P&s ModCast 437 - Remembering Super Dave Harrington - Primary & Secondary Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everyone, Matt Land for here with Primer and Secondary.
Welcome to Modcast. Today's episode is four thirty seven. We're
going to be remembering super Dave Harrington. The date today
is August eighth, twenty twenty five. I had phone conversations
with Dave, never trained with him.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
He was one of.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Those guys that always had a huge personality. I saw
videos and things and just seemed like such a fun character,
endless amount of energy, laser focus. I don't know these
guys though, these guys actually know him.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And so.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
A few years ago we did the pat Rogers episode
when Pat when Patten passed, and a lot of friends
of Pat came on and we discussed him, and it
was a celebration of Pat. And this is going to
be a celebration of Super Dave. One of the things
to remember as we discussed this is how life is
precious and our time is precious. And if there are
people like Super Dave that you wanted to train with

(01:06):
and you missed that opportunity, don't let those opportunities pass
you by. If you want to if there's someone on
your list you want to go and train with, or
you want to spend time with, make time for it,
go and do it, because these things, these things sneak
up on us unexpectedly most times. So my background's LA enforcement.

(01:27):
Have been doing the cop things since last century. I've
been doing primary and secondary for ten years now. It's
a good time love putting these together, having wonderful discussions.
During the course of this discussion, it's going to be
some great story time. It's going to provide some backgrounds,
some things that you may not know about Super Dave.
There's also a good possibility I may at least want

(01:47):
say super Dave Osborne because that's how I was grown.
I grew up with Super Dave Osborne. So we'll get
some backgrounds from these guys and then we'll hear. Then
we're going to start talking about Super Dave, his backro of,
his bio, and then get into some good stories and
we'll probably have a couple more people join. I know
Fisher is going to be joining us as soon as

(02:07):
the candies at the range right now.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
But let's go with Kurt for background.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Some names. Kurt Webber, I'm a retired army guy. Then
I was a contractor for Department of State DoD and
some other people currently unemployed in between jobs. Dave and
I were in the Army together. We were both in
the infantry at ford Ord and then went to Special

(02:37):
Forces at just about the same time. Dave was roughly
a month behind me in the Q Course, and then
we both went to Okinawa together. I met Dave at
ford Ord, probably in either nineteen eighty four nineteen eighty five,
I'm not sure. Dave was in the battalion next to
mine and his barracks was directly across the park lot

(03:00):
from me, and then we both had to move barracks
to a new location and Dave's building ended up being
right next to mine, and I had to go in
there once a week to take mail to the battalion commander,
and Dave and I would see each other in the
barracks almost every time I went there. Dave was the
barracks protector. I ended up going to the Q Course

(03:23):
to join Special Forces, and then about a month after
I got to Okinawa at Dave Kane and then we
ended up we were in the teams right next to
each other, and then we both went to the shift
company together and we were on the same assault team
for a couple of years before that, Dave, I know,
had been He was a security an Air Force Security

(03:44):
Force and a Navy CBE and I'm not exactly sure
what the order was which one he joined first, but
he did both before he joined the army. So he was,
you know, a couple of years older than me, had
already served in two different services, and then and then
joined the Army. Uh, Dave and I kind of lost

(04:05):
contact a little while later he he left Okinawa, I
was still there. He went back to Fort Bragg and
then he joined he was at the schoolhouse and then
he joined another group. Once he got to his other group,
is actually when we reconnected and started talking. And then
we both got out of the army, retired and Uh,

(04:27):
as you do when you retire, you go your separate ways.
But uh, Dave, through the magic of Facebook, we reconnected
and then we you know, tried tried to chat as
often as we could on Facebook or through phone messaging.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Cool. Rob.

Speaker 5 (04:45):
I'm Rob HoTT. I have a training company called Semtech Consulting.
We travel around the country doing uh, primarily shotgun training.
I met Dave through the training world. About I'm thinking

(05:06):
when IDPA first started, probably around ninety six, I would
say Dave and I had had met through a mutual friend,
Ken Hackathorne, which you guys are all familiar with, and
Larry Vickers and Dave and Larry kind of linked up

(05:29):
and traveled together some. And my home club was in Marietta, Ohio,
where Ken's at and Larry was an Ohio boy, and
so we would get together on the range there from
time to time. But we both became this is why

(05:50):
Dave was still active duty, and we would go to
Fort Bragg occasionally to arrange thirty seven and link up
with Dave was an instructor there and we would go
down and do some programs. We also both at about
that time became contract instructors for the Department of Justice.

(06:15):
We were doing uh, basically tactical training. I was doing
shotgun training, Ken was doing MP five training, and Dave
was doing card being for this particular group. And so
we would get together at Quantico and we would we

(06:36):
would do these training programs and then throughout the country
we would travel and do Then I d P a
kind of came along, and Dave was always interested in
competitive shooting, and I was fortunate enough to win the
first IDPA National Championship and I got sponsored by Smith
and Wesson at that point, and then Dave came on

(07:02):
the scene. We were relinked up and Ernest Langdon, who
you all know was a Barretta employee at that time,
just shortly out of the Marine Corps, and we formed
a Barretta pistol team. And my background being a law enforcement,
Ernest being a Barretta employee, and Dave being military, that

(07:26):
was kind of the trifecta that Barretta was looking for
to put a pistol team together. So we did that
and we became the Barretta Pistol Team and we traveled
all over the country shooting IDPA matches. All you can

(07:47):
basically say about Dave was he's larger than life. I mean,
he is truly a force of nature. And there are
literally hundreds and hundreds of super Dave stories, many of
which can't be told on a stream like this, but

(08:11):
best told over a cold adult beverage somewhere private. But
literally Normally, when you hear stories about somebody that's a
true character, we call it, there's got to be some
embellishment there. I can tell you from personal experience that

(08:35):
most of those stories that I'm aware of are true,
and we give them a little pump when we tell them,
just out of respect for Dave and because we love
the guy. But the basis of all those stories is true.
Because you can talk to almost anybody, and Kurt, you'll

(08:58):
probably back me up on this. Anybody that's been through
Range thirty seven down there, anybody that's been through the
CQB school. And if you say do you know Dave Harrington, man,
do you that opens a floodgate. You start getting stories
from these guys and oh yeah, man, this guy you know,

(09:21):
And I'll go, yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right. And
it took us all the Dave's inner circle, so to speak,
of friends, co workers and teammates and whatnot. This came

(09:41):
as such a sudden shock. I was in touch with
people today. His funeral service is going to be the sixteenth.
He's not been buried yet. His funeral service will be
in Baton Rouge on the sixteenth. Some of us are

(10:02):
thinking about making the trip down for that, but the
family has let the details out at this point. But
it's just just such a shock because I don't think
I don't think even Dave knew that he had this.
And the first inkling that anybody knew. I guess was

(10:26):
on the fourth of July that some of you may
have heard this, some of you may not have. But
Dave was supposed to go to a neighborhood cookout and
when he didn't show up, they went to the house
to look at him, and they found him basically unresponsive,
and that got the ball rolling for his hospital care

(10:47):
and to discover what the what the problems were, and
then the family took over his care. But it was
so sudden. I mean, this was such a rare, aggrossive
form of brain cancer that it just can I talked

(11:10):
to him probably two weeks before this happened, and you know,
we talked for about an hour. But anytime you're on
the phone with Dave, you know, he tends to ramble
a little bit. And I used to joke I said,
anytime you talk with Dave for any length of time

(11:30):
at all, I said, you better have enough breadcrumbs to
get home, because because he will, he will go left
and go right up the center, have it about face,
come back, and then you're going you know, where did
this conversation start at? You know, but he was always
so you know, laser focused on whatever it was that

(11:52):
he was interested in. And you know we always said,
you know, Dave likes to split Adams on everything, and
but yeah, I'm I'm in contact pretty much daily with
four or five guys that that were really close to

(12:13):
Dave and trying to figure out what, you know, what's
going on with the arrangements and all that kind of stuff.
So that's kind of where we're at at this point.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Cool, gotcha, Freddy Freddie Blush.

Speaker 6 (12:29):
I'm a retired lieutenant colonel Marines, work for a point
for four years, uh than LaRue just stake Farmer contract
and Robard album. Just let's say semi retired. I'm arranged
master of gun Sight and then uh do uh you know,
some teaching on my own primarily uh, you know, house

(12:54):
of worship, security gigs for for people that want to
protect their flocks. And then and also uh own a
company that makes the combat site tool that you used,
Military law enforcement, federal law enforcement. So a little few

(13:14):
honors in the fire. But regarding Dave, I knew about
Dave or heard about Dave before I had retired from
the Marine Corps, but didn't get his chances to train
with him or even meet him. Until I had gone
to work for Ing Point and uh, you know, as
we were talking a little bit before the shows started,

(13:38):
I think it might have been Ben or maybe it
was Kurt a comment that, you know, Dave was not
an easy guy to get to know, but once you
got to know him and he was your friend, he
was a guy that would not only help you bury
the body, he would do the deed for you, so
you'd had plausible deniability. And he was just that good

(14:01):
friend that you know, uh you as Rob said, you know,
definitely larger than life, thought on a different stratosphere than
the rest of us, and and tried to uh, you know, dude,
rack a brad around this and the intensity and just
you know, how he how he brought everything to the table.

(14:21):
He there was no one else like him. God definitely
broke the mold.

Speaker 5 (14:26):
Of that man.

Speaker 6 (14:27):
And and uh he uh, he just just a good,
good guy. I uh got to train with him numerous times,
you know after that, and we'd have conversations on the
phone about a lot of different stuff and and it
was just you know, he had that you know, almost
like a California surfer. But my understanding is most of

(14:49):
his life he had grown up in Mississippi. His dad
had been a CBE station in Gulf Port, and uh
I had retired out of there, and I think that's
why Dave went into the CBS for his first hitch,
and then he did Air Force reserves on the security
force side. But that was for a short stint, I
want to say, less than a year. When when you know,

(15:10):
he saw that I heard about the eighteen X ray program.
The door closed for him before he could get into
the Army on that. So he would you know, I
believe eleven Bravo was with seventh I d out of
Fort Ord and then with the SF route from there.
But you know, just a solid guy.

