A Veteran’s Journey Through War Trauma And Healing (Bill Krieger)

He survived Mosul, but the hardest fight started after he came home. Bill Krieger, a U.S. Navy veteran and Michigan National Guard military police officer, walks us through a life defined by the search for belonging, the weight of leadership, and what PTSD and panic attacks can look like when you don’t yet have words for them.

We trace Bill’s path from a chaotic childhood in Lansing to the Navy, where boot camp, technical training, and destroyer life give him structure and a “tribe.” He shares how recruiting taught him real-world communication, de-escalation, and leadership lessons that followed him into a long civilian career at Consumers Energy. Then the story turns: marriage mistakes, strained family ties, a return to service after 9/11, and the grind of Officer Candidate School while working full time and earning a degree.

Bill’s Iraq deployment in Mosul brings the daily reality of combat, IEDs, casualties, and the moral pressure of sending people out and hoping they come back. When he returns, reintegration hits hard: anger, numbness, fear, and a suicidal moment interrupted by a phone call. From there, we talk about therapy, suicide prevention, and the unexpected lifeline he finds in storytelling through The Moth, plus how that same approach helps him build a workplace wellbeing podcast during COVID.

We close with Veterans Archives, Bill’s nonprofit dedicated to preserving veterans’ oral histories in their own words, and why legacy isn’t about being perfect, it’s about making what you do matter to someone. If this conversation moves you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it and feel less alone.

