensitized
to all of it. I mean, you can only see
on CNN or Fox, or the empty movies that have
been made about it, American serviceman service people on patrol

(04:46):
and bombs going off and see pictures of destroyed humbies
that hit a roadside. It's called an IUD, right, I
AD before you start saying, well, that's just what happens,
and you forget that that's a twenty one, twenty eighteen,
nineteen twenty one, twenty two, twenty three year old kid
inside that thing. And I think we get a sensitized

(05:09):
to what quote getting blown up is. Can you walk
me through your whole first experience and let our listeners
understand what that really is?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah? And so for me because I talk about it
now for a living, and so it's easy, and I
remember like dealing my own traumas, like going over it
and being like, how do you explain it in a
short form and be okay with it by the bay
of time. It's just like I was blown up four times?
Like how much do you want to know about it?

Speaker 1 (05:41):
I want I want people to know because I want
them to understand. Trauma is an overused word. Oh yeah,
I mean we've got people that get talked too bad
in the breadline of All two and Kroger, and they're traumatized.
That's not trauma. That may piss you off. That may
trigger some things that make that's not trauma. Yeah, getting

(06:02):
blown up, that's got to be traumatic. Oh yeah, So
just tell me about the day the first explosion went off.
When you're in a humbye.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
So the first time I got hit, it was November
seventeen through eighteenth. I know because I had like the
medical records.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
How old are you?

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I'm thirty nine now, but I was at the time.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Now were you well?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Because I did the Camp David thing, I was probably
twenty one how many people in four of us?

Speaker 1 (06:27):
So it is.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
And there's a driver yep, so there was a driver.
Actually was that the fifth one? Yeah, there's a driver
and then what they call a vehicle commander, which is
the in the passenger seat of the vehicle. And then
there's a gunner who's like poking his head out of
the humphy.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
What the machine gun on? Yeah? Which is what fifty caliber?

Speaker 2 (06:44):
It depends where you're at. So ours was a fifty cow.
But then some are mark nineteens would shoot the grenades.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
And then some are these are heavy duty guns.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, summer saws, which are light light machine guns. And
I was the dismount at the time, so I was
in the back left passer seat, right behind the driver.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
What happened to the back right passenger seat. Oh, it's
where the gunner hands sit down if he needs to.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Know there's still like there's a little thing in the.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
So you don't put the guys in these things. You
put for him.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Usually always four fifth if there's a squad leader, so
Eric Kormack, So the squad leader always got a corman
with them, so that would be the only one run
around with five if there was in ours, it was
like that's where you put your packs, your emerise everything else.
You get stuff back there.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
So there's four of you in this humvy yep. Another
question I got, and I really want this to be
I want a visual picture. Yeah. I remember reading early
on that the American Humbies were not doing a good
job protecting service members on these things, and you guys
were actually plating them up yourself on base. Was that

(07:45):
going on.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
The first Yeah, the first part of the war, they
were By the time we got to us, they still
weren't super effective. We still have to put like sand
bags and stuff on the floor to protect the bottom
because the bottom wasn't protected at all. But we still
had like the first I think it was the first
generation armor where the doors still had like bulletproof glass
and a little outfitting, but it was only the doors,

(08:07):
so it wasn't the V shaped bottoms. But yeah, the
ones that came in tyrack, a lot of them didn't
have doors on them, so they were just like no doors,
just humvy riding around, just getting vehicles out there as
quick as possible. And then slowly they started building that building.
Oh yeah, now they have like the V bottom ones
that are like six feet off the ground and like
to shape the blast like they actually did the research

(08:29):
and were like, let's build equipment that would.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Hand So you're in the first generation kind of protective
of up armored.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah we're still you're.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Putting sandbags on the floorboard.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, well by that time we could like I was
not well. I had to put a vest and stuff
under my because I couldn't. I already had to break
my seat because so when I became vehicle commander a
few months or like a month after this incident, I
didn't fit with my helmet on and my MVG's on
top of that. So I had to break the passenger
seat thing and I shoved like a rod back there,

(08:59):
so I was like lean back and then I have
to be like like just to put my MVG's on,
Like I had to ride low in that thing. And
so yeah, it was hard for me.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
It's not built for right, So these things are not
especially well built. They're packed full of four guys with
some rations and the empty seat probably got sandbags on
the floor or bulletproof vests on the floor. You guys
are trying to protect yourself and you're out there trying
to find bombs so your supply lines can get through unfettered. Yep,

(09:29):
all right, this day, that's the picture of going down
the road.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah. So since I was a dismount in this one,
I don't remember as much as when I was vehicle
commander because I was up front watching the other three blasts.
By this time we got hit. And the only thing
I really remember about this one because I didn't pass
out on this hit. But when the bomb goes up,
you don't hear the bomb. You just see a flash
of light and you kind of like come to. It's
a really weird moment because I think the explosion is

(09:57):
so loud that you kind of like don't register it.
That was like the first one, but then there was
so much debris instead of it almost felt like the
vehicle was on fire because all that dust and smoke,
because as you imagine it blows up, there's like a
vacuum that's created. And I ended up tearing cartilage in
my chest just because my mouth was open. So the
overpressure of it in the cabin of the vehicle, because

(10:20):
you know where the gunner's at, there's a hole, so
air rushes in there, and I guess it rushed down
my lungs and expanded my lungs to a point that
torque cartilage in my chest. Like that's how bad the
blast was. But when we get out of it, and
this is another misconception, it's like where you see people
like me and you're like, you don't have a brain injury,
you don't look injured, and it's like it takes a toll.
Those things protected the shrapnel from coming in, but it

(10:42):
didn't protect the concussion from coming in and all this
other stuff that happened. And so everyone on that team
was there was a few concussions. They didn't actually give
me a concussion on that one. They just had a
torque cartilage and all that. But you're just going to
this little on base medical like Corman and saying like, hey,
here's what happened to me, and they either sign off
on it or they don't sign off on it. But
that one I don't remember near as much.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
As what happened to the other three guys.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
The other one, so they were just concussed. It wasn't
we get back in the vehicle the next day and
just go to work.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
What did you run over it? Or was it near you?
And they remote that one.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
I can't remember which what it was because the other
three I remember again since I was, I mean, I
could have been sleeping. I might have been sleeping on
that one. But the other three being a being vehicle committed,
tell me about or I didn't remember because the blast
was so.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
You tore cartilage from the concussion going down your throat.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, because I didn't know. I got out almost like
I was fine, because after a blast, you get out
and you look around the truck as if it feels safe,
you get out. Usually vehicle pulls up next to you,
so in case snipers come, and so like you go
assess your damage what you can do after you pull
up a little bit. And so I remember pulling up
and kind of like walking back and forth and just
being like, why's my chest shirt? So bit like out
of all my body, like why is my chest shirt?

(11:52):
And I just kept on like kind of like breathing
in and just being like what what is wrong? And
I just kind of everyone's like, hey, is everyone good
in the trucks. Wilder came over. I was like, yeah,
my chest hurts a bit, but that's it, and we
just go back on control like a little bit, but
not much. It was mainly my chest that I was
I was really suffering with and everything. Everyone's ears were ringing.
But because we were able to change out the tire,

(12:13):
it blew out the tires, but it didn't the it
didn't go through the block, so the humpy was still functioning,
and so we just put the new tires on there
and just kept rolling. But about thirty minutes in, they said, hey,
we're gonna go back to base just to check the
whole chess thing. And they checked on it and that's
when they said it was I don't know what the
name someone out there does castro finchitis or something like that,
where I tored cartilage in my chest. But the second blast,

(12:35):
it was there was a marine that was a vehicle
commander of the first vehicle, and so we run around
with four humvees with the squad leader like roughly in
the third humby. The lead vehicle commander controls our route
like we're going up MSR mobile, and he chooses where
we turn round points because you imagine if you turn
around the same spot, that's where they're going to plant
an id on your turnaround, and so you have to

(12:55):
like choose where you're going no other direction. He'd been
in two seven he was what two seven Marine two
that came over. He's lost so many people and been
in so many battles that he was like chewing through
his leather gloves and as anxiety was getting so bad as
being the lead vehicle commander, so I took over for him,
and that's when I got hit three more times. And
that's where like I could I remember a lot more

(13:15):
because I was in the front seat. But that first
blast that happened was it was they call him like
if you hear the term one thirty or one five
to five. It's the size of the shell, like a
shell that would be in a tank that you shoot out,
like one five to five African was like the big shell.
One thirties were still pretty big. And if you google
like one thirty shell military shell, you'll see how big

(13:38):
these things are. But they'll stack these and wrap them
up and put a detonator on instead of blown up
like two of these on your vehicle, and they'd either.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
One five to five shells about the size of like
a like a it's similar. It's not as fat, but
it's about same in volume as a like a propane
gas tank for your grill.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
One thirty is more like a I think a propane
The one fifties a little bit, a little bit even larger.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
It is thinner, so imagine a bomb that big. And
then they wrap three or four and yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
But the one thirty is is more like the propane
tink because it's like a lot bulky or two. And
so they two they've been two of those wrapped up
with each other. And when I say we were blown
up this one, there's only one that was directly underneath us.
The other two were just to the side.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Of us.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
So this one was only a car length away from
us when it blew up on our vehicle, and that one,
that one hurt, And that one was where they talked
about my brain injury. Was like, your body moves, but
your brain stays in the same spot when it's a
cussion that big, and so the brain knocking against the
walls what causes a lot of that damage. But that
was the same way where it's like it blows up

(14:46):
and you're just like where am I, and you just
taste burnt dirt. It's weird that you just taste burnt
dirt in your mouth, and it's just you're just yelling
if everybody's okay, and you're trying to figure out what's happening,
and you need to move up, and you hear the
radio and it's just all chaos. So it's so hard
to remember those impacts. But the second one was where
I got out of the truck after we assessed the situation,

(15:08):
and I remember walking around and I just kept checking
my leg because I felt like I had trappedelled it. It
was one of the things where you know your keys,
you like check your pocket and then magically they're gonna
appear a five minutes later, so you check your pocket again.
I was like do I have And I'm like looking,
is there any blood blood coming out my leg I
was like no, and my legs got hurt, like they
just hurt so bad, such a sharp pain in them,
and I was like, what is this? And then I

(15:29):
kept checking and kept checking. It kind of like dissolved,
but the endorphins of like, cause it was the blast
that made them hurt so bad, But coming out of
it was like coming out of anything else where. It
released a bunch of endorsements. You kind of like I
have a high after being blown up. It's a really
weird thing that happens. But none of my other body
parts hurt. But that's like a testament to like our

(15:50):
chest gear that we had and everything else. Like my
body hurt a little bit, but nothing like my legs did.
And that's like one distinct thing I kept remembering because
it's like a.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Big all that concussion just going against.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Your legs yep, and so just it was and it
was my right one, which was the side that it
was on, and so it was It's crazy because again
everyone's like were you knocked out? People who were knocked
out usually know because it's a very long time. But
I think there's a lot of those where you see
it in real time in boxing where someone gets hit
and they kind of go down but they come right
back to it. They were knocked out, but they hit
the ground coming back and back up and everyone's like,

(16:20):
were you knocked out? I was like, honestly, don't know.
It's just you instantly react when you are conscious again.
When you're blown up, you're just not in a good
space obviously, and.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
One of these things ends up with a guy right
next to you being killed. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
November. I was blown up the first time and talk
about these are the old Humbies where the where the
gunner sits, the metal only comes up to about like
you know, belly button high, and you're just sitting in there.
This is the time where Army had like automated fifty calves,
Like you could be sitting inside the Humby and have
like almost like a video game fifty cows so you're

(17:13):
not exposed. The Marine Corps with the hand me downs,
we still had like the metal in no way, so
your legitimate just popped out of there.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
You're literally on top your torso is above it.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, the whole thing is visible. And so anytime we
come up to something we think is ID, we corded
it off. So we're on this like ginormous highway three
lanes this way, three lanes this way, with like medium
in the middle, and so we see it as we're
driving up. First vehicle we drive up, we're like, hey,
ID in the road, and we go off to left,

(17:43):
go through the dirt, go get a better view of it.
And I still have video footage of me like filming
it just to make sure, like get in like the
thirty two x zoom on my little JVC camera that
I had with twenty gigabytes of data in there hard drive,
and I'd zoom in and I was like, okay, that
looks two fake. So typically if it was a very fake,
it meant like someone was checking out how we operate,
like how do we set up, Like how's this unit
specifically set up? Usually for a future attack, so like

(18:06):
testing it out. So honestly, I didn't think. I didn't
have a high sense of like something bad it's gonna happen.
I was like, Okay, this is them testing what we're doing.
And so I go cording off on the left side.
So I'm facing now traffic, and this is a very
trafficked road of just trucks and trucks and they hate
obviously being backed up. And so now we have a humbie.