Speaker 7 (15:33):
I've always said that if one they should make a
movie about Super Dave's life, Mickey Rourke should play him,
and it would people wouldn't believe. I mean, the entire
story would be true and people wouldn't believe it because
it was just so much, you know, larger than life
ship that Dave did.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
That.

Speaker 6 (15:54):
You know, I didn't have to be embellished much to
make it a very funny, very funny story.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Cool Ben.

Speaker 8 (16:04):
All right, guys, Benjamin de Walt I run a company
called on Site firearms training. We're based in New York,
but I personally teach everywhere from Texas to Maine to
Ohio down to Florida, but predominantly we run the New York,
New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, and sort

(16:26):
of Virginia areas. As far as training goes, I teach
full time. Before this, I worked for a firearms manufacturer located.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
In Yonkers, New York.

Speaker 8 (16:39):
I'm not going to mention their name because I don't
endorse their products, but I was the lead armor and
a senior gunsmith for their nineteen eleven line. I worked
in the quote unquote custom shop and built a lot
of the movie guns and TV props and celebrity clients

(17:00):
that we had. So if you ever saw John Wick,
they reference a very specific nineteen eleven in the first two.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
That was one of my guns that I built.

Speaker 8 (17:09):
And important part of that was my wife and I
had signed up about twenty ten for this shooter seminar
up in New Hampshire and a bunch of our buddies.
I had already trained with a gentleman by the name
of Kelly Vendon.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
If you know who Kelly Venden.

Speaker 6 (17:29):
Is.

Speaker 8 (17:30):
Trained with him a lot, and then kind of went
up to this event and one of the little blocks
in the seminar for three days was you know, like
a two hour block combat handgun with Super Dave, and
I was like, I don't know who Super Dave is,
and people who did know him were like, well, you
better be on your game if you're going to be

(17:52):
in Super Dave's segment, because he don't take no shit
from anybody, and I was like, oh crap, Like here,
I am like petrified this guy. He rolls up in
this camouflage, like real cam top, like like you know,
combat top, whatever, baseball hat, long hair, taking the hat off,

(18:13):
comb the hair every five minutes, cigarette hanging out of
the mouth, and I was like, all right, dig this,
Dude's here's a plan goes through the whole spield and
I actually had probably one of the best times just
hanging with him for those two hours. So we got
kind of buddy buddy. The following year, we go back

(18:35):
for the for the next installment next year, and Dave's
there again. This time he's presenting a dry fire seminar,
little dry fire block, and in between the two blocks,
one of the organizers this guy, Mike comes up to
me and says, hey, can you take a look at
my nineteen eleven. He's like, it's been acting kind of weird,
and you know you work for this company. Can you

(18:57):
take a look at it? So I'm like, yeah, man, sure,
we got time in between this block. So I'm at
the front of the classroom, at the table that Dave
is going to use for his dry fire segment, and
I've got this nineteen eleven in pieces, and I'm looking
at the frame and I notice, all right, both sides
of the frame are cracked right in front of the
trigger guard. You got a little bit aware in the

(19:21):
thumb safety window. That's going to cause you some some
weird hammer safety issues.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Blah blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 8 (19:26):
And I'm going over this with Mike, and I happen
to look and we're like two minutes from when Dave
is supposed to start, and I just remember going, shit,
Dave's going to kill me if I'm running into his time.
And I just I feel this presence behind me, and
I look over my shoulder and I just see Dave's

(19:47):
standing there, like, what are you guys doing? Just super
interested in the whole breakdown and all the different parts
of nineteen eleven.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I'm reassembling it for Mike.

Speaker 8 (19:58):
And after that weekend, at the end of the weekend,
I said to Dave, I'm like, hey, man, you know,
we've got about eight facilities on the East Coast from
Virginia to New Hampshire that we not only teach at,
but we also host other instructors at, Like we'll host
guest instructors. Would you be interested in coming up? And

(20:21):
every year, sometimes twice a year since then, I had
hosted Dave in New York, Pennsylvania, east and west of
sides of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, all these different places.
And it got to a point where he and I
would plan these two or three week trips together and

(20:44):
we would go and teach together and work off of
each other and blah blah blah. And that's how we
sort of formed this really close friendship. He would come
stay at the house for three weeks and just sit
on a couch, drink black coffee, eat ice cream, watch
horror movies still five in the morning, and hang out
with my dog. And of course, you know, being on

(21:05):
the road with somebody as you guys know the stories.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
The stories that I have.

Speaker 8 (21:10):
Just from the experiences of, you know, riding around in
a car with him and having him stay at the
house and being on the range with him, both in
a student capacity and as a co instructor capacity.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Just absolutely hysterical stories.

Speaker 8 (21:27):
And some of them are some of them are kind
of scary, and some of them are some of them
are pretty interesting. So hopefully I can get as many
out as we can tonight. You guys will enjoy him.
I know Rob's got some fantastic stories too. We've talked
about in the past.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well, if you guys don't mind, I'm ready for some stories.

Speaker 5 (21:52):
I'm going through my mental roll indecks and I'm trying
to trying to hand pick cherry pick ones that are
suitable public consumption.

Speaker 6 (22:07):
I'm not even gonna worry about it, Rob, I'm just gonna.

Speaker 5 (22:11):
Just say I'll try to give you a couple from
my first hand witnessing, and then a couple that I've
heard from other close guys. But we're shooting the Smith
and Wesson I d p a Winternationals in Springfield, and

(22:36):
we're in somebody's vehicle and I'm not sure whether it
was Ernest's expedition or I remember it being a big
s u V because we had myself, Scott Warren, Super Dave,
Todd Green, and I don't know who else. But any way,

(23:01):
if you guys knew Todd, Todd liked to argue as
a non practicing attorney.

Speaker 9 (23:10):
He liked the back and forth. But Dave not so much.
You know.

Speaker 5 (23:17):
Dave would take everything. He would reduce every argument or
discussion down to the most basic.

Speaker 9 (23:25):
Level, and that would be, if you don't.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
Agree with me, I'll just beat the shit out of.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Him, you know.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
And so we're driving along and Todd is literally poking
the bear and we're all, you know, because Todd didn't
know Dave at that point, and it was like their
first first meeting, and we're trying to tell him, Todd,
shut up, Todd, that's enough. Odd, shut up, you know,

(23:56):
kind of giving him the elbow. And at one point
Dave looks up and he says, pull into the home depot.
And we're like, what I mean, this is like five
or six o'clock in the evening and things it's still open.
He said, pull into the home depot. And if we're like, well,

(24:18):
what what? And He looks at Todd with all seriousness,
and he says, I'm going to buy a shovel and
a bag of lime, and I'm going to put you
in a hole. And the ambient temperature inside that vehicle
dropped about twenty degrees and it got deathly quiet, I mean,

(24:41):
uncomfortable silence, right, and Tod doesn't know what to say,
and he just kind of kind of laughed a little
bit or whatever. And then, for whatever reason known only
to God, the switch flip and suddenly Todd is a okay.

(25:01):
Suddenly Todd's the good guy and Dave loved him, and
that remained their relationship forever. That Todd dodged a bullet
on that one, and suddenly Dave figured out that if
if Todd wants to argue with me or whatever, he
might be a fun guy, you know, and he was
like the pet to Dave at that point. You know,

(25:24):
David put his arm around him and that would that
would be that. But literally, you could see your breath
in that vehicle at that point, because the temperature just
immediately dropped.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Once you were on the inside with Dave, you were
on the inside forever.

Speaker 5 (25:40):
Absolutely at that point.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
You were more than a brother to him.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
Well, and at that point Todd became the inner circle.
The brother and Dave would go to Todd's house and
visit and stay over, and I mean it was just, uh,
he opened a few doors for Todd on the military side.
And like you said, once, once you get to a

(26:08):
certain point where Dave decides he likes you, there's nothing
he won't do for you.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
You know.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, I've literally seen Dave take a shirt off to
give to somebody that needed one, like when you say
the shirt off your back. Like I've literally seen that
with my own eyes.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
I've seen him at matches where a guy's you know,
just you know, we would travel around and when we
would go to the big matches like the regionals and
stuff like that, we would kind of be in a
quote quote super squad. You know. We would be with
a bunch of well known shooters and would we would
be squatted together and Dave would look at somebody that

(26:51):
was a beginner and the guy was having gun trouble.
Dave would get him and go here, dude, and he
would dig around in his shooting bag and he would
hand this guy with his spare gun. He would guy
you know, shows up in a match that has, you know,
a couple of magazines. David be digging around in his
bag and hand a guy handful of magazines and stay here,

(27:12):
catch me after the match, and literally that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
I posted a story on Facebook when when we were
working together. We're in a shoot house training and you know,
we go through a room, room clearing and at the
end of the room there's that lull and firing that
takes place, and the firing could just die down, and
one of the guys said, oh shit, I shot a
hostage and Dave, with like no hesitation, leapt over the counter,

(27:44):
shot the hashest target twice and then said, hey, brother,
you and I are we're going to prison together. Like
we got this. That's like really encapsulate.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
Who Dave is, Oh yeah, and it just without thought,
you know, without consition.

Speaker 7 (28:04):
He liked to do.

Speaker 6 (28:06):
Yeah, yeah, that that.

Speaker 10 (28:08):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (28:10):
I got the story from Jason Devall when it was
Dave Todd Green, Ken Hackithorne and Larry Vickers were working
doing stuff with Crimson Trace and they had gone out
to eat at the end of a day and some
guy was given Ken Hackethorne the stink eye and Dave

(28:31):
kind of had enough of it, and he literally started
wrapping up the steak knife with.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
You know the plot.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
You know, I was there, Yeah, I was.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
I was wondering if you were there, Robin.

Speaker 5 (28:43):
I was there. We were. We were in a little
restaurant that basically served burgers and fries. And the guy
at the bar was given Kim, like you said, the
stink eye. And if Dave was nothing else that, he
was super in tune with his surroundings. I mean he

(29:04):
picked up on.

Speaker 9 (29:05):
That right away.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
And he looked at Ken and he said, what's the
deal with this guy? And Ken turned and looked and said, well, Ken.

