Latest / Aired Out / Sgt. Rick Yarosh- Sweethearts & Heroes
Transcript
- 0:23Speaker 1: Intel in the ultists of steaming distates a thing esteems
- 0:33Speaker 1: in highests and stand there standing disnames against the state
- 0:41Speaker 1: and business and its sciety. Stop with the supply, focused
- 0:48Speaker 1: the characters, and stop set to the second. Stop with
- 0:54Speaker 1: the simple mongst the characters and stupid.
- 0:59Speaker 2: Scriss Alright, first thing I want to say this morning
- 1:57Speaker 2: is it's five dollars Wednesdays at the Paramount Theater. Skip
- 2:02Speaker 2: the line, grab your tickets now FGB Theaters dot com
- 2:07Speaker 2: and check them out on Facebook, Instagram for all the updates, movies, showtimes,
- 2:12Speaker 2: all that good stuff. One of our proud presenting sponsors
- 2:15Speaker 2: and has been for a very very long time, Flying
- 2:19Speaker 2: the Wall Productions bringing you the aired Out podcast this morning,
- 2:23Speaker 2: streamed everywhere you get your podcasts and on the web
- 2:27Speaker 2: at airedoutvt dot com. It is Wednesday, August twentieth, Sweethearts
- 2:33Speaker 2: and Heroes Day. Superhero and featured guest rick Yarish in
- 2:39Speaker 2: just a few minutes here, But good morning to you.
- 2:42Speaker 2: Today is National Radio Day. Today, I have to be
- 2:46Speaker 2: honest with you. Tip of the hat to all the podcasters.
- 2:50Speaker 2: I'm so glad I got out of radio finally. Nine
- 2:53Speaker 2: days to Labor Day, weekend, fifteen days to the NFL
- 3:00Speaker 2: season kicking off. And how about Logan Loose last night
- 3:04Speaker 2: athletics his very first featured podcast, Driving Solo. I'm so
- 3:11Speaker 2: proud of him did such a great job last night.
- 3:13Speaker 2: Farmers Almanac predicting in early winter. Yes, early winter temperatures
- 3:20Speaker 2: for the Northeast. It's coming, I know. Give you more
- 3:24Speaker 2: details in the forecast here in just a second. But
- 3:26Speaker 2: Deb with us from the World, Deb, good morning. How
- 3:31Speaker 2: are you today? Can you hear us?
- 3:35Speaker 3: All right?
- 3:35Speaker 2: Deb?
- 3:36Speaker 4: Yep, I can hear you.
- 3:37Speaker 2: Good morning, and thank you so much for all you
- 3:41Speaker 2: and Gary do I know you guys are so so
- 3:44Speaker 2: busy putting together the paper every single week? And here
- 3:48Speaker 2: we go it is Wednesday. We have a new edition
- 3:51Speaker 2: of the World out today.
- 3:54Speaker 4: Yes, all right, what do we expect in this week's
- 3:57Speaker 4: We're school starting soon, so in this week's World we
- 4:01Speaker 4: have the back to school safety tips from A to Z.
- 4:05Speaker 4: They're good reminders on keeping safe and healthy during the
- 4:08Speaker 4: school year. Also this week are the monthly Bridle Directory
- 4:12Speaker 4: and Pet Care Corner. And being distributed starting today is
- 4:17Speaker 4: our magazine Here's My Card Business Directory. It's covering home
- 4:23Speaker 4: and garden, personal care, retail shopping, food, automotive and professional services,
- 4:30Speaker 4: all from local businesses.
- 4:32Speaker 2: It's just so cool. And I note that there's just
- 4:37Speaker 2: a chock full of stuff going on in the community,
- 4:40Speaker 2: and you guys are always pushing that, always talking about
- 4:44Speaker 2: what's happening right here in our backyard. Depth.
- 4:47Speaker 4: Yes, definitely, we're the place to go if you want
- 4:50Speaker 4: to find out what's going on in CenTra Vermance.
- 4:52Speaker 2: I look forward to getting my paper. Thank you, deb,
- 4:55Speaker 2: thank you, thank you Jad.
- 4:56Speaker 3: Have a good day.
- 4:57Speaker 2: Yeah, and don't forget check out sales at vtdashworld dot
- 5:01Speaker 2: com if you want to learn more, and also check
- 5:04Speaker 2: out the online edition too. If you want to jump
- 5:07Speaker 2: the gun and read it before you get the paper
- 5:11Speaker 2: in your hand, you can do that right there. Barry
- 5:14Speaker 2: Farmfest is one of the big events that's happening in
- 5:18Speaker 2: our community. Of course, that is this Saturday. Hard to
- 5:21Speaker 2: believe it's already here the Nodes Family Benefit fundraiser from
- 5:25Speaker 2: two pm to eight thirty on Lower Usley Road in Barry.
- 5:31Speaker 2: Food trucks, beer garden presented by the Cornerstone Raffles, silent
- 5:36Speaker 2: auction games and of course live music. Dave Keller, Jamie Lee, Thurston,
- 5:41Speaker 2: Shane McGrath, Donna thunder Heartless, and so much more. It
- 5:45Speaker 2: is going to be incredible as we help the Nodes
- 5:49Speaker 2: family rebuild and get their lives back together after that
- 5:54Speaker 2: devastating fire of their entire barn and livestock that they
- 5:59Speaker 2: lost this past April. It is going to be tremendous. Hey,
- 6:03Speaker 2: Happy birthday today to Linda Binoit, Amanda Smith, Brenda Bartlett,
- 6:08Speaker 2: Joyce Spooner, Susan Oopman. On the list today Jordan Kissner,
- 6:13Speaker 2: Caroland Batchelder, what a great lady, Rick Como and Patrick Poohling,
- 6:19Speaker 2: all celebrating birthdays. We're looking at a cloudy start to
- 6:24Speaker 2: the day today, a stray, much needed shower a little
- 6:29Speaker 2: bit later on sixty four only for the daytime high
- 6:33Speaker 2: clouds tonight forty eight Tomorrow cloudy starts sunny by the
- 6:37Speaker 2: afternoon though seventy eight degrees tomorrow night at thunder Row,
- 6:41Speaker 2: perfect clear skies and fifty sunshine. On Friday eighty one,
- 6:46Speaker 2: and looking all the way ahead to Saturday, partly sunny,
- 6:51Speaker 2: lower eighties, rain in seventies for Sunday. Well, here we
- 6:58Speaker 2: go a new day, a Wednesday, and with me is
- 7:03Speaker 2: Rick Yarish who is and has become a good friend.
- 7:10Speaker 2: And I am so honored to have Rick with me
- 7:15Speaker 2: on the air returning and you're you're remote this time, Rick,
- 7:30Speaker 2: can you hear me, buddy?
- 7:32Speaker 3: I hear you now. I didn't hear your response. I
- 7:34Speaker 3: didn't hear if you said anything.
- 7:35Speaker 2: I said good morning to you. I'm so glad for
- 7:37Speaker 2: friend's brother first and foremost, and I'm so glad to
- 7:41Speaker 2: connect with you. You're you're remote this morning. Where the
- 7:44Speaker 2: hell are you?
- 7:45Speaker 1: I am?
- 7:46Speaker 5: This is vacation, the vacation edition, So I'm on vacation
- 7:50Speaker 5: in the Poconot in Pennsylvania.
- 7:52Speaker 2: Are you serious? You're you're doing this while you're on vacation, Buddy.
- 7:56Speaker 5: Listen, this might be more of a vacation than the vacation.
- 8:02Speaker 5: I don't hear any background noise right now.
- 8:05Speaker 3: It's beautiful, man.
- 8:07Speaker 2: Listen. I always look forward to having you in the studio.
- 8:10Speaker 2: You've been in several times, and I look forward to
- 8:14Speaker 2: having you back in here, buddy, and giving you just
- 8:17Speaker 2: a giant bear hug.
- 8:19Speaker 3: I might miss the couch more than I miss you,
- 8:22Speaker 3: j D. I love that.
- 8:23Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't it? Isn't that couch amazing.
- 8:25Speaker 3: It's amazing. I miss it. That's what I wish I
- 8:28Speaker 3: was sitting right now.
- 8:29Speaker 2: Dude. I'm so you know. When I got the email
- 8:32Speaker 2: from Leon that you were going to be my guest
- 8:35Speaker 2: this morning, I was so excited, Buddy, I'm so happy.
- 8:38Speaker 2: I just I already know what to what to say
- 8:43Speaker 2: with you, buddy. I mean, it's like I don't even
- 8:45Speaker 2: need any any prep notes. By the way, did you
- 8:48Speaker 2: catch Heather last week or the week before?
- 8:52Speaker 3: I did not. I did not.
- 8:54Speaker 2: She What an amazing lady. Oh my god.
- 8:58Speaker 3: I didn't need to watch to know that.
- 8:59Speaker 2: That's yeah, teacher athletes positivity with a capital P, that lady.
- 9:06Speaker 2: Oh my god. Man, you and your team, and there's
- 9:11Speaker 2: so many of you and I haven't had I don't
- 9:14Speaker 2: think i've had all of you on the air yet.
- 9:17Speaker 2: You guys are just amazing. You are just crushing it.
- 9:21Speaker 5: Brother, Well, I appreciate it. I think we have to
- 9:24Speaker 5: get Abby on the show. Yes, Abby says, absolutely not.
- 9:28Speaker 5: But Abby is my goal to get on the show.
- 9:32Speaker 2: Tell us about Abby. I mean, she brings almost pretty
- 9:38Speaker 2: much everything that you guys do in schools, she brings
- 9:42Speaker 2: it to the viewing audience. On social media.
- 9:46Speaker 3: That's right, And she has been doing this for a
- 9:50Speaker 3: very long time with us.
- 9:51Speaker 5: I don't know how old she was when she started
- 9:54Speaker 5: with but she used to travel with us every single day.
- 9:57Speaker 5: She was in the hotels with us and and at
- 10:00Speaker 5: the schools with us. I think maybe it was it
- 10:03Speaker 5: might have been when she was fifteen or sixteen years old.
- 10:06Speaker 5: So Abby's like a little sister of mine, and I
- 10:10Speaker 5: just you know, she does so much for the group,
- 10:13Speaker 5: and she just wants to be quiet off to the side.