(18:27):
I'm facing the traffic that's coming at me the humphie,
and the other side is just still pointed away in
case someone wants to come across, but they're protecting anybody
from coming that way. Then the other two of Humbhi's
courting the other side of the road, so off make
sure nobody comes. We have this little area secured, and
that's when we call EOD to come in with a
little like we have a robot too, a very small
one that we can first drive up to it to

(18:48):
test out see how fake this thing is, and if
we have any thought that it's real, we have to
call it EOD. We usually do it anyways, just call them.
So while we were waiting for them to come out,
and I'm like videoing this thing, and I even like
get out of my truck because we're far enough away
from it, but I get out of my I had
to pee. Most people are like, where do you go bathroom?
Like we just pee on the tire and so I

(19:08):
get out and for some reason, and I typically never
did this, I was like, I'm gonna make myself a
hard target. And I'm like peeing, but I'm swaying, just
like because the idea is, if there's a sniper, why
are they gonna take the shot on the guy who's
swaying back and forth kind of thing. Just be a
hard target. And then there's a time too where I
got my camera and I was getting back in the
truck and I was like, oh, I'm going to get
back in the truck just in case the sniper's out there.

(19:30):
And I closed my door, set it down, and now
there's a tattoo on my arm that you could see
that has like angel wings and a cross, and it
was only at the time it was these angel wings
in a cross with no and there was a little
thing here but no name in here. And so my
gunner at the time, Luke Epsen, before we even went
to war, I got this tattoo, like right before we left.

(19:52):
He's like, why do you have that sash open with
no name on it? I was like, all right, I
designed this tattoo and I wasn't sure, like I'm probably
gonna honor one of my family members who dies or
something like that, someone close to me. But I just
I loved the design of this and just wanted to
show my faith and everything. And he's like, uh, would
you put me on my arm if I died? I
was like, no, you're a boot like that. So it
was like that big brother little brother thing. I always
gave him crap and he ended up being my gunner

(20:14):
throughout the time that we were there, built an awesome relationship.
He was a back home his dad's like his dad's
a deacon now, but they were largely Catholic Christian faith
and he kind of lost his faith before that. But
I used to listen to even though you were't supposed
to listen to music, I'd have Christian music and country
music always playing. And so one cool thing before he passed,
he said that he was like, he's like, I'm actually

(20:35):
glad you're playing that because it brings me back to
my roots and back home and all that stuff, and
I feel like I found faith again kind of thing.
And so, but go back to that time where we
were sitting there and I shut the door and then
some cars start creeping up. So every This is the
problem with the military and the media whole thing, like
starting to Vietnam, when I mean, it was good that

(20:55):
people went over there to like for one unjust thing.
So the military they're like, hey, stop this, we're watching.
But then it got so oversaturated, and like you said,
it not only desensitizes people, it puts rules in a
place that probably shouldn't be there when you have your
best intentions. So the actual rules like the roes or
what you cut rules of engagement for if a vehicle

(21:16):
starts approaching the first step, he has these little flags.
He waves the flags. So if the vehicle keeps coming,
he's supposed to now pop a flare, because we had
little flares in there. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's
supposed to shoot in the air. If the vehicle keeps coming,
he's supposed to shoot at the ground in front of them.
The vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot into like

(21:37):
the top left windshield. And then they keep coming, try
the engine block and it finally they keep coming, You
shoot them.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Does that do all that in about four seconds?

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, And that's the issue with it. But it was
because if someone died and the media just portrayed it
as like, oh, this innocent person was killed. It was like, well,
they were going. We had to react to it because
they were coming at us, and sometimes it was a mistake,
but the other times it wasn't. So he keeps and
all I see is his feet next to me, because
legitimy imagine like you're in a truck with like the
center council. Imagine someone just putting their feet right there

(22:08):
next to you, and like every time you try to
put your elbow up, you hit his leg and you're like, oh, hey,
be cause they're just sitting there in that little swing
that they're sitting in. And so I could see based
off of where his feet are or how high or
how low he's in the gun. If he like sits
all the way back, he has to actually like duck
into the vehicle to not be seen by people. And
so I was like, Luke, you might as well get
down while we're here, because just case sniper's Like I

(22:29):
still didn't think there was a big threat, but I
was like, just in case, And so I see his
feet like scoop scoop a little further into the truck.
But then is his feet go backwards. I'm like, Luke,
I was like, you want to end up on my arm,
don't you. He's like it'd be an ar RuView on
your arm, Corporal Casper. But he just kept getting back
up to like he just wanted to. He didn't want
to do the escalation. He just kept on waving the flag.
I was like, they're gonna keep kind of pushings, like

(22:50):
there's nobody running just and then ten minutes later you
shot and killed right beside me, and so he fell
down into that and we tried to work.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah it was not the cars, but nope, so was
the whole idea to put this thing in the ground
so they could stop you and get shots at you.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yep. And so that means that they had eyes on me,
like just knowing that I was sitting there being a
hard target that time. And then even I had my
door open when I was filming because where shot came from.
As I was filming the propane tank that had to
be within view of where the sniper was, so he
might have he might have been just locked in on
me for a little bit, being like.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
So, do you have guilt that he got it and
you didn't not?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I mean I'm more of guilt because I could have
actually made him get down. But again, he's a good
marine doing his job and it's not like we're both
fought for it. But if I was just like, I
could have been one of leaders. You're just like, no,
get in and get in. Like if I would have
had hard details that there was a sniper in the area,
I would have had him locked in there. And so
that's where that that guilt comes from.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
If our listeners were here, they would see that Luke
is now on that tattoo yep.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
And so I went to Texas where he's from Kingwood
and close his tattoo shop was Humble Humble, Texas, and
I got his name as close as I could do
his hometown.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
See, that's not what getting blowed up sounds light to
a decent stats public. That's personal. What did you know
he's dot immediately?

Speaker 2 (24:20):
No, And here's a good thing that going out was
he didn't even know he was shot. And so that's
the one comfort I could I brought to his family,
was uh, because when he shot, he just I just said, Luke,
are you hit? And he said, I don't know and
he fell into the truck. So that was the only
comfort I could bring to his family that he didn't know,

(24:41):
and that's a comfort that brings to me too, that
they didn't suffer suffer. And so when they pulled him out,
I still had the bullets because it went through his
armpit and threw both of his lungs and embedded into
his arm. And I had it in my pocket for
a while because we had to put in a little
plastic bag for investigation, and so I had the like
that took his life. He got on the chop We

(25:02):
didn't know he's dead still because they're working on him.
They had two corman on him at the time. Another
army unit heard that someone was shot and they came
and two people working on him. They got him on
the chopper. We went off to try to find the dude,
couldn't find anybody, and then they called us back to
base and that's when they told us that he passed away.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
What happens when you hear that, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
It's just for a split second, everyone just breaks down.
But then you realize that there's no days often more,
and we just I just had to put someone else
in the gun the next day and go out there
and act like we didn't hate everybody and just go
to work. So his best friend was there too, that
was with him when he died. Now he's in the
gun where his buddy just died, and I'm got to

(25:42):
control everyone and be like, okay, let's go and patrol tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Money gonna sound like a horrible question, but I can't.
I can't not ask it. Who cleans the truck up?

Speaker 2 (25:52):
We do? We do that, we clean the truck up?
We do?

Speaker 1 (25:55):
You're cleaning your buddy's blood out of that truck.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, so you're to I didn't have to vehicle commander,
and that's selfish of me, but I was just like,
you know, clean the vehicles and so what.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Happens when people loose limbs and stuff? Same game.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. So there's actually an incident the sugar factory for
two seven where the guys that I served with. This
is the deployment I didn't go on, but when they
came back from where there's an id set off at
a door that instantly killed ten marines and they had
all the guys get up and they had three different
black bags, one with green tape, one blue tape, one
with red tape. So if you found a body part
you put in the red tape. Blue was gear and

(26:31):
green was gun, and so.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
You're picking up their friends parts.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, we written songs about that. It's crazy to think
that this is what they're mentally holding on to that
people don't see. It's like nobody else does. There's no
cleaning crews. There's no like investigative crew to come in
and like clean, swab and do all that stuff and
then have a profane, a trained professional coming and swee everything.
It's the people who run it.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
So the kid that's sitting in that gun the next
day when you're going out, he knows Louke died in
that spot the day before.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, he was with them when it happened.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
How do you approach that knowing you are literally any
moment from being dead.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
You don't. You go through it. And this is the one.
This is the grandest part of the military and the
worst part of the military at the same time. As
they train you how to not be vulnerable and to
lose all emotion kind of thing while you're going through
the process of war, but they don't give it back
to you when you're done. So when I was over there,
the only thing that saved us on a lot of
trips was because this immediate reaction to requests. We were

(27:34):
driving one night and so we don't have we don't
run headlights at night, so we have night vision goggles,
which don't work very well. You only seem like maybe
twenty feet in front of you have these little bit
ir lights on the front of your humby, and my
driver's drive in. I'm sitting there in the pasture seat
just like trying to stay awake, like looking at the
road and instantly and this is crazy too, because you
just go up, you just make loops. But all of

(27:55):
a sudden, right there in the middle of of the
road was a bob and I just l left as
loud as I can, and the driver just goes left
and then he's like, what he didn't see it. I
was like there was an ied But it was that
instant obedience to order that saved our life right there,
because that was like homemade C four, like Russian style

(28:16):
Sea four, packed into this little what they call speed
bumps because it's like a metal with a little bitty
loop like speed bump, and they put what they sorry audience,
they call them anal beads. They're these little bitty uh
like what do you call it saw blades that are
just separated by two little pieces of cardboard and then

(28:37):
they wrap them up so the moment that if you
drive over them, the two metal pieces connect and it
completes a circuit. So they usually when they put this
speed bump on the road, they throw them out this way,
so even if you swerve you hit those, it still
blows up, not directly under for some reason why they
put this one on. They put them over the top
of it, and so luckily we swerve left. But it's
that like when they strip away the Marine Corps at

(28:57):
vulnerability and teach you, like just to go and go
and go and not think about it. That's why we
succeed when we do go to war. But that's also
why we're killing ourselves when we come home from war,
because they don't then say, well, here's how to remap
back to the normal.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
It maybe because they don't know how to remap. Yeah, okay,
so that's the reality of driving a hum v around
a rock in Afghanistan and fighting in these wars. And
remember we're still talking about twenty one twenty four year
old kids, yep, and your brain's getting right oled your

(29:34):
body's getting beat up. And I'm glad you said talked
about how head traum works because that's the same thing
in football. Actually, if you get slobber knocked in football,
your head moves, but your brain stays still. So what's
happening is your brain spats around on the inside of
your skull and getting bruised and traumatized. And it's why

(29:56):
there's now in football concussion protocol And until your concussions over,
you can't go back and play football because your brain
has to recover. But you're sidd't. Yeah, military guys aren't
because they go, oh yeah, your bells wrung, get back
on humd and if you get four explosions, your brain's

(30:16):
irreversibly affected.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, And they had they did have rules at least
even when I was there. I think the rules privately
changed now, but like for the better. But even the
rule back then was if you had a concussion, first concussion,
it was like yet twenty four hours.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Off, that is about two and a half weeks short.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, then if you get your second concussion, that's when
you get to do I think a week and then third,
third or two weeks and then third concussion means you're out,
like you're unfit for duty because it's too.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Many times you have four.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Well, the first one, yeah, they didn't think. They didn't
say I had a concussion.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
There's no way if you tore cartlage in your chest
that you were not concussioned.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, but they didn't say it. So I was on
the road with zero at that time. And then January
is like January's second was the first time I was
hit it with the concussion. And I still remember this
because I was sitting there thinking it was only sixteen
hours off and they put me back on the normal
shift because they're like, it's close enough to twenty four hours.
So I didn't really get any time off, but I
remember it being like, man, if I get blown up

(31:14):
right now, he's gonna get a lot of trouble for
putting on here the next day, So that that twenty
four hour went through and I didn't get blown up,
but the second day this is like people always say
I'm lucky. I'm like, you don't even know why I'm
so lucky. The second day of that as I was
supposed to be recovering and I'm on patrol first vehicle.
We're rolling down and a proof of smoke just comes

(31:35):
up beside us, and I didn't see what the gunner saw.
He say, hey, Gooba cast bro. I think someone just
shot at us or something. I saw this proof of
smoke come up, and so I go, we're outlaw. I
was like, hey, outlaw too. Can you check the burm
over here? My gunner says there was a proof of smoke,
and so he looks. He's like, dude, that's a bomb.
And he's like okay, So we cordon it off call eod.
It was two one five five stacked with white phosphorus.