Speaker 9 (29:14):
Was a part timer on a on.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
The Sheriff's office swat team and they had done a
hit on this guy's house. A guy's a local drug dealer.
And Ken said, well, the guy knows that I'm a
deputy and kind of explained it. And Dave's like, huh,
makes sense.

Speaker 9 (29:33):
You want me to kill him?

Speaker 5 (29:37):
And well and Larry's like, no, Dave, that won't be necessary, right,
And so Dave calls the waitress over and he asked
for a steake knife and she brings him out one
of those out back looking you know, that's a knife,
kind of steak knife, but it had it had wooden
handle on it.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
But Dave.

Speaker 5 (29:58):
Got a napkin and he spent the next five minutes
sanitizing this thing, wrapping it with a napkin, and he
put it under his shirt.

Speaker 9 (30:09):
And there is.

Speaker 5 (30:10):
No doubt in my mind that when we got up
to leave, if this guy had followed us out the door,
Dave would have put him in the dumpter. There is
no doubt.

Speaker 6 (30:21):
In my mind he was ready to shank that guy.

Speaker 5 (30:24):
In a heartbeat. And we're like, Dave, that's not going
to be necessary a small town, Ohio, Everything's going to
be fine. There's more than enough of us here to
take care of one person, you know. But that was
his attitude. I mean, we everything he did he did
one hundred and ten percent.

Speaker 6 (30:47):
Yeah. I tell that story because it leads into one
that I have personal one where uh just gone to
work for endpoint I'm doing a military show at Campell June,
and Brian Lezanki, who was the president Van point Us,
was with me and and I said, hey, super dam
Harrington's in town training some coast Guard guys. Uh, we're

(31:11):
going to meet him for dinner. And so you know, uh,
we're waiting at the hotel. Dave shows up and he's
bleeding from the face he had they were doing some
shooting around vehicles, had a you know, a fragmentation off
of one of the bullets kind of bounce off the
car hit him in the face, and any kind of
facial injury, of course, always bleeds and looks worts and

(31:34):
but yeah, he's he's kind of hand patching himself up
and and uh so you know, Brian's already and I
already told him the story about you know, Dave willing
to shank that guy. So we go to dinner. I
can't remember the restaurant. I remember, is that the way
the uh, the guy that was kind of the short

(31:54):
order cook, he would he would yell really loud, obnoxiously
at the waitress to come pick up the orders. And
then Dave starts taking a steak knife that was on
the table, starts wrapping it over the action. Willian's eyes
got biggest saucers, comes over and Dave's like, hey, hey,
that dude. Have to keep hollering like that because he's

(32:16):
getting on my fucking nerves.

Speaker 5 (32:19):
Sensing a pattern here. Yeah, we were in North Carolina
at the North Carolina State I d p a match
and we went out to dinner and we had a crew.
Bill Wilson was there, Ken Joyce Wilson.

Speaker 9 (32:41):
I don't know if.

Speaker 5 (32:43):
Jason was there or not. At Todd was there, and
I had this young waiter, you know, he was either
in his teens or very early twice. And it was
everything that we all don't like, ear rings, nose, long hair,
and he kept screwing the beer order up.

Speaker 9 (33:04):
I mean, we would.

Speaker 5 (33:05):
Order a certain thing and he'd.

Speaker 9 (33:07):
Come out and bring something different, you know, And.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
And Dave was getting a little aggravated at him. So
it kind of build up and build up and build up,
and finally we're ready to leave, and Dave asked the
kid if he would get him a styrofoam cup in
a napkin so he could put a rub in. And

(33:32):
this kid looked at Dave and he says why. He said,
are you going to do a magic trick? And the
secondary eyelids dropped and the ambient temperature got cold again,
and he looked at this kid and his voice drops
an octave when this happens. And he looked at this

(33:54):
kid and he goes yeah, dude, I'm going to make
you disappear. We spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes
trying to find this kid so we could pay the bill.
He disappeared. I mean, his whole life passed before his eyes.
He was just deer in the headlights. Look and he

(34:16):
just away went and we never saw him again.

Speaker 9 (34:20):
But yeah, let's get a similar to.

Speaker 6 (34:23):
The story Larry Vickers told me once where he and
Dave and their wives went out to dinner. It must
have been Vietnam somewhere there. But they're waiting for their tables,
so they're in the bar area. But it was kind
of a slow bar night, so there's only ones in there,
and the bartender didn't have much to do, so he
was over listening or overhearing the conversation, and whatever conversation

(34:47):
David and Larry were having, it got kind of quiet.
The guy didn't quite hear him. He didn't realize that
he was listening to conversation that, you know, he had
no business listening to.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
So he made the.

Speaker 6 (34:59):
Comment of like, oh, what did you two say. Dave
looked at me, he said, I said, if you don't
stop listening to us, I'm gonna break your back and
make you suck your own dick.

Speaker 5 (35:08):
Fuck.

Speaker 9 (35:12):
That's about right.

Speaker 8 (35:14):
My first, my first super Dave holy shit moment was
at that first that first seminar in like twenty ten.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
We were shooting on steel, you know, ten.

Speaker 8 (35:28):
Fifteen yards away doing the single you know, single hand
support hands, single hand support hand. His his two and
two drill, and it was the sort of the last
drill of the of that segment, and he's like, all right, everybody,
it's like, come on down to the three yard line.
Throw your pistols out, remove your magazines, clear out your chamber.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
So at this point.

Speaker 8 (35:55):
Everybody's done shooting classes over, draw pistols out, remove magazines.
Me and my wife Rachel, we lock our slides to
the rear, visually inspect cool, slide.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Forward back in the holster, and we're.

Speaker 8 (36:09):
About to turn and head back up range to the pavilion.
It's like this fifty yard pavilion and all our stuff
was sort of staged at and everybody on the line,
fifteen guys on the line, all clear out, pistols, locked
their slides to the rear, except for one guy who
was probably I would say this guy was about one

(36:32):
thousand years old. He takes his magazine out and he
aims in.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
At the piece of steel three feet in front.

Speaker 8 (36:40):
Of him and presses the trigger.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
And my wife and I look at each other like.

Speaker 8 (36:49):
And we immediately make a one eighty and we start
like bogging, like high tailing it because as soon as
that round hit that steal, Dave just exploded on this guy.
You mother, what but like every word that you can
think of in the book, at the loudest voice I
think I've ever heard in my life, just on this

(37:10):
dude in like typical super Dave, like going after this dude,
putting him on blast.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
As Dave would say.

Speaker 8 (37:19):
And I just remember my wife and I were like
double timing the walk back to the to the pavilion,
just going fu fu fuck, just so happy that it
wasn't us that were in his sights on that when
it was hysterical, And that's like kind of what set
me up for the following year, Like shit, I don't
want to piss off Dave.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
I don't want to take up Dave time. I don't
want to piss.

Speaker 8 (37:40):
Off Dave because just watching, like like Rob.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
Said that, whoever said the switch.

Speaker 8 (37:48):
It went in the other direction, It went from like
being this really super for super helpful instructor to all
of a sudden, I'm like this, this old guy's gonna die.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
He's gonna get buried right here, and I don't want
to be any I don't want to be any part
of it. And I just like I killed it out
of there. But yeah, it was that was pretty wild.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
That they've told a story before. He was like before
he had joined the army. Some guy had to stop
light in front of him, was doing something in his car,
and the light turned green, and the guy didn't get
up to drive, he just stayed doing whatever he was doing.
Dave started honking at him and sat through the entire

(38:31):
green light cycle and the red light cycle, and the
light turned green again and the guy went back to
doing whatever he was doing in his car, and like,
Dave's losing his mind by this point, and right as
the light started to turn red, he flipped him off
in the through the window and gone through the light.
Dave ran through the red light to chase him out

(38:54):
of Florida into Georgia and then into I think Alabama
next to Georgia. So you chased him through three states,
finally caught up to him in a parking lot, pulled
him out of his car and started beating him when
other people intervened and pulled Dave off. So we're driving
around Fayetteville during training one year and something similar happened.

(39:20):
I'm driving and Dave's like, chase that dude, and I'm like,
absolutely not. I don't know how many states he's going
to go through. Dave starts fuming in the in the
in the passenger seat and he's like, go get that guy.
And I'm like, no, Dave, we're not We're not going
to go get that guy. We have places to go.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Has he has? He told you.

Speaker 8 (39:39):
So there's two other good vehicle stories with Dave. One
of them we're on the road together. We're on some
highway in upstate New York and there's this eighteen wheeler
that I just I can't get around him because this
motherfuckers like every time I go to speed up to
pass him, he'll speed up and he's in the left lane.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Then he's in the right lane.

Speaker 8 (39:58):
And Dave just says to me, he goes, hey, dude,
you got to get yourself a truck gun. And I'm
like what and he goes, yeah, man, like you know,
I keep a little twenty two revolver in my glove box,
you know, in case these motherfuckers start shit. And I'm like,
what are you talking about? And he goes, Dude, last

(40:18):
time this truck wouldn't let me pass. So I rolled
up next to him, put my passenger window down, firing
around right and that motherfucker's tire and I'm like, so
there's other better courses of action here, Dave you understand that, Like, naw, dude,
fuck those guys. Get you like, nice little revolver, put
it in there. I'm like thinking to myself, holy shit.

(40:41):
Do you guys remember back when he wrecked his pickup
truck about six seven years ago, if you remember that
at all.

Speaker 5 (40:50):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (40:50):
He came up to do a bunch of classes with
me prior to that, and the whole idea was I
was like, hey, man, let's let's make you some money
to get you down payment for another truck. And I
think he went home with something like twenty grand for
like four or five classes and he's telling me, He's like, yeah, man,
I went right through this red light cloud right into

(41:12):
this old lady in her car.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
And I'm like, really, I'm like, you didn't see the
red light at all.

Speaker 8 (41:17):
The Nah, dude, I'm like completely oblivious to the red light,
just drove right through that intersection, doing about thirty five
forty miles an hour. And I looked at him and
I said, let me ask you a question. Is what
he said? How big was the set of tits you
were looking at on the sidewalk? And he looks at
me and he goes with that surprise super Dave. Look,

(41:38):
He goes, who told you that? Go, dude, I know,
I know exactly what happened. He goes, don't tell anybody,
You guys, you can't tell anybody that story. They were
fucking big though.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
I've got a vehicle where he and I can't remember
who told me, but it was down in Tampa. Dave
was driving and uh, I think he reached over across
the seat to get something whatever and caused him to
swerve into the lane. There was a guy on a
motorcycle beside him, and Dave rode bikes and so he was.

