Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Finding Heroes (with Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe) | Episode 37

Transcript

Finding Heroes (with Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe) | Episode 37 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:02
  David O'Keefe: I can't explain it, but there is a connection, that tactile piece that you have in your head that connects you, and it would not have been brought together if it wasn't for the ability to research, tie up all the ends, find Jim, get the story and bring it all together.
• 0:16
  David O'Keefe: And I think it was one of the best moments I've ever had in my entire career.
• 0:21
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future.
• 0:29
  Crista Cowan: I'm rista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:33
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:40
  Crista Cowan: My guests today are Wayne Abbott and Professor David O'Keefe.
• 0:47
  Crista Cowan: Now, these two men have been engaged in telling military stories for most of their careers Historian, documentarian.
• 0:58
  Crista Cowan: They're both engaging but also doing a really, really important work.
• 1:04
  Crista Cowan: They have a new podcast, sponsored by Ancestry, called Finding Heroes, where they find lost military treasures and personnel and reunite those stories with their living family members.
• 1:18
  Crista Cowan: I'm excited for you to listen in on my conversation with Wayne and Dave.
• 1:22
  Crista Cowan: David.
• 1:23
  Crista Cowan: Wayne, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:24
  Crista Cowan: I'm excited to have this conversation with each of you.
• 1:31
  Crista Cowan: Wayne, let's start with you.
• 1:32
  Crista Cowan: I would just love to hear a little bit about your journey into this particular project.
• 1:36
  Wayne Abbott: Well, this particular project, finding Heroes, the podcast, evolved from Finding Heroes, the online series, but that evolved from a show that Dave and I worked on called War Junk for years.
• 1:49
  Wayne Abbott: It's 10 years ago now.
• 1:51
  Wayne Abbott: We started and the whole idea of War Junk was to tell the story of a battle or war by what's left behind on the battlefield.
• 2:00
  Wayne Abbott: And that's where we really began and these were dynamic, colorful present day history shows.
• 2:05
  Wayne Abbott: We named it War Junk because we wanted a younger audience, which we got, and we just took what perceived to be junk and told stories and within it we always, every show, we had an artifact that we tied to a soldier, that we tied to a living family member, relative.
• 2:25
  Wayne Abbott: So that evolved into Finding Heroes and then I just started talking to Ancestry going.
• 2:34
  Wayne Abbott: Like you know, we could do this over a podcast.
• 2:36
  Wayne Abbott: Instead of a very expensive 10 minutes, maybe we can do a podcast that's longer and we can get more in-depth.
• 2:44
  Wayne Abbott: And that's where we are now and it's been a really great experience taking Finding Heroes to the podcast.
• 2:51
  Crista Cowan: I love that, david, if you go back even before that, how did you and Wayne connect?
• 2:56
  Crista Cowan: Can you tell us that story?
• 2:58
  David O'Keefe: Oh boy, yeah, that's quite the story.
• 3:00
  David O'Keefe: It's over 20 years now we've been working together and it was one of those things where both of us were independently working for History Channel or at least History Television up in Canada that's where we are, in the Great White North and they decided to marry us up, thinking that maybe we'd compliment each other and boy have we.
• 3:18
  David O'Keefe: So it's been great, it's been an incredible partnership over that time and we've done a lot of documentary filmmaking together.
• 3:26
  David O'Keefe: And then we started moving into the podcasts and, to be honest with you, we're having a lot of fun doing this.
• 3:31
  Crista Cowan: I love that, David.
• 3:32
  Crista Cowan: What was it from your childhood or youth that got you interested in this particular field of work?
• 3:40
  David O'Keefe: I guess for me it's a bit of a family thing.
• 3:42
  David O'Keefe: I mean, I've had grandfather and his brothers in the First World War and I've had my father and my uncle in the Second, an uncle in Korea, cousins in the Gulf War and of course, I ended up joining the army back in the 90s and so it's always been something.
• 3:58
  David O'Keefe: Military history in particular, has always been something that was extremely important within the family, and then I went off and became a historian.
• 4:05
  David O'Keefe: A military historian particular has always been something that was extremely important within the family, and then I went off and became a historian, a military historian, and actually I teach students all about that now.
• 4:11
  David O'Keefe: And that's where you find me now, sitting in my class in my classroom at the college where I teach.
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: Wayne, what about you?