(31:58):
So this is like napalm. This is if that would
it would we would have been dead, completely dead. The
only thing that saved us was whoever connected it. The
blasting cap was the only thing that went off because
they didn't make the circuit.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
They pushed the button when you were BA was on our.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Truck and nothing. It was just the proof And so
that was amazing for us. But it was something that
I didn't even reflect on until really later on, when
people are like, man, it's lucky that you didn't get work,
and I'm like, you know, what's really lucky? At that
time that little proof of smoke went off because I
didn't even we didn't even realize we weren't. Just like
in the moment in the military, you're not like, oh

(32:31):
I could have died, I could have done this years like,
oh my god, that was insane. We almost got blown up.
Like that's how we process it.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
So now it's time to start working new way out
of the Marines and you're told you have a brain injury.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
I actually wasn't told I had a brain injury.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Okay, well tell me how that worked.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
So before this is the funny thing too. I had
to extend. I don't think I've said this. I had
to extend to go to war. I didn't actually meet
when they first sent me to first Tank Battalion with
first toes. They said I didn't make their deployment either.
So I asked if I could extend in the Marine Corps,
just even a few months, And I'm like, yeah, you
could extend if you just want to do a month.

(33:14):
And extend a month, I was like, I did not
know that, or I would have done that with two seven,
but thanks for telling me now, And so I extended
one month in the Marine Corps just to go to war.
So that was a whole nother hurdle. But then because
I did that and they knew I was getting out
the moment I touched down, I had to do my separation.
They call it like steps and taps. I had to
do that before I even left for Iraq. So, which

(33:35):
is stupid anyways, because you're supposed touchdown or just have
this time to like, you know, learn how to do
resumes and stuff. And I did that before I even
went to war, because they were just trying to you know,
cut costs and be like, just do it now so
we can get you over there. So the whole time,
I was considered unfit for duty. So within four months
of me being in Iraq, I couldn't work my normal
job anymore. But I still was in Iraq. I was like,
see you why for duty? Just because of the rule

(33:56):
three concussions you're out rule. I got it and so,
and I didn't know that my brain is was that bad.
There was signs of it, but I didn't know the signs.
I just figured they're the smart ones. So if they
kept saying we're probably gonna send you to Ballad to
get a cat scan, that's where they'll find out if
you have any brain damage. Nothing. They never sent me.
I just kept going throughout my days like normal. They
just kept never sending me. So I was like, Okay,

(34:17):
I must be good. But they'd put me on I'd
be on this COC like the command center that was
on Camp Fallujah, just as like a runner, and they'd
be like, hey, go get Corporal Johnson from Hutt two
to two. But the moment he said two two, I
forgot the corporal's name. And then he'd say I'd be like,
what was that, Gunny? And he'd say it again and
I forget. I was like, what was the number? And

(34:38):
he say the number and I forget the name. I
was like, what was his name? And then he'd say
that he just he'd get so pissed at me. I
thought I was gonna get in trouble. So I started
only learning the number because then i'd run there. There'd
be two guys names on there. But hey, Gunny, once
one of you up there, and then let him decide
once you go up there. So I should have probably known,
but I also thought I was just blown up a
bunch of times. It's gonna take a minute for me
to be unrattled so well for the rest of the

(35:01):
three months goes by, and I fly back to the
States and I get home in twenty on Palms, California,
and I start checking out of the Marine Corps. Within
the first like three days of me being home for more,
I'm checking out going. I went to medical and just
said like, hey, will you sign off on this? And're like,
do you need to be seen by us? I was like,
I don't think so, because nobody ever saw me then,
and so I just had them sign off and I

(35:23):
left the Marine Corps. So I didn't know I should
have been medically retired. I still haven't been, but I
just left and took six months off of just trying
to find out what the next step was, and I
knew it was college. But then after like six months
is when I decided to go to the VA, and
that's when I ended up getting diagnosed with it.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
We'll be right back when you get back. Do you
have survivors? Gill? No.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I didn't feel anything. It was not in like a
bad way, didn't feel it like numb. They sit And
I didn'tlearn until afterwards that PTSD doesn't even kick in
until like one hundred and ninety days or plus out
because it's like the think of whole reality shift. So
I was just so happy to be home in like
next phase of my life?

Speaker 1 (36:15):
What do I do?

Speaker 2 (36:16):
And kind of I felt pretty normal even coming home,
even because you reflect on it and you feel like
you're a bad person because you don't feel anything. You
don't you don't feel anything that your friend. Do you
feel it? Obviously you can't. It's hard to bring up.
You can't talk to people. But you don't feel it,
feel it like you think you would in the first
initial stage of getting back. And I think that's because
excitement's out weighing everything else. Your excitement levels are so

(36:37):
high that it's kind of depressing everything else. So you're like,
I'm back home. My mom came to see me, my
girlfriend at the time came to see me. Like, Oh,
I'm gonna do this. We're gonna travel across the country.
I'm gonna eat Taco Bell. It's been like seven months
and I hate Taco Bell. And you start getting so
excited that I think you're suppressing them until it all
just hits you at once. And that's kind of what happened.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I don't know the numbers, but I think during that time,
how many servicemen a day were committing suicide.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
So it's the numbers now they say is roughly there's
roughly twenty suicides a day, and that's military and veterans,
mainly veterans, is like seventeen points something of that. The
other ones are active and reservist. But that's just to
say that's including active.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I didn't realize.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Yeah, it's like number three for active or something. But
that's only the VA study. So there's something called American
Warrior Partnership out of Atlanta that did another study, a
deeper dive where they partner with university you think of Alabama,
and they went down to the Corner Report because what
happens is if you don't have a suicide letter, they
don't count as a suicide of a veteran. So if

(37:41):
you get in a car accident or overdose or anything else,
it's not suicide, it's an overdose. They're very black and
white on that. But the Corner Report went down to
like they actually went they searched every veteran who died.
They went down to the path of being like is
this most likely a death? So what they found was
in their study that it is minimum of twenty three
suicides a day in the veteran military is but it's
most likely up to forty three because the people who

(38:03):
didn't have notes still had all the indications that they've
and I've seen this through the work we do with Creative.
It's where someone was like, hey, before this program, I
was going to have a rock climbing accident. I wasn't
gonna leave a note. I didn't want my kids to
know I killed myself. I was just gonna say, you know, hey,
your mom fell off a rock. And so I know
that they don't lead notes all the time. And so
they did this big study that shows that most likely

(38:24):
it's anywhere between the twenty three and the forty four
number a day. Currently, that's.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Between two and twenty five hundred service people annually.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, we were safer in war than we were at
six thousand people died in that twenty year war.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Right, and now you're losing five times as many service people, yeah,
at home than you did in theater. So the war
continues to kill service But.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
That's the thing too, it's not even the war. Suicide
is as a whole as up and a lot of
that goes back, like childhood suicide and all that, and
so I think these later states suicide, we're seeing a
lot of non combat people who are killing themselves, a
lot of active duty people who've never seen anything that
are killing themselves. And so it's so hard to pinpoint
it now where it's at. Back then it was pretty
high because people didn't know how to deal with it,

(39:18):
But now the numbers only keep growing. I think it's
because a whole social like econotic, like the when iPhone
came out, I was a part of the I was
honored enough to be invited to the Province Task Force
before it was inside the government. And so if you
don't know, one of the things that Trump put in
place was like this thing called Province Task Force, and
it's supposed to be outside of the VA government. It's

(39:40):
supposed to be a bunch of entities so that nonprofits
get together and other people and solve veteran suicide. Drew
a bunch of like however, it is, just try to
solve it. I was the only arts nonprofit at the
table at the time, which I thought was awesome. I
went to DC met with all these people. It's like,
this is gonna be great. So we started doing this
like work up and then now it's been pulled into
the administration. After the next administration came in, they're like, hey,

(40:01):
let's pull this back in to the government. Good and
I've been excluded from it. But when I was there
the first time, they said, what we're really tackling is
not veteran suicide. We are going to tackle that, but
we're going to figure out why it's happening, and we're
going to sprinkle that into everybody else. And they showed
us statistics where like the highest rate of suicide in
or highest rate of death in like Arizona somewhere from

(40:22):
thirteen to sixteen year olds is suicide. It was a
crazy number. And they showed us the correlation between like
two thousand and eight up and suicides in every single population.
So what we're ultimately trying to solve wasn't just better suicide,
it was everybody's suicide. So I think that's where sometimes
these I do want to preface this not war always,
but it is there is an issue, and it's a

(40:44):
military is the biggest.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Part of the issue, even if it's twenty two No,
I know you can cut that number to fifteen hundred
hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
No, a lot of it is fatter. A lot of
the venters that we deal with is from war specifically.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
So you've got a brain injury, you're trying to figure
out life, and you want to go to college, and
now enough time has pass that you're suffering from PTSD.
Did you ever consider suicide?

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Oh yeah, I mean, but my faith in God was
the one thing that kept me above water when I
if zero was killed myself and a hundred was me
before war. I was at a nine when I first
went well, it was during college when I was in
my deepest, darkest place. But I was like in a
nine and I was hovering there. But again, it was
just my personal faith that I was just like, I'm
never gonna do this. But I thought about it a
lot of times, but I just was like, I'm not

(41:35):
gonna do this.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
That's dark.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Oh yeah, it was a lot of thought. I mean,
I was hurting. I was everything, like I didn't know.
I went from him again, not that it's a big
deal in the kid twenty two person class, but I
was prom king. I was class clown. I went and
guarded the president of the United States. I went to war,
and I'm a twenty two year old, Like what other
twenty two has a life like that kind of life
experience of what I went through. And now I'm bouncing

(41:59):
in a bar with a brain injury and I can't
learn new technical skills and I have debilitating anxieties that
I can't leave the house for some reason. I didn't
know why I was anxiety about, and I didn't know
for the longest time I would. So I went to
college at first, like normal, I went. I wanted to
study business business school, right business entrepreneurship at this community college,
because again we didn't have money. So I was like,
I knew, I'm going to community college route, then I'll

(42:20):
probably do a four year of college with the GNI bill.
So I start going and I failed my very first
business class, and that was the first sign of that
there was a bigger issue than I knew about. Because
I didn't have to use my brain for six months.
It was like I took my Harley to surgis. I
just rode around. I didn't have to really fully function
with my brain. It was just a normal day to day.
And so now I'm in school and I sign up

(42:41):
for this hybrid class, which is online. You're in class
every Monday, but you do online stuff, and I could
not get There was a process where I was like,
I never remembered where to go like online even how
to even once I figured out how to go online
to get it, I didn't know where in there. And
I just ended up failing that class so miserably that
that's when I went to the A hospital. I was like,
I think there's something else wrong with me. And I

(43:03):
go through the whole process and they ended up diagnosing
me with tramic brain injury. And back then when they
don't know how to talk about it, they're just pretty
much like, oh, yeah, so if in two years you
don't see any like anything better, you're probably gonna be
like this rest of your life. Like that was their thing,
not like right, yeah, so I have a time or
two years and we're good, uh and so, but they're like, hey,
you're probably not gonna learn new technical skills. Your left

(43:24):
brains injured, so your short term memories like jacked up,
you're all this stuff. You're my speech at the time,
I did a lot of um my roll index was
broken in my head. I couldn't find words and all
these issues. And so now I'm thinking like, wow, I
can't do a lot of even though I look like
I'm you know, working a lot very fit, I still
my body doesn't function that way. I'm still very much injured.