(42:20):
They pulled up at the light.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
He rolls his window.

Speaker 6 (42:22):
Hey dude, I'm sorry, you know, I apologize, and the
guy wasn't having it. He like lifted his foot up
and like kicked Dave's truck. Story, and then like turns green,
and David said, chasing this dude through the streets of
fucking Dampa. So finally they get to a gas station.
Correct me from wrong then, and then you know, before
the guy's even off his bike, Dave was on him.

(42:44):
They're taking the guy's helmet, was beating him with it
till I guess some lady pulled up and was like,
I'm gonna call the cops, and they've looked at her,
like through the fucking helmet at the guy and got
his drunk and left.

Speaker 5 (42:56):
We don't got it.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Right, let me know.

Speaker 5 (42:57):
Then he calls me in right after that, he told
me the dude, am I in trouble?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
It was.

Speaker 8 (43:07):
The dude, the dude on the motorcycle kicked his car. Yeah,
kick this truck. He followed him into a neighborhood, he said,
and then was like beating him with his helmet and
pounding him on ahead and some he said. He says,
for some reason, I looked up and all these people
were out on their porches on the product looking at me,
and he said, some lady said call the top.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
So he just went left.

Speaker 8 (43:33):
But yeah, he said, he called and called, Um, called
the buddy of mine, see.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
If I was in trouble, and.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
Yeah, Ken Ken tells him that how long ago has
this been? And he said a couple of hours. If
the If the deputies aren't at your.

Speaker 9 (43:47):
House right now, you're probably okay.

Speaker 5 (43:51):
You know, because they've got your license number.

Speaker 9 (43:53):
You know, if they had it, you know, you'd be
you'd be talking to him right.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Now, hysterical.

Speaker 5 (44:00):
Here's a funny vehicle story. It didn't involve Dave's vehicle.
We were at Blackwater and we're driving into town. Ernest
was driving an expedition. Dave's in the back seat. I'm
in the front passenger. So Dave's telling us the story.

Speaker 9 (44:19):
About how he was involved.

Speaker 5 (44:23):
As a role player. They did a simulated takeover of
a bus and they had regular soldiers.

Speaker 9 (44:35):
That were the main role players. Dave and a couple his.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
Guys were the bad guys were the terrorists. And Dave said,
you know, I was pretty much in character, you know,
doing all this stuff. And so they're driving along and
little birds come in.

Speaker 9 (44:52):
They do the hit. They board the bus, they.

Speaker 5 (44:55):
Take out the bad guys, and as they're bringing the
the hostages off the bus there. You know, of course
they're doing account and hey, we got one missing here.
So we go back in to do a secondary sweep
and they find this female soldier in a fetal position
under the seat and they have to physically extract her.

(45:22):
She is so emotionally traumatized that she was just jealous.
And Dave said, you know, he said, I had to
go talk to to command staff about that one. And
he looked at us. He said, I don't know if
you guys have ever noticed before he said that. Yeah,

(45:43):
I said, sometimes I can be a little intense. So
we fall out and Ernest about put.

Speaker 9 (45:52):
The truck in the ditch.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
You know.

Speaker 5 (45:54):
We we had to come to a stop, you know,
you know the dirt roads down there coming out of
Black were and we were laughing so hard we had
tears coming down our face.

Speaker 9 (46:04):
Did man?

Speaker 5 (46:05):
He said, sometimes I could be a little intensive. And
apparently that girl at female they had basically she left
the army because of that. She was so screwed up.
After that, they.

Speaker 6 (46:18):
Lit in the disability for PTS.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yeah, it wasn't It wasn't a rarity. Uh. We did
two things with role players from post like that. We
did one one was a bus and one was a
building hit. And it didn't happen every cycle that we
used them, but it also happened often enough that it
wasn't rare that one of them would have like an
extreme adverse reaction because like their their commands use us

(46:47):
as uh, because we would put them through basically a day,
sometimes a day and a half of seer training, and
so their you know, their their commands, whether you know,
like a transportation unit, they don't get any slots of
seer school, so their commands would use our training as
the opportunity to put their people through, you know, a
day of steer training, because we would give them classes

(47:07):
and all kinds of stuff and then take them prisoner
and put them through the resistance laboratory part of it
before the rescue.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
That reminds me of the story that Ken Hackettron told me.
This one when Dave was teaching at Range thirty seven
and he gets his phone call from Dave. Dude, dude,
I'm having a problem. You know, we'll be shooting a
drill the carbine you'll transition and you know some of

(47:43):
them won't hear me, and they won't transition to their
pistol and you know. Ken's like, oh, the problem, Dave.
They're just make a you know, transition stick day, Dude,
what's that? I go to take like a broomstick, cut
it down a little bit, but it'll be stay up
on it, and can you yell out transition? You don't hear?
You just kind of tap him on the on the helmet,

(48:05):
names like got it. And then like a week later,
kid's getting a phone call from the search wad it
Range thirty seven and it's like, Ken, what did you
tell Dave about this transition stick?

Speaker 4 (48:19):
What do you mean?

Speaker 6 (48:20):
He goes and he explains to him what he told David.
He goes, I knew there was something to that. He goes, No,
Dave went and got a baseball bat and cut it down.
He goes, I got like two guys in the fucking
uh at the at the base hospital with neck compressions
right now because it hit him so hard on.

Speaker 9 (48:40):
Rob.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Who was it?

Speaker 8 (48:42):
Who was it that told the goat story?

Speaker 3 (48:46):
That one that one.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
Kills the greegree story? I actually saw photographs of that
at Dave's hooch. He had eight y ten glossies of
this goat. Are you guys all familiar with that story

(49:10):
at all.

Speaker 6 (49:10):
Oh, that's that's a hilarious story.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
Well, there's a there's a litany of of the Africa
stories where they were doing basically like a mobile training
team kind of thing, and I like to laugh about it.
I said about the time that Dave was out in
the bush playing with the laser range finder, we bombed
a baby mult factory. And but he talks about going

(49:36):
into this village and some of the guys that he
was working with, some of the locals had this amulet
around their neck, like this little pouch, and he was
asking about it. And apparently they go to the local
witch doctor and APay and this is wards off. Evil

(49:58):
spirits make some bullet roof vere Isle, you know, and
all things good. Well, Dave kind of wanted one for
a souvenir, and I guess when he went to the
local witch doctor or whoever, the guy refused to make
it for kind of pissed Dave off. He's like, is

(50:19):
this a black and white thing here, you know, And
the guy just wouldn't do it. So Dave gets one
of his guys and says, listen, here's some money. I
want one of these things. I want the super deluxe grigory.
I want the one, I said, I, you know, I

(50:39):
want to be able to do anything. So the guy
goes and he gets this thing made up, and when
he brings it to Dave, Dave's pretty disappointed. He said,
I'm looking at this, dude, and this is clearly a
substandard Gregory. And he said, it's just a little pouch
with a piece of wire in it, a feather and

(51:00):
little little shit. He said, I I had my hopes
up for something, you know, a little niger. So, as
only Dave would do. He stews on things, and the
more he thinks about it, the matter he gets. So
he goes to the market in the village and he
buys a goat and he drags it out in front

(51:21):
of God and everybody, and he ties this grigory around
the goat's neck and he kicks it in the ass,
and he draws his m mine and shoots it in
the head and the goat does the flip flop and
you know, bulletproof my ass, right. So I said, Dave, dude,
how'd that go over? And he goes, not too good,

(51:45):
he said. He said, things were a little tense in
the vill for a few days after that.

Speaker 6 (51:52):
That was there was a mission, a thin mission they
were doing in Chad and jose Gordon told me prior
to the Gregory they're doing their in brief with the
village elders and then the warriors because what they were
having and they were trying to train these guys they
were animus, and so they're they're training to protect their

(52:14):
village because the Sudanese Muslims were coming down and would
raid the villages, kill the dudes, take the you know,
women and children's slaves, all that stuff. And so they're
doing the d brief and Dave's checking out this mountain
range it's probably, I don't know, ten miles away, and
at the end kind of question and answered, he looks

(52:36):
at the village elder and he's like, dude, what's on
the other side of that mountain range there, And they're
kind of like, we don't know. And so Dave like
just takes off like Dave does and just drags the
whole village and his wake and you know, it gets
up to the top of the ridge line he's looking
on the other side. He looks down and they won't
come up any higher than maybe you know, they're about

(52:58):
one hundred feet back right company more and he's like,
don't you dudes want to know what's on the other side.
And they're like no, no, you know, kind of getst
a religion. He's like, that's why you fuckers will never
have a space program.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
I've heard that one.

Speaker 6 (53:12):
That one winning hurts and minds.

Speaker 5 (53:14):
Well, here's one more Africa one. They pull in. It's
been shitty weather, cold, rainy, mud and they pull into
this little mud hut village and they've been living off
of MRIs and and just shitty food, shitty no heat,
no fires, and Dave, being a good old Mississippi boy,

(53:40):
shoots a couple Thompson's gazelle's and throws them in the
back of the truck. Well, they pull into this village
and uh, they're getting ready to you know, have an
r O N there and there's a Belgian game ranger.

(54:00):
Unbeknownst to Dave, they have crossed into a game preserve
and this guy comes over and he looks at the
two dead antelope and loses his mind and he's gonna
confiscate the guns, the vehicles, all this kind of stuff,
and Dave's like, dude, let me explain something to you.

(54:24):
We're the United States Army. You're not going to take anything.
And he says, matter of fact, it's four o'clock long,
about five point thirty. We're gonna have some deer steak.
He said, you're welcome to join us.

Speaker 11 (54:44):
Or not.

Speaker 5 (54:46):
And he said, dude, let me explain this. You can
hear him say this. If you choose to throw my
hospitality back in my face, this is how this is
gonna shake. Dude, you and I are going to walk
about two hundred meters in that direction and then I'm
going to come back and have some deer steak. And
he looked at this guy and he says, now, dude,

(55:07):
how do you want your steak done?