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: What was it from your youth or childhood that sparked an interest in all of this?
• 4:22
  Wayne Abbott: Actually it wasn't in my youth.
• 4:26
  Wayne Abbott: I got into sports television right away and that's where my love was.
• 4:32
  Wayne Abbott: And in the late 90s I just started wanting to do my own work in documentaries and I came across one specific story on a Canadian World War II ship called the HMCS Athabaskan which sank six weeks before D-Day off the coast of France, and I just, I don't know, I became so passionate about the story and that was my entry into the history world.
• 4:57
  Wayne Abbott: I took about nine of the survivors of this ship because it was Canada's worst naval loss ever, with 130 men I think 120, 130 men who died on that ship and it was a very dramatic story.
• 5:11
  Wayne Abbott: And I took nine of the survivors over and told the story of the ship and the fallout, of what happened after, and I, because I spent so much time in sports, I started feeling it was the same kind of elements.
• 5:28
  Wayne Abbott: It's man versus man, man versus his environment, and it was like the ultimate game war was and I felt there was.
• 5:37
  Wayne Abbott: I just became very passionate and since then I don't think there's a year that's gone by where I haven't delved into a big history project.
• 5:49
  Crista Cowan: Wayne, was there one particular individual from that ship whose story resonated with you?
• 5:55
  Wayne Abbott: Oh, you're going to make me cry.
• 5:56
  Wayne Abbott: Herm Salkers man.
• 6:03
  Wayne Abbott: Herm survived the shipwreck, but he tells this story about him and his buddy, sammy Samson, in the water on this piece of wood floating after the ship sank and they were waiting for rescue and Sammy kept falling back into the water and Herm kept coming back and then he would pull, you know, sammy back up on the board and then eventually Sammy just went off into the darkness of the water, never to be found.
• 6:35
  Wayne Abbott: And no, I'm wrong, in that Sammy's body was recovered and there's a grave for him in France.
• 6:44
  Wayne Abbott: I don't want to get that wrong, but it was a very powerful moment.
• 6:47
  Wayne Abbott: I think it was maybe one of the most powerful minutes of television I ever told, because when Hern told me this story and we didn't have money for reenactments or anything I just let him talk for an entire minute without cutting away, and that never happens with my shows.
• 7:01
  Wayne Abbott: But that was probably single handedly the most powerful moment I've ever told.
• 7:06
  Wayne Abbott: And then I got a phone call about a week after it went to air and it was Sammy Samson's relatives from Eastern Canada that didn't know that he was even buried in France until they saw the show and saw that we put his uh, his uh, his grave site and they didn't know.
• 7:26
  Wayne Abbott: So that was kind of maybe the most impactful moment and that's what we're still doing with finding heroes, the podcast I mean.
• 7:34
  Wayne Abbott: You'll see in these episodes, each episode has a family that we we share.
• 7:39
  Wayne Abbott: We we contact and we share information that they never knew about their loved ones who were fighting in either World War I or World War II.
• 7:50
  Crista Cowan: It becomes more less about just stories and more about people very quickly, doesn't it?
• 7:57
  Wayne Abbott: Yes, very much so.
• 8:00
  Crista Cowan: Sometimes I think, in the storytelling and I find this even with family history, you know you get so intrigued by the mystery of it or by the salaciousness of it or by the sensationalism of it, but when you recognize the real people and the real families behind the stories, it becomes very personal very quickly.
• 8:24
  Crista Cowan: David, what about you?
• 8:25
  Crista Cowan: Do you have a particular story from the work you've done that stands?
• 8:27
  David O'Keefe: out to you.
• 8:27
  David O'Keefe: Among all the others, I have a lot, but there's one in particular that Wayne and I were involved in.
• 8:32
  David O'Keefe: It was our first show, we were doing a pilot for War Junk and we were over in Hong Kong and of course the battle was very quick.
• 8:39
  David O'Keefe: It was over in three weeks, so we weren't sure what we were going to find.
• 8:42
  David O'Keefe: And we ended up over there and one of the local archaeologists had found what looked like half of a shoulder flash from the shoulder of a uniform of somebody who fought there, and it turned out it was rather special.
• 8:56
  David O'Keefe: It was Royal Army Medical Corps and there was only five doctors on the island.