(43:47):
And so I was like, well, I can't get like
a heavily physical job even though I look like I can.
And then I can't learn new technical skills, like I'm
a piece of crap, Like what can I do? And
so even in Illinois, they make you do speech classes.
And this is when I found out I had anxieties
really bad. I'm supposed to do speeches in front of
these eighteen nine year old kids. Nope, they don't have
any kind of you know, life, and like they haven't

(44:09):
done anything like high school four months pretty much high school.
This is their first writing class, speech class. And I'm
back here, this veteran serve four years gard the president,
and all we have to do is write a little
report and then go up in front of class and
read that report. Seems easy, right, Well I got debilitating
anxiety to the points where I had to do one
on one speeches my speech teacher. I had to go
tell her that I had, Like there's a kid who

(44:31):
had autism like on like on the like I don't
want to be around people style that still would get
up in front of class and do something. And then
there was me who, when you look at me, every
part of me should have been able to go up there.
I couldn't and I couldn't get over that. And that's
part of the reason why like even contemplats suicide because
I was like, what am I gonna do? Like if
I keep like if I'm broken physically and I'm broken mentally,

(44:53):
just what is there in the world for me and
so and.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Who's gonna want to be around me? Yeah, and so
I just cause the anxiety.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
It was in anticipation anxiety. I didn't even know what
it was. It was the idea that I was going
to be in front of class, speaking in front of people.
And I think it ultimately comes back from being blown
up by not knowing who was blowing me up. And
so I'd be just driving every day like normal, then boom,
and then I was just sitting in my truck when
my gun I was boom killed. And so I think
it was anticipation anxiety that is I was in the

(45:21):
front of the class, or if I was the first
person walking in or something like, something could happen to me.
So I never knew what it was though, and that's
where a lot of suicide comes from. It was because
we never asked why why am I getting anxiety?

Speaker 1 (45:33):
I never even thought about that. What about just driving around?
Didn't you drive around and have flashbacks? And so it's
not flashback, passed a thing on the sidewalk and freak.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
So I didn't know that was happening, but it was happening.
So you're subconscious, don't so yours? And this is the
important thing that I get to tell veterans, is like,
you're subconscious. Like so they taught me. There's this really
cool article that described it the best and they broke
it down Barney style. So they said, you have Barney. Yeah,
they broke it down Barney style. They said it you
had your foret very simple, very simple, your forefront of

(46:04):
your brain and in the back end of your brain.
And one's like your your uh how did they say it?
But I think it was just like forefront of the
back end of your brain. And so your forefront of
brain is like what we're doing right now, we're talking,
we're doing all this stuff, but if anything happened, someone
came in here or shooter came in, we'd all go
into a fight or flight brain, which is actually separate.
It has no emotion, it doesn't attach motion. It's just

(46:24):
if you're trained well enough, you go and fight. If
you don't, you come back. And so in that brain
is where like if you killed someone overseas in a
fight firefight, and then you come back out of it
and you're like, I didn't I didn't care that I
killed that person in the moment, like I didn't feel anything.
So you your brain starts talking to each other. Little brain,
big brain starts to me like big Brain's like, why
didn't you feel compassion? Why do you kill that person

(46:46):
not feel anything? Then your wear brains just like I
don't know, like I don't know why I did. So
you're having this internal discussion or subconscious like are sometimes
to picks up on everything. That's why we have anxiety
before we think of like why am I about to
get anxiety? So that anxiety subconscious was telling me when
I was driving to school, then I was going to
be blown up. But the forefront of my brain is
just like I'm going to school, So my body's reacting

(47:09):
to my subconscious and my mind's reacting to like what
I'm doing that day.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Which is so interesting. That's how that that's how you
don't understand it, but you can't get your body to
do what you wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Yeah, that's what leads to suicide. Is that whole why?

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Why?

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Why is this happening? And never trying to discover And
that's where my next choice in life is what saved
my life and saved a lot of other vendors' life.
Since then was I decided to do art, I decided
to take.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
So okay, so yeah, So, first of all, that is
so freaking gosh. I don't want to say it's interesting
because it's horrific, but it is interesting. It's horrifically interesting.
I guess that so many of our young men and

(47:57):
women who served us come back to the United State
with that very thing going on in their brains, and
somehow they're trying to at the same time fighting all
these internal struggles. They're trying to re enter a normal,
civilized society and they're having a hard time finding their

(48:17):
place in it. And who do they talk to? Because
unless they're sitting there with a buddy who's been through it,
nobody can really I can hear you, and I, for
God's sakes, I empathize with that. But there's no way
you can tell that story to someone who doesn't experience
it and think that we actually get it. So now

(48:40):
you're also isolated. So you've got anxiety, you've got things
going on, you've got suicidal tendencies. You have to feel isolated,
and you can understand why people would say I'm hanging
it up.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, and I get it was so bad. I got
anxiety about getting anxiety one time, and I still remember
it because I make is same sandwich like I legitmate
wouldn't leave house unless it was absolute need, ran out
of all food supplies, and I was. I was trying
to get job interviews. It's still like in that moment
where you're like, you knew you had some issues, but
you had to be successful, try to as hard as

(49:13):
you could. So I was gonna go to a job interview,
and I was making like a sandwich for the day,
just like malooney and cheese sandwich, probably through ketchup on there.
Because I was that type person like ketchup.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
That's disgusting, nasty dude, that was my jam. I will
not feel bad for you. I will empathize with everything
you've said except for that disgusting to that have information.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
So I'll be eating this awesome sandwich.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
There's nothing awesome about maloney and.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
And uh about before I was going to this job interview,
which I was getting anxieties because of the job interview, right,
but I was eating the sandwich when I was getting sure.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
It wasn't about thea you were going to have from
the Bolooneian barbecue.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
I was well trained. This was at least my thousands sandwich.
So the next day, when I had nothing to do
besides probably game with my buddies, was making a sandwich.
I started making the sandwich, and my anxiety came. Why again,
because my body remembered, you know, the body keeps a score.
My body remembered getting anxiety the previous day making the sandwich.

(50:12):
I was getting anxiety because I was getting anxiety. Wow,
it was like and that's where I think people will get.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Caught up as just to make it literally cristy.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Because they think, like what and so that's that's honestly.
When I was like, something really has to change. And
that's again when I went to I was still in
college even though I was failed my classes, and I
was sitting there taking again, optimism goes a very long way,
and I was sitting looking back saying, Okay, I guarded
to the President of the United States and had a
really high clearance. So now that I am going to college,

(50:42):
what I did learn and the separation program was you
don't really need the degree you're going for unless it's
very specific, like obviously, if we're gonna be doctor, you
need a degree, but if you wanted to even go
law enforcement, you didn't actually need like a law degree,
like law enforcement degree. If you wanted to be executive
director of a non probably you don't have to go
through non off of management school. You just need a
degree because it shows people that.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Get will to go yeah, and you can commit and finish.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
And so I was thinking, Okay, I have the background,
which is what most people don't have, like top TOI
your security clearance, experience guard than the president. Now I
just need a degree and I could be an FBI
AGENCYIA agent, whate a three letter agencies and just be
And I thought that might bring me normalcy again as
being in a place where maybe combat something like that.
And so I was like, but what can I do
to get a degree now that I have a brain

(51:26):
injury and I can't really do so and I have anxiety?
So where can I go be with people who I
don't want to talk to they don't want to talk
to me. Maybe I'll be an artist.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I was like, yeah, coo, are you kidding?

Speaker 2 (51:36):
I'll sign up for some art classes so I don't
have to talk to these kids who don't want to
talk to me. I don't have to worry about that.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Dude, a six foot five veteran rolling in with a
bunch of eighteen year old and I had a Harley.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I had Harley cut off more cutoffs than I did
shirts with sleeves on it. And I was like thirty
pounds heavy and it's working all the time.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
That well, but the artists crowd can be a little
eclectic and all that. So but I just got to
believe one thing did not look like.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
No, when people see me walk in this room, just
like what is that? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
But it was good because again they didn't want to
really talk to me. I didn't want to talk to them.
There's no like, I didn't have to use my brain
that much. So I thought, you know, I was like, okay,
I'll just paint some things, eat some crans like marine stew.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
So the only one that knew I had disabilities was
a teacher because I had to report, like, hey, if
I anxieties want to leave the room or not show
up to classes, probably because something's happened on a PTSD
flare up kind of thing. And so I'm learning drawing
and painting and it's going well. I go to my
gunner's grave every single year. I go to Houston to
visit his family. I didn't know his family before he

(52:59):
was killed. Sales afraid to call his family back when
you can still they still had some you know, you
flip through the books and find some people and UH
call him up and just you know, I left a
voice message saying, hey, you don't know me when I
served with your son, and I'm coming to his grave
on the day he died, and so I just want
to know. I was being in town and they called
me and they said, you need to stop by your
house if you're coming. So I went there and I

(53:21):
haven't I've never not gone. I haven't missed a year
going to his grave and December spend time stayed his
family's house, spend time with him.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Do you have a wump in your throat walking up
to this kid's family? Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
The first few times, the very first time, because I
was legit, I was in charge of him when he died,
so I could have got a slap in the face.
They could have been wanting, you know, me to come
there for retribution, or it was going to be something different.
And I'm so glad they are who they are because
I remember getting out of that truck and my uncle shake.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
I would be so freaking nervous I was. That was anxiety.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
That was the most nervousness I've ever had. I had
one phone conversation with him saying I was coming to town.
They said, we're having a awake, like a celebration of
life for Luke. So please, We're gonna be at our
neighbor's house across the street. Just come over when you
arrive and pulled in and she was like, are you rich?
And I was like yeah. She gave me like the
biggest mom hug ever, and at that moment, I knew

(54:16):
everything was.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Gonna be all right, and so did they want to
know everything?

Speaker 2 (54:20):
No, they didn't, like they they kind of well she
did specifically only because there she heard. It was a
few years after that, like the first year, I just
wanted to be like I served with him, no nothing else.
Second year I came, Third year I came, and I
think it was the third year where I just had
to tell her that was the lump of the throat,
like I need to tell her that her son didn't suffer,

(54:43):
Like I don't know how much detail I'll get in,
but I need her to know that she that he
didn't suffer, like that was the main thing. And then
come to find out that, you know, the other brains
that served with him, he was engaged at the time.
They decided when they came home to tell his fiance
that like he said your name when he died, like
try to bring her come by, which is all crap,
which but that got back to the mom. And so

(55:04):
imagine you're the mother of him thinking that another lady
was like coming out of his mouth when he died,
not his own mom. And so it's like this idea
that like the is so I never wanted her to
feel that, so I had to tell her. So I
ended up telling her the whole thing, and she's like,
I knew it. I knew that if it was any
woman's name coming out of his mouth at the end,
it was going to be his mom's name. And so

(55:25):
that was the thing that I just felt so good
that I got that off my chest because now she
knows that he just didn't know.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Once are again, these are not conversations that people are
supposed to have telling parents about how their children die, No,
and reliving it. Yeah, all right, so you're an art class.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
So now I'm an art class. I have this photo
of me and his grave that my uncle took when
I was sitting there, and I just loved it. It
was like I was my hand on his grave, it
was the tattoo with his name on it. It was
me just kneeling there. And so in this class, I
wasn't you're not supposed to do You don't need to
do conceptual things or just you could copy photos, you
could do whatever kind of you I want. You're just
learning at this point. It was like I think by
that time, it was drawing too or painting too, and

(56:05):
I'm doing chalk pastel, and I have this photo of
me and in my gunner's grave that I'm just doing
by myself in the corner again, don't want anybody to see.
And I'm coloring in everything skin tone this way's supposed
to be, the cami shorts, the black shirt, his headstone.
Everything is an exact replica of the portrait or the
photo that I have next to it. And my teacher
comes up behind me and he said, hey, I know

(56:27):
you're probably gonna do the background green because it's grass.
I see it here. But I just want to challenge
you to do painted a color that wouldn't grass, would
never be like it never be this color, Because if
you do something like that, you gotta imagine that your
art's gonna live where you're not. So if it's sitting
up in a room somewhere and you're not there to
explain it. If you want that person viewing it to

(56:49):
know that you're a part of this piece, you need
to have a conversation with him. So and I first
I didn't I didn't understand any of that, and I
still barely understand it. I'm like, that sounds stupid, Like
I don't want to mess up this drawing because it's
really good. It's like it's like the best I've done yet,
and it is my first time doing chalk pastel. Every
part of me was saying, don't do it because I'm
going to ruin this piece. And I ended up getting
red and just I did everything red behind it, just

(57:11):
because I'm good marine follow rules, did everything read, not
knowing why. And then it comes to critique time, and
I was so art dumb. I didn't know what critiques were. Really,
I just you know, I put up my piece. The
other kids put up their piece, and then he's like, Richard,
do you want to talk about your piece? I was like,
uh no, thank you very much. I'm not gonna talk
about like Richard, do you want to talk about anything.