- 10:15Speaker 5: She doesn't want to be on.
- 10:16Speaker 3: The podcast, right. She's putting out all the social media stuff,
- 10:21Speaker 3: all the videos that are made really amazing, amazing stuff.
- 10:25Speaker 2: But here's the thing, and y'all know this, especially Tom,
- 10:30Speaker 2: but it's one thing to have such an incredible impact
- 10:35Speaker 2: in schools and bring your message and see and experience
- 10:39Speaker 2: the results of what you're having with children. But it's
- 10:45Speaker 2: another thing to take all of that and to put
- 10:49Speaker 2: it to spread it on the internet and show people
- 10:55Speaker 2: not just that we're there at that school what's happening,
- 10:59Speaker 2: but people everywhere. And that's how you guys have spread
- 11:03Speaker 2: And without Abby, there would be a limit here big time.
- 11:09Speaker 5: Yeah, we'd have a small cluster in New York or
- 11:12Speaker 5: maybe a small cluster in Vermont as well. But because
- 11:15Speaker 5: of all the social media stuff that's gone out, all
- 11:18Speaker 5: the videos that haven't put together, all the promotional videos
- 11:21Speaker 5: that we've made with the Chevy dealers and some other
- 11:24Speaker 5: people along the way that have been big helpers in
- 11:27Speaker 5: the Suers and Heroes world, Like, she put all that together,
- 11:29Speaker 5: and if it didn't happen, we wouldn't be I mean,
- 11:32Speaker 5: we say two million students around that we've spoke to,
- 11:35Speaker 5: it wouldn't that number wouldn't be two.
- 11:36Speaker 3: Million, that's for sure.
- 11:37Speaker 2: Absolutely. I want to talk about your your book of course,
- 11:41Speaker 2: a bridge named Amos, but I want our listeners to
- 11:48Speaker 2: learn a little bit about you, who they may not
- 11:52Speaker 2: be familiar with rick Yarish, And I think there's a
- 11:55Speaker 2: little bit of maybe some competition between you and Tom
- 12:00Speaker 2: who's known, who's known more? Who's known who's known better?
- 12:06Speaker 1: You?
- 12:07Speaker 2: Or or Tom Murphy.
- 12:09Speaker 3: Who's known better about what? Everything?
- 12:12Speaker 2: Just who's more famous?
- 12:14Speaker 3: Oh, who's more famous? Who's known more? I got you, Yeah,
- 12:18Speaker 3: I was like Who's I thought you were saying who
- 12:19Speaker 3: knows more?
- 12:20Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, we already know that's you.
- 12:22Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go, there you go. I wasn't even
- 12:24Speaker 3: gonna say that because Tom is the most.
- 12:26Speaker 5: Like well read person I've ever met, truly, but you know,
- 12:32Speaker 5: if we're going there, you know, it's kind of crazy too,
- 12:35Speaker 5: because Tom had the USC career and all that stuff.
- 12:39Speaker 5: But this is not a face you forget.
- 12:44Speaker 3: Sometimes it's in your nightmares, but hopefully it's in your dreams.
- 12:48Speaker 5: But this is not a face that's forgotten when you
- 12:51Speaker 5: you know people I don't run independent people and they're like,
- 12:54Speaker 5: I think I've seen you before, Like, oh, yeah, I
- 12:57Speaker 5: know you.
- 12:57Speaker 3: I've seen you before. Not some then that's like, oh wow,
- 13:01Speaker 3: I don't know if I've seen you. Maybe there was
- 13:03Speaker 3: somebody that looks like you.
- 13:05Speaker 2: Yeah, you were you were burned alive, and we I
- 13:14Speaker 2: want to push the word alive because you're so very
- 13:17Speaker 2: much alive, and I don't want to put words in
- 13:23Speaker 2: your mouth, but it almost seems like in some ways
- 13:26Speaker 2: part of your message is that you're more alive now
- 13:30Speaker 2: than you may have been before this, this incident, which
- 13:35Speaker 2: was a roadside bomb when you were overseas fighting in
- 13:43Speaker 2: the in the army for the United States.
- 13:46Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's I think it's well said, really,
- 13:49Speaker 5: you know, more alive today than I was before. And
- 13:52Speaker 5: you know, you know you've heard it before. I've said,
- 13:54Speaker 5: it's the best thing that it's ever happened to me.
- 13:56Speaker 5: I certainly didn't want it to happen, but it did.
- 13:59Speaker 5: There's nothing I can do about that, and I've gotten
- 14:01Speaker 5: a lot of rewards out of it. But yeah, I
- 14:03Speaker 5: am more alive. I'm prouder of who I am today.
- 14:08Speaker 5: I'm just you know, so I get thank you for
- 14:11Speaker 5: your service all the time just because of my service
- 14:15Speaker 5: to the country, and I appreciate that. You know, I
- 14:17Speaker 5: would never tell anybody, Hey, don't say that, you know,
- 14:20Speaker 5: I appreciate it. But it's even more important when people
- 14:24Speaker 5: recognize the service that I'm doing today, and that should
- 14:28Speaker 5: be everybody. You know, past service is amazing and great,
- 14:31Speaker 5: but you can't live your life on past services.
- 14:35Speaker 3: So it's like, what are we doing today? What are
- 14:37Speaker 3: we doing today to serve?
- 14:38Speaker 5: And because of what happened to me, it's given me
- 14:41Speaker 5: just an amazing opportunity to continue serving in this world.
- 14:46Speaker 2: And what you're doing and how you're serving with sweethearts
- 14:50Speaker 2: and heroes, and how you met Tom and how you've
- 14:54Speaker 2: connected in with this organization and what you're doing and
- 14:57Speaker 2: the message you're bringing to children, schools and so many others.
- 15:02Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about what you've you've recently
- 15:05Speaker 2: recently done, of course this morning. But man, it's like
- 15:12Speaker 2: when I see you and I chat with you, one
- 15:15Speaker 2: of the things that crosses my mind is how many
- 15:22Speaker 2: veterans are walking around who don't have the the exterior
- 15:35Speaker 2: obvious damage that you have, the very obvious scar scars,
- 15:45Speaker 2: But internally they're not living like you are right now.
- 15:52Speaker 2: They're not walking around with an immense amount of positivity
- 15:58Speaker 2: and hope. They're walking around with discouragement with a big,
- 16:03Speaker 2: beautiful or handsome smile on their face.
- 16:07Speaker 3: I have a good, good.
- 16:09Speaker 5: Buddy of mine from Ohio, and he he doesn't look injured,
- 16:14Speaker 5: but he certainly was. He HASH, He has PTSD, he
- 16:18Speaker 5: has a traumatic brain injury, and he also has about
- 16:21Speaker 5: three hundred pieces of shrapnel that you can't see because
- 16:24Speaker 5: they're covered by his clothes.
- 16:26Speaker 3: But he's dealing with a lot in life.
- 16:28Speaker 5: And I would say that he and anyone else who
- 16:32Speaker 5: is dealing with post traumatic stress is dealing with a
- 16:34Speaker 5: lot more than I am. But when you know him
- 16:37Speaker 5: and I are together and we're standing there and we're
- 16:40Speaker 5: having a conversation and somebody will come up to me
- 16:43Speaker 5: and always say, hey, man, thank you so much for
- 16:46Speaker 5: your service and your sacrifice. And they don't even look
- 16:50Speaker 5: at my friend Paul. They don't even look at him. Wow,
- 16:53Speaker 5: they yeah.
- 16:55Speaker 3: And it's frustrating, you know, And I know he's feeling it.
- 16:59Speaker 3: I know he doesn't really say it.
- 17:00Speaker 5: He won't come out with that, but I know he's
- 17:02Speaker 5: feeling it, and I you know him and I can
- 17:05Speaker 5: joke about it later on and I say, I always
- 17:07Speaker 5: want to put a shirt on. This says he was
- 17:09Speaker 5: injured too, and then they have an arrow pointing at
- 17:11Speaker 5: him because like I don't know, Like I certainly do
- 17:15Speaker 5: appreciate when people do come up and say those things,
- 17:18Speaker 5: so he would as well.
- 17:20Speaker 3: But yeah, he didn't have any visible wounds that you
- 17:24Speaker 3: can see when you first walk up to him.
- 17:26Speaker 5: So in my mind, him and so many other people
- 17:29Speaker 5: who are dealing with post traumatic stress are just dealing
- 17:31Speaker 5: with so much more than I am. I say that
- 17:34Speaker 5: when I look in the mirror, like I'm looking at
- 17:36Speaker 5: myself right now, and I know exactly who I am,
- 17:41Speaker 5: and somebody with post traumatic stress you know, they can
- 17:43Speaker 5: look in the mirror and they see a person and
- 17:48Speaker 5: it's like they don't recognize who they are.
- 17:49Speaker 3: I don't know what their purpose is in life. They
- 17:51Speaker 3: don't know all those things. And that's crazy to me.
- 17:54Speaker 3: And I'm just I'm not that. I'm super blessed that
- 17:57Speaker 3: I do not have to deal with that. So many
- 18:00Speaker 3: people do you.
- 18:01Speaker 2: You know, you say that that something happened to you,
- 18:08Speaker 2: and of course it did, and the story about what
- 18:12Speaker 2: happened is incredibly graphic. You were covered in diesel fuel,
- 18:17Speaker 2: you were burning alive, you you tried to get out
- 18:23Speaker 2: of the the Bradley vehicle that you were in. Essentially, Ah,
- 18:30Speaker 2: what is that vehicle anyway?
- 18:32Speaker 5: Well, you know, I say it's a small tank, but
- 18:35Speaker 5: in the military a tanker. I actually said it in
- 18:37Speaker 5: front of a tanker the other day and afterwards they're like,
- 18:40Speaker 5: that is not a tank I said, I know, but
- 18:42Speaker 5: the majority of the people I'm talking to aren't tankers,
- 18:45Speaker 5: So I can call it whatever I want.
- 18:47Speaker 3: That's what it looks like. But as an a PC,
- 18:49Speaker 3: it's called an armored personnel carrier.