• 9:00
  David O'Keefe: So we knew it was one of them and we ended up, through Ancestry and everything else, figuring out who this was.
• 9:07
  David O'Keefe: And then we tried to contact his family in New Zealand and we ended up bringing his son over to Hong Kong.
• 9:16
  David O'Keefe: Now the amazing part was and this is the fascinating thing is he never thought about his father Because his father he was evacuated, I think, when he was four months old, from Hong Kong and his father stayed to fight on.
• 9:31
  David O'Keefe: He was a doctor in the British Army and he never saw his father.
• 9:34
  David O'Keefe: His father just never came back.
• 9:36
  David O'Keefe: And so his mother remarried and he was raised by his stepfather to be his own.
• 9:41
  David O'Keefe: So he never really thought about it until we called stepfather to be his own.
• 9:46
  David O'Keefe: So he never really thought about it until we called.
• 9:48
  David O'Keefe: And then he ended up going up into the attic and he said well, wait a second.
• 9:50
  David O'Keefe: You know, mom left a chest, and he started going through the chest and he started finding the photos of his father, the letters that they exchanged between each other at the time.
• 9:59
  David O'Keefe: So it was this incredible portal that just took this guy right back to what it was like.
• 10:05
  David O'Keefe: And then, when he arrived in Hong Kong one of the strangest things you can see it in the show he shows up with a picture of his father in uniform and he's the spitting image of his father.
• 10:17
  David O'Keefe: But he now is 70 years old and his father was about 29 at the time.
• 10:21
  David O'Keefe: Father was about 29 at the time, and that was the one thing that really stuck with me.
• 10:27
  David O'Keefe: And then, of course, we, you know, we took him through it and it was a tough story.
• 10:30
  David O'Keefe: His father had been taken prisoner, his father had been tortured, tied to a tree and tortured by the Japanese, and then, along with two other men, they escaped and they got about 500 yards down and then split up.
• 10:42
  David O'Keefe: Barkley was the name of the doctor.
• 10:44
  David O'Keefe: He went one way and the other two went another.
• 10:47
  David O'Keefe: And so when we told Jim about this particular story he said oh my God, this is incredible.
• 10:54
  David O'Keefe: And we handed him the shoulder flash.
• 10:56
  David O'Keefe: You can imagine how.
• 10:57
  David O'Keefe: You know how that hit him.
• 11:00
  David O'Keefe: And then we realized that, after reading an atrocity report that was written after by the two men who escaped, that the shoulder flash was found about 500 yards down in the direction where Barkley went, and he would have been the only doctor who would have been in that area.
• 11:14
  David O'Keefe: So in this particular case, he had one thing to ask.
• 11:19
  David O'Keefe: He said look, I got to see my dad's grave.
• 11:21
  David O'Keefe: Can you please take me to the cemetery?
• 11:22
  David O'Keefe: So sure enough, we took him to the sidewalk, a military cemetery, and we were filming this.
• 11:27
  David O'Keefe: So I jumped out of the van and Wayne was talking to Jim and I said Wayne, just give me two seconds, I'm going to go find the grave.
• 11:33
  David O'Keefe: That way when we walk in we're not stumbling across and whatever.
• 11:37
  David O'Keefe: So I walked in and I realized when I got in his body was never found.
• 11:41
  David O'Keefe: There was no known grave.
• 11:44
  David O'Keefe: So there was no grave inside.
• 11:46
  David O'Keefe: There was just a name on the wall.
• 11:47
  David O'Keefe: So I had to come back and tell both Wayne and Jim that this was the case.
• 11:52
  David O'Keefe: So now the only thing that connected him to his father was that tiny little shoulder flash in his head.
• 11:59
  David O'Keefe: And you know I had doubts about the show going in.
• 12:03
  David O'Keefe: As a military historian I didn't after that because there was something that was so magical about that moment.
• 12:10
  David O'Keefe: I can't explain it.
• 12:11
  David O'Keefe: But there is a connection, that tactile piece that you have in your hand, that connects you, and it would not have been brought together if it wasn't for the ability to research, tie up all the ends, find Jim, get the story and bring it all together.
• 12:28
  Crista Cowan: And I think it was one of the best moments I've ever had in my entire career.
• 12:31
  Crista Cowan: That's a powerful story.
• 12:34
  Crista Cowan: You bring up an interesting concept.