Transcript

Introduction And Early Roots

SPEAKER_00 0:33

So my name is Bill Krieger and I live in East Lansing, Michigan. I served in the United States Navy from 1984. I left the day after Christmas, 1984, until 1993. And then I left the Navy, went to work for Consumers Energy, and joined the Michigan National Guard on the Army side in 1999, served there for 11 years and retired in May of 2010. Yeah, actually I'm originally from Lansing. I was born in Lansing at Sparrow Hospital, but really lived probably the first four or five years of my life in Perry, Michigan. Yeah, I was born to William Krieger and uh Norma Weeks uh in 1965 and uh grew up in a pretty solid family up until uh the mid-70s, I think 74, 75. Uh but then we moved to Lansing, and I ended up uh in the Waverly School District, um, over around the kind of west side of Lansing. So went there for a few years. Uh my parents split up at that time, and uh I ended up uh moving with my dad into the Lansing School District, which uh I ended up going to Foster Street Elementary, which is a community center now, and uh went to Patton Gill, which is no longer standing, and then I went to Eastern, which is in the process of being torn down. So I don't know if it's me or the schools, uh one of the two, but if you think about this time in history in Lansing, especially, the West Side really hadn't been developed a whole lot. So we lived on West St. Joe Highway, um, just at the edge of where all the farming was at. When my parents split up, we ended up in Park West apartments, which is behind the old Kmart, if anyone's familiar with that. Um, so that it was great. Like we had great friends, we all knew each other. You know, you would get up, you never had to wonder what you were going to do for the day because something would always unfold. But part of it too was a lot of chaos in our family because we moved around a lot, especially after my parents split. There was a lot of um changing locations, my mom got remarried. It was a very difficult time for my sister, my brother and I. You know, we would come home, my mom worked, my my dad didn't live with us, and so my brother and my sister and I all sort of took care of each other, and you know, we were the family that that we built. Overall, I would say my childhood was amazing, um, but it had its its moments. I think there was a lot of loneliness because my parents weren't there a lot, you know. Uh my dad kind of split after after the divorce. Uh he lived across the street basically, but he never really saw us a lot. So it was tough. Um, and my mom worked a lot because she had to. Um, and so there was that part of it. But uh, you know, I think overall everything I did back then brought me to where I am today. So how can I complain? When I was in grade school and junior high, and junior high was seven, eighth, and ninth grade back then. People were not kind to me uh back then. And uh there was like this period where you got picked on, and so I learned some lessons from that. When you're the short, fat kid, you can either get your butt kicked every single day, or you could be funny and make people laugh, and they don't for whatever reason when they're laughing, they don't want to smack the crap out of you. So I learned as a mechanism just to be a funny guy. Something magical happened. After ninth grade, the summer came, and you know, we all kind of went our separate ways as students, you know. My the people in my neighborhood I still hung out with. But in that summer, I grew from 5'5 to 6'1, and I dropped down to 175 pounds. And when I went to school, like people I had been in school with my whole life did not know who I was, I had looked completely different, and my attitude had changed. And so high school was just a whole different ball game for me. I uh joined the swimming team and swam for a couple of years, and I think I really my whole life kind of looked for that family that we lost in the 70s, and and uh so that swim team was really like a family. I see some of those guys today, you know, and and it's just a lot of great memories about that. Um, so I went through high school, my senior year, I met this girl who, you know, I was I was in high school, I was in love, like this was it. Like, this is the girl. And we dated through most of high school and went to prom. And um, you know, I didn't come from a family where education was important. So I wasn't gonna go to college. Um, the money wasn't there, and there wasn't really any emphasis on education, so I just wasn't gonna do it. Um, but I did work, I worked really hard. And in high school, I started working at uh a lumber company in Lansing. Um and it just so happens my girlfriend's dad owned the lumber company. Um but they were they lived in East Lansing and they lived in White Hills, and it was it was a different lifestyle than than I had ever had. And she went out east to to college, and uh I you know I graduated high school and she's off at college and I'm kind of home trying to figure out what I want to do. Yeah, so I was just kind of floundering working at this at this place, and and then I get this letter from uh my girlfriend, hey, you know, things aren't just gonna work out. We're we're from two different worlds, and I'm going to college, and I don't want to be tied down, and and just she just broke my heart. Broke my heart. So I went uh down and talked to the recruiter, and I can't tell you why I walked into the Navy office. I really can't. It was just the first one I walked into uh and the recruiter was amazing, and uh they offered me um to they offered uh for me to go to computer school. So I uh, you know, I was guaranteed this job working on guided missile systems. It all sounded very cool to me. Uh, so I enlisted. And uh right after I enlisted, uh a friend of mine uh introduced me to a friend of his uh and um I started dating this girl that he introduced me to. And um, you know, we dated uh all the way up until the time I actually left for boot camp. I left for basic training or boot camp um on December 27th, 1984. I was supposed to leave on the 26th, the day after Christmas, but we had an ice storm. So I got stuck in Detroit uh because of that. And uh so I flew off to San Diego. Yeah, so my my family was really uh behind me doing this, but not for the reasons that you might think. Uh you know, to back up a little bit, you know, I had mentioned my brother and sister. Uh my sister's uh a couple years older, about 18 months older than me. Uh my brother was about five years younger than me. Um sorry, I lost my brother last year. I thought I could just talk about this and it wouldn't bother me. So even though there was this difference in age between my brother and I, and um, my sister and I were kind of best friends growing up because we were so close in age. And um like I said, I think we all kind of raised each other. Uh right after high school, my sister got pregnant and um she moved to Arizona, very successful, owns a bakery now. I mean, she's just she's this amazing woman. Um, but she was gone by the time I enlisted, and uh her and I really didn't communicate a lot. I mean, this is before cell phones. My younger brother uh was a musician. Um, he had played the guitar, he started playing guitar like when he was nine years old. And by the time he was 11 or 12, uh the his music instructor told my mom, You're wasting your money because he comes here and teaches me stuff. He's uh he was an amazing musician. My stepfather, uh who I really hadn't talked about, uh, he was a former Marine. Um, so so there was a little bit of military stuff going on there with him. And uh he was an accountant as well, and he taught me how to do my checkbook and how to file my taxes, taught me how to do taxes, all these really great things. He was a great guy. So he was happy that I was joining the military. Uh, as a Marine, I don't know that he was happy I was joining the Navy, but uh he was just happy that I was doing something. And um, you know, I think my mom was a little worried. Like you, you know, there was we were coming off from the Vietnam War. Um, things were quiet, but um, you know, that's always in the back of people's heads. It was an interesting send-off. My uh girlfriend, who would later become uh my first wife, um, was with me. Um, you know, her and my dad uh and my mom all saw me off at the old Greyhound bus station, which isn't even there anymore. It was a nice goodbye, but it wasn't there were no big parties, and I didn't really talk to my siblings about it. I really just kind of went and did it. Which I was sort of that kind of kid, like, you know, I I would used to do things like that. So I think joining the military wasn't a huge shock or surprise to them. And so uh we get to the Naval Training Center, and uh, first of all, the whole time you're there, it's torture because you can see planes coming and going, and these are all people that are on vacation or they're having a good time, and you are not. Every person I talk to that's been in the military, it's the same story. For whatever reason, you land or you get there at like two o'clock in the morning, you get on a bus, it's dark out, the bus travels to who knows where, some secret place. You get off the bus, and immediately they're yelling at you. You can't move fast enough, you're you can't stand straight enough, you can't you can't do anything right. And I remember like the second day I'm a basic training, they got us in this formation. We're all still in our civilian clothes because we haven't gotten our uniforms yet. Um, but we're standing there in this formation, and somebody got in trouble for something. And and the the drill instructor's like, drop and get me a toy, you know, just like the movies. And I'm like, holy crap! So I just glance over and giggle just for half a second. But these guys are really good, and I got caught. So now I'm over there doing push-ups with this other guy who had gotten in trouble as well. And that was, you know, that's what that's your introduction to basic training. But it was really cool because you could kind of watch the different phases of basic training where every week you see it getting better and better and better. You know, uh when you first start marching, it it doesn't sound the same. It's like everyone's foot is hitting at a different spot, and there's 150 of you, right? So it sounds terrible. But by the time you're done, everyone's marching in step. Uh it was just it was an incredible growing experience. It was great to not be able to go home, to not be able to run away from it, to have to face it. Uh, you know, for uh a lot of my life, I let fear dictate what I did. And I didn't really talk about that, but um I didn't do a lot of things because I was afraid. Um, in in this instance, you can be as afraid as you want to be. You're still gonna do what you have to do. There's not a part of that that I that I would ever say, oh, I would never do that again. It was just a great experience. My life as a child was so chaotic that I was always looking for that tribe or that group that I belonged to. And so, I mean, the Navy brought that. But one of the threads