Speaker 3 (55:13):
That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
I have sparred Dave and I. We were kickboxers. Dave
is much better than me. Dave was I think a
semi pro kickboxer in between the Navy and the Army.
I did it for for fun, and uh, Dave, Dave
and I sparred a few times. And Dave can hit
like really really hard, much much harder than you think

(55:39):
he can.

Speaker 5 (55:42):
He Uh, he was like a cat that one of
the first times I saw him. We had a buddy
that had a little shoot house built out of uh
just built out of barnwood slats and whatnot, and two
before and all that. So anyhow, Dave's over there and

(56:04):
Tom is asking you about the layout about rooms and
center fed doors and corner fed doors and that kind
of stuff. And Dave climbs up on this thing and literally,
honest to god, guys, the top of that thing was
only that that wide. And Dave is up there like

(56:25):
a cat, walking out this room, talking, turning around, coming back,
stepping across. I mean, his balance and his coordination. I mean,
my mouth was open. I killed myself in the first
couple of steps. But Dave's just completely at home in that.
I mean he for such a big guy, he had

(56:47):
such coordinations, you know, his eyehand coordination was super And
finally I finally got him on the range one day.
I said, Dave, your pro preception is astounding, of course,
just fucking weaponte And he looked at me and he goes, dude,
because Dave liked to use big words too, and he said,

(57:10):
what's pro preception? I said, dude, I said, do a
magazine exchange, and he did. I said, that's pro preception.
I said that that's the ability of the body of
one body part to find another in free space without
any other assistance. I said, just like a quick reload.

(57:31):
You know, it's sort of like a shooter's field, sobriety
test or something like that. So forever more after that,
Dave was using that word. But yeah, his his his
athleticism was it was amazing.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
And he could back a trailer up like nobody. We
used to go to a place in the Philippines called
the Lower Lower de Camp. We called it the Lower
Death Camp, and it was at the bottom of the
hill with a loading dock, and we used to travel
to the other side of the bay for training and

(58:11):
they would bring a mic boat in. We'd load up
all our gear and drive us across the bay. And
we had parked a deuce and a half with a
water buffalo on it at the top of the hill
because there wasn't enough room to turn it around if
you drove it in, you know, regularly. There wasn't enough
room at the bottom to turn it around and then
back the water buffalo onto the onto the mic boat,

(58:34):
So you had to back down this curvy hill, down
this hillside and we must have had like ten or
twelve people try it and jackknife the trailer over and
over and over, and finally Dave is like Jesus Christ,
get out of the way, hops in and like drives
drives it down in one shot, down down the hill,
across the death camp, in between the buildings, up onto

(58:56):
the pier, and then onto the mic boat. At the
end of it. We're like, how the hell did you
do that? And he's like, how in the hell can
you not? Good question?

Speaker 3 (59:09):
We used to.

Speaker 8 (59:11):
You, guys, if you've ever had Dave stay with you,
if you're you know, obviously huge fan of coffee and
a huge fan of ice cream and horror movies. So
he would stay at the house and my wife and
I are big coffee drinkers, and my wife is like,

(59:32):
I think our blood type is caffeinated. But we had
probably four or five of these big Costello espresso jars
from Costco and he had stayed with us for about
a week. We were like before we got on a
road to do classes. It's probably about five days of

(59:54):
just hanging out at the house, throwing axes in the
backyard and shit, and day three my wife comes to
me and she goes, did you move the coffee and
I said no, why. She goes, I can't find any
of the coffee and I'm like, well, we had four
of these these big containers of coffee, Like where the

(01:00:17):
fuck did they go? And she's like, I think I
think they're gone. And I asked Dave. I'm like, hey, man,
did you did you drink all the coffee? He goes, yeah, sorry, bro,
I might I might have motored through that shit. And
I'm like, shit, all right, let's let's go to the store.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we'll go to go to supermarket.

(01:00:39):
I'll get you some more like all right, So we
go to the supermarket. We're there at the supermarket, me, him,
my wife. We're all like, hey, let's get some ice cream.
So we all buy a gallon of ice cream. And
this is like seven o'clock at night. Come back, have dinner,
pass out. I get up the next morning to go
make breakfast and my wife's gets up and she's like, oh,

(01:01:01):
I'll get you know, sausages out of the freezer. She
opens the freezer and she goes, did we leave the
ice cream at the supermarket. It's in my car and
I'm like, I will ruin now and for whatever reason,
she went to go op in a garbage can and
there's in the trash is three empty gallon containers of

(01:01:24):
ice cream.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
And I'm like, no fucking way.

Speaker 8 (01:01:29):
So go downstairs and he's sitting you know, he's sitting
there watching them, you know, wear a wolf five.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
And I go, hey, man, can I ask you a question.
I'm like, would you, uh she have some ice cream
last night?

Speaker 8 (01:01:41):
And he goes, yeah, sorry, bro, I think I might
have motored through all that too.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Wait three gallons of ice cream last night? He's like, yeah,
my bad.

Speaker 8 (01:01:55):
But he was such an ice cream fan. Every year
when we we would go to Pittsburgh. I'm at my
family's house in Pittsburgh right now, but we would go
to Pittsburgh and there is this drive through ice cream
spot in the Keysport that is perfectly centered between the
Range and where our house is there. So we would

(01:02:19):
go and we've had a class on Saturday. Sunday, we
would go to the range Friday work out whatever we
were going to work you know, reload drills, malfunction drills, whatever,
and then on the way back we would swing into
this little spot and get some ice creams and whatever.
The soft served flavor of the week was and we'd
make our way back to the house. And this went

(01:02:41):
on every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday like religiously for probably
six years in a row.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
The last time that.

Speaker 8 (01:02:50):
He was here in Pittsburgh, we went Friday to the range,
worked out what.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
We were going to practice and work on for the class. Stop,
got a cream. Saturday training day one comes to an end.

Speaker 8 (01:03:04):
We drive back to the house, stop to get ice cream.
Just not even there's no discussion, like, hey, we stop
at for ice cream. It's like it's just known that
this is going to happen. Like the sun goes down,
the sun comes up.

Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
Then and Dave stop for ice cream.

Speaker 8 (01:03:21):
Sunday end of the class, last day, were all packed
up and drive back, driving back to the house and
I'm sitting here driving and I see the ice cream
turning like one hundred yards and I'm like, let me,
let me have a little fun with you, fro monthfucker.
So I'm driving and I don't say a word, I

(01:03:41):
don't slow down at all. It's about one hundred yards
away and out of the corner of my eye, I
just see this like that Dave like worried face just
glancing at me, and I see the lip going like
like he's like he wants to say something like he's
about to be like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
I get about fifty yards and.

Speaker 8 (01:04:01):
The eyes start to widen, the lip starts to move
a little bit more that the face has to like
the wrinkles. Here twenty five yards, I can hear him
breathing a little bit heavier. About ten yards literally ten
yards from the entrance to this thing. I'm still doing
about forty miles an hour. I get about seven yards,

(01:04:26):
foot off the brake or foot off the gas. I
hit the brake and I cut the wheel in at
the last second into this place, and I just see
his face go from and he lets out this huge
sigh and I go.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Dude, did you think I wasn't gonna stop?

Speaker 8 (01:04:46):
And he goes, dig disc, bro, I was about to
put you on blast. Dude, I will always stop for
ice cream, don't you worry.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
But he I literally thought he was going to have
a heart attack.

Speaker 8 (01:05:02):
Like he just looked like it looked like you were
taking a puppy away from him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
It was hysterical.

Speaker 8 (01:05:08):
And that's that's like one of my favorite stories with him.
And it just shows you like, here's this dude who
you know, one, yes, can be rather intense, he can
be rather intimidating. He can scare the shit out of
people who don't know him just by looking at him.
But at the same time, it's like, it's just a

(01:05:29):
dude who just wants to shoot guns and eat ice
cream at the end of the day. And that was like,
that was the most beautiful thing about this dude is
all the stories that we have, these are all ways
that you know, he touched our hearts and our brains
in some way or another, Like, regardless what we've learned
from him, regardless how much training I.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Did with him, and did you know from.

Speaker 8 (01:05:53):
Him, at the end of the day, this dude was
a genuine dude. And there's not many people like him
left on his planet. And that's this dext generation coming in.
They're not going to know guys like him, and they're
not going to know guys like you guys, unfortunately, you know,
unless we we sort of maintained that that level of integrity.

(01:06:13):
But this was a dude who just he just loved
He loved his friends, and he loved his coffeest one
of movies, and his ice cream.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
It's hysterical.

Speaker 8 (01:06:22):
You know, I'm gonna miss him a lot, I really am.

Speaker 4 (01:06:26):
The ice cream thing is a new one to me
because I knew him in the army. So you know,
Dave was super fitness, super exercise. Yeah, watch watch his diet. Yeah,
but it's kind of like super Dave. Dave wasn't Super
Dave to us. Dave was Big Dave.

Speaker 5 (01:06:43):
Yeah, because we had we.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
Had another guy in the unit was super Dave, Paulmy,
So you know Dave, Dave didn't become super Dave until
long after I'd known him.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:06:53):
Yeah, Well, if you guys don't mind, oh, let me do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
I'll run some ads really quick.

Speaker 12 (01:07:00):
Sure, almost two minutes of a break, So if you
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for bathroom and then we will be right back.

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Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
And we are back.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Hey, Yes, Bert, I'm mad, indeed we are hey, And yeah, Kurt,
that was Ai the filster.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Ad was Ai voice. It wrote that for me and everything.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
So smile nice, Hey, Matt.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
I have to get on board before it takes over
and eliminates all of us.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Exactly, be kind to it, think it.

Speaker 13 (01:09:19):
Yeah, I just I wanted to pop on and tell
the last Dave story that I have absolutely. Dave reached
out to me a couple of months ago, just out
of the blue, called me and.

Speaker 6 (01:09:41):
We we have a.

Speaker 13 (01:09:44):
Proficiency test that we do in our class called the
Skills Gauge. It's a five shot shotgun slug drill. And
Dave called me out of the blue and he's like, hey, dude,
I want to get the download on this. I want
to understand it. And so I'm walking him through the
you know where it came from, from what we do
with the course of fire and everything.