• 12:35
  Crista Cowan: You talked about you know him being older and that younger picture of his father.
• 12:37
  Crista Cowan: So often we view history as this linear thing, but when you start stepping into these moments it's not linear anymore.
• 12:45
  Crista Cowan: I don't know if you've experienced that, dave, or like how that resonates with you.
• 12:51
  David O'Keefe: Yeah, it is strange.
• 12:52
  David O'Keefe: There's a lot of things.
• 12:52
  David O'Keefe: I think there's a lot of serendipity that goes into this and I can't explain why.
• 12:57
  David O'Keefe: But Wayne and I have had those.
• 12:59
  David O'Keefe: You know, had those moments when we're sitting in an archive somewhere and you know, a file just pops up into our lap and you know, had those moments when we're sitting in an archive somewhere and you know, a file just pops up into our lap and you know, like, for instance, with the Barkley one, it just happened to be that that atrocity part report was right on the top and we weren't expecting that.
• 13:14
  David O'Keefe: So you know, I mean, obviously you're casting your net and the odds are you're going to stumble on to something.
• 13:20
  David O'Keefe: But when you do, you you got to wonder.
• 13:23
  David O'Keefe: So there is something special going on, without a doubt.
• 13:28
  Crista Cowan: There, definitely is.
• 13:29
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, wayne, when you think about all the work you've done and is there any connection to your personal life, is there anything that, by doing this work, you've been either able to uncover from your own personal life or that's kind of drawn you back to stories from your own family?
• 13:47
  Wayne Abbott: I'll have to be honest and say no, I'm a storyteller through and through, that's all.
• 13:52
  Wayne Abbott: I am a storyteller.
• 13:53
  Wayne Abbott: My family, we didn't have anyone fight in the war like David did.
• 14:01
  Wayne Abbott: His father was there.
• 14:02
  Wayne Abbott: My father was about 16 when World War II ended and if it lasted a few more years I'm sure he would have gone over.
• 14:10
  Wayne Abbott: But no, it's just, I just love telling stories and, as I said, history I got into it later, like in my late 20s, if not 30s, I started telling history programming and then fell in love with it, and it's just a personal thing now and trying to help others and just telling stories, and there's nothing I don't know.
• 14:33
  Wayne Abbott: There's something about war stories, too that really touched me, and it's the.
• 14:39
  Wayne Abbott: It's also maybe because my family didn't.
• 14:41
  Wayne Abbott: I feel like I am obliged or I'm going to use my talents to tell these stories, because look how many millions it affected World War I and II, and there's millions of stories to tell.
• 14:54
  Wayne Abbott: And it's just not even with our podcast right now, in the last, the first three episodes, three episodes, I mean, we're telling, we're telling names of soldiers that have been forgotten by their own families.
• 15:12
  Wayne Abbott: Um, and that's crazy when all of a sudden, you know, especially with the support of ancestry, that we can now let people all over the world know the names of um Williams, aldrich, stewart, nick Nickel, captain William Rothlin, who I just finished editing his episode today.
• 15:34
  Wayne Abbott: Those are the names that we can tell now that have been forgotten, and I think that's the most special thing and that's what drives me, or at least inspires me, to tell these stories.
• 15:48
  Crista Cowan: Beautifully said.
• 15:49
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for sharing that, Dave.
• 15:51
  Crista Cowan: What about you?
• 15:52
  Crista Cowan: Something from your personal family history?
• 15:55
  Crista Cowan: That's been a story that you've been able to connect with.
• 15:59
  David O'Keefe: Oh well, again, there's a few, but I think it's just a question.
• 16:02
  David O'Keefe: What Wayne is tapping into, I think, is the concept of empathy, and I think the more that you do this kind of research, it makes you a better person period, because you understand what others have gone through and you can really soak it up and you can really feel it, and that's one thing I've always noticed.
• 16:18
  David O'Keefe: I mean, you know, a couple of years ago, about 10 years ago, I wrote a book, my first book I wrote, and I did.
• 16:23
  David O'Keefe: I wrote it for 242 straight days and somebody went oh my God, 242 straight days that must have been.
• 16:30
  David O'Keefe: And I'm thinking well, I'm sitting at home, I got a roof over my head, I got my family around there, I had three square meals a day and a whole bunch of wine to drink.