that runs through most of the people that I met in the military was this idea of service, service to country, um, service to others. And so I saw that throughout throughout my career in the military. But it was the military was always that family that just didn't seem to, you know, really exist the whole time that I was a kid. And the way it worked then was I was going to be a guided missile computer technician. Their fancy name for it is fire controlman, right? Which is interesting because I spent so many years trying to explain to my mom that I do not put fires out, I start them on other people's ships. I'm a fire controlman. Uh so instead of taking a bunch of English courses and things like that, you go right into basic electronic and electricity school where you learn about circuit boards and you learn about resistors and diodes and oscillators and all of this stuff. You actually build circuits. It was a lot of fun. It was self-paced. Uh, so I um I did that. I think I was there for a couple of months. Um, and then once I finished that basic electronic school, I came home on leave for a few weeks, hung out with family and friends, got engaged, right? Because that's what you do when you come home from boot camp, is you get engaged. I'm just gonna tell you right now. And then I go to um, gosh, I went to fire control school and I was there for probably six months. I know I left there in uh November of 1985, uh, and then I got married in December of 1985, and then from there we went to uh Virginia Beach, Virginia. Uh, and then uh from there I went to the fleet, which is my first real assignment. But because I'd been in so long, I came in as a as a just a seaman recruit in E1, and now I was a petty officer third class. I was on a on a destroyer of the USS Preble DDG 46. Um, she was uh I think 450 feet long and had 350 sailors on it. The computer that I worked on uh worked in conjunction with the radar system to actually fly the guided missiles. So yeah, four years on this ship. We did we did a Mediterranean cruise. Uh went to um, in fact, I just pulled out my cruise book the other day and was going through it with my wife. Um, but yeah, we went to France, Spain, Italy. We were the first American warship to go to Romania, spent a few days there, Haifa Israel. Um yeah, just it was just an amazing cruise. We were gone for six months, um, but uh it was incredible. This would have been in uh the the summer and fall of 1987, uh is when we went on that cruise. But uh yeah, it was just incredible. Great experience. Now on this cruise that we did to the Mediterranean, it was uh it was like we were visiting all these different countries uh in celebration of when the Americans liberated them during World War II. And so every place we went to was a celebration, and it was just it was incredible. And if you didn't have duty, like we would generally be in port anywhere from four to ten days, so you would always get a chance to go out and and see the countryside. So, you know, in France we visited wineries that had been there for you know five, six hundred years, yeah, and and to see some of the history that is there. Uh Haifa Israel uh went to Jerusalem, actually got to walk in the places where Jesus walked, you know, got to see the stuff that's in the Bible, and that really brings it to life. So yeah, I joined the Navy and I saw the world, but I saw it up close, and it was almost like a tourist. I mean, we did we did a lot of business, don't get me wrong, but when you weren't doing business, you were having fun. So one of the interesting things about the military and in the Navy specifically, because I can speak to that, is that a lot of times when you uh enlist for a specific job, like a computer technician, um, you're required to enlist for six years instead of four years. And so um, and it's because you spend like the first two years in school, right? And so you they want to get their time out of you. And what happens is you uh you enlist for the six years. It's four years with a two-year extension. But at the end of four years, you can re-enlist for an additional four years, and they just absorb that that two years in. Now, the nice thing is they really needed computer technicians, and so at my four-year mark, not only did I re-enlist for an additional couple of years, uh, but I also got a nice$20,000 bonus on top of that. And so I did all of that and I served my time at at sea. So they have a seashore rotation, and I don't know what it is now, but but back then it was four years sea duty, four years of shore duty. And so when I got done with my four years on the ship, it was time to go to shore duty. And I, you know, kind of thought, do I want to be an instructor? You know, what do I want to do? And they really needed um recruiters at the time. In the meantime, my son had been born in 1988, uh, my son Aaron, he was born in Chesapeake, Virginia while I was in the Navy. And uh so I packed up my uh my young son and my young wife, and we um headed back to Michigan uh for me to be a recruiter. So I will put it this way: the you know, there's the only thing harder than being a sailor is being a sailor's wife. And the only thing harder than being a sailor's wife is being a recruiter. It was a very difficult job. Uh, you know, I moved with my family here to Michigan, but then for I want to say it was two or three months, I was in Pensacola, Florida, learning how to be a Navy recruiter. Uh, that as hard as the job is, it's just an amazing experience. I mean, think about this. I'm in my 20s, I have a family, um, I go to work every day, I get a credit card, I get a government car, and I'm told to hang out with high school students. Right? That's what you do. You know, you talk to you talk to kids, you meet with them, you find out, you know, what they need, you determine whether this is for them or not, or they determine whether this is for them or not. Um, but uh you develop these friendships and these really cool relationships with school administrators and teachers. And if you do it right, when you walk up to the school, the doors just open for you. So, this overall experience, like my first year there, I was the number nine recruiter in the state, was recognized by the Michigan um House of Representatives for recruiting excellence. This I like I had found my my niche. Like I could sell, but I could really sell something that I believed in. And I believed that every single, and I still believe to this day, every single kid that joined the the military because of me has nothing to complain about. I told them the whole story, I answered their questions, they knew what they were getting into, and most of them were very, very successful. It was a great, it was a great experience. Um, but if you think about uh the time frame was uh right when they were starting to kind of do the drawdown. I think Bill Clinton had been elected president and they were kind of shrinking the military. And so it was time for me to leave. Uh, and so I uh I actually got out a little bit earlier than I than I normally would have uh and kind of started my civilian career. So while I was a recruiter, I lived in St. Louis, Michigan, um, which is near Alma, small town. Uh but I worked as a reserve police officer for them. In fact, I worked there for 10 years. I worked there after I got out of Navy. But I say that because one of the skill sets you learn in recruiting is de-escalation, uh, interpersonal skills, all things you need to be a police officer. And so I learned these skills in the Navy, kind of honed those skills, just working as a reserve working one night a week, um, you know, but you still had to see people on their worst day, you still had to do all of those things. And so those two things kind of came together for me. And um, as I was leaving the Navy, um, I'm you know, I'm I'm kind of thinking that yes, I've learned I've learned sales skills, but not how to sell something to someone. It's how to understand what people want. And many times when someone says no to something, you simply haven't answered a question that they have. And so I don't take no for an answer very often because I want to find out what the true objection is. That's something I learned in in the military. That's something I learned specifically as a recruiter. Um, when you go to their schools, you learn these things. And it's and the other thing I learned, most importantly, at least to me, was that recruiters don't lie to people. People don't ask the right questions many times, or they don't listen to the answer, or they only listen to part of the answer. And so another thing that I learned is that many times you have to make sure that people understand what you're saying to them because you could be perceived as being misleading if you don't. And so I always like to make sure, do you understand what I'm saying? You know, have them paraphrase it back, but you know, not in a way that they know that that's what you're doing. Um, and then, you know, I also learned, and some people might call this manipulation. I don't, I also learned that sometimes it's important for whatever the whatever it is you you want to get done, whether it's having someone join the military or having someone do a job or working with a team, is many times it needs to be their idea. And so when someone can feel that it's their idea, they're more likely to go along with that. And so that's a skill set that I also took away that I could use as I as I transitioned into my civilian career. Yeah, so you know, as as I'm as I'm thinking about getting out, I can kind of see the handwriting on the wall. I'm I would love to, if I think if I could have stayed in recruiting, I might have stayed in, um, but that just wasn't an option. You had to go back to the fleet, and I understood that. Um, so I started kind of looking at what what I could do. And I saw a newspaper ad. They were looking for salespeople for um Farm Bureau Insurance in Michigan. And uh I answered the ad and I took a test. And of course, because of my background, I scored very high on this test, and they were like We want you to come work for us. And I thought, great, I will. And I transitioned out of the out of the Navy. I go to work for Farm Bureau. They they send you to school, they get you trained, they get you licensed. They do a great job of all of that. And then I started selling insurance. The problem is when I when I was in the Navy as a recruiter, I believed in what I was doing. As an insurance salesman, I'm not sure I believed 100% in what I was doing. Because if I didn't sell insurance, I didn't put food on my table. And it was difficult because it felt like, now I don't, I don't think this is true, but it just felt like sometimes you had to sell people stuff they didn't need. And I I couldn't reconcile that in my own head. And so I quit the insurance business. And now I'm not working. And so I flew out to Arizona to where my sister lives, and kind of kicked around out there for a little while, tried to find a job, applied to a couple of police departments. There was just nothing there. So I came back home and went to work for a college. Well, uh a