Speaker 6 (01:10:02):
He's like so.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
What's the coin times?

Speaker 13 (01:10:05):
And I told him what the time was for pump
gun versus autos, Like, what about a single shot?

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I said, it's never come up.

Speaker 13 (01:10:15):
We had a guy who's a double barrel one time,
but we never had anyone do a single shot.

Speaker 4 (01:10:19):
He said, well, what if that's the only thing you
got on you?

Speaker 13 (01:10:22):
What if you're out hunting and shit goes down, what's
a good time for that. I'm like, well, Dave, I
think you're kind of fucked in that case, but you know, hey,
And so he was saying that he was going to
go out and work that test with a break action
single barrel and see what he could do with it,
and you know, he never got He never got the
opportunity to do it, or at least never got the

(01:10:43):
chance to tell me what his thoughts were. So I
think I may have to go dig out my crappy
old twenty gauge dollar store single shot and do some
test runs on it, just to see what can be
done with that.

Speaker 8 (01:10:59):
With that up, well, I want to know where that
dollar store is at, Go buy ten of them.

Speaker 13 (01:11:08):
Brazil By the label on that gun, probably a Taurus
or something. It's like a Sears and Roebuck or something.

Speaker 10 (01:11:17):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
No, he used to.

Speaker 8 (01:11:24):
He used to be a lot of fun to mess with,
especially on the range. I would put up pasters and
I would clip pasters at the top of the target,
and I'd have like a three foot string of pasters
and uh, We're at We're at my range in New
York one day and it's the winds blowing. These pasters

(01:11:44):
are going all over the target backer you know, like
a like a ribbon. And he goes, dude, what's with
that ribbon down there? What's that pasters? And he said, yeah, man,
why'd you put that there? And I go, so when
we go down we could paste up our targets. And
he goes, yeah, but see how it's blowing all over
the target.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
That's what we call a distractor, bro.

Speaker 8 (01:12:08):
And I looked at him, just dead square dry, and
I go, yeah, man, if you let shit like that
distract you, And he looked at me with that look
like like he's processing one hundred and one different ways
to kill me. And then in his intro safety brief,

(01:12:29):
you know, one of the things that he would say was,
you know, do the right thing at the right time
every time. And then he'd say, like, if you don't
know what to do, don't do anything. And he'd say,
when in doubt, do nothing. And you know, I'd be
downranged putting up steel or putting up targets while he's

(01:12:50):
doing this, and I'd hear him say when in doubt,
and from like fifty yards away, I would just yell
at the top of my lums whip it out, and
my class would lose their minds. And he would again
turn and be like, and give me that look like
you're about to die. So any opportunity where I could

(01:13:11):
kind of poke that fucking Hordois nest poke the bear
a little bit, just to see see how far I
could take.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
It was always was always funny.

Speaker 13 (01:13:21):
That story Dad and Freddie were telling about Dave in
the in the restaurant asking for the for the knife.
That was the first time that I met Dave. I
was like fourteen years old and I was out with
Dad and the boys, you know, finally being able to
go to the range with the adults, and we're sitting
in this little looks like an scale golden corral, and

(01:13:42):
you know, Larry comes over comes out to shoot with us,
and he brings his buddy Dave that none of us
have met yet, and if he's with Larry, almost certainly
competent at this, you know. And yeah, when that went
down in the restaurant, I mean, fourteen year old me
is like, what the hell.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Did I get?

Speaker 5 (01:14:07):
Yeah, that's gott.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
Better than I am.

Speaker 5 (01:14:17):
When when your buddy Award met him at Thorne fiftieth, Oh,
you guys are going to love this. Oh I'd forgotten that. Yeah,
we were had a surprise fiftieth birthday party for Hackathorn.
People came from all over them and Dave shows up

(01:14:39):
with at that time one of his stripper girlfriends, and
I gotta follow into that one. Yeah, and another guy
shows up that his name is Ward. I'll let it
go anyway. He's a criminal psychologist. He goes into prisons

(01:15:02):
and stuff and interviews serial killers and stuff like that. Right,
So he was there about half an hour and he
gets Ken off to the side, takes him in the
kitchen and said, what's the story on this day? Guy?
And he says, oh, he's a buddy. He's dangerous and

(01:15:24):
kids can kind of laugh that off. He said, no,
you don't understand he's dangerous. And he said what does
he do? And he said, oh, he's in the army.
What does he do in the army? And Ken said, well,
he's special Forces and he looked at He looked at
Ken and he said, you know, he's a true sociopath.

(01:15:49):
He said, it's so rare to see one in a while.
And he starts talking about Dave's personality and stuff, and
it actually bothered him so much that he got his
girlfriend and left in about fifteen minutes. Dave unnerved him
that much, But I said, you know he's dangerous. Of course,

(01:16:12):
Ken laughed and I said, yeah, I know. No, you
don't know not to me. Yeah, but I saw a commercial,
you know how you have Peru's faithbook all the time,
you know, and you see these little memes and there's
this picture or this little video of a lion that's
walking and it says, I may not have six friends

(01:16:37):
to carry my casket, but I've got this one motherfucker
that would carry it till his legs gave out. And
then it shows the second lion step out from beside
the first one, and that's Dave. I mean, he would
do anything for you as long as it took him
to do it. Yep, you know, it would he wouldn't

(01:17:02):
quit when he was tired. He would quit when he
was done.

Speaker 10 (01:17:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:17:06):
You know, he was a great dude, and he you know,
I I had taken a lot of training classes with
him in my you know, my training lifetime, and you know,
it had always been like, hey, I'm I'm a student.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
You know, I'm a student. I'm a student.

Speaker 8 (01:17:24):
And the last two years I taught down in Florida
on my way out the shot show, you know, driving
from New York down to Florida, through Texas and then
out to Vegas. And last year and the year before,
you know, I made the phone call like, hey man,
I'm going to be in Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Over in Leesburg. It's you know, two hours from you.

Speaker 8 (01:17:48):
If you want to come out and you want to
come out and shoot, you know, you're always got a
free spot. He said, oh yeah, I'll be there. So
this year, you know, he came out and shot the
two days. It was two days of pistol, and then
the previous year was rifle and pistol together, and it
was it was pretty cool to have him in the

(01:18:09):
class on the line, you know, next to the other
students and one for me as someone who's taken trained,
trained with him and taught with him and done everything
to have him just as a student. To have a
dude like him just as a student in a class
was a huge honor. But then to have him next

(01:18:31):
to the other guys and he didn't say a word
like his was. He was like, yeah, man, I'll come out,
but do me a favor. He goes, don't tell him
who I am. Like, nobody's gonna know who you are.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:18:43):
As soon as as soon as he got out of
his truck, like six people are like, holy shit, that's
super Dave.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
And I'm like, sh don't tell each other.

Speaker 8 (01:18:51):
You know what we're supposed to do at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:18:55):
But it was. It was very cool.

Speaker 8 (01:18:56):
And like last year, he had some achilles heel issue
so he didn't do the whole class, but he kind
of like we had a talk. I was like, are
you sure you're all right? And he goes, yeah, he goes,
I just can't run. I can't do this.

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
I can't do that. He goes, I'm just gonna bang
out and go home.

Speaker 8 (01:19:13):
And I'm like, all right, well, I hope you enjoyed
the class, and he was like, dude, solid performance, legit,
talking points, solid teaching, good stuff, and he got in
his truck and kind of headed out, and that was
kind of like, that was the last time I saw
him in person, and my wife and I really really

(01:19:35):
wanted to go down to Louisiana and it was just
like so last minute. I was on the road for
like a week or two weeks almost with Jared resting
at the time. This was all going on, and I
was like, I can't get out of this. I can't
just kind of ditch Jared to go do this. And
I was thinking to myself, if I did ditch Jared

(01:19:55):
to go down there, whatever condition Dave was in, he'd
probably beat my asked for doing that, And you know,
he probably would have been much happier if my last
memory was of him, you know, as a student in
the class, running and gunning and doing his thing. And
I'm happy that my last in person conversation with him

(01:20:19):
was him I don't want to say passing the torch,
but sort of giving me that that little kudos, you know,
that pat on the shoulder and being like, you know,
you did a good job, and that that, to me
is like what I will remember from him.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
Trying to keep it together here.

Speaker 8 (01:20:39):
But that's what I remember of him, like those are
That's the day that I want to I want to like,
you know, remember I don't. I don't want to think
of him in any other less capacity than the badass
motherfucker that he always was. And I think that's like
the biggest thing. I created a Super Dave Memorial page

(01:21:00):
on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
It's a group. People can go and find it on Facebook.

Speaker 8 (01:21:06):
Post your photos, post your stories, hopefully you know something
to just solidify his placement in eternity.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
In all of our hearts and minds, and you know,
as as Dave used to say, that's all I.

Speaker 4 (01:21:21):
Got, that's cool. I do have a hard time wrapping
my head around Dave being on the firing line and
following along with instructions because I was Dave's bosh for
I was Dave's bosh for a couple of years. Dave,
Dave following instructions was kind of a problem.

Speaker 5 (01:21:45):
Yeah, you heard I.

Speaker 6 (01:21:48):
Always, you know, as an officer leading Marines, and I
just knowing Dave, I'm like, oh, good God, I'm so glad.
I was never so o I s I can only
imagine what that was like.

Speaker 8 (01:21:58):
He was good he was definitely a good dude on
the line. He's like if I had a whole line
full of super Dave thaid.

Speaker 4 (01:22:06):
Our troop sergeant was getting ready to put some information
out training with a foreign counter terrorist unit, and there's
still someone shooting on the line. We're waiting to give
instructions to, you know, our guys and the host nation
people we were working with. There's still somebody shooting on

(01:22:27):
the line. Look down, and of course it's Dave. And
he was like, who's Dave's boss, And was like, oh,
go down there and tell him he needs to join
with the rest of us. And I go down there
and Dave's holding his brought upside down with his with
his strong hand and pulling the trigger with his offhand

(01:22:48):
pinky and he's shooting at a pasty at twenty five yards,
a one inch pasty. Of course, of course he is like, Dave, Dave,
that's awesome and every thing, but yuh, can you come
back down and join the rest of the group. It's like,
just because you're a little learned me, don't think I
won't kick your ass. It's like, just because you're bigger

(01:23:11):
than me, don't think you can. Let's hold straight and
come back down on the line so we can get
this thing moving for everybody you're holding this up.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
Who was who is his?