(57:31):
That's why I'm in hope. That's why this is my piece.
Like that's why I'm here.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
I'm here not to speak.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
Yeah, And then they say, students who had no idea
about my life, like what do you think about Richard's piece?
What do you think he's saying? And then each one,
one by one is like, I think you put Redd
in there because you you're so angry your buddy died.
And I didn't put his name on there. Anything I
put I actually put on the thing John fifteen thirteen,
which is no great or yeah, no great love has

(57:57):
a man than to lay down his life for a friend.
And so I didn't put any names on there, like
it was somebody just put that piece up there. They said.
Another person's like, I think you put red in there
because you love this person. Another person said, oh.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
I'd representing love, which I'm sitting here being glorious thing
thinking it represents.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
But that was the third person. The third student said,
I think you put red in there because you saw
his blood. You are with this person when he died.
And I'm sitting here thinking, holy cra these eighteen night
tel kids. You know nothing about me. And I felt
like I was connected to for split second, I felt
like they were a battle body because I didn't say
anything and they heard everything. And so now I found

(58:35):
a way to talk about my issues without actually talking
about them, which is my biggest issue.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
And you were speaking through your art and I was speaking.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Through my art. So I was like, what is this
voodoo witchcraft that just happened? Like like how did how
did you know? And I talked to my teacher more
about it. He's like, that's what conceptual modern art is
supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to hide symbols,
use color that evoke emotion that has different meaning, and
tell a story without actually telling a story. And that's
what really good artists accomplished by doing it. They don't

(59:02):
tape bananas to walls. They do other things that like
really evoke emotion. And because there's the whole thing like
never go to art, like you don't go all the
way to that side of it. You have to stick
in this middle ground where everyone can understand it. And
that's where I was going. I was like, imagine I
used one color to tell that story. Imagine if I
understood every color and every pattern and everything, Like what
stories could I tell? And get off my chest? And

(59:25):
so I just dove deep into this idea of like
art and how I tell my story and I started
everything from that point. I was taking creative writing classes,
I was doing every kind of art form to really
trying to dive into it. So here I am this
community college because I have no money, and this like
gi Bill is paying for it, Okay, But then someone
from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, not

(59:46):
the Art Institute. It's like the global chain, like the
School of the Artist to Chicago, where Georgia O'Keeffe went,
Walt Disney went there. Disney, right, yeah, Walt Disney went there.
Hugh Hefner, if you're that type of fan, he went
there too. So a lot of artist, a lot of
big alumni went there. And so they were like, this
is like the Harvard of Art schools art institutions. And

(01:00:08):
they came down and talked about what their school was,
and I was like, oh, this is in my backyard.
I was like, I'm gonna apply there. And I tell
my teacher that and he's like, whoa.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
He's like, this is Harvard.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
He's like, you either just have a lot of money
and you can get in there probably, or you study
art your whole life. Like it's those two demographics they
typically get even in Harvard. I have a lot of money,
no people, or you're super super super smart. And so
he's like, so I just don't want to break your heart,
like I wouldn't go up there. So me optimist, I
was like, that's the only school I'm going to apply

(01:00:38):
for after this. So I applied for the school. I
go up through my portfolio review, which every other student
up there has thirty pieces of art like that was
like the maximum was like, and it's sixteen to thirty.
I pull up with like twelve and eight of them
are still lives, like where you just take a piece
of fruit and color it in like that would because
I didn't have any concept material because I just discovered heart.

(01:00:59):
So I go up there with my portfolio review on
review day and they give it like a they have grading,
and that one was fully just being graded on like
draftsmanship and so like he's good enough to at least
apply for the program based off of his skill set.
And so then it was the whole like interview, go
up there with my portfolio again to talk.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
To miss special in the Marines.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
It was the same kind of process, and so I
go up there and I don't remember what her name,
but I remember was a female was talking in the
ministration office and I was showing her and she was
looking at my pitiful, you know, placement of all the things,
and I was like, Linda, Linda, Linda, listen, no.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
I was just like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
She was like, you are obviously good at dude, like drawing,
paint and all this stuff. But what we really are
heavy on are like the next big artists, like concept ideas,
modern art, all this stuff, which this is just lacking.
You have like two pieces that really touch on that.
And I had to be like, listen, I am either.
I was just discovered art for the first time ever

(01:02:01):
and it's completely changed to save my life. But here's
what I want to create with your school. I want
you to know what it feels like to be blown up,
but without being blown up. I want you to know
what loss of innocence in the war looks like when
you have to save a life, take of life, be
blown up. I was like, and I only think I
could do that through your school. I was like, I
could show people what this is. And so she called
in someone else and that guy came in and listened

(01:02:22):
to my shpiel again and they're like, okay, let's give
him a shot, and they let me into that school.
The issue was I had the old Montgomery jibill, which
doesn't pay for private tuition, and so I knew at
that moment it was another crossroad. Like God put so
many different crossroads in my life where I just kept
taking that hard path because it was okay. The state
of Illinois actually has this veteran grant and the jibill

(01:02:44):
paid me, So I was actually getting paid to go
to school because I was double dipping, and that's what
most people do. Know. It wasn't illegal, but I was
doing it both of them. But knowing that I was
gonna go to the school meant I forfeited both those
the Illinois grant didn't cover and the gibuild didn't cover.
So I knew at that moment, and I was with
I was with a relationship for five years, and so
I knew that if I moved to Chicago and went

(01:03:06):
to the school, that that would be off and that
I would go on extreme debt. And but I knew
that it's kind of like you put the mask on
yourself before you help someone else. There was no way
I could help anybody in my life without helping myself first.
So I was like, I'm going to go and I
went there and that happened. I went extreme into debt,
and then even my mom, who didn't have much money,
pulled money like nine thousand out or four to one

(01:03:26):
k just to support the stuff that I couldn't support
outside of the government grants that I got. She's just
a saint for doing that because she didn't have any money.
She pulled it out of her house. And so I
got into that school and I just pushed at it
and it was just it was one of the hardest
times in my life, but I knew it was something
I had to do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
How long?

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
So I was there for two and a half years,
is what you're saying, Like, how a long? Guys said, yes,
two and a half years. And that was truly You
imagine when I said, like, I went to an art
school like everything you imagine, like the skinny jeans, skinny cigarettes,
blue hair, like that's the school I had. Actually, it
was like reverse Bulliam. I was like an elevator and
someone's like, why.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Are you here?

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Like they were picking on me for being there, and uh,
I was like, I'm just.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Bigger than you. No.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
I was just to me, I just hear do art
just like you are. Because I was still very recluse
and just didn't want to speak to people and do
stuff because I still had such bad anxiety. But being
there completely changed me. It's what I call the worried
brain to artist brain transition, where I learned to tap
into my subconscious like what you mentioned earlier. Driving to school.
Did I feel like I was blown up? No, none

(01:04:36):
of us do. But when I found out as an
artist that that's why I had anxiety. So I do
art around it. I could take photos of everything I
saw on the way to school and put it up
on the board. And now you knew as a civilian
what I saw when I came into class. Just a
bunch of bombs.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
At some point, you did ceramics.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
That was at the school. I didn't know what ceramics were. Again,
I was so are dumb?

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
I did drink coffee out of it, That's what I said.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
My roommate was like, I'm in the ceramics apartment. I
was like what it was like pound plates, glasses and
cups together, Like what do you do? It's like, no,
it's clay. I was like, Oh, that's what happens. Like
you get clay and you get to play with it,
like because even my high school didn't have clay, and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
So and no doubt your parents were buying play does.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, and so he was like it's all free, So
you can come down here with me when I'm when
I'm in this class, when my first semester I had
my drawling collage, all these classes and I go down
there with him and I start just playing with clay,
and it brought me back to childhood, where're like everything
you made looked like something different, and so you just
kept building, destroying, building destroyed, and I was like, for
three hours, I didn't think about war. That's weird because

(01:05:36):
I always think about war or something. And I felt good, again,
what is this voody wiscraft? Like what just happened to me?
And so that's all I signed up for it. I
didn't know what I was going to create. I wasn't
good at it. I just said. That was the cool
thing about that school was no matter what you went
in on, you could do whatever you wanted. You can
come in on painting and ended up being a performance artist.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
And they're still dealing with anxiety and PSD and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
And so that now was my safe zone. That was
like that physical theory there, like just being able to
mend and mold and not think about anything. So everything else.
I put as many ceramics classes as I could on there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
So that's what I might talking about, being blown up
with ceramics.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Not at first, it was just like, you know, what's
crazy too, is you dive in your soap. Kind of
the reason we do the things we do in our
daily life is because of everything in our path, but
most of it is so subconscious we don't even know it.
And a perfect example of this is in my studio.
I have all these pieces I'm building and I start
from scratch. A lot of the is like I'll create

(01:06:33):
something and I'll coil it up and build what I
see and create some sort of military like something about me.
I'll find it while i'm building. And this one time
I had this piece and it had like four little loops.
I started. I built this thing real big, and I
put it up on this table and my instructor comes
in and I have this like coffee cup in my
hand that I go, I turn, I set it on

(01:06:53):
the the my art piece, and he's like, why'd you
do that? And I was like, what do you mean?
He's like, why'd you set that coffee cup up there?
Is that a table? It's like, no, that's my art
piece that I'm making. He's like, yeah, but is it
a table? And I was like, no, it's one of
my art pieces. He's like, then, why'd you set your
coffee cup up there? He's like, your body's gonna react
for your mind es. He's like, your body and your

(01:07:14):
mind are telling you this. And I looked at it
and I was like, holy crap, this is like a
legit pedestal coffee tape. I was just creating designs and
building it up, but it was legitibly something to put
other art pieces on. And it was that moment where
I was like, we do this in our daily lives.
Anxiety and everything else is that way? If how I
explain and I always say, like find your why, whether

(01:07:37):
it's a fake why or not, because imagine We're in
a room of one hundred people and I come up
to you and I'm like, hey, this person's gonna or
I'm like, hey, one of these people is gonna try
to kill you. That's anxiety. That's when you're like, no
matter how well you're trained, you're gonna process like one
hundred different people. What am I gonna do? We're the exits.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
How do I do?

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Like, that's your body. But if I gave you the
same scenario and I said, that person in the back
of the room is the one's gonna try I kill you,
you have a whole different reaction. You're like, oh that person,
the door's over here, you start. You're more calm in
that process because you know what's going to be doing that.
So when I was driving to school, it was the
chaotic why. It was like, why is my body reacting

(01:08:16):
to this? I didn't see anything. I was just why
am I getting sick? Why am I doing this stuff?
I became an artist. It was also identified it. Once
I identified it, I did photos of photo art piece
around it, which then got rid of it. So because
I knew the why, I was able to attack the why.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
It's interesting say that your body and your subconscious speaks
to you before your brain does. That's the big brain,
little brain. Then I have a business version of that,
but it translates to everybody metaphorically, which is have you
ever had something bad happen and your immediate first reaction

(01:08:52):
is myknew I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, Well, that
is a reminder that when you made the decision that
worked out poorly, your subconscious was telling you not to
do it, yep, but your ego overroaded your psyche's ability

(01:09:14):
to tell you not to do it. But you did
it anyway, which is why when something goes bad and
you think to yourself, I knew I should have done that.
Your ego was overriding your subconscious yep.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
And you probably never actually heard yourself say it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:27):
You never heard yourself say it, but you just remember,
you know, And when you say that, I mean that
makes a really lot a ton of sense. The difference
is I'm talking about making a decision about selling a
load of lumper for a price versus another price. You're
talking about the decision about twenty two year olds that

(01:09:50):
have come home with horrific experiences, wondering or not if
they should try to continue on with life or not. Yeah,
we'll be right back. So you transition out of art

(01:10:22):
and you're graduating, and I've read you said I'm eighty
five percent, which means you're covering and arts help and
you recover, and then you think, well, if that helps me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Yeah. So when I talked about that nine being a nine,
and to me, it's like after our school and learning
how to tell my story, and I did four years
of being able to do that through music. I started
teaching myself guitar because I was like, well if I
want to if I could write down my fuddy story,
why can't I just give a tune and walk away,
so that now you could hear his story. I don't
have to cry in front of you. You could just

(01:10:57):
hear it that he lived and I walk away. And
so I did four years of this where I was
writing his story, trying to write make music, making art
about my brain injury and everything else I was going through.
So when I graduated and I was at like an
eighty five percent back to normal Richard, and I was
able to go out and do things and not be
a stress. I still had anxieties and some other stuff,
but I was back to livable, like one hundred percent
livable Richard, but eighty five percent truly me. And I

(01:11:21):
looked back and I said, well, it was just the
education around, like the process I'm telling you, like finding
your why and like baby stepping in tell your story
and saying everything without saying anything. That was the process
of education. Not art therapy, music therapy. It was art education,
music education, and just utilizing it in the right ways.
And so I go through this whole process and now
I'm like, Okay, now I'm gonna do it. I'm going