technical college. Uh I won't name names, but I was a recruiter for them. And essentially it was like recruiting for the Navy. They gave me a car, a credit card, and I drove around to talk to kids. And it was it was okay. It was it was kind of cool, but I it just wasn't, I don't know the best way to put it. It wasn't a fit for me. Um, I didn't I didn't really like the job, but I I just couldn't work there. It just wasn't, I felt like it was no going nowhere. And it felt a lot like insurance. Um, so I I I left that job. Um, and now I'm I I don't have a job. I've got a mortgage, I've got a child, I've got uh car payment, you know, I'm I'm applying to everything that comes up. There wasn't a lot of opportunity out there. Uh, but a friend of ours who was actually the uh maid of honor in my first wedding worked for Consumers Energy, and she said, Hey, they're looking for dispatchers, you could probably do that. And uh I'm like, Yeah, I could do that. So I applied to uh Consumers Energy. Um, it was dispatching in their um electric lines department, which meshed really nicely with my background in electronics and electricity. I could read maps, I could read um uh schematic diagrams, and so I got hired uh and started my career there at Consumers Energy. So I um I start working at Consumers in their dispatch um area. Uh it's um it's a lot of work, it's a lot of hours, it's weekends, it's rotating shifts and all that stuff. But you know, I'm 30 years old, right? So I can handle it. I'm I'm doing well. And so I got to spend a lot of time at home and a lot of time with my son. And I think he'll even vouch for me on this one. Like we would do adventures, we would ride our bikes. Um, you know, we were living at um a place called Canal Club on the west side of Lansing, and again, it was like this period of time where it wasn't really built up where we were at. So there were places that we could go ride our bikes, and we would we would have picnics, and I spent a lot of time with my son. He was like he was my little buddy, like we did all kinds of stuff together. So to me, this is kind of where getting married young kind of falls into the whole bigger picture. Um, in that um my wife and I started kind of just struggling in our relationship. And um, I was feeling like I couldn't do anything right. You know, like we bought my parents' house, but that wasn't the house that she wanted. She wanted something different, and um, and so I'm not pointing the finger of blame. I'm just saying that we were like on on, we were uh we were just in a different place. You know, we got married very young, and I think that, you know, that time from you know your early 20s to your mid-20s, you do a lot of growing and changing, and I think we did a lot of growing and changing. And, you know, unfortunately, um, I made some huge errors in judgment. Um, and I say unfortunately on the one hand, uh, because um I uh I had an affair and I broke up my marriage, which was very unfortunate. Um, in all of that, I really lost my connection with my son uh because I got married again right away, and I had children again right away, and um uh my wife did not want me spending time with my son, and so I didn't. And so for a lot of years, my son suffered because of my poor judgment or my my lack of morals at the time, or whatever you want to call it. Now, we could get into the nitty-gritty and we could point fingers and talk about who was wrong about what and all of that, but at the end of the day, um, he paid the price for all the things that were going on with his mother and I. And it was not a good breakup. Um, and uh it, you know, it just and so for there were a number of years where I did not spend time with my son. And if you think about it, we had been best buddies, we'd hung out together, and so I can't I can't begin to even pretend to know what that was like for him. I know what it was like when my parents split up and my dad disappeared, you know, because I used to do a lot of stuff with my dad too. You would think that history wouldn't repeat itself, um, but but here we are, and it did, and it was it was very difficult for everyone. Um, but I started this new life. Um, and um for whatever reason I allowed external inputs to to kind of break from the other life completely. Um and it was it was completely wrong. Now I still did stuff with my son and I still went to his ball games when I could. Um, but um I know there are times where he wanted me to be there and I wasn't there. Um, and not necessarily because I couldn't be, but I chose not to be because I didn't want to have to battle uh to be there. And so I chose the easy way. Um and that's my fault. Now the amazing part is yeah, I made these mistakes, but I I also have two amazing daughters, uh, Carolina McKenna, um, as a real result of my second marriage. And um, I wouldn't trade them for anything. You know, I think the only thing I would trade was I would have included my son more in the things that we all did together. So it's hard for me to talk about like this wonderful things that had happened when I know in the background there's somebody that was hurting for all that time. Um, but yeah, so I I got I got remarried, but we finally moved back to Lansing, bought a house, and um, you know, kind of started our lives. We had um we had McKenna, um, and then we had Caroline, and you know, we had this tight-knit little family, and uh my uh my ex-wife um went to MSU, got her degree, um, you know, went to work, um, and things were kind of just chugging along. But I missed the military, right? I didn't want to quit my job and go back, but I really missed it. So in 1999, uh my wife was pregnant. This was Valentine's Day, 1999. She was pregnant. Um, and my my uh young or my daughter at the time would have been almost two years old, and then Erin uh would have been 11, right around 11. Anyway, I decided to join the Michigan National Guard. And I thought this is a great way to continue my military career. And you know, what the heck? It's two weeks two weeks uh in the air and one week in a month, right? How bad can it be? And uh I always wanted to be a police officer, and so they really needed military police. So I enlisted uh as a military policeman and um swore in on Valentine's Day and then started my career in the Michigan National Guard. You know, at the same time uh at Consumers Energy, um, you know, I had moved from dispatch to um, they call them customer energy specialists, but it was basically like a field engineer where you go out and you um you draw up plans, like if someone's building a new house, you you draw up the plans um for their gas and electric services and stuff like that. And I had taken this job and really enjoyed it. I was working in Lansing. They were looking for someone to work in Charlotte. And I remember going to my boss and going, hey, boss, I know I'm new, but I would love to work in Charlotte. And my boss, Gene Falposh, loved the guy. Um, he goes, You know, Bill, uh, you don't have enough experience. We're looking for someone with more experience out there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was on a Monday. On Friday, Gene comes to me and says, Hey, how would you like to go to a Charlotte? And I said, I said, Well, you couldn't find anybody else to go. You're really scraping the old bottom of the barrel now, aren't you, Gene? Um, so I went out to work in Charlotte as like a field engineer is the best way to describe it. Um, and did that for uh quite a few years. In the meantime, you know, we were we were growing our family, and um, you know, uh September 11th, 2001 came along. And, you know, that was the day that the whole world changed for not just for us in this country, but for people all over the world. And, you know, here I am, two years in the Michigan National Guard, and now um everything changes. When 9-11 happened, I was at I was a um a staff sergeant in the 144th Military Police Company. So I had left there and taken um taken a job in tailor at the 177th military brigade in long-range planning. So I did that for a while, and I remember uh the guy that I worked for, uh, this colonel, he said, you know, you know, Krieger, you should you should go to OCS. I'm 30, like I was 37 years old. I said, I'm too old. And he goes, You can get a waiver. And for weeks this guy rode me like a circus pony. And so finally, and so my uh my now ex-wife really pushed me. She was like, You should go do this, this is important. And so I sign up for it, I get, you know, I get all set up. Um and the way that the way it works is if you're in the National Guard, you go to um phase one. And for me, phase one was in uh Minnesota, Camp Ripley, Minnesota. And then um, then you do a whole year of like uh every weekend, and then two, and then phase two is really kind of the final phase. You go out to Fort Lewis, Washington for two weeks, and then you come back and then you do some stuff and then you graduate. And so I thought, well, I can do this. The only catch is I didn't have a college degree because I never went to college. In order to get your commission as an officer, you have to have a bachelor's degree. Lanson Community College has what they call a two plus two program with Central Michigan. So you get your two years' worth of credits at Lanson Community College, and then everything automatically transfers towards your bachelor's. I apply to LCC and I get a letter back saying, we're admitting you. However, do you remember 30 years ago when you came here and you failed out? Well, you're on academic probation for the first two semesters. Well, what that means is you can't get any financial aid, and I can't use my military financial aid either. So I had to pay for the first two semesters on my own because of something I did when I was a kid. Um, but they hold it against you. Um, so anyway, I get signed up, I take my classes, I end up graduating with an associate's at LCC, like in it was less than a year. Uh, and then I went on to CMU and got my bachelor's. So I was working full-time at Consumers Energy. My wife was going to Michigan State University for her degree. We had two small, well, two small children and one one older child, and I'm going to school full-time, and I'm going to OCS one weekend a month. And uh so I did it. Like everything kind of came together. But I do remember um I would um I would drive to Officer Candy's school uh with a good friend of mine, Trish Barker. And so uh we would drive there, and I just remember like we would get almost to Battle Creek and we would both like literally start crying because it was so hard. Like OCS was not an easy thing. Yeah, so we go through uh we go through OCS. Um I remember my son Aaron um liked to race BMX bikes, and so I thought, well, if if he could do it, I can do it, right? If I got to be here all day on a Sunday, I'm gonna race too. So they had like this this geezer group of people who raced on uh cruisers, which are a little bit bigger than BMX bikes. And uh this is right before I'm going to phase one. And uh I get on my my bike with all the other geezers, and uh you you kind of go down this hill, and then you come up another hill, and