Speaker 8 (01:23:21):
There was a superior and he was telling me a
story about some hand to hand combatives that he was doing,
and he got angry in the middle of it and
ended up beating the crap out of some dude.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
I don't remember.

Speaker 4 (01:23:36):
I never saw that he did. He did, he knocked out.
We had a officer come to Okawa, that's yeah, and
he was he was on the West Point boxing team
and he was like, you know, I was a boser.
I can take you. And Dave's like, no, you can't.
He's like, no, no, no, I was on the West
Point boxing team. I can take you. Dave's like, no,

(01:23:57):
you can't. Dave hit him so hard, like it lifted
his feet up off the ground and put him flat
on his back and asked him the next day after
he had come to and gotten his senses back, and
he's like, how did that feel. He's like, I could
feel every vertebrae in my back separate when.

Speaker 5 (01:24:14):
You get.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:24:17):
He told me the story about some hotshot dude who
thought he was the ship and he's like dude, I
rocked that dude so hard.

Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
Like, yeah, Dave. I started with Daved a couple of times,
and Dave did not like to be hit, and he
was more than willing to go fifty percent power, fifty
percent speed and till you landed a hit on him.
And then once you did it, it was full on
run for your life.

Speaker 13 (01:24:44):
I remember something he used to say a lot often
to Todd Green is going to say, dude, test him
with people's skills.

Speaker 5 (01:24:56):
Yeah. He would look at you and say, like I said,
the eyelids would draw up the octave, the voice would
drop an octave, the ambient temperature and a ten meters
blast radius would drop twenty degrees. And he would look
at you and he'd say, dude, when did this conversation
go bad?

Speaker 13 (01:25:18):
And that brings up something I always remembered today from
when I was a kid. Was I mean, he had
an entire language built out of the word dude. How
he said it, how he you know, the tonal inflection.

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
You know, he could.

Speaker 13 (01:25:39):
Convey so much emotion and meaning with just that one word,
and he used it a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:25:48):
Dude, dude, dude, dude.

Speaker 8 (01:25:57):
The occasional sort of you knew you were in trouble. Hey, dude,
It's like, yeah, you see the dots.

Speaker 5 (01:26:04):
Yeah, see here, dude, the hell is that? Dude? See here, dude,
Let me tell you more if I may. And this
is this is a typical Dave in my travels and

(01:26:27):
working with a certain agency, federal agency that may or
may not be based out of Quantico talking with some
of their snipers is like, you know, that's an area
that I've always been interested in. And figured out that,

(01:26:49):
you know, most of those guys go through the Marine Corps,
part of the Marine Corps Scout sniper School in order
to qualify for their agency billet. And found out that,
you know, none of those guys have ever killed anything.
They've never shot any big game. They've you know, And
I'm like, guys, you know, they always say that in

(01:27:13):
the sniper realm that the first large animal that you
shoot probably shouldn't be one of your own species. So
living in rural West Virginia, I came up with this
this thing and we called it deer Fest. Have a
big I have a very rural county and the county

(01:27:38):
commissioner is a father in law of the sheriff, and
they own half of the county and I get with
the game warden and I did a bunch a handful
of crop damage permits. So we had these guys come
up every October and we would go out and set
up and they had a chance to evaluate equipment, all

(01:28:01):
that kind of stuff, and they would whack some deer.
And my uncle owned a meat packing plant, so we
would haul I would feel feel a dressed deer. They
would assess terminal ballistics on the deer, and we would
we would haul the deer to the meat house and
my uncle would have his guys skin cut, wrap, freeze

(01:28:24):
the deer meat. And at the end of the week,
these guys would go back south and with coolers full
of deer meat.

Speaker 9 (01:28:33):
And then at some.

Speaker 5 (01:28:34):
Point in time we would have a big, big feed
down there. We would all get together and you have
a huge deer feed. Well, anyway, Dave heard about it,
and he goes, man, I want in on that, and
I go, I don't know, Dave. So the normal guys
got to the point where they're higher ups kind of thought,

(01:28:57):
you know, if this got out that we were doing this,
it may not look so hot. So we're gonna We're
gonna pull the plug on that. So that left the
big vacuum. So Dave decided he would gladly fill that vacuum.
And uh, cour, do you know, Scott suda?

Speaker 4 (01:29:18):
Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Well.

Speaker 5 (01:29:20):
Scott came up with Dave. And up until that point,
the federal guys were using work guns and they had suppressors,
and we were doing this at night, and there were
some adjoining farms, and we were doing it with you know,
with thermal and night vision and stuff, so we weren't

(01:29:42):
attracting a big footprint. You know, the locals didn't really
ever know we were there. And so Dave and Scott come.
So we're in my suburban and I've got the trailer
to haul the deer out with, and we're going going.
We have to go buy a couple of farmhouse is
to get to where we're going to. And all of

(01:30:04):
a sudden, Dave's stop, stop, stop, stop the truck. I'm like,
what what the fuck? So I stopped. He opens the
door and jumps out, and mind you, we're trying to
be quiet. He jumps out and I'm like, mother fuck, Dave,

(01:30:26):
what are you doing. He's goes, I'm shooting deer. He
had seen a group of deer up on the hillside
that I didn't see, and he jumps out and I
just opened puts a full mag dump up the hill
and I'm like, Dave, which one did you shoot? And
he goes all of the time, So we and I'm like, dude,

(01:30:56):
what did you shoot him with? Well, green tip, of course,
And I'm like, dude, you realize that you're not going
to kill a deer with grand tip and he's just
poking a little holes for him. So ethics demand that
we go up and look for a blood trim and

(01:31:17):
see if there's anything laying up there right. So yet,
it had been rainy and the hillside's all kind of
wet and slippery, So we claw our way up to
the top of this hill, Scott and I and I'm
looking with my flashlight and I'm not seeing any blood,
no blood trail, nothing, And I know that he's a

(01:31:39):
good enough shot that he's probably poked a lot of
holes in he's deer. So all of a sudden, come boom,
Well there's Scott with his Marlin thirty thirty whacked this
big dough who runs over and all the way down
the back of this hill and she runs clear to

(01:31:59):
the bottom and we find her in the creek and
she's a pretty good sized dough And then we realized
we left our knives in the truck. The drag rope
is in the truck. You know, it couldn't get any worse.
So I ended up field dressing the deer with a
leatherman tool. We took the five point fifty cord off

(01:32:23):
the surefire lights and tied the feet together and put
a pole in and Scott and Iyre claw on her.
And of course he doesn't have a sling for his rifle,
so he stages at a flat up, comes back down.
We claw our way up and we do this and
we are absolutely exhausted, and we get to the crest

(01:32:44):
of the hill and we hear this voice, Yo, dudes,
pretty laurel and hardy like over there, and I'm like, Dave,
gets your big ass over here and get a hold
of this deer. So it was like and we're compromised

(01:33:04):
because at this point, the little old lady that lives
next door, the lights are coming on in the farmhouse
and she's calling the nine one one dispatcher. You know,
I've got I've got spotlighters out here, and so we
got to smooth that over. I have to go up
and tell her that who I am and where this

(01:33:26):
is all on the up and up, and sorry that
we shot it on her land. We were supposed to
be the next plot over and uh but that was
the last last year for deer Fest Yuh but it
was so funny. I like, dude, which one did you shoot?
It was like he was offended, like all of them.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
Uh, all right, Fellas, I got to take the dog out.
He's getting very impatient with me before you do.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
Wonderful Yes, final, final plugs, final thoughts.

Speaker 8 (01:34:09):
I believe we had discussed this earlier in the beginning
of this thing. Guys, no one lives forever, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:34:17):
I missed.

Speaker 8 (01:34:18):
I missed the opportunity to get with pat Rogers, just
missed the opportunity to get with Todd. If there's people
that you want to train with, get out there. Unfortunately,
every year I'm seeing more and more of my friends,
you know, pass away from one.

Speaker 3 (01:34:37):
Reason or the other.

Speaker 8 (01:34:39):
And uh, it's always it's always the ones that deserve
better in life that seem to get the worst deals,
sometimes Dave being you know, the perfect example. Meanwhile, if
I found out that I had, you know, three months
to live. I have a list about this long of
people who would live a lot shorter than at because

(01:35:02):
they deserve it. But unfortunately, it's it's always the good
guys that seemed to get the worst, the worst out
of life. And yeah, it doesn't have to be an
age thing, doesn't have to be an illness thing. It
just could be any reason that person that you wanted
to train with or you just wanted to spend time
with or tell them something, you know, get it, get

(01:35:26):
it done before you know, tomorrow's tomorrow's pretty much too late.
I appreciate being on here. I got to thank Steve
for you know, recommending me to be on here, and
I thank you guys. The stories were phenomenal, the experiences
were phenomenal, and you know, I think Dave is one
of those guys that's, you know, comes along once in

(01:35:47):
your life that really changes things and you know, opens
your eyes and ears and mind to a lot of things.
I have folders and folders of essays and books that
he the articles and stuff that he sent me to read. Like, hey, dude,
let me pick your brain for about three hours on this,
you know, like Rob said, you know, bring your bringing

(01:36:09):
up breadcrumbs, you know. I see the phone would ring
and I'd be like, do I have do I have
an hour and a half, you know, like, but always
always answered. And my wife was like, Dave's calling you,
and I'm like, all right, let me see what he wants.
But he was an incredible human being, an intense human being,

(01:36:34):
just one of those people that you don't you don't
come across all the time in life. And you know,
I'm thankful, I'm thankful that he and I bonded. I'm
thankful that we had a very good friendship. Bumpy at times,
but that goes with with everybody who is friends with him.
They probably can relate.

Speaker 3 (01:36:53):
Plugs, you know, check us out o f T LLC
dot us.