• 16:36
  David O'Keefe: I'm like it's not my grandfather spending four years in the trenches, if you know what I mean.
• 16:42
  David O'Keefe: It's just it centers you, it makes you truly appreciative of what you have and you know, appreciative of, perhaps, maybe, what you don't have, you know.
• 16:52
  David O'Keefe: So there's a lot of things like that.
• 16:54
  David O'Keefe: That's the reason why I enjoy doing what I do and teaching as well.
• 16:59
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that concept of perspective, which sometimes we lose so easily in the world today, with all the technology and the advancements that we have and the comfort in which we often live comparatively, is one of the things that I love about family stories and history.
• 17:17
  Crista Cowan: And looking into those particular experiences and being really specific about the details of their experiences is the perspective that you're able to gain because of that, and I think about the benefit of that as adults, as parents.
• 17:34
  Crista Cowan: You know, as we move in the world and we have that perspective that we're able then to transmit that to the next generation.
• 17:42
  Crista Cowan: And, dave, you do that through teaching and both of you do that through the storytelling.
• 17:46
  Crista Cowan: I think about the connection that you know that we need to be making as storytellers to the people who are affecting our lives, the next generation, to help them gain that perspective.
• 17:59
  Wayne Abbott: Yeah, I think we both feel we're responsible to pass on the history with each thing.
• 18:05
  Wayne Abbott: I mean that's why I mentioned earlier, people kind of questioned our title War Junk when we did that series.
• 18:12
  Wayne Abbott: It's not junk, it should be war treasures.
• 18:14
  Wayne Abbott: Well, we wanted the 15-year-old boy to watch it and that's what we got and we had co-viewing and I think we just told history in a different way, in a dynamic, colorful way um being on a battlefield and showing little if not any um archival, trying to bring the experience, the tangible experience of digging things up.
• 18:37
  Wayne Abbott: You know, sometimes it's stuff that could kill us Once or twice and grenades and shells, but a lot of times it was just trying to connect to that younger generation.
• 18:50
  Wayne Abbott: And I'm hoping the Finding Heroes podcast does the same thing, that people can listen to it and watch it, because I think we are pushing the limits on the podcast world, because one of the things we always did we planned out these incredible reveals with family, like I had it orchestrated to the day.
• 19:09
  Wayne Abbott: They would fly over to Europe or, as David said, we even flew somebody up from New Zealand to Hong Kong and it wasn't just bringing them in and throwing them an artifact.
• 19:17
  Wayne Abbott: We carefully planned the day so that they were emotionally at a peak when we revealed the artifact, but we also wanted them to understand the importance of that artifact when we revealed it.
• 19:30
  Wayne Abbott: And so now we're doing it virtually and that's unbelievable.
• 19:36
  Wayne Abbott: Unbelievable If you see episode three, the two called the Lost Canteens.
• 19:42
  Wayne Abbott: We virtually reveal a story just because of technology.
• 19:48
  Wayne Abbott: Now we don't have to take them to Europe, and it was very powerful and very.
• 19:53
  Wayne Abbott: You know, we connected Italy, canada, mexico and the United States on States virtually and told this story.
• 20:01
  Wayne Abbott: So I'm really hoping it makes an impact.
• 20:04
  Wayne Abbott: I really hope we can do a lot more of these and I hope it does connect with the younger generations.
• 20:15
  Crista Cowan: As a storyteller, I'm super curious to get your perspective on this, which is the stories themselves have power and impact and meaning and as storytellers I think sometimes we want to push the boundaries, letting people live in the moment of that experience versus manufacturing experiences for them in the storytelling.
• 20:34
  David O'Keefe: I think it's a question.
• 20:35
  David O'Keefe: I think it's a question of research.
• 20:36
  David O'Keefe: I think the deeper you dive in, the wider you spread your net, the more data you're going to find, and then that takes away sort of the space and time that sometimes you will try to fill up by perhaps gilding the lily a little bit.
• 20:52
  David O'Keefe: And you don't need to do that if you actually have the various pillars, and those pillars come through the research and you do your stuff and you move from one and it's organic, and you let the evidence tell the story.
• 21:05
  David O'Keefe: And that's essentially what Wayne and I have done for 21 years and it's it's.
• 21:09
  David O'Keefe: You know, it's amazing to be able to do that and to sit back and just let it flow.