it's all paved right there. And I came up over the hill, and I, you know, I got air, like I'm flying through the air. And I do a complete Superman on the pavement, and I think I broke my hand uh because my hand was all puffed up like a cartoon character. Uh, but I go to I go to Officer Kennedy School anyway, uh, and they're looking at my hand and they're like, is there something wrong with your hand? I'm like, oh no, no, but you're doing push-ups on a nonstop basis with a broken hand. But I, you know, I'm 38. I'm not gonna not do this. My last opportunity, and I do remember though, one time in OCS at Camp Ripley, and I just remember standing in front of the mashed potatoes guy thinking, if I just quit now, I could serve mashed potatoes for the next two weeks and be happy about it, you know. But I thought, I can't do that, I'm not doing it. So um I continued on, um, made it through, went to uh um went out west, um, and that was that was amazing. Fort Lewis, Washington is beautiful. We're outside for the whole two weeks there, uh jumping out of the back of helicopters and doing field training exercises. And again, this whole time it's like this other family that you have. And what's crazy is like when you do your two weeks with this family that you have and you come home, you all go your separate ways, but but you miss that family. It's really strange because you're glad to be home, but you miss that other family that you had. When I graduated um from OCS, my first assignment was as a platoon leader in the 1776 military police company. Um, anyway, so I end up in 1776. Um, I'm a fresh new lieutenant. Now I'd I'd been enlisted total for like 14 years before this, um, but I didn't know anything about being an officer, except what I learned in OCS, and I guarantee you that's not everything you need to know. So I get there and uh I get assigned to uh I think it was second platoon, and my uh platoon sergeant is a guy named uh Lucas. Sergeant First Class Lucas. Never forget him, because that guy trained me how to be an officer. Um, you know, the one thing you learn in the military, whether it's active duty or National Guard, is that um officers come and go because we rotate assignments, right? You're a platoon leader, then you're company commander, then you work in a battalion somewhere, then you become a battalion commander, and so on. Um, but the constant for all of those folks in the platoons are the enlisted guys, the the platoon sergeant, sorry, first class Lucas, the first sergeant, um, all of those enlisted guys are kind of the constant. And so he taught me how to be a good leader. Um, and he never, he was always very good about he never corrected me in front of the troops. He would always say to me something like, Are you sure that's what you want to do, sir? And that meant he and I needed to go talk. And sometimes he prevailed, and sometimes I prevailed. But I always took his direction because he knew. And I knew that I would be successful if he and I could work together. And so I owe a lot of the way that I learned to lead from um Sergeant First Class Lucas. He was just an amazing dude. And so I get to the 1776, and um shortly after that, Hurricane Katrina hits, right? And so uh uh President Bush is like, we're sending every National Guard unit that we can. And so the 1776 gets tapped to go uh down to Hurricane Katrina, and so these were on initially on state orders. So I want to say those are Title 32 orders, so the state owns you, right? But once we got down to uh Biloxi, Mississippi, where we kind of ended up, um we went on Title X orders, which were federal orders. So we fell under federal guidance and federal leadership. So that's kind of the difference. So we uh yeah, we loaded up the trucks and we head headed down to Biloxi. And so we spent uh, I think 45 days um kind of bouncing around um down by Biloxi. We ended up at um in Baton Rouge at the college, uh doing some work there, um just helping to augment security. We didn't have arrest powers or anything like that, um, but we helped augment security and and do things like that. And I'll tell you, um Biloxi was wiped out. I mean, people talk about New Orleans all the time because it hits the news, but it was uh like a nuclear bomb had gone off. And so we spent a lot of time down there. But I think I have two really good memories about Biloxi. Yeah, so I think the two best things I remember about Biloxi, one is that um a good friend of mine, Jim Blocker, we served together throughout my career. He was always just excellent at finding like the coolest stuff. And there was a school, like a little private um like Christian school, uh, that was still standing, miracle of miracles. And um every night at like 11 o'clock, they would serve food. It was all like local people, and they invited us in, and that really felt like home to me. You know, something I didn't talk about was growing up in the Pentecostal church with my grandparents because they would always take me to church on Sunday, because I was the only kid that would go with them. But this felt like that. Like these people were so welcoming, and um, you know, they didn't have anything, but they they they asked what they could do for us. And we were there to help them. And so that really touched me. So every night that I could at 11 o'clock, Jim and I would go down to the school school and we would we would eat the food and we would talk to the people. Um, and it was it was a great experience. The other part of it, you'll probably laugh, is that um the only restaurant that opened right away, there was a sonic down there. Um, this sonic, uh, the girls all uh used roller skates. And um, there was this one particular gal who was probably 6'2, uh, blonde, blue eyes, super friendly, super nice to look at. Um, and she just treated us so nice that every night we would go up there and we would get something, whether it was a shake or something to eat, it was nice. And uh and it was just overall a good experience. You know, I saw some things there. Uh I remember being uh at a station where uh a national charity that I won't mention um was handing out cash to people who needed it. And if you had a baby, you would get uh more cash. And so we were providing security because it was cash. And what was happening is uh there was one baby, and they were passing the baby through the line so they could get more money. And um, this charity wanted to say we gave out X number of dollars, and we went to them and said, Hey, they're using the same baby, and we were removed, like we were reassigned someplace else. So stuff like that happened, but it's gonna happen, you know. I also saw people take the shirts off their backs and give them to other people when they didn't have a a shirt to take off their back. I saw the best in human beings taking care of each other through that experience. So I we got back, uh, I was doing my my regular work, the family was kind of chugging along. Um, and uh I got a call uh from a friend of mine, a guy named Curtis Bielan, and he worked at our battalion, and he said, Hey, I know you're a first lieutenant, and I know you're supposed to be a captain to take this job, but would you want to be the commander of the 144th MP Company? Which is where I started, right? And I th it was really to me, it was an honor because as a first lieutenant, you're not normally tapped to be a company commander. And uh so I I said, Yeah, I'll do it. Hell yeah. So I go back to the 144th as the as the commander, and I remember uh a guy named Colonel Stone, General Stone, but he's retired now. But anyway, Colonel Stone shows up in my office one day and he's sitting at my desk with his feet on my desk, and I'm sitting in a chair because he I'm not gonna ask the Colonel to move. I'm just a lieutenant. And uh this was really kind of At the height of deployments for the National Guard. Now, military police units were at a premium to deploy overseas. And Michigan is full of military police units. And so Michigan had a really high op tempo. They were deploying on a regular basis. And so as they're deploying, you know, you have people who can't go. They've got a busted leg or they've got a family member. There's reasons why people can't go. And so they will take people from other units. And so what happened was the 144th, they took all of our deployable soldiers. All of them. And so I was left with a bunch of people who couldn't deploy. And so the reason Colonel Stone was sitting at my desk with his feet on it was to explain to me that, hey, you're in a building phase, you know, if you think about football teams, you know, you're in a building year. Um, you're not going to go anywhere for a couple of years. You have plenty of time to get your unit pulled together, and you'll be ready to go. So don't worry about it. Anytime someone tells you not to worry about it, worry. Worry a lot. Because about uh um maybe six months later, less than that, maybe three months later, um, I'm sitting at uh my neighbor's pool and my phone rings. And it's Colonel Stone. He's like, hey, remember how I told you not to worry about it? You have six weeks. So I had one platoon that was deployable. I had to have four. So then we took a platoon from the 1776th and a platoon from the 1775th, all Michigan Guard units. And so now I've got three platoons. Well, originally it was a unit out of Connecticut that was supposed to go, but they couldn't for whatever reason. They supplied a platoon. So now I've got a platoon from Connecticut of people I've never met. And we've got six weeks to get them all ready. And so we do that. So if you if you look at how we were set up, you have four platoons of military police, and then you have a um a headquarters platoon or a fifth platoon, and that's all of your operations people, your your uh typists, your personnel people, all the people that take care of people, cooks, mechanics, all of that. So that's basically a military police unit. So we throw this all together. Some of the leadership from Connecticut comes out. We do some training at at um Camp Grayling, you know, we spend the six weeks making sure everybody's ready to go, records have to be set, everything has to be done in that six weeks. So it's a 18-hour-a-day job to do this as a company commander. And um, you know, but during this time, I mean my kids were young, and so, you know, every night I'm tucking my kids in at bed. That's how that's our that's what we do at our house. I I tuck my daughters into bed. And um, so during this time, I'm like, I'll be damned if I'm not gonna tuck my kids into bed. And so I would leave Owasso or wherever we were at, I would drive to Holt where I lived, and I would tuck my daughters into bed at night and kiss them and tell them I love them and and all that. And it was it was a really cool routine. And so we're getting ready for uh to deploy. So what happens is we do like a six-week get everything together here in Michigan, and then we go to Fort Dix, New Jersey for another three months of actual training for our mission. And so we're getting closer and closer to to deployment. And I remember like the probably the last night before I