- 18:52Speaker 2: It's big. And you had a close friend of yours,
- 19:01Speaker 2: a fellow soldier who was next to you, who didn't
- 19:04Speaker 2: make it. You tried to get out of this the
- 19:09Speaker 2: top of this vehicle while you were on fire and
- 19:14Speaker 2: fell badly, broke your your leg and then rolled down
- 19:19Speaker 2: in embankment, still burning into like.
- 19:25Speaker 5: Roadside swamp sewage basically, I mean really, it's like it's
- 19:30Speaker 5: like swamp sewage. You know, they don't have where we
- 19:35Speaker 5: were actually anyways, in Iraq, they didn't have plumbing like
- 19:39Speaker 5: everybody else.
- 19:40Speaker 3: And you know when they went to the.
- 19:43Speaker 5: Bathroom in their house or outside of their house, you know,
- 19:45Speaker 5: they would dig a hole and use the bathroom out
- 19:47Speaker 5: there or they had a hole in there. But it
- 19:49Speaker 5: didn't run to a sewage treatment plant. It ran into
- 19:53Speaker 5: the local canals. I mean, that was just how it works.
- 19:57Speaker 5: So you know, all that runoff from all that stuff
- 20:00Speaker 5: that's coming into that canal that where I.
- 20:03Speaker 2: Was, it was not good. It's now going right into
- 20:07Speaker 2: your your body. It's making a horrific situation, which frankly
- 20:14Speaker 2: is just alone, deadly, deadly, and now you're you're you're
- 20:22Speaker 2: receiving all of this infectious material into your body.
- 20:27Speaker 3: I mean you can say the word it's infectious, you know, yeah, yeah, literally, yeah,
- 20:34Speaker 3: literally how how it's all insult to injury.
- 20:39Speaker 2: Really, yeah, go ahead.
- 20:42Speaker 5: I so I was on fire, but then my the
- 20:46Speaker 5: reason I have a prosthetic leg is because I jump off.
- 20:49Speaker 5: I had to jump off of the vehicle and I
- 20:50Speaker 5: broke my leg. Like the fire wasn't enough. Then I
- 20:53Speaker 5: break my leg and then I roll into a canal,
- 20:56Speaker 5: which saves my life. So obviously I would, you know,
- 20:58Speaker 5: we talk about that. I would do it again. But
- 21:01Speaker 5: it also almost killed me because of all the disgusting
- 21:07Speaker 5: stuff in that canal. I had so many things in
- 21:09Speaker 5: the hospital happened too, Like I was on dialysis at
- 21:13Speaker 5: one point because my kidneys stopped working and they brought
- 21:16Speaker 5: the dialysis machine in and that the dialysis machine stopped working,
- 21:20Speaker 5: so then.
- 21:20Speaker 3: They had to get another one, and it was like
- 21:22Speaker 3: the time to get it. It was not good, and
- 21:25Speaker 3: I was this is early on. I was a mess.
- 21:28Speaker 5: And then my kidney started working on their own again.
- 21:31Speaker 5: I don't know how my eyes weren't more affected than
- 21:34Speaker 5: they are. You know, I lost a little bit of
- 21:36Speaker 5: vision in my right eye. But you know, I just
- 21:39Speaker 5: like all of these things that had happened, you know,
- 21:42Speaker 5: the whole everything happens for a reason saying, I don't
- 21:45Speaker 5: know how much I buy that. I've told that before,
- 21:47Speaker 5: but man, the fact that I can still see, the
- 21:50Speaker 5: fact that I can still talk, the fact that you know,
- 21:53Speaker 5: I don't have ears, but I can still hear, the
- 21:54Speaker 5: fact that I don't have a nose, I can still smell,
- 21:56Speaker 5: you know, my hands they lost the feeling in them,
- 21:59Speaker 5: but I can still use them.
- 22:01Speaker 3: I don't know, I'm just super super blessed.
- 22:04Speaker 2: Isn't that something else? Did you ever wish that you
- 22:10Speaker 2: had passed?
- 22:12Speaker 3: I think in the hospital, for sure.
- 22:14Speaker 5: I think there were days that it was like this
- 22:15Speaker 5: is too much, you know, thinking back, like they when
- 22:20Speaker 5: I go through I tell my story and I tell,
- 22:22Speaker 5: you know, hey, I was injured in Iraq and I
- 22:24Speaker 5: jumped off the vehicle and I broke my leg and
- 22:26Speaker 5: I rolled into a canal, and like that's just that's
- 22:30Speaker 5: the part of the story. But if I really break
- 22:32Speaker 5: it down to every single day in the hospital, and
- 22:37Speaker 5: there's five or six stories for every single day. I
- 22:40Speaker 5: was in the hospital for six months, so you know,
- 22:43Speaker 5: there's thousands of stories just and when I really break
- 22:47Speaker 5: it down and I think about all of those little
- 22:50Speaker 5: incidents in the hospital and the hopelessness that I.
- 22:54Speaker 3: Felt on certain days, Like it's crazy.
- 22:57Speaker 5: To me to think that, yeah, I'm still here, but
- 23:03Speaker 5: it also makes me remember how rough it really was
- 23:07Speaker 5: at that time. Like I say, I would go through
- 23:09Speaker 5: it again to get back to this point in my life.
- 23:11Speaker 5: But when I break it down to the seconds of
- 23:15Speaker 5: being in that hospital, man, it's so hard to really
- 23:19Speaker 5: think that because it was brutal.
- 23:22Speaker 2: It was brutal for years, and you know, I just
- 23:28Speaker 2: it's it's like, you know, something horrible happened to you,
- 23:33Speaker 2: and it didn't just go away the next day. I mean,
- 23:37Speaker 2: this horrible thing was was weighing down on top of you,
- 23:42Speaker 2: trying to pull every ounce of life and hope and everything, yeah,
- 23:50Speaker 2: outside of your soul, and.
- 23:52Speaker 5: Knowing, you know, if I am going to survive this,
- 23:56Speaker 5: knowing if I'm going to survive this, I'm going to
- 23:58Speaker 5: have to live with it the rest of my life
- 23:59Speaker 5: and some capacity.
- 24:01Speaker 3: So I think that was a part of it too.
- 24:02Speaker 2: So this happened to you, Rick, but something else happened.
- 24:08Speaker 2: And it's like usually when something like this happens, it
- 24:14Speaker 2: just the residual is not great. But there was something
- 24:21Speaker 2: else that happened to you, and I don't know what
- 24:23Speaker 2: the hell it was. I don't know if it was
- 24:28Speaker 2: in awakening. I don't know if it was spiritual. I
- 24:31Speaker 2: don't know what happened. But at some point, I'm guessing
- 24:36Speaker 2: you had to you had an epiphany. You had something
- 24:40Speaker 2: much much bigger than an epiphany where you had to
- 24:43Speaker 2: make a decision that, man, I'm either going to take
- 24:47Speaker 2: a hard left or a hard right here, and I'm
- 24:51Speaker 2: going to go one hundred miles an hour in whichever
- 24:56Speaker 2: direction I go in.
- 24:58Speaker 5: I think once I fig out that I could share
- 25:02Speaker 5: my story is when the you know, I think this
- 25:06Speaker 5: might be the first time I've ever said.
- 25:07Speaker 3: This, because I alway started trying to point it to
- 25:08Speaker 3: a point in that recovery where it all changed for me.
- 25:12Speaker 5: And I tell you know, I told the little girl's
- 25:14Speaker 5: story that many people have heard, and like, that's a moment.
- 25:17Speaker 5: And a book I read by Randy Posh called The
- 25:19Speaker 5: Last Lecture. There's a point in that book that things changed.
- 25:23Speaker 3: But I don't know.
- 25:24Speaker 5: I think when I started to speak and started to
- 25:27Speaker 5: share my story is when I truly changed my mindset,
- 25:33Speaker 5: because that's when I realized that, you know, I can
- 25:35Speaker 5: help people, and in the end, what I really got,
- 25:37Speaker 5: and you know, this is something we talk about all
- 25:39Speaker 5: the time, is I got purpose. You know, I found
- 25:41Speaker 5: who I was again and it was a different me,
- 25:43Speaker 5: but it was still my purpose and it's my purpose.
- 25:46Speaker 3: One of my purposes today. I have many, and you
- 25:49Speaker 3: know we should all have many, not just one.
- 25:51Speaker 5: Because if something happens to that one purpose and you
- 25:54Speaker 5: don't have another, that's a tough situation to be in.
- 25:57Speaker 2: You're a father, your a husband, and you're also maybe
- 26:04Speaker 2: even your own best friend.
- 26:06Speaker 3: You have to.
- 26:09Speaker 2: You have to look to yourself at the end of
- 26:11Speaker 2: the day and cherish what you have, but also be
- 26:18Speaker 2: true to yourself in that you know that if something,
- 26:23Speaker 2: if the ship hits the fan again for you in
- 26:28Speaker 2: any capacity, that you're going to be able to not
- 26:34Speaker 2: only survive it, but also flourish beyond it for sure.
- 26:39Speaker 5: I mean, and I'm going to get this so wrong
- 26:43Speaker 5: because I'm terrible at quoting things, but you know in
- 26:46Speaker 5: the Bible it says that, you know, like difficult things,
- 26:52Speaker 5: we're supposed to rejoice over those things, and when you
- 26:56Speaker 5: do it, it creates h It's not longevity, but it's
- 27:01Speaker 5: like that, and that's.
- 27:02Speaker 3: Where I'm at today.
- 27:03Speaker 5: Like I know that if I deal with something difficult again,
- 27:07Speaker 5: I'm going to be okay.
- 27:09Speaker 3: And that's the longevity, that's the endurance. Endurance is the word.
- 27:12Speaker 5: That's the endurance that I have now because I went
- 27:15Speaker 5: through something extremely difficult. You know, I always say, if
- 27:19Speaker 5: I was lit on fire again tomorrow, my pray to
- 27:21Speaker 5: God that doesn't happen. But if I did, then I
- 27:23Speaker 5: survived it, I would be okay, and I would be
- 27:26Speaker 5: okay a lot sooner than I was last time I was.
- 27:29Speaker 5: You know, it took years for me to be okay
- 27:33Speaker 5: when this happened, but this time it won't because I
- 27:36Speaker 5: recognize that there will be good things.