Speaker 8 (01:37:00):
Teaching a shotgun class tomorrow in Pittsburgh at my local
range here and then pistol class on Sunday, same place.
This is what I do full time, and I am
a product of those that I have trained with. I'm
a product of Fisher, Presburg Resting, Super, Dave, Kelly Bend
and like all these dudes, I don't profess to be

(01:37:23):
anything other than a product of my my what I've
learned from these guys, So thank you again, Matt and
Rob and Matt also good to see you guys again.
Hopefully we'll get some more time together. Kurt, I, David
brought your name up several times. I don't think we
ever talked. And then Freddie, I've just heard stories about

(01:37:45):
you from everybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:37:46):
So it's good to final prout.

Speaker 8 (01:37:53):
I appreciate the U, the opportunity and and you know
the time to share and unload some stories. And like
I said, I got that Facebook page up, so if
anybody wants to join it, you know, I want to
keep everything you know, related to Dave. Uh just monitoring
it to alleviate any fam or self promotion. This is

(01:38:14):
should just be all about him.

Speaker 3 (01:38:16):
But thank you guys very.

Speaker 2 (01:38:18):
Much, thank you, thank you, thank you, great great being.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
You you too, man. Take care.

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
How did he turn into super Dave because he was
Big Dave before you said.

Speaker 4 (01:38:34):
It was after he went to uh Sephardik to raise
thirty seven to be an instructor. I think the other
instructors there started calling him Super Dave and then it
just sort of followed. Yeah, like Dave was, you know,
as famous as he gets everywhere he went, he was

(01:38:54):
famous at Saphardik. We we spent students back and uh,
the way the marksmanship training works at the school, you
get a very minimal class that lasts maybe an hour,
that's primarily about range procedure, like what we expect the
students to do on the range, how we want them

(01:39:16):
to line up, how we want them to listen to commands,
and then the actual learning of marksmanship takes place through
shooting rather than really teaching it in classroom. And we
sent students back and they when they like, within a
couple of days, we hear back Dave went back and

(01:39:38):
had been put in charge of marksmanship and change it
to an eight hour class only because you wanted three
days to teach the basic marksmanship class before they ever
got to the range, And the other instructors are like
absolutely not, like we'll give you one day. And apparently
that lasted like one class. Like Dave's intensity and his focus,

(01:40:01):
like he wants to cover everything there, and it's like,
you know, so at first he became famous in a
in a not good way, and then famous in a
good way once you get him on the range and
start working with him and the students can interact him
in that setting like he's he's just such a different

(01:40:21):
persons as opposed to the platform instructor Dave to the
range training Dave, Like once once you can get him
out and let him explain his process, how he sees things,
super super focused, Like you never have to explain to
Dave what you know. Hey, on this you need to
fully see your front side picture because Dave fully sees

(01:40:44):
his front sight on everything because that's where his focus is.
That's why I told this story on my Facebook page.
We were back at at Fort Bragg and another year
for training. We're in a parking lot at the Big

(01:41:04):
Mall in Fayetteville and we get out of our rental car,
our Lincoln Town Car rental, and this lady comes running
up to us in the parking lot and said, hey,
you guys are special Forces from Okinawa, which is like
extremely random and you know, a weird thing to open
up a conversation with. And so we're like, no, no,

(01:41:25):
that's not us, and she's like, I can tell I
know who you guys are. I met a guy from
there a couple of years ago, and I don't remember
his name. He was kind of a big guy. He
was like he's the most intense person I've ever met
in my life. We're all like looking at each other.
It's like, it's Dave Harrington and he's like, yeah, that's
his name. That's it.

Speaker 6 (01:41:48):
There's a story Ken Hackethne told me about David just
got back from a deployment and whatever strip or wife
he had at the time had left. He came back
to an empty house and so he calls up Ken
and and uh he's like, dude, uh, you know, I
got to take some leave. I need to get out
of here. And you know, and Ken was like, yeah,

(01:42:10):
come on up. It was back when he was still
living in Ohio. He goes, I've got a well heeled
couple that I got to train this weekend and after
that I got time for us. And he was like,
no problem, dude, I'll just sit in the back. They
don't even know him there. Okay, Like this is good.
Over you know, Turner was worred. He was sitting behind
the line under a tree, just kind of chilling and uh,

(01:42:31):
you know, chain smoking his day would do bat at
that time. And uh, you know, the wife of the couple,
you know, sees Dave kind of over there. You know,
it sees like a little puppy that needs to be petted,
and made the mistake of going over and to break
the ice.

Speaker 5 (01:42:49):
We saw.

Speaker 6 (01:42:51):
The name of the gal that had just left him
was tattooed on Dave's arm, and she goes, oh, that's
an interesting tattoo. What is it say? This is mind
your old fucking business, bitch Like yeah, Ken was like
quickly kind of you know, it's more things over, but

(01:43:13):
it was.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Dave, Well, I think it's this might be a good
time to wrap up, get your guys' final thoughts, if
you have anything that you want to bring up, and well,

(01:43:33):
we'll call it a night.

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
Start with Kurt.

Speaker 8 (01:43:36):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:43:37):
I would just say that, you know, Dave was a
unique individual, but whether you realize it or not, your
your life is full of unique individuals. And take the
time to reach out to him, tell him you love him,
because one day you won't be able to and you'll
miss it. Uh. Dave and I talked a couple of
months before he passed, and we were supposed to talk

(01:43:59):
again and I got busy and didn't make the call.
And I really regret that.

Speaker 8 (01:44:06):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:44:07):
Support primary, secondary support, the people that you think are
that you know are good trainers, because there's a see
of there's an ocean of trainers, and there's a very
small puddle of ones that are good. So seek them
out because good, good instruction knowledge will will help you
every day of your life.

Speaker 5 (01:44:28):
That's all I got, Rob, I'd just like to say that,
you know, Dave affected me in a very positive way.
I'm honored to have been his friend.

Speaker 4 (01:44:49):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:44:50):
Dave once said, you know, I know a lot of people,
but I've got a smaller circle of fronts. And you know,
he said, I've got a lot of acquaintances. But I'm
glad that I was among the friends.

Speaker 4 (01:45:04):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:45:05):
I'm glad I had a chance to work with him professionally.
I'm glad that I had a chance to shoot and
compete with him and be a be a part of
the the Baretta team with him. And we uh, he

(01:45:26):
will be missed, like I said, he was. They broke
the mold when they made Dave Harrington, and there won't
be there won't be another. But we it's up to
us to to to honor his memory and to uh
make sure that he doesn't fade away.

Speaker 6 (01:45:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45:51):
Pretty The uh.

Speaker 6 (01:45:56):
Want to just echo occurred and Rob said, but you
know over the last few years, Uh, you know, Dave
was having a lot of uh issues physically, and you
know we would call, we talked, you know about the
struggles you would have, the things that we have to do,

(01:46:18):
uh in preparation for surgery, dealing with the v A
and uh, you know, he we kept talking about, hey,
you know, get healed up or other get healed up.
We get your back, get your back out of the road,
get your training again, you know, get you out out
west and do some stuff. And and uh, you know,

(01:46:40):
we never know when that you know, when when the
Lord's going to call us home and they that amount
of time we actually have left, and so take advantage of,
you know, the time that you do have with those
people that are special to you and and and you know,
call talk to him like Kurt, I, you know I
you know, it was it literally was like, you know,

(01:47:03):
I need to give Dave a call. I haven't talked
to him in about I get a goop of call.
And then I got the word on the fourth about
what had happened. And and then uh then I was
just wanted to like give him some time the family
and everything not overwhelm him. You know, they were going
through a lot of stuff at the time, and so
I never got a chance to really you know, talk
to him before he left, you know, before we passed.

(01:47:24):
But at the same time, I know that uh you know,
there was a time he needed with his family at
the end, and then't you know, didn't need me, you know,
uh consuming any of the the the little time he
had left to you know, be with them and be
you know, be with the people that you know, he
truly loved and cared about. So anyways, Uh yeah, I

(01:47:51):
you know, just honored that. Uh I knew Dave and uh,
you know could share stories. Uh, Like I said, we
could make a movie about his life and people wouldn't
believe you know, half of the stories that were all true,
maybe slightly embellished, but there was a lot of truth
in him.

Speaker 13 (01:48:13):
Yeah, Matt, I mean, I can't really say a whole
lot that these gentlemen haven't already said.

Speaker 5 (01:48:23):
He truly was a unique individual.

Speaker 13 (01:48:26):
He was one of a kind. I'm very grateful that
I got to know him, you know, from the time
I was a teenager and made my formative years all
the more interesting. But it made me think of that
old movie The thirteenth Warrior. You ever see that where

(01:48:47):
they're at the beginning when they're given the old Viking
king the funeral and heard the joyous says, you will
not see this again. It is the old way it was, Dave,
and we'll miss him.

Speaker 1 (01:49:09):
And to reiterate, yeah, less precious and we we can't
predict what's what's around the corners to take advantage of
the time now. Big thanks to the panel, wonderful discussion,
great story shared. Hopefully people listening, Hopefully hopefully they can
they learned something about someone that they can go back

(01:49:30):
and look at some YouTube videos or and they can
they can read some stuff about about just a cool
guy who really liked ice cream, who's a sociopath.

Speaker 4 (01:49:44):
And he loved cats and cats what unnaturally and.

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
Yes very much so yeah, yeah, yeah, so big thanks
to the panel, wonderful, wonderful discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:49:59):
Big thanks to this sponsors Filster Walter and Lucky Gunner.
Also a big thank you to the Patreon and the
network supporters. If you like what you like, if you
like what we do.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
Make sure your share and your liking and all that
other stuff. My favorite thing to say with all these
episodes is make sure you're supporting those sources that you
found to be beneficial. If you like what these guys
have had to say, make sure you find.

Speaker 2 (01:50:21):
Them on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:50:22):
Give them those likes, those shares, those subscriptions, because the
algorithms don't work in our favor.

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):
That's pretty much it have.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
Still have more episodes that are being planned out for
the near future, and.

Speaker 2 (01:50:36):
I think that will be all. I will talk to
you guys later.

Speaker 4 (01:50:41):
Awesome, Thank you Matt, Thank you everybody.

Speaker 5 (01:50:43):
Oh, take care of guys.

Speaker 6 (01:50:45):
Take care of guys.

Speaker 2 (01:50:46):
Be safe.

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P&s ModCast 437 - Remembering Super Dave Harrington

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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;}P&s ModCast 437 - Remembering Super Dave Harrington