I actually had to leave. You know, I do the whole routine thing. I tuck the kids in and and I I uh, you know, my my daughter McKenna is upset and I give her a big hug and she's crying and all this. But you know, we get through it and she goes to bed, and then I go to tuck my um youngest in, and uh, she's not playing any games, like she's not being funny, she's just like she's basically staring at me. So I, you know, I go, Hey, is everything okay? And she goes, Yeah, everything's okay. And I'm like, Well, what are you doing? She looks at me and she goes, Well, I want to burn you into my brain in case you don't come back. And uh, it was a very rough night, you know. And um, and again, I like went back to I went to my room. I'm like, oh, I'm a wreck. So the next day, you know, we we have breakfast and we all get in the car and we drive down to Battle Creek and we're gonna get on a bus and go to go to Fort Dix, New Jersey. And um, and it was it was a it was tough. It was really tough. And um, you know, the the whole family was upset. Everyone was there for the the send-off. And um I think the hard part, the really hard part about the whole thing was like, I'm not gonna do this routine for 15 months because it's three months of train up and then 12 months of deployment. So that it was difficult. Um, you know, we get there, and then um as we're leaving, you know, I have to address the families, and um, I stupidly tell them all, um, you know, I'm gonna bring your son home, I'm gonna bring your daughter home, I'm gonna um, I'm gonna bring your loved one home, your brother, your sister, whoever it is, your husband, your wife. Um, I'm gonna bring them all home, so don't worry. And so um we uh we go. We go to Fort Dix for train up. And uh that was a complete nightmare. Like I'd love to say that was a good experience. The training portion of it was not the best of the best. Um I remember uh we had this major that was attached to us to help us, and uh two things stand out in my mind. Uh one is we did like this final training exercise, and um, you had to go into this village and rescue these kidnapped people, right? And the way it was set up was the um opposing forces who were the trainers had like lined up on this road for this ambush and they were gonna blow you all up. And and I looked at the map, and I'm like, I was like, first of all, I'm not taking the road into the village because they're probably gonna ambush us. Um, so I came up with a different plan, which was go around the village, park, and then walk in from the backside so no one knows you're coming. And they had a fit because they wanted to blow us up. They were so angry that that I didn't do it their way that they almost relieved me of command for doing the right thing. So there was that. And then um, as we're getting ready to go, this major uh gets up in front of everyone and he gives us really nice, heartfelt speech. You know, the reason we do this training and the reason it's so hard is because this and this and this. And then he says, Well, I've never been deployed myself, but my brother has, and he says it's really bad over there. And I'm like, dude, you just lost us. Like, we're not gonna listen to a thing you say. So we pretty much did our own thing. And um, you know, when you're doing your train up, at the end of train up, you get to come home for a weekend before you actually deploy, which is really nice. The problem is that um they include your travel time in that weekend. So you basically fly home for a day and then fly back. Well, as the commander, you have to write a memo for this weekend pass. So in my memo, I wrote a day of travel time at the beginning and a day of travel time at the end, so they could have the whole weekend with their families. And so everybody flies home, everybody's home. And then on uh on uh Sunday night, I get a call from the company commander, this captain, and he's like, Where are you at, Lieutenant Krieger? I said, I'm at home. And he said, Well, you're supposed to be here, blah, blah, blah. And he starts yelling at me. And I said, I said, Sir, with all due respect, I think you should read the memo that you signed. I'll see you tomorrow, click. And uh, so we got back, and again, he's like, We're gonna charge you leave for this, and we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that. And he's reading me the right act, and we have to meet with the base commander, this colonel, who clearly can't stand this guy. So we get in there, and uh and the base commander looks at me and he goes, Uh, Lieutenant Krieger, why was your whole company A-WOL? And I said, 'Sir, my company was not AWOL.' If you read the memo that the captain here is signed, you will see that I spelled out what we were going to do. And he looks at the memo and he looks at the captain and he says, Well, we're not charging anybody leave, and he excused me. And I don't know whatever happened to the captain, but uh I'm I'm sure that I'm sure that he read everything that he signed after that. So that I think that was a highlight of of train up. There was a lot of stuff that went on there. Uh, and then we got on the plane and we uh headed to Kuwait. This deployment to Iraq was uh 180 degrees um different from my deployments in the in the Navy. I was older, so now I'm 40 years old, and I'm deploying to Iraq in charge of uh uh a bunch of kids for the most part. My executive officer was close to my same age, and my uh first sergeant was a little bit younger than me. Um, but overall, I'm again probably one of the oldest people as part of this deal. And um, but what made this deployment different was that we knew that we weren't going to celebrate stuff with the French people, and we weren't gonna go hang out with the you know uh Romanians. We were going into battle, and this was very difficult to wrap your head around. And uh we landed in Kuwait October 13th um of 2006. We land in Kuwait and it's like landing on the moon. Like the dust is very fine, it's hot as hot. I mean, I can't even describe it. Kuwait, you're in Kuwait for two weeks um getting acclimated to make your jump. So we were scheduled to go to Mosul, Iraq. So for two weeks we're getting we're getting acclimated, we're getting people ready, you know, you're trying to get your sleep cycle back to where it should be. Um, and one thing that probably nobody knows is maybe like the second or third day there, I started having panic attacks, but I didn't know what they were. I thought I was dying. But I wouldn't, I didn't go to medical and I didn't go to mental health because I didn't want to get kicked out. Like I these are my people. Yeah, I have to suck it up. Whatever's going on, I gotta suck it up. So I started having these panic attacks um on a pretty regular basis, and I just lived with it, you know. And uh, so we we get all trained up, all ready to go. We go into uh Mosul Iraq, and we're on a C-130 cargo plane, and um, they don't tell you about things like combat landing. So uh essentially where we were at, they would take over the airports, and then that would be like where their forward operating bases were, it just makes sense. Already an airport there. Uh, but this airport like sat down and there were mountains around it. So the planes would have to basically fall out of the sky and land very quickly, like this. And the whole time you're like, oh, this is fun. Um, so yeah, so they're doing these combat landings, and um, so we get there, and again, it's the middle of the day. We get off the plane, it's just hot as Hades. Uh, we get there, and uh we um meet up with the unit that we're getting ready to um uh rip. We call it rip, it's um uh relief in place. So essentially we didn't bring any of our own equipment or vehicles, it was already there. Um, and then we uh met with this other unit, and I think for two weeks we did left seat, right seat, where um they would do all everything they would do everything that they would normally do, and we would just ride with them, and then we would do their job and they would observe, and then they would leave. So we did that. Um and you know, we figured out our our area of operation. Our job was to train and equip the Iraqi police. Um, and so that really involved going out every day, um, meeting with the police chief, meeting with the local police officers, training them on whatever training they needed, providing them with the equipment that they needed, all that kind of stuff. So that was our job. I remember the first day um doing left seat, right seat. I was actually so if you look at the way a Humvee is configured, you have a driver, you have a truck commander, and then you have people in the back, and you have a gunner and a turret up top. And um uh so the company commander I was relieving was sitting in the front right. I was sitting behind him, and we're cruising through Mosul, Iraq, we're stopping at different police stations, we're kind of seeing what's going on, and uh all of a sudden, man, we start somebody starts shooting at us, and you're we're in an up armored Hum V. So they're shooting AK-47s, nothing, nothing's coming through there. But as the new guy, you don't know that. And I'm like in the back, cowering down. The commander I'm relieving is laughing, you know, because he's already been through this. Um and he's thinking, I'm sure he's thinking, oh, he's gonna get used to this really quick. And and you do, it's amazing what you get used to. Um but yeah, there was some sort of firefight, some sort of explosion, uh, you know, people running around. It was just this chaotic scene. And and um, you know, the time we were there was right around the same time as the surge, and they were pushing people out of the south, out of Baghdad, and those the bad guys were coming up into the northern areas, which usually tended to be, I won't say quiet, but not quite as busy as some of the other areas. But now things were getting busy. I mean, every single day people were getting shot at and blown up. It was a daily thing, 24-7, you know, 365 for that whole year there. I'll go back a little bit. We were part of the um uh the first cavalry. Um so if you watched um We Were Soldiers, the air cav was part of that. They have the horse patch on their sleeve. So we were a part that was our um that was our brigade. And then we were part of the 27 cavalry. Uh the 27 was uh General Custer's. They have a very storied history. They're called the Gary Owen Battalion. Um, anyway, amazing group of people to work with. So we were assigned to them, and uh they were out on patrol, and someone had buried uh a an IED improvised explosive bomb essentially the size of a water heater in this road. And one of their vehicles drove over it and it detonated and it killed everyone in the vehicle and um created a huge crater. Um it was a it was a giant mess. And um so I sent a a platoon out to set up security and help clean up. But we didn't want we didn't want the guys from the 2-7 to have to pick up the body parts of their own men, essentially. So we sent people out to do that. And unfortunately, those people, even though they didn't know them, will never be the same because it was horrific.