- 27:38Speaker 3: Sure, the struggle is going to be really really hard,
- 27:41Speaker 3: but that's what struggle is. But in the end, it's
- 27:44Speaker 3: going to be totally fine and even better than totally fine.
- 27:47Speaker 2: Really, And look how blessed you are. You have a
- 27:50Speaker 2: beautiful wife, you have beautiful children, and you're connected in
- 27:54Speaker 2: with a family of friends before anything else through sweethearts
- 28:03Speaker 2: and heroes. They're colleagues, but they're they're friends more than anything.
- 28:07Speaker 2: I mean, these these people that love you and surround
- 28:09Speaker 2: you uh and are part of your team, are tremendous.
- 28:14Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're.
- 28:15Speaker 5: Family, I mean, and JD, you're a part of that
- 28:17Speaker 5: family too, honestly, Like, I'm not afraid to lean on people.
- 28:21Speaker 4: I am not.
- 28:22Speaker 5: I'm not going to put too much on people like
- 28:25Speaker 5: I try not to do that, but I'm not afraid
- 28:28Speaker 5: if I'm struggling man to lean on people because I
- 28:30Speaker 5: I know that I didn't get to where I am
- 28:32Speaker 5: today on my own. That just didn't happen like happened
- 28:36Speaker 5: because there were so many people that helped me get
- 28:39Speaker 5: through it. Now, sure, you all, you have to have
- 28:41Speaker 5: strength yourself, you have to have the desire to get better.
- 28:44Speaker 5: But you know, we need people in our lives to
- 28:46Speaker 5: help us get through things. And that's what the Sweetheart's
- 28:48Speaker 5: message is. That's the hope that the Sweethearts give. Sure,
- 28:52Speaker 5: but yeah, I have this amazing family and and JD,
- 28:55Speaker 5: like I said, you're one of them. Like, if if
- 28:56Speaker 5: I'm struggling, I'm not, I'm not going to be afraid
- 28:59Speaker 5: to lean on you a little bit.
- 29:00Speaker 3: And I hope you feel the same way.
- 29:02Speaker 2: Yeah I do.
- 29:04Speaker 1: I do.
- 29:04Speaker 2: You know, we don't we don't have to go through
- 29:11Speaker 2: an event like this that you went through to have
- 29:17Speaker 2: very bad days. So many of us are going through
- 29:24Speaker 2: some form of hardship, even though we're not scarred on
- 29:29Speaker 2: the outside, we're we've got a nice house, a nice
- 29:35Speaker 2: roof over our head, we've got a good job, maybe,
- 29:38Speaker 2: but there's something that's dying inside of us, something that's
- 29:42Speaker 2: disconnected inside of us, and we're walking around with a
- 29:48Speaker 2: lack of hope. Do you ever taking your your your
- 29:54Speaker 2: story of your incident out of it. Do you ever
- 29:59Speaker 2: have moment and like that that have nothing to do
- 30:02Speaker 2: with with what happened to you, where you're just having
- 30:05Speaker 2: a really bad time in life.
- 30:08Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, it's not it's not even
- 30:10Speaker 3: really bad days.
- 30:10Speaker 5: Sometimes it's really bad long moments of days and weeks
- 30:15Speaker 5: and months.
- 30:15Speaker 3: And you know, I was just about to say that
- 30:17Speaker 3: I knew, I knew where you were gonna go with that,
- 30:19Speaker 3: because that's real, you know.
- 30:22Speaker 5: I I share a really good story, and I share
- 30:25Speaker 5: this message of hope, and I do all that. But man,
- 30:30Speaker 5: even when I'm on that stage given that message, there
- 30:33Speaker 5: are times where I'm like, can I even deliver that message?
- 30:38Speaker 5: I would tell you that's also the time that I
- 30:40Speaker 5: should be delivering that message, and it's the most important
- 30:43Speaker 5: to me because it you know, and that, and at
- 30:45Speaker 5: that point it's me helping myself, like these are your words,
- 30:48Speaker 5: rick Man, live by them.
- 30:50Speaker 3: It's going to be okay.
- 30:52Speaker 5: It truly is like something that I said that I've
- 30:55Speaker 5: been saying a lot recently is you know, life is hard,
- 30:58Speaker 5: but it's good.
- 31:00Speaker 3: It's good even when it's really really difficult. It's good
- 31:03Speaker 3: and it is going to be okay.
- 31:05Speaker 5: And okay doesn't always look like what we think is
- 31:08Speaker 5: going to look like or we want it to look like,
- 31:11Speaker 5: but it's going to be okay.
- 31:13Speaker 3: If you believe it's going to be okay, it will
- 31:15Speaker 3: be okay.
- 31:20Speaker 2: There's so many of us that are like, hold on
- 31:23Speaker 2: a second. You're asking me to get up on stage
- 31:27Speaker 2: in front of hundreds or even thousands of people and
- 31:31Speaker 2: speak be serious. That that brings me massive, massive anxiety.
- 31:40Speaker 2: You have to, you don't have to, but you do
- 31:44Speaker 2: this knowing that when you walk into a school, or
- 31:48Speaker 2: you walk into an auditorium or any kind of theater
- 31:53Speaker 2: or anywhere where you and sweethearts and heroes are bringing
- 31:57Speaker 2: your message that when you walk onto stay age, when
- 32:01Speaker 2: you're in front of so many eyes looking back at
- 32:05Speaker 2: you that there's a woe factor. I mean when people
- 32:12Speaker 2: see Tom and you know how handsome he is and
- 32:14Speaker 2: his big muscles and all that stuff, there's a woe
- 32:18Speaker 2: factor there too. But when people see you, you know,
- 32:23Speaker 2: what's what's in their their mind? You know what they're thinking,
- 32:27Speaker 2: Holy shit, what's going on here?
- 32:31Speaker 3: Yeah? You know it's uh.
- 32:34Speaker 1: You know.
- 32:34Speaker 5: Tom has always been into the entertainment of it, like
- 32:38Speaker 5: we know, we have to entertain people, and uh, I
- 32:41Speaker 5: have a hard time with that.
- 32:42Speaker 3: Like I'm just I am very simple. I just really am.
- 32:45Speaker 3: Like I want to go in.
- 32:47Speaker 5: I want to be standing on stage when they introduce
- 32:50Speaker 5: me and hey, here's Rick here.
- 32:52Speaker 3: But you know, Tom, he's got.
- 32:54Speaker 5: His video in the beginning, which I love, and then
- 32:57Speaker 5: he comes out, he runs out at the end of
- 32:58Speaker 5: the video, and then halfway through the presentation another video
- 33:02Speaker 5: plays and I'm backstage.
- 33:03Speaker 3: And then I come out. I didn't ever want to
- 33:06Speaker 3: do that because like, it's just I don't know, it's
- 33:10Speaker 3: just silly to me. Now it's not. I understand the
- 33:12Speaker 3: importance of it. So I, you know, present on my
- 33:16Speaker 3: own sometimes.
- 33:17Speaker 5: And I used to just be on stage, like I said,
- 33:20Speaker 5: I want to it's a easier that way. And then
- 33:23Speaker 5: I was like, you know what, this is not the
- 33:25Speaker 5: way it's supposed to be done. There has to be
- 33:27Speaker 5: some kind of grab. And I'm enough of a grab,
- 33:30Speaker 5: like being on stage anyways, because they the way I look.
- 33:33Speaker 5: But when I do my presentation on my own, there's
- 33:36Speaker 5: a picture of me on the screen and it says
- 33:38Speaker 5: retired Army Sergeant Rick Yerish and it's an old picture
- 33:42Speaker 5: of me before my injury in my army uniform.
- 33:44Speaker 3: My BDUs or my acus.
- 33:46Speaker 2: And then the.
- 33:49Speaker 5: Introduction happens, I'm not up on stage, so people just say, Okay,
- 33:53Speaker 5: it's going to be this army guy who.
- 33:54Speaker 3: Was in the military and he's going to tell us
- 33:57Speaker 3: a good story.
- 33:58Speaker 5: And then the video plays of me walking for the
- 34:01Speaker 5: first time of an explosion in the beginning of the vehicle,
- 34:05Speaker 5: so they're surprised by that. And then at the end
- 34:07Speaker 5: of the video, I actually get up on the stage,
- 34:10Speaker 5: so they think that this military guy is gonna come
- 34:13Speaker 5: and just talk, and then they see me and they're
- 34:14Speaker 5: like whoa. And then I stand on stage for thirty
- 34:19Speaker 5: seconds and I just stare into the crowd and I
- 34:21Speaker 5: don't say anything at all, and it is so uncomfortable
- 34:26Speaker 5: and it is so awesome, and I can just.
- 34:29Speaker 3: They don't know anything about me. They don't know if
- 34:31Speaker 3: I can talk, they don't know if something's wrong. They
- 34:34Speaker 3: just don't.
- 34:35Speaker 5: I'm afraid they have no clue what's going on. But
- 34:39Speaker 5: I create this really uncomfortable situation. And the importance of
- 34:44Speaker 5: it is is you know what is thirty seconds? You
- 34:46Speaker 5: know you ask that question and thirty seconds is thirty seconds?
- 34:48Speaker 5: But does it always feel that way? It certainly doesn't.
- 34:51Speaker 5: So thirty seconds can go really fast if you're having fun,
- 34:54Speaker 5: or thirty seconds can feel like a lifetime if you're
- 34:56Speaker 5: in a really uncomfortable situation. So I created this thirty
- 34:59Speaker 5: secon and some uncomfortability and just to show how long
- 35:03Speaker 5: thirty seconds can be. And then I say, the reason
- 35:07Speaker 5: I'm really talking about thirty seconds is because that's how long.
- 35:10Speaker 3: I was on fire.
- 35:12Speaker 5: So that's how long I was burning alive before the
- 35:14Speaker 5: fire was extinguished by that water. So it gives people
- 35:18Speaker 5: an understanding of how long thirty seconds can really be
- 35:21Speaker 5: and really feel.
- 35:23Speaker 2: What are the first words out of your mouth?
- 35:25Speaker 3: Ah, are you uncomfortable yet?