• 21:13
  David O'Keefe: And again, it's part of that charm, because we don't know when we flip a page what's going to be the other side, and everything could change on a dime.
• 21:22
  David O'Keefe: And we've had plenty of those experiences and that's the beauty of this career.
• 21:27
  Wayne Abbott: I think, at the end of the day, the families.
• 21:28
  Wayne Abbott: The best thing is we get to tell the world about their loved ones who fought in the war, and I think that really truly is.
• 21:36
  Wayne Abbott: What is central to how strong our stories are is because, at the end of the day, as I named a few names earlier, dave and I could probably list 100 plus names of soldiers that we've told stories for, that if we didn't do it, nobody would know their names.
• 21:55
  Crista Cowan: There's this idea in the military of honor, and sometimes just speaking aloud of the name is a way to honor them.
• 22:05
  Crista Cowan: But what the two of you do is so much more than that.
• 22:08
  Crista Cowan: You're restoring not just their name being spoken out loud, but their story.
• 22:14
  Crista Cowan: You're restoring their identity.
• 22:16
  Crista Cowan: You're restoring their connection to their family.
• 22:19
  Crista Cowan: When you think about that and you think about all the stories you've told over the years, is there any family that has come back?
• 22:27
  Crista Cowan: Has there ever been a rest of the story or more information that's come out?
• 22:32
  Crista Cowan: Or do you just move on to the next story because there's so many to be told?
• 22:38
  David O'Keefe: It's always a continual relationship.
• 22:41
  David O'Keefe: I mean I'm still in touch with people that, and I'm sure Wayne is too, and I know Wayne is too there's so many to be told.
• 22:45
  David O'Keefe: It's always a continual, continual relationship.
• 22:46
  David O'Keefe: I mean I'm still in touch with people that, and I'm sure Wayne is too, and I know Wayne is too, that we have discussed stuff or, or, you know, revealed stuff too, and then they'll start digging and they'll find out more.
• 22:53
  David O'Keefe: And that's the brilliant part, you know, sometimes, you know I mentioned, you know, jim Barkley before and this is not uncommon where sometimes in the attic they'll find the letters and there'll be this incredible love story or there'll be something about their family which they didn't know and it's really amazing to see.
• 23:10
  David O'Keefe: But yes, they're always coming back and, you know, exchanging what they found and how the story and how the interpretation of the story in their family has developed over the years.
• 23:22
  Wayne Abbott: Yeah, no, very much.
• 23:22
  Wayne Abbott: So.
• 23:23
  Wayne Abbott: I mean you do lose contact with some families but other ones you stay in touch with.
• 23:28
  Wayne Abbott: But there has been a lot of stories.
• 23:32
  Wayne Abbott: It's hard to keep up, but it's always nice when they share new information.
• 23:37
  Wayne Abbott: Or a lot of times they'll just say you know our family now.
• 23:41
  Wayne Abbott: I mean in our first episode of Finding Heroes, the podcast, it was on a lost plane, that was.
• 23:46
  Wayne Abbott: I went missing off the coast of Florida in 1945.
• 23:50
  Wayne Abbott: And we were covered.
• 23:51
  Wayne Abbott: We uncovered information about an 18 year old who was on that plane, alfred Zwicky, and his, his niece said that you know, the family had kind of forgotten him but now she's going to leave his like an 8x10 picture of him out in the open in her apartment so that she can actually see him every day.
• 24:14
  Wayne Abbott: So I think those are the kind of stories that really kind of, you know, make you happy that there's a new connection with the family.
• 24:24
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, because ultimately, these stories they're not just entertainments, they are real people and those connections are real and I think the work that the two of you are doing putting those stories out into the world is powerful and impactful and needful in the world today, but the impact it has on the families is immeasurable.
• 24:44
  Wayne Abbott: Ultimately, yeah, you hope.
• 24:47
  Wayne Abbott: So I mean, in a way, you just hope because I mean I think, dave, the same way anybody puts on the uniform and fights for your country and fights for freedom, you know, is a hero.
• 25:02
  Crista Cowan: Yeah Well, I'm excited for the world to know more about this podcast that the two of you are undertaking now, and excited that Ancestry has a role in helping to support that in any way we can.