(01:11:42):
to join the FBI, joined the CIA, I even went
to like a government hiring thing, And I really looked
back and I was like, how selfish of me to
think that I just discovered something that doesn't really exist
the way that it should exist. And I wouldn't pursue
this to help other people who are not going to
see this as an option. I didn't see this as
an option. I would have told you day one, I'm

(01:12:03):
never gonna do that. It's because I fell into it.
So then I was like, well, how do I make
people fall into this? And can I even create a
program in just a few days or a few weeks
that is as impactful as my four years of figuring
this out? And so through the process, I was sitting
here thinking, well, I only told was able to tell
my story through song because I met a guy at

(01:12:24):
a bar who's doing a writer's round and he has
nine number one hits. I think he wrote Alan Jackson's
first number one here in the Free World, and he
wrote like Sangria and Highway, Don't Care, Tim Mogol, Taylor Swhip,
all these all these epic songs, and I just approached
him one day at the bar I worked at and
I was off that time, and he was doing his

(01:12:44):
round up in Chicago, and I said, Hey, I've been
trying to tell my story through song for a year
and I just can't write. I can't put Luke on
a pedestal he needs to be on. If I come
to you in Nashville, just drive down there, will you
sit with me and help me tell my story? Because
there's to be easier way to do this than me
trying on my own. You obviously doing this for a living.
And he said yeah to me and nobody from Chicago

(01:13:06):
just like okay, And I didn't know how big of
a deal that actually was. Two months later, I come
down there and we write a song and a half
in like three hours. So the first hour and a
half we had a song and I'm sitting here, I've
been trying this for a whole year and you took
my words and put it in a song an hour
and a half. This is insane. So now that experience,

(01:13:27):
on top of me graduating and being like I'm almost
back to normal, was like, how do I now just
bring veterans to Nashville to tell their story because it
absolutely saved my life. And so that was the process
that my brain was going through when I decided that,
I was like, I wanted to start a nonprofit that
helped veterans heal through the arts and music.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
Which is phenomenal. So now, after we got the extensive
background and unbelievable story, Richard Casper founded Great Events. But
the first year it was really just six or seven
or eight guys.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
Right, yeah, and I technically co founded it. There's a
lovely lady named Linda Tarsan who's in Chicago, who's a philanthropist,
who I didn't know how to start a nonprofit and
I was just having lunch with her one day. That's
a whole another long story how we got to lunch,
but just having lunch one day after I wrote with
a veteran saying like, oh I wish I could just
turn this into something where I could save more veterans.
She's like, Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
And so she helped me understand it's good.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
So she had five board members come on, I had
a few of my friends and veterans come on, and
then we started Creatives in twenty thirteen. So I always
like to make a note that she helped me co
found Creative a's because we never, you know, truly do
these things on our own.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
So tell me about how it went that first year,
which just.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
So it was only nine I think nine total veterans
through the songwriting program because that's all we had money for.
And I would just like as veterans came in, I
wouldn't find them. I would be like, Okay, we're now
going to go to Nashville together because I didn't live
in Nashville, and each time we went to Nashville, I
would recruit more songwriters while I was with the veteran
so i'd have one group. The first group that officially

(01:15:03):
wrote with us outside of Mark writing with me was
the band called Blackjack Billy, and two or three of
them were number one songwriters like in their own right,
they wrote songs but also did music. So I met
them in Florida when they're performing, just said, Hey, I
want to bring veterans to Nashville. You write with them?
They said yes, So like are.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
You telling veterans? Look, man, I know I've been there.
You can't tell your story too much, anxiety, too much everything,
But you can tell your story without having to speak
up to the public by putting it down and having
a song about it, so what I do or some
of them looking at you going dude, you're not well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
No, At first, it was like my I knew who
was suffering from my friend group, and I would just
be like, hey, do you want to go to Nashville
and write with the number one?

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
You write you out to guys that you're close with
me at.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
First because it was like the refer like we always
know who's suffering with our friends, and so the first
person ever to go through it was more of like
a a he knows he was like a tester, but
he is what like a tester to see if this
program actually would work? But he also he lost his
leg overseas, has sixty percent burns over his body, in
his face, and he did not like telling his story.
So he is the perfect person for me to approach
to see if he didn't even do something like.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
This, was he ashamed? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
I mean, he's he would probably never stay ashamed. He's
just hard working.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
He just doesn't want to Why did he want to
tell him?

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
He's one of those guys he just doesn't talk like no,
that doesn't affect.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Me, Like he's like he still had an internalized yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
Yeah, and and honestly it doesn't like his physical He
doesn't want you to be like, treat him different because
he's lost his leg. He still climbs towers like with
his leg like that. He'd yeah, he is salted or
just doesn't want you to treat him differently. Not that
he hasn't processed a lot of this stuff, more like he's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
But still he's carrying that story and something. Yeah, and
SI's probably creating anxiety and PTSD, right, and you see that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
And so I go to him and I'm like, dude,
you want to come to Nashville with me. We're going
to write a song with a number one songwriter and
tell your story through it's And he trusted me because
he knows my story and I know his story. And
I was like, don't worry, I'm going to be through
the whole process. I'm gonna be with you when you're
writing and everything. But he's like, I've never heard of
yes from him so fast because his love for music.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
Was so great awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
So when I talk about what we do and anybody,
if you want to serve anybody, if you could outweigh
their anxieties and depression. With excitement, you can get them
to do almost anything. And so when I'm like, you
want to come to Nashville write on music road with
a number one songwriter, it's so hard. That's like a
bucket list thing then nobody could do. So yeah, I'll
do that. But also, we're gonna tell your story. But

(01:17:21):
don't worry, I'm gonna be with you the whole time.
So I work with them on an idea and everything
we're like building up. I'm like, this is what we're
gonna say. We're we got it keyed in. Don't worry.
I'm gonna speak for you when we get in there.
I'm just gonna ask you to tell you like about
the song. And that's another psychological thing you do. You
don't say, hey, tell your story. You say, hey, tell
them what the song's gonna be about, which is their story,
but they see it as a song.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Kind of like kind of like, hey, Richard, you don't
have to talk about your art, but we'll tell you
what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Yeah, same thing like love blood yeah, or if you
have background or if you poured my when I poured
my heart into that art, it's like, oh, well, this
art is saying everything for me, or I could talk
about my art piece, like if you were all looking
at me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Oh, because now you're not talking about you. Yeah, you're
talking about the art yep, So I can be which
is a degree of separation.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
It is you're separation. You're projecting it onto there, which
makes it a lot safer because there's no communication to
you directly.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
So that's what's happening with you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
That's what's having a song because it's like, oh, I'm
talking about my song, not the time my friend died,
but you're talking about the time your friend died. But
it's the song idea, so and oddly it's healing. Yeah.
And so he was talking about how it doesn't it's
called until it feels like home because he walked through
Hell for so long it felt comfortable to him, and
so when he came back home, he's like, this is

(01:18:34):
comfortable to me. I know it's weird to say, but
I was trained for this and this is what I do.
So now I feel uncomfortable being home because Hell felt
so much more comfortable to the kind of reverse roles,
which is weird to think about. And he wrote this
song and he loved it so much. He sent it
to all those people he couldn't talk to, and I
had his like sister.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
So like friends and family that he couldn't talk to.
He just set the song and like, listen, if you
want to understand, just listen to a song.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
No, he didn't even do that, because I call it
tricking them into healing, because he didn't know he was.
He was so excited. He just had a song he
wrote in Nashville. He was sentenced to everyone, like I
just wrote this song in Nashville.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
It's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
It's like check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
And uh So he didn't even know he was telling us.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
No, he kind of is the subconscious thing, like he
knew he needed to get this out, but the forefron
of your brain's just like I need to share this
with everyone, Like I wrote a song in Nashville.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
With another way, you're seeing this or you're sitting there
bobbing your head up and down going I'll be damn
this work.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Oh yeah, like within knowing. And he was the first
person to say that three hour Ryne session helped me
more than eight years. I've been at the VA Hospital
and like stuff like that where I'm just like there's
magic here, like for him to him too, just to
even come down here, be willing to come down here.
I was like, I think I just found something that's
gonna help a lot of veterans who aren't seeking help.
Because if you go back to those suicide numbers, even
if you based off the twenty suicides a day, fourteen

(01:19:51):
of those twenty don't seek help. So fourteen of those
twenty don't even go to the VA or go to nonprofits.
So you're talking about a group of people who don't
want to be helped and are not searching help. So
you can have the you can have a program that's
one hundred percent effective and eighty percent of people aren't
coming to it, So how do you build it so
that you make them come to it? And that's what
this was.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
So after that first year of helping eight or nine.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
And after the first three, it was people I never
knew before, and that was really cool, the first veteran
to pip out for the.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
First three guys, So that first year, even that the
remainder of those nine.

Speaker 2 (01:20:22):
There were all just people who heard through the Great
Fighter were like Jesse was like, my cousin is really suffering.
He was in Afghanistan and he lost a buddy and
I call that dude, and that dude would be like, hey,
my buddy I served with is suffering. And then organically
people just started applying out of the woodwork, just being like, hey,
I did this is my last option. I don't have
any other resort, but I just want to I want

(01:20:42):
to come to Nashville write a song. Was the process,
and the moment I picked up the phone, I'd say, hey,
I'm Richard. I was blown up four times. I watched
my friend get shot and kill beside me, What did
you go through? So instantly breaks that ice, and they
feel comfortable enough to say, tell me what they said
or what they went through. And they tell me things
probably sixty percent of the time, they tell me things
they never told anybody, not even their family or the
Marines they served with, like whatever it was because I

(01:21:05):
was a stranger who understood them, kind of like when
you call it, if you called Sucson Hotline, you're more
open to talk to a stranger than someone who knows
you because you feel like you're not going to be
like judged for it. And so when they told me that,
I'd be like, you know what, a really cool song
idea would be about, and then we go into it
and I'd get them so excited about their own story
and be like, oh, dude, that would be a good story.
That would be a good song. I'm like, you know

(01:21:26):
who I paired you up with. This guy has six
number ones and they're like, oh my gosh what. I'm like, yeah,
and we're paying for your flights, your food, you're housing,
and I'm going to spend the whole time with you.
It's like your new battle buddy. So it was just
it was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
So now you're doing the song thing, but what got
you out of it really was art.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
And so now you say, well, because we didn't have
enough money to do anything outside of like.

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
Yeah, because these guys aren't paying for you're raising.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
From the get go, because there's friction points for receiving help.
Some of the frictions money, some of the frictions like again,
your anxiety is too bad, so you need excite me
to way you're anxiety in order to get over. Some
of us need battle buddies. We need to know what
it's like to have someone to go through something we did.
So I had to have a battle buddy and financially
everything had to be paid for. So that was day

(01:22:14):
one a no non starter for me. If we didn't
have a nonprofit that didn't do that, then why even
start one. And within the first nine veterans, we helped
one Native American marine from the Foothill Tribes of Montana.
It costs over two grand just for his flight, which
is unheard of for the other what we were spending.
We only raised like eighteen thousand cash that first year,
and so to think, but I was like, he doesn't
have access to this, so of course I'm going to

(01:22:36):
put him on this list and fly him out here
and put him up and write his song. So it
was that. But I knew I needed the art program,
and I didn't know what that looked like yet. I
just knew I needed to build something. And so I
went back to that school and to the School of
the Arts Shoo Chicago, and I was like, I didn't
know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a
game plan. Really, I just knew we needed a program.