- 35:28Speaker 5: That's the first words, And everybody kind of chuckles are
- 35:31Speaker 5: you uncomfortable yet, And I said, that's my job in
- 35:33Speaker 5: this world is to make people uncomfortable because in the end,
- 35:36Speaker 5: that's the only way to become comfortable.
- 35:38Speaker 3: Got to be uncomfortable first to be comfortable.
- 35:41Speaker 5: So I'm going to get that out of the way
- 35:43Speaker 5: and then I go into the talk about what thirty
- 35:46Speaker 5: seconds really is.
- 35:47Speaker 3: But yeah, my first thing is are you uncomfortable yet?
- 35:51Speaker 2: It's one thing to step out on stage in front
- 35:56Speaker 2: of wow, adult school staff, administration, easy. Yeah, it's a
- 36:08Speaker 2: whole nother bag. I'm guessing to present yourself in front
- 36:14Speaker 2: of young children.
- 36:17Speaker 3: Yeah, and middle schoolers and middle.
- 36:19Speaker 2: Schoolers there they the way they react, the way the
- 36:24Speaker 2: way they feel. This is something that's really profound and
- 36:31Speaker 2: what is that.
- 36:33Speaker 5: That's a It's an amazing feeling, honestly now, But in
- 36:37Speaker 5: the beginning it wasn't. You know, like those kids when
- 36:40Speaker 5: they first see me. I mean, I can see the
- 36:43Speaker 5: little ones especially, you see the fear in some of
- 36:45Speaker 5: their eyes. Some of it's just wonder, which is amazing
- 36:49Speaker 5: because that's what kids are full of.
- 36:50Speaker 3: They're full of wonder.
- 36:52Speaker 5: But there's fear in some of the kid's eyes too.
- 36:54Speaker 5: And when I see a kid in a little kid
- 36:57Speaker 5: in the room that is fearful. My job is them,
- 37:01Speaker 5: and I'm going to focus on them and I'm going
- 37:03Speaker 5: to get them out of that zone that I'm comfortable zone.
- 37:06Speaker 5: And usually very quickly it changes and I can see
- 37:11Speaker 5: the change, and you know, my mission is accomplished for
- 37:14Speaker 5: that one kid that I can concentrate on the.
- 37:17Speaker 3: Rest of the room.
- 37:18Speaker 5: But in the middle schoolers, you know, they're just surprised,
- 37:21Speaker 5: like WHOA. First of all, they're surprised that I'm even there,
- 37:24Speaker 5: because when Tom introduces, they don't know I'm there. They
- 37:28Speaker 5: just see a video and then all of a sudden,
- 37:30Speaker 5: there I am on stage and they're like, oh my gosh,
- 37:32Speaker 5: he's actually here.
- 37:33Speaker 3: So uh, I don't know.
- 37:35Speaker 2: I just love it.
- 37:36Speaker 5: I just love it and now and then I get
- 37:37Speaker 5: to connect with them. That is That's truly my job
- 37:40Speaker 5: in this world is just connecting with people. And you know,
- 37:45Speaker 5: looking the way I look, I just you know, I'm
- 37:48Speaker 5: really good at it now, and it's hard. I think
- 37:51Speaker 5: people have a hard time understanding that I would be
- 37:54Speaker 5: good at connecting with people.
- 37:56Speaker 3: But I've made it up my job. I think it's
- 37:59Speaker 3: extreme important in my life. If I can't connect with people.
- 38:02Speaker 3: Then how do I get a message.
- 38:04Speaker 2: Across what's the story of that little girl?
- 38:07Speaker 5: Yeah, so in a restaurant, gosh, probably eight months after
- 38:11Speaker 5: my injury, about two months after I got out of
- 38:14Speaker 5: the hospital. You know, still very new to me going
- 38:17Speaker 5: out in public, but it was very obvious to me
- 38:20Speaker 5: that children were terrified of me. Like, I mean, I
- 38:24Speaker 5: wish I had a picture of me right now, of
- 38:25Speaker 5: what I look like right after I got out of
- 38:27Speaker 5: the hospital.
- 38:27Speaker 3: It wasn't like this. My skin wasn't smooth and shiny.
- 38:31Speaker 3: It was open and red, and uh, you know, it
- 38:35Speaker 3: looked it looked awful. It really did.
- 38:37Speaker 5: It was scary even to adults. It was scary in
- 38:40Speaker 5: a certain way. You like, you imagine what a monster
- 38:45Speaker 5: is and you could, you know, maybe take me. And
- 38:48Speaker 5: that's what it looked like. So kids were afraid of me.
- 38:51Speaker 5: It was obvious, Like I'd go out in public, made
- 38:53Speaker 5: runway hide behind their parents. And this little girl in
- 38:57Speaker 5: the restaurant saw me sitting with her. She was sitting
- 39:00Speaker 5: with her grandfather, and she was staring at me, and
- 39:03Speaker 5: I could see that she was afraid of me. But
- 39:06Speaker 5: her grandfather saw the same thing, and he actually asked
- 39:10Speaker 5: her quietly. Now at this point, I mean I was
- 39:13Speaker 5: listening and seeing everything. Two months after the hospital, like
- 39:18Speaker 5: I'm still in kind of a little bit in Iraq mode,
- 39:21Speaker 5: like war mode, you're still aware of everything. But also
- 39:24Speaker 5: I was aware because of the way I looked, and
- 39:27Speaker 5: I was bummed that people thought the way they did.
- 39:30Speaker 5: Her kids thought the way they did, so I was
- 39:31Speaker 5: really in tune with him. So this is grandfather whispered
- 39:34Speaker 5: to her very quietly, but I heard him, and he said,
- 39:36Speaker 5: go say hi to him. Now, she didn't want to
- 39:39Speaker 5: come over, and I totally understood that. I didn't want
- 39:40Speaker 5: to really to come over either, because I knew how
- 39:42Speaker 5: it would end.
- 39:43Speaker 3: She's afraid.
- 39:44Speaker 5: But he did it again, and he said go say
- 39:46Speaker 5: hi to him, and this time she did start to
- 39:48Speaker 5: come over, but when she got halfway over, I didn't.
- 39:51Speaker 5: I didn't want her to come all the way over.
- 39:52Speaker 5: She was too uncomfortable. So when she got halfway over,
- 39:55Speaker 5: I said, hey, how you doing. But when I said
- 39:57Speaker 5: that is what happened was what I s she stopped
- 40:00Speaker 5: at in her tracks, turned around and ran back to
- 40:03Speaker 5: her grandpa. And you know, at that moment, it's just
- 40:06Speaker 5: like Rick, this is life, man, Just deal with it.
- 40:08Speaker 5: This is the way it's going to be. You're always
- 40:10Speaker 5: going to look really different. Kids are always going to
- 40:12Speaker 5: be afraid of you.
- 40:13Speaker 3: Just deal with it.
- 40:15Speaker 5: So she ran away and she got back to her
- 40:17Speaker 5: grandpa and she looked at him and she said, Grandpa,
- 40:20Speaker 5: he's really nice.
- 40:21Speaker 3: And she changed a lot for me, changed a lot
- 40:25Speaker 3: for me.
- 40:26Speaker 2: But you overheard that.
- 40:28Speaker 5: Yeah, I was, like I said, I was paying attention
- 40:30Speaker 5: to everything, and the grandfather had a huge part in that.
- 40:34Speaker 3: I never really have given him the credit, but yeah,
- 40:37Speaker 3: he deserves a lot of that credit.
- 40:38Speaker 5: He you know, forced his granddaughter into an uncomfortable situation,
- 40:42Speaker 5: which in the end made her comfortable, which was kind
- 40:44Speaker 5: of crazy. But yeah, she said, he's really nice. And
- 40:49Speaker 5: as soon as I heard that, it was like, and
- 40:51Speaker 5: this is something that I've always thought about, but I've.
- 40:53Speaker 3: Never really said.
- 40:54Speaker 5: Tom and I have been talking about this, but it
- 40:55Speaker 5: wasn't you know, because we say, you know, I lacked
- 40:59Speaker 5: acceptance in the world at that point.
- 41:00Speaker 3: It was the acceptance of children. When that happened. I
- 41:04Speaker 3: wasn't all of a sudden accepted by every kid in
- 41:06Speaker 3: the world. That's not happened.
- 41:08Speaker 5: I was accepted by one. But what did happen was
- 41:11Speaker 5: I accepted myself. And that's the biggest thing. Once we
- 41:14Speaker 5: can accept ourselves except who we are, and that's when
- 41:19Speaker 5: things really change. If we're waiting for the acceptance of
- 41:22Speaker 5: everyone else in this world, man, you're gonna be waiting
- 41:25Speaker 5: till the day you die because it ain't happening.
- 41:27Speaker 3: It's not gonna happen. So that's when I accepted myself though,
- 41:31Speaker 3: and I was like, you know, I think I can
- 41:33Speaker 3: get through.
- 41:33Speaker 1: This.
- 41:34Speaker 3: Certainly wasn't the answer to the rest of my life,
- 41:37Speaker 3: but it was a part of it.
- 41:39Speaker 2: I have a question for you. Yeah, maybe you've been
- 41:44Speaker 2: and I want to know if you've been asked this before.
- 41:49Speaker 2: Do you have tear ducks? Can you cry? Have you
- 41:53Speaker 2: been asked that before?
- 41:56Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I've been asked if I
- 41:58Speaker 3: can cry.
- 42:00Speaker 5: I've been asked a lot about my eyes and a
- 42:02Speaker 5: lot about the tears.
- 42:05Speaker 3: I don't know if I've asked if I been asked
- 42:07Speaker 3: if I can cry. So yes, I can.
- 42:10Speaker 5: And when I cry, it's very obvious because like there
- 42:15Speaker 5: are no drainage, so all the tears are going down
- 42:19Speaker 5: my face. And it's the same with you know, even
- 42:21Speaker 5: when I present, my eyes are very My eyes get
- 42:24Speaker 5: very dry because I can't close.
- 42:26Speaker 3: Like I mean, if you can see really close, this
- 42:28Speaker 3: is me blinking.