• 25:17
  Crista Cowan: Since this is a podcast, I suspect you know podcast listeners always are looking for another podcast, so I'm going to wholeheartedly recommend the podcast that the two of you have and, as you look forward to the future of the rest of the season that you've got planned, is there a particular episode you can tease us about that you're excited about?
• 25:41
  Wayne Abbott: particular episode you can tease us about that you're excited about.
• 25:43
  Wayne Abbott: I think all three episodes are great.
• 25:43
  Wayne Abbott: They're all very different, but I think we're we, with each episode we try to.
• 25:49
  Wayne Abbott: I pitched it saying there's going to be an aha moment every episode and we've proven that in the podcast world we can do that.
• 25:57
  Wayne Abbott: We're not just talking.
• 25:59
  Wayne Abbott: You know we're not being reactive, we're being proactive with our storytelling.
• 26:05
  Wayne Abbott: So you will see, as in our third episode called the Lost Canteens, you will see us do a live reveal over a podcast Family that didn't have any information at all about their uncle, and it was a very emotional experience for, I think, all of us, because we were telling this family information about their uncle that they didn't know.
• 26:32
  Wayne Abbott: And this was all done live over a podcast, live record over a podcast.
• 26:39
  Wayne Abbott: So I think you know, watch and tune in.
• 26:41
  Wayne Abbott: I think there'll be something for everyone.
• 26:42
  Wayne Abbott: Be very reflective.
• 26:43
  Wayne Abbott: It's fun at times and it's very emotional.
• 26:47
  Wayne Abbott: You'll see me break down a few times.
• 26:50
  David O'Keefe: He does that.
• 26:53
  Crista Cowan: That happens around here as well.
• 26:54
  Crista Cowan: I understand that.
• 26:56
  David O'Keefe: No, I think what Wayne said I think he touched on it nicely where each one of the episodes is different and really remarkable.
• 27:02
  David O'Keefe: I mean the first one we touch on believe it or not, the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
• 27:06
  David O'Keefe: Even though we're not going into it, it's one of the big stories that that helps start that legend.
• 27:11
  David O'Keefe: And then the second one we're looking at a medieval cave during the First World War and it has connections, you know, all over the place and has connections all over the place.
• 27:20
  David O'Keefe: And then the final one we're talking about a very special unit that was created during World War II, which was a special forces unit made up of half Canadian and half Americans and they fought in Italy and a lot of people don't realize that.
• 27:34
  David O'Keefe: So you can see the kind of eclectic nature within the context of military history that we do.
• 27:40
  Wayne Abbott: But we should say, though, that it's great to listen to them, but let's drive some traffic to Ancestry's YouTube channel, because they're visually spectacular.
• 27:48
  Wayne Abbott: I mean because we have a lot of footage as well in archival, like the third one, which is based in Italy.
• 27:57
  Wayne Abbott: We've been on the battlefield, so you get a visual experience as well as just the audio experience.
• 28:03
  Wayne Abbott: So, if anybody does hear this, please try to get to Ancestry's YouTube channel and watch the Finding Heroes podcast.
• 28:13
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, always driving traffic to that YouTube channel.
• 28:16
  Crista Cowan: You'll find my face there too.
• 28:17
  Crista Cowan: Well, thank you both very much.
• 28:21
  Crista Cowan: Before we wrap up, I always end the podcast with the same question and as you think about the future, as you look forward to, you know the impact you want your work to have made in the world, or what you hope for this, these rich stories that you've left behind Is there any kind of hope you have for the future?
• 28:44
  Wayne Abbott: Well, with the Finding Heroes podcast, it's just we.
• 28:47
  Wayne Abbott: We just want to keep doing more of them.
• 28:49
  Wayne Abbott: I think with the the podcast world now and we don't need the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to travel we can, I think, touch more people and tell more stories.
• 29:04
  David O'Keefe: Yeah, I think what Wayne's touching on is we get a chance to develop that kind of empathy within people, and I think that's something that the world needs a lot of at the moment.
• 29:14
  David O'Keefe: And particularly moving forward is just understanding what people had to go through and did endure on many occasions.
• 29:22
  David O'Keefe: So that's certainly something that I'd like to see as the legacy of what we do.
• 29:29
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, well said.
• 29:29
  Crista Cowan: Thank you both very much.
• 29:31
  Crista Cowan: I appreciate you being here.
• 29:32
  Wayne Abbott: Oh, thank you for having me Pleasure.