unknown 1:00:30

Yeah.

Homecoming Shock, Anger, Suicidal Spiral

Therapy, The Moth, Storytelling Saves

Workplace Wellbeing And Podcast Growth

Meeting Alexis And Proposing Onstage

Veterans Archives And The Legacy Question

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

So they're out there doing that. And um uh the perimeter's set. There's engineers out there filling in this crater they're gonna repave. Um, and uh they're running a bobcat, like a small front-end loader machine to move dirt around. And the thing with a bobcat is there's no rear view. Um, so you have to be very careful. And um, the guy driving the bobcat accidentally rolled over the legs of one of his fellow soldiers. And we're in the middle of Mosul, so you can't, it's not like the movies where they fly a helicopter in, right? You can't you can't do that. Medavac is not available, so you have to Kazivac. That means you have to put them in a vehicle and drive them back to the combat surgical hospital, the cash. And um, so the the engineering company commander that was out there didn't understand this. So she kept trying to call in Medavac and kept saying, you can't do that. You have to call in, yeah, we have to do a Kazavac. And um, she wasn't getting it, so this argument ensues on how they're gonna do this. One thing I didn't tell you is once I got there, they assigned me uh uh a platoon of infantry, uh the Delta 124th Infantry out of Florida. They were a National Guard unit. So I had this additional um group. Anyway, so they're the ones out doing this. And Sergeant First Class Holloway, amazing soldier, took care of his troops. He's kind of going around the perimeter, making sure people understand like you have fields of fire, you have a left and a right limit, so you don't shoot a person next to you, all this other stuff. So he's out getting this perimeter set up. And um, they've been out there for hours. And uh so he stands up to go do something, and the minute he stands up, a sniper shoots him right in the right in the vest, but it's right between where the vest comes together. The the person who did it knew what knew what they were doing. They're they were probably waiting all those hours for someone to do exactly what he did. And so he was he uh he got shot. It went across his back, um, nicked his spine, um nicked his intestines, and then came out the other side. And so um, you know, they brought him back, and then we shipped him off to Launchtule, Germany, and then he went back to the States, um, did not come back, and um, you know, he's got injuries that he'll have for the rest of his life. Um, so he was gone. That was like our that was our first casualty. And uh, you know, things things were very busy, people were getting hurt. So we were fortunate, we were on a Ford operating base or a FOB. It was called Fob Morez. It wasn't as primitive as some others. We had like we had living quarters, we had a dining facility, we had all of those things. Yeah. So so we we had the larger fobs or forward operating bases had things that other fobs did not have. Um but uh it was no less dangerous um than being any place else. In fact, uh the Christmas before we got there, someone had walked into the dining facility and detonated a vest and killed a bunch of people. Um they were a third-party national, um, and they weren't vetted properly, and so people died. And so there was, you know, the people who were there before we got there were very sensitive to security and things like that. And so, you know, we we just sort of we just sort of chug along, things were going well. You know, I remember uh learning that when you name a mission something, you have to be very careful because we got a mission. We it came down that that they were holding some hostage in this shopping mall. Uh in the and uh they believed it was near this CD DVD store. And so we created uh an operation for Operation Elton John because it was a CD store, right? And uh I'll I'll never forget uh Lieutenant Kissling was my infantry platoon leader, and that dude was just the most dedicated hard charger guy. Like he when you look up infantry, you like see his picture next to it. He was a great, great kid. Um, so young Lieutenant Kissling. So I give him I give him this operation, and he takes his platoon of infantry dudes, and they go to this shopping mall, and they get there, and the whole place is just freaking empty. There's nobody there. So they kick in a few doors and they look around and they're like, he calls back and he's like, Hey sir, there's nothing out here. And I said, Well, Lieutenant Kissling, I think you should do what you do best. And I think you know what that means. And so they went room to room, door to door, they just ransacked this place. They finally kick in a door, and you know what they find? The largest cache of IED building equipment that had been found so far in theater. Yeah. Cell phones, explosives, wires, all of those things. And so when you let people turn people loose to do what they do best, they will find something. And so he did. The challenge was now we have to brief Operation Elton John, and everyone's like, what the hell is this Operation Elton John? So and my understanding was that got briefed all the way up to, you know, the Senate um Armed Services Committee, because it was a big deal because of what they found. So I mean, stuff like this was happening. Um, and it was it was it was pretty cool. And um, one thing you never do is you never say how well things are going ever when you're in the military. Um when I was in, when I was dispatching for consumers energy, you never walked in the dispatch center and said, gosh, it's quiet, because something would happen. So I'm sitting there with the first sergeant, first sergeant Bradan, uh, but we were just kind of talking about how things were going. And uh right around that time you could hear the radio, and the radio starts firing up and something's going on. Well, my uh my second platoon had been out training a an Iraqi police department and they were ambushed. As part of that ambush, uh Sergeant McCulka, a farm girl from Ovid, like she just she could pick up a Humvee and throw it. She was tough, had been injured along with Sergeant Marvin. Um, Sergeant Marvin is a guy I knew the day he had joined the army. Like I remember him showing up um his first day of drill and all of that stuff. Anyway, so they're Caszy vacuuming him. Something terrible has happened, and they're Caszy vacing him. So they uh myself, uh the exo and the first sergeant all go to the cache and await the vehicles to get there. And they get there, and um Sergeant McCulka has lost part of her leg. You know, we're getting her out of the vehicle and onto a stretcher to get her in to get her stabilized. And um I knew that she was gonna be okay because um she had this tattoo on her leg that she had just gotten, and she was bitching about this that that now she's gotta get another tattoo because they had blown that part, that like her whole leg was gone, and that it was really gonna hurt. And I was thinking, your leg's gone. Um, Amanda. And uh so we go to pull Marvin out, and um his injuries aren't quite as traumatic. Um he's shattered his Tibfib, and he's got a bunch of shrapnel. There's a lot of blood, a lot of blood, but he's scared. Now, I don't like hospitals, I don't like needles, I don't like blood, I don't like anything to do with hospitals at all. But here's Marvin, and he's not doing well, so I'm I go in with him. And uh while I'm waiting for the doctor to get there, I'm holding his hand and we're talking, and he's asking me, Don't leave. And I'm like, dude, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be fine. You know, the doctor pulls his boot off and blood goes everywhere, and it's it's looks really bad. And it is bad. I mean, he's really seriously injured, um, but it was very hard to just sit there and tell him, you know, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay. And um, he was okay. Um, you know, he's he's doing fine now. I talk to him pretty regularly. I see him on a regular basis, but um, it was very hard. Uh, it really hit home that making that promise to people was not gonna be easy to keep because we're only six months in and this happens. You know, and the other part of it too is you have to go talk to the rest of that platoon and say, look, we still have a job to do. You can't be out there to get revenge on people, right? You know, you can hate what happened, but you can't take this out on on others. So, you know, we had to calm people down, kept them in for a day, but got them right back out on service. But things like that would happen. I remember we had civilians with a civilian law enforcement as advisors, and uh John Tetter was one of them. Um, not a tall guy, not a really big guy, but a dedicated guy. And uh he took a sniper round right to his chest, but he had plates, he had bulletproof plates, and it actually cracked the plate. And he had a big bruise right here. Uh, but he went to the hospital and they checked him out, and the next day he was back out on mission. Didn't waste any time, like total dedication to the mission, and knowing, knowing that if he didn't show up, you know, what message does that send to these soldiers? So they had civilian fighter fighter firefighters that came there, and we'd have uh breakfast with them, and every morning before we would go out um on the TV, it would be the today show, but it would be like the today show from the previous day because you didn't get it live. But towards the end of the show, they would show the pictures of all of the