- 42:30Speaker 5: My eyes are not shutting. That's me blinking. Now I
- 42:34Speaker 5: can blink, But what's gonna happen is you can see
- 42:36Speaker 5: it on my shirt. Watch I'll close my eyes.
- 42:38Speaker 3: This is me blinking. What just happened?
- 42:41Speaker 5: The tears come down my face and they go down
- 42:44Speaker 5: onto my shirt. So that's what happens when I blink,
- 42:49Speaker 5: truly truly blink. So I create tears, but they don't
- 42:53Speaker 5: have anywhere to go because the drainage is just does
- 42:56Speaker 5: not work. So the tears sit in my eyes and
- 42:58Speaker 5: my Like I said, my eyes are really dry. I
- 43:00Speaker 5: partially because I can't close them all the way. So
- 43:02Speaker 5: when I sleep, yes, if I squeeze my eyes shut,
- 43:05Speaker 5: they're closed, but nobody does that. When they're sleeping, it's
- 43:08Speaker 5: very light, so my eyes are a little bit open
- 43:11Speaker 5: and they do dry out. So then throughout the day,
- 43:14Speaker 5: some mornings, you know, like people have bad hair days.
- 43:16Speaker 5: I have a bad hair day every day, unfortunately, but
- 43:19Speaker 5: I have bad eye days. So some mornings my eyes
- 43:22Speaker 5: are just not working the way they should things are
- 43:25Speaker 5: really blurry because of dry and maybe a fana was
- 43:27Speaker 5: on or something like that in the night. But yeah,
- 43:29Speaker 5: so the tears if I squeeze my eyes shut will
- 43:33Speaker 5: just come down my face. And sometimes I have no
- 43:36Speaker 5: choice but to do that in a presentation because like
- 43:39Speaker 5: it's all just sitting there and now I'm starting to
- 43:41Speaker 5: go crosside trying to like not have these tears go
- 43:44Speaker 5: down in my dry eyes are drying out, So I
- 43:47Speaker 5: try to time it really perfectly, though, So when I
- 43:49Speaker 5: squeeze my eyes shut, it's a really sad part of
- 43:52Speaker 5: the story.
- 43:52Speaker 3: And then it looks like I'm crying and just adds
- 43:55Speaker 3: to everything.
- 43:57Speaker 2: Do you do you do you cry? I have you
- 44:01Speaker 2: cried leaving a situation where a child has just impacted
- 44:12Speaker 2: you in a certain way and you just need some
- 44:16Speaker 2: time to be alone.
- 44:19Speaker 3: Uh, not so much kids anymore.
- 44:22Speaker 5: I've had a lot of those moments with adults when
- 44:26Speaker 5: you know, I was when even when I'm speaking to kids,
- 44:29Speaker 5: you know, in high schools and middle schools and camps
- 44:33Speaker 5: and stuff, and you know, there's always adults in the room,
- 44:35Speaker 5: and you know, I'll get a lot of feedback from
- 44:37Speaker 5: the adults, and the adults come up to me and
- 44:39Speaker 5: tell me that they're having really difficult situations in their life,
- 44:45Speaker 5: and you know, and I say that not kids, But
- 44:47Speaker 5: when I said that I met I was thinking more
- 44:49Speaker 5: like little little kids, but yes, like high schoolers. I
- 44:54Speaker 5: did a camp in Pennsylvania this summer and it was awesome.
- 44:57Speaker 5: They're just the best kids to talk to. I've done
- 45:00Speaker 5: for ten years in a row, and two weeks in
- 45:02Speaker 5: a row I've had at the very end of the thing.
- 45:05Speaker 5: You know, I speak from six forty five to eight,
- 45:08Speaker 5: so an hour and fifteen minutes. I don't leave there
- 45:11Speaker 5: until eleven PM because there's so many kids lined up
- 45:14Speaker 5: to talk to me, have questions, get pictures. But two
- 45:18Speaker 5: weeks in a row, there was a different girl, because
- 45:21Speaker 5: it's different kids each week, but there was a girl
- 45:23Speaker 5: who waited until the very end, so ten forty five pm.
- 45:27Speaker 5: She just sat in the auditorium. Two different weeks in
- 45:30Speaker 5: a row, different girl, and they both came up to
- 45:33Speaker 5: me and talked to me, and they were crying because
- 45:37Speaker 5: of their situation. But they got me going as well,
- 45:41Speaker 5: because I was in a situation that really pertained to
- 45:47Speaker 5: their message that they had for me, Like I don't
- 45:50Speaker 5: you know, I know you waited around until ten forty
- 45:52Speaker 5: five to talk to me so that I could help you.
- 45:55Speaker 3: But they helped me, Like, and it was just.
- 45:58Speaker 5: Crazy that two weeks in a row, these girls waited
- 46:06Speaker 5: that whole time to talk to me, and it was
- 46:08Speaker 5: something about something that they were dealing with, but also
- 46:11Speaker 5: something that I was dealing with as well, Like, so
- 46:15Speaker 5: crazy to me how that all works out, And it
- 46:18Speaker 5: was just me and not that I'm in the room
- 46:20Speaker 5: at the time, and it was just amazing, amazing.
- 46:24Speaker 2: I would guess Rick that there are many and you
- 46:31Speaker 2: I wanted to what you have to say about this?
- 46:34Speaker 2: Who would see you, hear you and then say or
- 46:40Speaker 2: think or feel Man, I can't. I can't complain to
- 46:46Speaker 2: that guy about anything that's going on in my life.
- 46:51Speaker 2: Nothing that I've gone through or that I'm going through
- 46:56Speaker 2: could compare to what he has. So I'm not going
- 47:02Speaker 2: to I'm not even going to say anything to him.
- 47:07Speaker 2: Do you think that that is true? And that that
- 47:10Speaker 2: may create some barriers at times where people just like man,
- 47:15Speaker 2: I can't even like I can't. I would feel like
- 47:18Speaker 2: crap if I complained to him that I was going
- 47:23Speaker 2: through a tragedy because I got into a car accident
- 47:26Speaker 2: and broke my leg, and you know, nothing can compare
- 47:31Speaker 2: to what he's gone through.
- 47:33Speaker 3: Well I don't. I don't compare my what happened to
- 47:36Speaker 3: me to anything else.
- 47:37Speaker 5: And that's because, like that would be silly, like when
- 47:43Speaker 5: an adult is like, what I'm dealing with in my
- 47:44Speaker 5: life right now, I'm not going to get into it
- 47:46Speaker 5: right now.
- 47:47Speaker 3: But it's a lot.
- 47:48Speaker 5: This is harder than what I went through. And it
- 47:50Speaker 5: has to do with my kids. You know, my oldest
- 47:53Speaker 5: daughter thirteen. This is harder than what I went through, Wow,
- 47:58Speaker 5: almost nineteen years ago. And this isn't like anything that's profound,
- 48:03Speaker 5: Like people are dealing with this stuff. Yeah, you know
- 48:06Speaker 5: when I meet parents and they're dealing with their kids
- 48:09Speaker 5: in certain situations in their life, and it's a lot.
- 48:13Speaker 5: So I would say that what they're dealing with is
- 48:16Speaker 5: worse than what I dealt with.
- 48:17Speaker 3: Wow, So I don't. That's why I don't.
- 48:19Speaker 5: I don't compare because I can't when a thirteen year old,
- 48:24Speaker 5: you know, I says something so awful that they've been
- 48:28Speaker 5: through in middle school and and I'll be like, well,
- 48:32Speaker 5: you know, well I was on fire and I almost died,
- 48:34Speaker 5: like come on that, I can't compare it to their situation.
- 48:37Speaker 3: In my mind, what they went through was way more
- 48:39Speaker 3: difficult than what I went through when I was twenty
- 48:41Speaker 3: four years old.
- 48:42Speaker 5: Sure, so I try to make that obvious to people
- 48:47Speaker 5: so that they can share that. I'm not telling you
- 48:51Speaker 5: that what I went through was harder than what you
- 48:53Speaker 5: went through. Definitely, absolutely not, because that's not true.
- 48:57Speaker 3: What you're dealing with might be a lot more in
- 49:00Speaker 3: It depends on who the person is that's dealing with it. Yeah,
- 49:02Speaker 3: that's always you know, how we deal with things, who
- 49:05Speaker 3: we are.
- 49:05Speaker 2: It's it's amazing. I'm sitting here listening to you, and
- 49:09Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, just because you have had what happened
- 49:16Speaker 2: to you, you're just not immune to any other hardship
- 49:24Speaker 2: or any other situation that can come your way.
- 49:28Speaker 5: No, there is no immunity to that. You know, we're
- 49:31Speaker 5: all up for grabs with that one. I'm thinking about that. Yeah,
- 49:37Speaker 5: there is zero immunity to that.
- 49:39Speaker 3: It's coming. It's happening. Like you know, life, I said,
- 49:42Speaker 3: life is good, but it's not easy. It is not easy.
- 49:45Speaker 5: There are times where it feels easy, but there are
- 49:48Speaker 5: gonna be times where it doesn't yeah, we're not immune
- 49:52Speaker 5: even if we've been through it before. But knowing that,
- 49:55Speaker 5: like what I said earlier, it's going to be okay, and.
- 49:58Speaker 3: That's what I ride on.
- 50:00Speaker 5: I know, and I'm not just saying it to make
- 50:03Speaker 5: myself feel better.
- 50:05Speaker 3: I truly do believe that.
- 50:07Speaker 5: But when you're in the midst of it, and you're
- 50:10Speaker 5: in the middle of it and you're like, I don't
- 50:12Speaker 5: know how much longer it's going to be before it's okay.
- 50:15Speaker 3: It's hard.
- 50:16Speaker 5: Yeah, it is hard for everyone, but I do believe
- 50:21Speaker 5: that it will be okay that situation. And then when
- 50:24Speaker 5: that situation is okay, guess what, They're probably gonna be
- 50:27Speaker 5: another one coming.
- 50:28Speaker 3: But at least he got through that one. And that's
- 50:31Speaker 3: just life. That's just life.