(01:22:57):
I didn't even know that program look like, which is
the worst pitch ever, Just be going there back, you
want to do something with me? I have an art program,
but it's not a program yet. We can make it
a program. It's like the worst pitch ever. And so
I get a meeting with the vice provis and his
name's Paul Coffee, and I'm just like, you know, this
school absolutely saved my life, and I think that I
could probably build a program that saves other veterans. But

(01:23:20):
what I need you guys do is like eliminate the
whole art background part of it. I want to help
non artist veterans come through your program. And I don't
know if it's just pairing up with a teacher or
something like that and teach them. He's like, you know
what we do, you could be the teacher. I'm like
what He's like, Yeah, He's like, let's do this.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
Let's do this.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
You just you get veterans they apply through this program.
And I'm like blown away how quickly he said yes
to me, being like, let's just build something on a
whim and I can be an instructor. So talk about
kind of like posture syndrome. You know already Garden President
was kind of crazy. Just be like, I'm guard the
idea of me, Garden President from Washburn, Now, the idea
of me not being an artist now teaching at the

(01:23:58):
best art school in the country for my program or anything.
It was just like, what is my life? Like, how
is this even an opportunity? But it's because I asked
for it. I asked to be a part of this,
and I just didn't care because at the end of
the day, it's like life is saved if I go
ask and so that's why I was willing to go
up there and ask for it. And then when he
said I was a teacher, I just figured I was
gonna be like assistant, like just be there and help

(01:24:20):
guide them. But he's like, well, have you teach it
and we'll just run it and we do three week
programming so we could fit it in there. Does that
work for you? It was like, I guess that works
for me. So then it was on me to build
the syllabus and get the program and get the veterans
recruited and find the money. And so that's what we did.
Our second year. We ended up running an art program
with I think six veterans and it was a sole
Vietnam vet who applied. And that was the thing about

(01:24:41):
me too. If you do songwriting, I'm not gonna let
you do songwriting. I want you to do urt. I
want to teach you a new skill set to save
your life. Like, if you're doing songwriting, it doesn't work.
It's not gonna work. I don't care how much you
love it. You need to do something different. I think
that's where we get in our wheelhouse. We think, like,
you know, hammer's not gonna fix every problem we have
in a house. So why is songwriting gonna help every veteran?
It's not. And so this old Vietnam vet applied for

(01:25:02):
a songwriting program. I said, hey, we have this art
program in Chicago. He's from la I was like that,
I really love you. Go through because I want to
teach you a new skill set. And so he's like,
I actually grew up in Chicago as a dream of
mine to go to that school, just to go to it.
And so he applied for this program, went through it,
and I tell you what, after three weeks he dived
in ceramics. He called me two months later be like, Richard,
you don't understand what you lit inside of me. He's like,

(01:25:24):
now I'm a part of a seramic collective. I'm going
to college for He's still to this day that was
twenty and fifteen. He's still to this day doing ceramics
and it's phenomenal out in La names Walt phenomenal, like
completely changed the safest life all because we gave access
and changed his direction and what he thought he needed
to what he actually needed.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
And away for these guys to express themselves without having
to talk about their trump yep, but they're talking.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
They are, And that one is I set up differently too,
because when I look back, I'm like, I can''t do this,
Like when I look back at how I started Creativet's,
I was like, I can't do that like nowadays. Because
so these were pretty much there's only one person I
actually served with that was in that group of like
six actually seven. I had to kick someone out for
threading to kill someone, but that was a whole other story.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
But I'm gonna go to Srama's class and I'm gonna
make this knife and then I it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
But so they live in the We're paying for their dorms,
they're housing, their food, their their tuition, everything even food
for three weeks we're paying for and I live. I
teach the class, but I also live in the dorms
with them and I'm their ra so like for a
whole three weeks straight, I'm like from finding the veterans,
calling them all, telling them my story, hearing their story,
buying their plane tickets, flying them out there, being there

(01:26:35):
before to prep all the rooms for them. They're living
in dorms. I'm like getting them situated. By the way,
I'm your teacher. So nine of them meet me out front.
We're going to class Monday through Friday, or Monday through
Friday nine to four. I'll be your teacher. But afterwards,
if you want to go out like, I'll take you,
show you Chicago whatever. On the weekends, we buy like
the city pass so they can go to like architecture tour,
like feel like actual students, not like people going through

(01:26:55):
a program. But on that first day, I do one
on ones with every one of them, cause it'll be
a challenge if you don't understand art or want to
understand art, how to explain Picasso to you, Cause I
could say, hey, he changed the figure twenty six times
and he did these colors because of this reason, and
you're still going it looks like my kid could do that.
But if you told me about your friend being shot

(01:27:16):
in a cornfield meta backed out of a pomegranate field,
and I showed you what that looked like in Picasso style.
You'd instantly connect with Picasso. And so that was my
whole job, was they would come in this room, just
one on ones, and I would sit there, not like
back to back. Vendors would come in, they tell me
their story, and I'd show them what their story look
like as an art piece, like a modern art piece,

(01:27:36):
because once they had that, they said, oh, I don't
have to paint or sculpt. I could legitimately go to
a thrift store and buy this piece and then go
over here and get some clay and then go downstairs
the wood shop and they'll help me design this coffin
and like they now had access to it, and I
just let them run with it for three weeks, thinking
like an artist, like thinking how to tell their story

(01:27:57):
in different ways. Because there's this one marine whose trigger
was a palmergranate because his buddy died in a palmerrant field.
So every time he saw one when we went out
to like target or something, that's when he'd freak out
and have an episode and have to be like pushed
away because he was he reacted so negatively towards it
because he wasn't expecting it. So when he's telling me
the story about his friend being shot in his cornfield

(01:28:18):
and it took thirty minutes for the chopper to get
off the ground, that's why he ended up dying in
this Pombrant field where there's more open space, where they
moved him to. I was like, you can. This is
as simple as like you going to buy a piece
of corn and you writing his words, dying words where
I love my life. I don't want to die.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
I was like, you can write dying words where I
love my life. I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
Because he was shot, gleeding out and this guy was
stuck holding them. I love my life. I don't want
to die. I love my life. I don't want He's
holding them thirty minutes straight of just this till he
passed away, and so that's stuck in his head obviously,
And I'm like, you can do this piece of corn
and you could write his dying words and put a
pomegranate there. That's as simple as your This huge story

(01:28:58):
can be shot here, die words up to the moment
he died, So use a pomegran to show death. That's
all I give him, and then they have to go
out and expand on that they can't use my exact
art piece. But from that moment on they're looking at
life so differently. Now every class they go to, whether
it's three D printing or ceramics or wood chop, they're
thinking every moment now like, oh I could use a

(01:29:19):
wood piece. I could like make a little frame house
for this thing. Oh I could do this. So what
Gino did at the end of this and this is
a beautiful part because he called me three weeks later,
like when we're setting up because we have an art show.
I have to show your art at the end of
the three weeks, and he's like, Richard, I went to jewel,
I went to Oscar. I can't find I can't find
a palm grant anywhere. So already in that three weeks

(01:29:40):
we healed this.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
The first step was he went being triggered by him
to go in to look look for.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
Him, because he repurposed the memory of what that Pomeran was.
Now it's an art piece. Now it's his death. So
I got to show it in a way, and so
he ended up doing this plaster mold of his hand.
He did this like wood board where he wrote for
thirty minutes, because it took thirty minutes for a child. Together,
he did a imer for thirty minutes and wrote I
love my life, I love my life in red paint
on this wood board. I love And when that thirty

(01:30:06):
minute timer went off, he just smeared his hand across
it and stopped, and then he installed his his hand
that he had and he had palmergrant seeds that fell
to the floor to a real pomegrant on the floor,
and that was his art piece. That's like one of
the most shit no matter what. You don't even know
a story. You look at it and you're like wow
when you see that piece. And this has come from

(01:30:26):
a guy who's never done art a day in his life.
But you just give him the tools of understanding like
what art can do and how to hide yourself in art.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
What did it do for him?

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
For him, it was that way to talk about it
without talking about it. And so he now he was
one of my first He was in that same initial
class with Walt. He was my very first art veteran ever.
He was just in our office in Nashville, recreating his pomegranate.
He three D printed it and redoing stuff. He now
carries an iPad with him where he does procreate all over.
It's like a drawing thing. He's like every step of

(01:30:55):
the way, I just when I feel anxiety, depression or rewar,
I just go to my I just create art about it,
and so giving them the tools to attack it from
here on.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Year was this for sure?

Speaker 2 (01:31:04):
Twenty fifteen was technically the first year we had art program.
It was our second year, but our fiscal year ends
in July or June thirtieth nine years ago. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Veterans from fifty states served one thousand, six hundred, is
that right?

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
A lot more now? We served eight hundred by ourselves
just last year.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
So what's your total veterans served?

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
So it's probably up to three thousand or more. But
we have fifteen million streams of our music, which we've
already done study.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
On fifteen million streams, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:31:37):
And we have studies that show that our music actually
heals people. We had just recently a Vietnam that hit
up our Facebook saying I just discovered creative. A's because
we have our music streaming. He's like, he's like I
served in Vietnam, serve eighteen years. Your music has helped
my PTSD so much because I relate to every song
and he's like eighteen years, four months Vietnam, and so

(01:31:58):
we have no idea what the true impact number is.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
We'll be right back. I'm going to read this. Oftentimes
I've been asked if I'm okay, or what it's like
to be deployed, or what it's like being wounded in action.
It's difficult to explain. Art gives us the ability to

(01:32:31):
express what is hard to put into words. It helps
us let our emotions go without the uncomfortable feeling of
someone staring you in the face waiting for response, but
instead they stare at the piece you created and they
come up with their own conclusions. It's therapeutic to be vulnerable,

(01:32:52):
and it hopefully helps individuals get a better understanding of
service members. Great events helps bridge that gap. What else
can you say?

Speaker 2 (01:33:04):
There's it's powerful arts and option, and that's what most
people don't know. They don't they're not searching for it
like I wasn't. They don't fully believe it's gonna work.
There's another guy who's now our veteran coordinator who to
this day, every time he says it, it makes me
want to cry because he's like he we run this
program now at not just the school there in huge cargo,

(01:33:25):
but at Glassdale School of Art in Houston, Virginia, Connwell University,
Belmont University, and University of Southern California. And that class
is where he went and he only went there because
his friend went and he said, Oh, I'm just gonna
go with my buddy and then I'm gonna go eat
a bullet when I go home. I just my one
last hurrah with my buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
He's like, arts, are you kidding? He's like arts and
this guy was literally gonna go with his body to
this thing and then he was going to kill him.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
Yeah, he was like, this is a good opportunity just
to spend my last days with my friend I served
with for free, like paid me to go to USC
and go to school. Cool. And he's still to this
day says he was going to eat the bullet when
he went home, and he's like, I discovered something completely new.
And he's he's now part of organization. He's our veteran outreach,

(01:34:11):
he's our veteran coordinator. So every veteran applies, he calls
them and tells him a story and then gets them
involved and stuff. But that's not the only story that
we've heard from that, like so many people talking about
writing the suicide letter on the day that we call
them or other stuff. It's it's insane and more stuff
like this needs to happen because art truly is an
option and music is an option. And I hate that

(01:34:31):
I treated it the way I did when I first
got out. And I'm hoping that we create a movement
that kind of helps everyone understand that they can get
into it and they can save their life.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Even though my friends and family do not understand what
it was like in a rock, I believe my song
gives them a better understanding of what I went through
while deployed. Man, I tear up, and I'll read that
that is a person who loves his friends and family
who cannot communicate with them. He's enable, and he's walking

(01:35:07):
around every day trying to live life with this brokenness,
and he has to feel relieved of that burden by
writing a song because he says, my song gives them
a better understanding of me and what I went through
while deployed. I mean that's how you get over PTSD.

Speaker 2 (01:35:30):
Yep, that's how you get it. Just we feel like
we have to keep it in for multiple reasons, because
we serve so you don't have to, like the idea
of most people, serve so you don't have to see
the evil exists, and so when we come home, we're
injured because of that evil. If we tell you, it's

(01:35:50):
why do we even go and serve for you? If
we tell you. So, that's one part of it. The
other part is if I tell you, you're not going
to understand. And so there's so many reasons that the
reasons why we don't tell you, But the only way
we survive is if we tell you. So there has
to be a creative way to do that, and that's
what this music does. You have these songwriters who can

(01:36:13):
write a song that makes you feel like, even if
you're not a female, could make you feel like a
twelve year old girl when you listen to them, because
you're just like the impact of the music attached with
the lyrics just make you feel something like even if
you never went through a breakup and you listen to
a Dell, you'd be like, oh my God, I know
what it feels like to be broken up with and
so music has an impact. And now we're working with

(01:36:35):
the best songwriters in the world that don't have to
even truly understand the situation to write it in a
way that your family and friends are going to understand.
But other combat vets are going to understand too that
they're not alone. And that's why we had to be
in Nashville with these number one singer songwriters. And that's
why even people like Justin Moore and Granger Smith and
Randy Rodgers and Craig Campbell, Craig Morgan, Jimmy Allen all

(01:36:58):
have sat down with veterans for free just to help
them tell their stories because they know the impact that
it has them as an artist and other songwriters to
actually help them decipher what they went through.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
When you were going through your height of anxiety and
your PTSD and your brain damage and all the stuff
that people come back with before your art healing and
your own self. And I found out you served our
country and we're passing each other in an airport and
I look at you and I say, you don't know me,

(01:37:31):
and you'll never see again. I say, hey, man, I
just want to let you know, really appreciate your service.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing to say.