- 50:33Speaker 2: Tom Murphy, CEO and founder of Sweethearts and Heroes with
- 50:40Speaker 2: you the guy is He's unstoppable. He's unstoppable with his uh,
- 50:50Speaker 2: his thinking process. He is never stagnant and comfortable where
- 50:58Speaker 2: he is. He is all always wanting to sharpen his edge,
- 51:04Speaker 2: do more, be better, bring a different message, as if
- 51:10Speaker 2: bringing your message to the thousands of schools that Sweethearts
- 51:16Speaker 2: and Heroes has Tom says, we need to bring this
- 51:23Speaker 2: message to the National Electrical Contractors Association, and rick Yarish
- 51:28Speaker 2: is thinking what.
- 51:31Speaker 5: I'm thinking, how do we fit into that world? But
- 51:36Speaker 5: how do we fit into elementary schools? So I mean,
- 51:40Speaker 5: really the message is hope and in the end, you know,
- 51:43Speaker 5: I truly at this point, I believe that we belong everywhere.
- 51:47Speaker 5: Everyone is, you know, struggling with hope at some point
- 51:50Speaker 5: in their life. And but yeah, I didn't understand it.
- 51:54Speaker 5: Why are they even reaching out to us? And then
- 51:56Speaker 5: you know, come to find out the suicide raign the
- 52:00Speaker 5: electrical contract world is incredibly.
- 52:02Speaker 3: High and they they need hope.
- 52:06Speaker 5: This is you know, We've done a lot over the
- 52:08Speaker 5: past couple of months with them and it's been extremely rewarding,
- 52:13Speaker 5: difficult because we still hear stories of you know, people
- 52:16Speaker 5: taking their own life in that world. I don't think
- 52:19Speaker 5: anyone that we've spoken to yet, but that's how big
- 52:22Speaker 5: that world is. There's a ton of these contractors. We
- 52:25Speaker 5: need to be there. We need to be there, and
- 52:27Speaker 5: we're not leaving the kids. We're not giving up on
- 52:29Speaker 5: the kids. That's not who we are and we're going
- 52:31Speaker 5: to continue to do that. We're just entering another realm
- 52:34Speaker 5: as well.
- 52:35Speaker 2: It's amazing. I want you to and you guys had
- 52:41Speaker 2: such a profound impact and still are on those electrical contractors.
- 52:48Speaker 2: What you brought to that convention was amazing. Just to
- 52:53Speaker 2: see and hear a little bit of it. I wish
- 52:56Speaker 2: that I could have been there. But I want to
- 52:58Speaker 2: shift gears and h talk about your book. Yeah, tell
- 53:04Speaker 2: us about a bridge named Amos.
- 53:08Speaker 3: The easiest book I will ever write. Just a book
- 53:13Speaker 3: about my dog. I mean that's literally what it is.
- 53:16Speaker 5: It's a book about my dog, Amos, and super easy
- 53:20Speaker 5: to write because it's all true. I mean there's always
- 53:23Speaker 5: there's one part in the book where kids were like,
- 53:25Speaker 5: did he really do that? And of course that's the
- 53:27Speaker 5: only part in the book that wasn't even true, because
- 53:30Speaker 5: I said that he made me go outside where the
- 53:32Speaker 5: kids were to get me closer to the kids so
- 53:35Speaker 5: that I could interact with them. But of course that's
- 53:37Speaker 5: the only part they asked that's true. They don't ask
- 53:39Speaker 5: if like him tugging my sock off is true?
- 53:43Speaker 3: No, that is true. The only part that's not is
- 53:45Speaker 3: the part that they asked about.
- 53:46Speaker 2: I want to read that. It's just one day when
- 53:49Speaker 2: we were at school talking to older kids. I saw
- 53:52Speaker 2: little kids on the playground. I knew that I needed
- 53:56Speaker 2: to get Rick outside, so I pretended that I had
- 53:59Speaker 2: to go pot Rick saw all of the little kids
- 54:02Speaker 2: on the playground and tried to go outside a different way,
- 54:05Speaker 2: but I wouldn't let him.
- 54:08Speaker 5: Of course, they ask every time, is that part true? Well,
- 54:11Speaker 5: you got to remember he's a dog, so but yeah,
- 54:15Speaker 5: it's all from his perspective. How I wrote the book
- 54:19Speaker 5: so many times from my perspective, and then you know,
- 54:22Speaker 5: I'm not good at like throwing something away that I've
- 54:25Speaker 5: done because I put a lot of time into it
- 54:27Speaker 5: and I don't want to do it again. But I
- 54:28Speaker 5: was like, this just isn't right. So then I threw
- 54:31Speaker 5: away and wrote it from his perspective. But yeah, he
- 54:34Speaker 5: was just the best dog, the best.
- 54:36Speaker 2: The bridge, and so many of us can relate to this,
- 54:41Speaker 2: that an animal can be a bridge to so many things.
- 54:48Speaker 2: It can be a bridge to others, but it can
- 54:52Speaker 2: also be a bridge back to ourselves self rediscovery. This
- 55:02Speaker 2: dog was Amos was both maybe.
- 55:05Speaker 3: No, he was he was He made me comfortable with me.
- 55:08Speaker 3: I mean that's what the bridge is.
- 55:10Speaker 5: In the end, you know, they they are the tool
- 55:13Speaker 5: that you need to cross, but once you're across, unless
- 55:15Speaker 5: you need to go back, you don't need the bridge anymore.
- 55:18Speaker 5: And I always needed Amos in some capacity, but he
- 55:23Speaker 5: made me cross the bridge, and once I got over
- 55:25Speaker 5: the bridge, I didn't need him for that reason anymore.
- 55:28Speaker 3: So yeah, he made me accept my situation.
- 55:32Speaker 5: He made me understand my situation, and he was he
- 55:36Speaker 5: just truly was just one of the best dogs ever.
- 55:38Speaker 5: Terrible service dog, but one of the best dogs ever.
- 55:43Speaker 2: Amos came into your life after this horrific accident in Iraq, yep.
- 55:52Speaker 3: Four years after my injuries when I got on my
- 55:55Speaker 3: so actually I think it was about five years. So
- 55:58Speaker 3: he uh, he came into my life and it was
- 56:00Speaker 3: a point where I wanted a dog so bad.
- 56:03Speaker 5: I lived on my own, there was nobody else in
- 56:06Speaker 5: my house, and I couldn't just get a dog because
- 56:10Speaker 5: I traveled so much. So I couldn't get a dog
- 56:12Speaker 5: that would just stay home all the time. That wouldn't work,
- 56:14Speaker 5: and a regular dog couldn't travel with me. So a
- 56:18Speaker 5: service dog was the answer, and he was the best
- 56:22Speaker 5: service dog when I got him. I say, he's a
- 56:24Speaker 5: terrible service dog, but that was because of me.
- 56:26Speaker 3: And I ruined him. I let every single kid in
- 56:30Speaker 3: the world that wanted to pet him pat him. I
- 56:33Speaker 3: never said no.
- 56:34Speaker 5: I can't say no. My whole job was to connect
- 56:36Speaker 5: with these kids. And then right after they come up,
- 56:39Speaker 5: hey can I pet your dog?
- 56:41Speaker 3: No?
- 56:41Speaker 5: If I said that, I've just ruined everything. So yeah,
- 56:46Speaker 5: Amos is he's the best. And yeah, he passed away
- 56:49Speaker 5: almost a year ago. Now, it's hard to believe that
- 56:51Speaker 5: it was almost a year ago. It was October of
- 56:54Speaker 5: last year.
- 56:55Speaker 3: But he was almost fourteen years old and he did
- 56:58Speaker 3: his job, and he did his job.
- 57:00Speaker 2: Well, how are you coping with that? Is that something?
- 57:05Speaker 1: That?
- 57:07Speaker 2: Man? It was two thousand and twelve when I lost
- 57:12Speaker 2: my sixteen year old black lab mix and was and
- 57:23Speaker 2: still is. But it's still every now and then, Well,
- 57:28Speaker 2: smack me out of the blue. Kind that was so
- 57:32Speaker 2: long ago and at times kind of take my breath away.
- 57:37Speaker 2: How are you coping?
- 57:39Speaker 3: I'm okay, Yeah, I'm okay.
- 57:41Speaker 5: You know, sadly, long before he passed away, I kind
- 57:47Speaker 5: of prepared myself, like.
- 57:48Speaker 3: I know he's not going to be around forever, and
- 57:51Speaker 3: you know, how am I going to get through that?
- 57:52Speaker 3: I think, just you know, preparing myself.
- 57:54Speaker 5: A little bit for that, knowing that it was going
- 57:57Speaker 5: to come eventually, just because it does to everything that
- 58:01Speaker 5: I was gonna be okay. And uh, the worst part
- 58:06Speaker 5: is is, you know, we do this to ourselves.
- 58:09Speaker 3: You know, we had to. We put him down at
- 58:11Speaker 3: the hospital. We went to the Cornell Hospital for the animals,
- 58:16Speaker 3: and I take myself back to that moment way too often.
- 58:21Speaker 5: That's the like, I don't know why I do that,
- 58:23Speaker 5: because you know, I have a memory, many memories of
- 58:27Speaker 5: every single day he was alive, But for some reason,
- 58:29Speaker 5: I go back to that one single day where you know,
- 58:32Speaker 5: we took him away.
- 58:35Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know why I do that.
- 58:36Speaker 5: So that part is really hard, Like, you know, it
- 58:39Speaker 5: makes me want to cry right now, just like laying
- 58:42Speaker 5: there with him on the floor and patting him and
- 58:44Speaker 5: give him giving him his last treats. Yeah, super super
- 58:49Speaker 5: freaking hard to think about that. But you know, again,
- 58:52Speaker 5: he served his purpose, and he was tired and he
- 58:55Speaker 5: was hurt and he was having a hard time walking,
- 58:57Speaker 5: and you know, in the end, the right decision was made.
- 59:02Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys have here we are. School is starting
- 59:10Speaker 2: up for so many kids everywhere across their nation, and
- 59:15Speaker 2: you guys have a schedule and a calendar that is
- 59:20Speaker 2: borderlining ridiculous, especially.
- 59:24Speaker 3: Now we're entering this new world and the electrical contractors.
- 59:27Speaker 2: Yeah, because Rick, I mean because Tom apparently didn't think
- 59:32Speaker 2: you guys were busy enough. You're going to be running
- 59:37Speaker 2: around going to so many schools. You're going to be
- 59:42Speaker 2: empowering children to think differently, to be better versions of themselves,
- 59:50Speaker 2: to interact with not only other teachers and maybe their
- 59:56Speaker 2: parents and siblings in a different way, but also other
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: students and also students who I know you guys, you
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: guys really push the whole bullying thing, but students who
- 1:00:10Speaker 2: may not reciprocate the same kind of respect and way
- 1:00:16Speaker 2: of thinking that someone with good intentions is. You guys
- 1:00:19Speaker 2: are are really empowering children of all ages to just
- 1:00:28Speaker 2: think differently and respond and react to things in a
- 1:00:34Speaker 2: better way. That is so huge for sweethearts and heroes.
- 1:00:38Speaker 2: That's so massive for what you guys are.
- 1:00:40Speaker 5: Doing kids people, not even just kids. You know, that's
- 1:00:44Speaker 5: who are focused, is sure, But kids need help. People
- 1:00:48Speaker 5: need help, and you know, like I say, you know, life,
- 1:00:52Speaker 5: life is good. It's not always easy. And when it's
- 1:00:55Speaker 5: not easy, we need people around us. And you know,
- 1:00:59Speaker 5: part of it is, you know, not being afraid to
- 1:01:01Speaker 5: share what you're dealing with. That's one thing, you know,
- 1:01:04Speaker 5: And that's a crazy world that we're living in with
- 1:01:06Speaker 5: the adults. The older kids shows are not the older kids,
- 1:01:11Speaker 5: but the adults sharing things that you're dealing with with
- 1:01:15Speaker 5: other people.
- 1:01:16Speaker 4: I can't do that.
- 1:01:17Speaker 3: Well, you have to.
- 1:01:18Speaker 5: You have to, especially if it's something really really difficult,
- 1:01:22Speaker 5: because I.
- 1:01:23Speaker 3: Don't know if you're gonna get through all that stuff
- 1:01:25Speaker 3: on your own. You need people in your life.
- 1:01:27Speaker 5: So, yeah, these kids are gonna understand what people, what
- 1:01:31Speaker 5: other kids are dealing with.
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: That's empathy, putting their self in their shoes.
- 1:01:36Speaker 5: And once they do that and they can build a
- 1:01:38Speaker 5: connection with those other kids, then they can help each
- 1:01:41Speaker 5: other and that reward.
- 1:01:44Speaker 2: Is awesome, Gonna get you. Yeah, go ahead.
- 1:01:48Speaker 5: The world focused on that stuff. Like, man, the reward
- 1:01:53Speaker 5: is helping other people, that's I'm telling you right now.
- 1:01:57Speaker 5: The feeling is amazing when we do that. But when
- 1:02:00Speaker 5: we're self centered and the reward is what we can
- 1:02:03Speaker 5: do for ourselves, and there.
- 1:02:04Speaker 3: Is some of that in there, Like, yes, you get
- 1:02:07Speaker 3: a lot out of it.
- 1:02:08Speaker 5: But if it's just that, then what is it like,
- 1:02:13Speaker 5: I don't know's there's so much self centeredness in this world.
- 1:02:16Speaker 3: And once we start doing stuff for other people, I'm
- 1:02:21Speaker 3: telling you, it does something for you too, and it
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: feels so good.
- 1:02:26Speaker 2: Yeah, it's infectious. I'm on your Facebook page right now
- 1:02:31Speaker 2: for Sweethearts and Heroes, and it says your mission is
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: simple to ignite empathy, empower bystanders, and cultivate compassionate leaders.
- 1:02:41Speaker 2: Through our life saving message of hope. We equip individuals
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: with the tools and strategies to jump into action and
- 1:02:52Speaker 2: be the difference that the world needs. That's huge, man.
- 1:02:57Speaker 3: That is huge.
- 1:02:58Speaker 5: There's zero chance on the word that wrote that. There's
- 1:03:01Speaker 5: way too much big stuff in there. People always ask
- 1:03:05Speaker 5: us what do you guys do, And I'm like, oh, man, well,
- 1:03:10Speaker 5: I give hope to people and they give hope to me.
- 1:03:14Speaker 3: I have a hard time describing what we do because
- 1:03:17Speaker 3: there's so much to it.
- 1:03:18Speaker 5: Yeah, it's simple in the end, because that is what
- 1:03:21Speaker 5: we do, but there's so much more to it than
- 1:03:25Speaker 5: just you know, giving hope.
- 1:03:27Speaker 2: Yeah, my little girl was so excited when she met
- 1:03:33Speaker 2: you and Tom and we should give a shout out
- 1:03:35Speaker 2: to Wells Rivers Chevrolet that has helped bring you guys
- 1:03:40Speaker 2: to so many schools in the Upper Valley, including my
- 1:03:46Speaker 2: daughter's school. And when she came home and was like, Dad,
- 1:03:50Speaker 2: I had the best Because we always say did you
- 1:03:53Speaker 2: have a good day? Yes or no? What was good
- 1:03:57Speaker 2: about it? What wasn't so good about it? How can
- 1:04:00Speaker 2: we do things differently? And how was your day? I
- 1:04:03Speaker 2: had the best day. This guy came out and he
- 1:04:06Speaker 2: was feeding us marshmallows and we had to do the
- 1:04:09Speaker 2: alphabet backwards and there was this guy there and he
- 1:04:13Speaker 2: was all burned and it was a great day.
- 1:04:17Speaker 3: And I'm like, what happened?
- 1:04:20Speaker 2: What?
- 1:04:22Speaker 3: What the else going on?
- 1:04:25Speaker 2: You guys just had such an impact.
- 1:04:29Speaker 3: Man. That's what we do.
- 1:04:32Speaker 5: I mean, it's uh, you know the it's entertainment too.
- 1:04:36Speaker 5: We entertain them, we have fun with them that we
- 1:04:39Speaker 5: make them comfortable. I mean, that's a recipe for success
- 1:04:42Speaker 5: right there. And guess what in the middle mix of
- 1:04:45Speaker 5: all of those things, the entertaining and having fun.
- 1:04:49Speaker 3: And connecting, there's a really good lesson in there too.
- 1:04:53Speaker 5: And that's how you get the lesson across is you
- 1:04:55Speaker 5: got to be able to do those other things they're
- 1:04:57Speaker 5: not You can have a great lesson but if you
- 1:05:00Speaker 5: don't know how to deliver it to them, then you know,
- 1:05:03Speaker 5: we need kids to go home and say, this was
- 1:05:04Speaker 5: an amazing day, it was so much fun.
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:05:07Speaker 3: When it's when that happens, that's when they learn the most.
- 1:05:11Speaker 2: Sure, I say it every time. If your child's school
- 1:05:16Speaker 2: is not yet connected with Sweethearts and Heroes, please don't
- 1:05:22Speaker 2: wait get on Sweetheartsinheroes dot com. Email info at sweetheartsin
- 1:05:29Speaker 2: Heroes dot com. I'm not sure if what's your schedule's like,
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: I know it's crazy, but don't wait on this. If
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: you or someone you know is a teacher, an administrator,
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: or involved in any way, shape or manner with a
- 1:05:47Speaker 2: local school anywhere actually Inframont or beyond, please get in
- 1:05:53Speaker 2: touch with them. Sweetheartsinhroes dot com. Sergeant Rickyarsh guest this morning,
- 1:06:01Speaker 2: and more importantly, my friend, I am so blessed by
- 1:06:05Speaker 2: you guys. And I said to Heather, and I've said
- 1:06:09Speaker 2: to others, my my dream is to have a circle
- 1:06:16Speaker 2: amongst just the Sweethearts and Heroes family and myself and
- 1:06:24Speaker 2: live stream it.
- 1:06:28Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be awesome, and don't yeah, it would
- 1:06:33Speaker 3: be something.
- 1:06:34Speaker 5: Don't put yourself in that state, and you said the
- 1:06:37Speaker 5: sweethearts and fake hair, the Sweetheart's and Heroes family, and
- 1:06:40Speaker 5: myself you are a part of that Sweethearts and Heroes family.
- 1:06:45Speaker 5: So don't don't exclude yourself like that. You're a part
- 1:06:49Speaker 5: of this this organization. You're doing just as much as
- 1:06:51Speaker 5: we are by helping us share our message and taking
- 1:06:55Speaker 5: your time.
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: To do this with us.
- 1:06:57Speaker 3: JD.
- 1:06:58Speaker 2: Buddy, thank you ever so much. I can't wait to
- 1:07:01Speaker 2: see you again. I don't know when or where. I'm
- 1:07:04Speaker 2: still hoping that I might get an invite from Tom
- 1:07:08Speaker 2: to attend one of these school functions where I can
- 1:07:11Speaker 2: actually see what I've been in experienced in person, what
- 1:07:15Speaker 2: I've been hearing about for so long. Do you think
- 1:07:17Speaker 2: Tom will put me on the invite list one of
- 1:07:19Speaker 2: these days?
- 1:07:20Speaker 3: I think you could probably do that.
- 1:07:23Speaker 5: We'll try to avoid New York, though, so you don't
- 1:07:26Speaker 5: have trouble getting over the ferry again.
- 1:07:30Speaker 3: We don't want you to have issues with that, so
- 1:07:33Speaker 3: we'll do something a little closer to.
- 1:07:34Speaker 2: Home for you, buddy. I love you, and I mean
- 1:07:38Speaker 2: that love you man, and I appreciate you so much
- 1:07:42Speaker 2: for coming on this morning again.
- 1:07:45Speaker 3: Absolutely anytime. I love it. You know.
- 1:07:47Speaker 5: They were like, oh, hey, Rick, never mind, you don't
- 1:07:50Speaker 5: have to do it today. You know, we know you're
- 1:07:52Speaker 5: on vacation. I said, no, I want to do it,
- 1:07:54Speaker 5: so I look forward to it j D.
- 1:07:55Speaker 3: I really do.
- 1:07:57Speaker 2: Thanks brother, absolutely heavy, wonderful rest of your day. Big
- 1:08:01Speaker 2: hugs to you man you as well
- 1:12:00Speaker 3: Passssssssssss