Speaker 2 (01:37:40):
Well, it used to be good. I think it's over.
It's the new hello to veterans. It's like it used
to mean something because you didn't hear it a lot,
you didn't truly know who it was. And then there's
this rise of where that's just your normal response to
people is like, oh, thanks for your service, thanks for
I even catch up with sut like, oh your vetter,
thanks for your service, like instantly. And so there's a
song actually wrote with Be, a non veteran where in

(01:38:00):
the lyric and says, your thinkings don't seem to work
no more, because now it's just it's just like if
you say I love you too much, It's like at
some point it kind of like do you because you
play delta?

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
Yeah, the loading goes this way. People who need extra
time and assistance, which are old people and assholes who
want to put their luggage in front of everybody that
don't need any extra help, but use that as an
excuse to board the plane so they have a place
for their carry on. That's number one, and that's one

(01:38:30):
of my biggest pet peeves. So I'm glad I got
to say that. And if you're one of those people,
screw you and everybody puts their seat down, Yes, that's right.
Then then number two are veterans, and then number three

(01:38:50):
active or military service, and then it goes to like
platinum members in first class and then they board. That's
the boarding thing, so pregnant women and women with a
bunch of children and people in whelchairs first, and then
veterans and or active military. And I can't tell you

(01:39:11):
how many times I've been standing in line as those
guys passed through to get on the plane before me,
and sometimes they're stopped, or they'll turn and talk or whatever.
And I've always said, you know, hey, man, thanks for
your service, and I genuinely mean it. I have a
an enormous appreciation for people like you who gave what

(01:39:35):
you gave and struggled with you struggled with to serve
me and my family. But I am hearing it often
and I am starting to wonder if it's if it's
now almost not received well. And that's why I asked no.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):
I mean, we usually could tell, though, like who's authentic
and who's not it's hard sometimes, but most of the time,
how you do it, you can just tell, you know,
you to tell when someone's faking something like hey, yeah,
happy to see you here.

Speaker 1 (01:40:07):
You know, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:40:10):
Here, so usually it was like hey quick, but it's
like when they stop and they're like hey, by the way,
like thank you for like I never think you for
your service, or like when you initial initiate it in
a certain way where it's not just a meeting. If
it's meeting, and then you hear it and you say
thank you. Sometimes it's hit or miss, but when you
got your way to go thank them, it's a lot different.
And nowadays that kind of patriotsm died down like it was.

(01:40:32):
It was from like too much to now, like you
hardly ever hear it from people because it's so distant,
like that war so distant you should and people would
know like that you're being genuine about it. But you
know what funny, there's a veteran of brought down. This
is the first time I ever heard it, and I
legit thought this was like a pickup line because these

(01:40:53):
two ladies came up and thanked him for a service.
He just looks how he did it he like shook there.
He's like, you know you were worth it?

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
And I was like did you?

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
And I was like this is the best pick up
one ever. You were worth it? And then he's like
then he felt weird that I was thinking that way,
because he was like, no, I just feel awkward, Like
what do you say? And I was like, hey, you
know they're worth it, so you're worth it. But he
totally had like Rico like almost like even a week,
you were worth it. But I was like, that's genius.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
Marine, you know whatever. That's hilarious. If someone wants to
support creative outs, if someone wants to become involved as
a songwriter or art teacher for creative outs, or if
there's someone out there listening to us who served this
country and is struggling and needs creative ats, how they

(01:41:51):
find Richard Well.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
The first step for all those categories is just listening
to our music, because, for one, by listening to his
music actually does create royalties.

Speaker 1 (01:41:59):
For the listen to the music.

Speaker 2 (01:42:01):
You can listen to on any stream platform Spotify, Amazon, YouTube,
and you just search creativets as the artist.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
That is that is spelled c R E A T
I capital v E T S creative.

Speaker 2 (01:42:13):
Yes, so just creative with the T S on the
end of it, not a double V, which some people
will try to do. But we released this through Big
Machine Records, and we actually have artists singing our songs.
So the artists will say creative, that's featuring Justin Moore, creative,
it's featuring Aaron Lewis. Finn Skill is so cool. We
had Vince Gill do backups on a song with Aaron
Lows and Dan Timinski and so the idea of that

(01:42:35):
too is a veteran here in those voices and be like,
what's this? Then google us and find out We'll pay
for their flights here, so like go in their.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
Home pull out.

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):
We have had one one R and B song, and
one kind of rap song, one heavy metal song. But
we're in Nashville, so a lot of people don't know
we do everything, but we do everything. We'd find we'd
find the writers who do everything. But that's the first
step because for one, that music really does heal everyone.
Whether you know a veteran or you've been with a veteran,
you're gonna understand them more. If you are a veteran,
you listener of music, you're gonna felt understand and felt

(01:43:04):
like you're not alone anymore. And then as a donor,
you're just listener music. It's helping build. It's not a ton,
but it still streams over time that create revenue. And
then obviously anybody wants to donate on our website creativets
dot org and donate there and learn more. Same thing
with veterans for applications on there, and our newsletter is
an easy way to keep up with all the stuff
that we're doing. And social media Instagram and everything.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
Eight hundred people social media is at Creative Outs at
Creative's and eight hundred vets this year.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
Yeah, and that was through all of our program We
do programs down twenty different states with a bunch of
partners like the National Ability Center and Traf's Mills Foundation
where we bring out songwriters to locations. We probably served
fourteen different states last year and gonna help more this year.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
So you wanted to have a Creative Vets like concert
like Old Farm Aid used to do, remember.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
That we building that. We've had some in Nashville with
some people, but we're building to actually do a little
tour or some we go around the country and write
with people and sing songs. And we've done it like
Coastguard Base in qy Wes. We've done a show down
there for the active duty and stuff. But we're getting there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
Dude, a washed out high school student, last in his
class from Washburn, Illinois, with siblings, who had issues from
nowhereville to just wanted to go to the Marines and
kick indoors. To ended up guarding the president, to coming

(01:44:34):
home with anxiety and PTSD and a brain injury. Who
found art, who found art to save himself and then
decided he was going to save a bunch of others
through the same love of music and art and serving.
I mean, of these eight hundred vets, Richard the math

(01:44:59):
says that a third of them would be dead. So
it's literally saving the lives of the very people who
gave of themselves to serve us. I cannot, I can't.
I just can't think of a more noble cause. How
does it make you feel to know what you're doing?

Speaker 2 (01:45:20):
Well? That gets me to my ninety five percent? Me
so that eighty five to ninety five.

Speaker 1 (01:45:25):
Is all this. It's like, where's the other five percent?

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):
It'll never come back, But I don't need to come back,
like we don't all need to be one hundred percent
all the time. We you know, as we get older,
like we're not one hundred percent ourselves that we were
back dates. So being in ninety five is like more
than enough. Like I could easily survive at eighty five.
But giving back to these veterans and hearing these stories
each time, that's why after like over ten years, I
still talk about it and cry and get enthusiastic and

(01:45:49):
speak really fast about all this stuff we're doing because
it just drives me. With every single veteran who's like
and I wish I could even get into more stories
with you, they'd just be You'd just be like yes
because it feels so good.

Speaker 1 (01:46:02):
I got one more question. I played chess in high school.
That's my version, your version of being a six foot
guy walking in with all the blue red art people
while lettered in six sports but also played chess. So
imagine me in the national championship with the chess kids.
And yeah, I worked out too. I wasn't always old
and fat, dude, So get over what you're seeing right now.

(01:46:24):
But anyway, one of the things actual research says that
playing chess makes kids smarter It's not that smart kids
play chess. It's that kids play chess and get smarter
because your brain exercises it. Literally, It's just like it's
just like if you do if you do three arm

(01:46:45):
days a week, your muscles build because you're using them.
Your brain does the same thing chess. The strategy, the thinking,
the long two hours of sitting and making yourself be
able to concentrate for two hours actually makes you a
better test taker. It makes you Chess makes you smarter

(01:47:08):
over a period of time. As I listened to you
in the same vein, I kind of wonder if having
to think about writing a song for an extended period
of time and express yourself in art, if that doesn't
help in some weird way repair a damage braining, well.

Speaker 2 (01:47:29):
The repetition of words do because like the rolodex that
was broken now I'm recalling, like I forget what the
number of words the average human uses today, but a
songwriter uses ten x that. Because every time we're writing
a song, we're trying to think of what words go where,
we're trying to find new words. We're legitimately going to
rhymean dictionaries online, rhymezone dot com and we're trying to
find rhymes and near rhymes whatever works with the song

(01:47:50):
that we're doing. So that's actually what healed most of
my speech, Like I went to the speech pathologist stuff,
but it was the songwriting portion. So I think there's
definitely different parts in there. I know piano playing at
the early age is the same thing where IQ goes
up when you're playing piano at a young age. So
I think it's the combination of the music, how the
music affects you, like emotionally and resets well that stuff.

(01:48:11):
But you can also remap your brain and remap or
repurpose emotions if you come out of the same dark
emotion and happy, which is a song. Like the same
guy who was like my friend died and all this stuff.
He's crying, but then an hour later he's like, I
got a song. Every time he thinks about his friend,
he's going to think about the last time he brought
up that emotion.

Speaker 1 (01:48:27):
So he's remapping his emotions.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
Yeah, retrain, repurposing. He's repursing those memories as a good
one rather than bad one, because now every time he
thinks about his friend's death, he'll think about the last
time he brought it up, which was in the songwriting session,
which was a good memory.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
Ben Carson a neuro surgeon. Ben Carson neurosurgeon, and he
did the first successful surgery where he took away two
co joined twins that were joined at the head and
they lived. And I read one time when he said

(01:49:02):
that the three most unexplored realms in humanity right now
are the depths of the deepest oceans, the cosmos, and
the human brain that we understand so little about it.
But he says it can repair itself, it does have
a way to remap around broken areas, and he's just

(01:49:24):
seen it too much. And you know, hearing you talk
and hearing the story, I can't help but think this
is not only good for one psyche, but physically it's
actually good for the brain.

Speaker 2 (01:49:37):
Yeah, my left brain is Jambers, so my right brain
took over. That's my creative side, that's everyone's creative side.
And so that was a nothing. Going from nine artists
to the best art school in the country. They said, yeah,
one part was damaged to another part took over.

Speaker 1 (01:49:48):
And went hyperactive and got you good at it. Yep,
what a phenomenal testament to the ability of a human
being to cope if they remain optimistic and they find
something that can help them, which is exactly what CREATI
Vets does. It is, Richard, what a phenomenal story. Do

(01:50:09):
you find it all ironic that you came to Memphis
and we're talking about the strength of music and you
look around you and you're sitting in mephis Listening Labs,
which is nothing but a three thousand square foot area
of music.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
This is awesome. When they when I walked in and
they told me, I was like, this is a perfect
spot for what we're doing. They didn't even know we're
get into it, and I was like, yeah, it's all music,
like we do music. And now to be in here
with all music, I mean, there's no better, especially with
the effects that music has on people, to be able
to come and listen. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:50:44):
And this is a lab.

Speaker 2 (01:50:45):
This is a cool vibe.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
Yeah, it's a cool vibe. And it's a it's a uh,
it's a it's a place that is a testament to
the power of the very things you're doing with Vets.
So welcome to the Memphis Listening Lab and Crosstown concourse.
I'm glad we did this here because it couldn't be
more appropriate. In my opinion, it feels perfect. Richard, thank

(01:51:07):
you so much for joining us, thank you for sharing
your story, thank you for your candor, thank you for
the depths of explaining all of it to us, and
most importantly, thank you for creating creativets and saving the
very lives of the people who've been on the wall
so that we can have our freedoms. And I mean
it with awe sincerity. When I look you down in

(01:51:28):
the eyes, I say not only thank you for your
service when you're overseas, but thank you for your service now.
I appreciate that you make our country a better place.

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
Bro. Thank you, you were worth it. What you were
worth it, You're Jack.

Speaker 1 (01:51:52):
And thank you for joining us this week. If Richard
Casper or another guest has inspired you in general, or
better yet, inspired you to take action by volunteering with
creative Vets, by donating to them, by starting something like
it in your own community, or something else entirely, please
let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You

(01:52:13):
can write me anytime at Bill at Normalfolks dot us
and we will respond. And if you enjoy this episode,
share with friends that I'm social, subscribe to the podcast,
rate and review it, Become a premium member at normalfolks
dot us. All of these things that will help us
grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll

(01:52:37):
see you next week.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Richard Casper: The Secret Weapons of Music and Art (Pt 2)