military members who had died the previous day in theater. So that's what you saw before sending people out or before going out yourself. Um and and so yeah, so that was a it was a whole year of of that sort of thing. I mean, we had some fun. Um I remember that the the firefighters had they thought it was funny. They um they would do inspections, and someone left a donut on one of the one of the MP's beds, right? So we were not we were not going to be showing up. Each fob had like a mayor um who was an officer that ran the the the fob. So we went to the mayor and we said, Hey, here's the deal. Here's what they did. We want to mess with them. And the mayor was 100% on board with this. What we did was he said, we want you to tell them that they put that donut on the bed of one of our soldiers who is in in the the weight training program, and he's really struggled with his weight. And this has pushed him over the edge, and we're not sure what we're gonna be able to do now. And and so the mayor takes it one step further. He calls the fire station, says, I don't know who did this, and just reads him the right act. He says, I want whoever's responsible for this to have their bags packed and ready to be out of here by the end of the day. So this dude packs his bags up and he's ready to go. And we go down there and we're like, whoa, this is so funny, you know. That was a funny, funny joke. Ha ha, we laugh about it and everything, and everything's back to normal. And they invite us to a uh cookout. And so we're uh we're at the cookout. It's getting towards the end of dinner, and um, all of a sudden it's just like it's too quiet. Like, Jim Blocker looks at me, and I look at him, and we're like, something's not right. Something's just not right. So we go to leave and we walk out the front door, and they have like this, I don't know, 50-gallon thing full of ice water, and they go to dump it on us, and then they get the hoses out and they're spraying us. Well, while we were in eating, they had taken empty water bottles and filled our home V with them and then zip-tied the doors shut. Um, so needless to say, we loved our Moswell fire department, and it's the whole cop firefighter thing, even over there in theater. This was kind of what went on with deployment. You know, we we uh continued on, we did our work. You know, the only other thing I'll say is I learned some really good leadership lessons there. Our battalion commander was a guy named Colonel Apadaka, but I remember he had a big meeting with all of his company commanders, and um I felt like he and I had just gained some rapport. Um, you know, we got along and uh we were getting ready for this meeting, and he goes, you know, you know, Lieutenant Krieger, I think I'm gonna tell these guys that they need to be out there, you know, 16 hours a day, they need to be working hard, they need to be getting stuff done, you know, they need to be doing this and they need to be doing that. And and I said, Well, sir, if I may, sometimes it takes 24 hours to get the job done, and sometimes it takes 30 minutes. But if you send people out and tell them they have to drive around for 16 hours looking for work, someone's gonna get hurt. So I think the message should be we need to get the work done, whatever it takes. So I leave, you know, we have the meeting and uh we're getting ready to kind of break up and head our own ways. And he goes, Hey, just one more thing, everybody. I know everybody's working super hard right now. I know you guys are doing the best you can. Um, we need to make sure that we're getting our missions complete. He goes, sometimes that's gonna take 24 hours, sometimes that's gonna take 30 minutes, but I don't want people driving around in sector looking for work because someone's gonna get hurt. And to me, the leadership lesson there was yeah, he didn't say Lieutenant Krieger told me this, but he listened to what I had to say, and I want to think it saved lives, and that's all that matters. A good leader will take constructive criticism or take um suggestions from their junior leaders. So I mean that was really uh that was our deployment. Um, and we came back. Uh and I will say probably the only thing more difficult than going was coming home. Yeah, well, you know, if you if you think about it, like my time, my early time in the military was really as a follower, right? You had to follow orders, and then as it progressed, it was more and more of a leadership role. Um, you know, a couple of things about the deployment that I really haven't shared with people is that I was terrified the whole time I was there. I was terrified. I mean, this is a time where people are getting their heads cut off on TV, right? So you spent all of your time trying to avoid getting your head cut off on TV, essentially. Plus, you're worried about the people who are there. And I had the added bonus of like, I'm having these panic attacks. This is still going on while all of these other things are going on. And um, you know, it's it's hard to say that. Like I was scared the whole time I was there. I'm sure other people were too. I'm sure there are people who weren't, you know, and even though I was like making those hard decisions and and doing those things, um, there were people who were doing a lot more than I was. There were people who were working a lot harder than I was, there were people who were in harm's way a lot more than I was. And there's a part of that just sticks with you. Like you think, if I had been out on that patrol, would they have been ambushed? Probably. But you think, oh, there might have been something I could do about that. There's also this part where you see people get hurt doing the things that you have asked them to do, and they did them without question, and now they're hurt, and their lives are forever changed. Amanda McCulka, she's never gonna have another leg. Sergeant First Class Holloway, his life's never gonna be normal again. The people that got hit with IEDs that didn't have any physical damage, but got traumatic brain injury, they're never gonna be the same again. And they were doing what I asked them to do. That's hard to reconcile in your head. Um, there's always this guilt or this thing in the back of my head that I didn't do everything I could have done. I could have been I could have been less scared, I could have been more heroic, there's other things that I could have done. Um, so there's just that kind of dichotomy in your head uh about how you could have done things differently. No matter what you did, no matter how successful you are. I mean, success at this point was bringing people home alive. But you don't think about the fact that we lost more people after we got back than we did when we were there. And that's because they were doing the stuff you asked them to do. And they came back all screwed up because of it. I think I had a different level of maturity because I was older. I was older than most of my peers. But there's also the people in the back of their heads like, how did this guy screw up so bad that he's this old and he's only a lieutenant, right? So there's that. I'm sure people ask that question too. Um, but I think there's there was an advantage to being the age that I was. There was an advantage to being in combat. Um, not only myself, but everyone I was with um did something different in civilian life. And now I'm in a completely different situation than I've ever been in my life. And it's it's it's a situation where it's nonstop for me, nonstop fear 24-7. Because you don't want people to get hurt, and you certainly don't want to get hurt yourself. That's not going to do anybody any good. Coming back from that was very hard because when you're gone, the world goes on. People live their lives. Mortgages get paid, cars get bought and sold, jobs change, people die, people are born. The whole world keeps going on, but you were in like a time capsule for that 15 months. And so when you get back, it's that part of it's hard. Um, you know, reassimilating is hard. You have a different perspective on things. Um, you know, I remember coming home, you know, I stepped off the bat battlefield on October 13th of 2007, flew back to Fort Dix, and about two weeks later, you're in the National Guard, you're not in the army, you go back to your job. None of your support systems are there, none of your buddies are there. It's you. And I remember getting in my car and driving from Holt, Michigan to Lansing, Michigan. And uh it was it was in November, and you know how November days are in Michigan? Like you get those days where it's like crisp, but the sun's shining, um, but it's it's a little bit dark, but it's not. And the birds, I mean, it's just this whole thing, it's like something out of a Disney movie. Like, you get those November days. And I remember like getting to my office and getting out of my car, and I'm walking up to the building, and I'm thinking to myself, it's gonna be a great day. And you would think I'm thinking that because of all those reasons I just gave you, right? No, no one shot at me and nothing blew up. That's why it's gonna be a great day. The next thought I have in my head is holy shit, I'm crazy. Like no one, no one thinks like this. And that was kind of the beginning of the almost end for me, because um, I didn't have compassion for other people's stupid little problems. You know, like I remember sitting in a sitting in a meeting, all all of our union field workers were now gonna be required to wear this yellow vest out in the field so we don't get hit by a car, right? And these guys are like, oh, it's the end of the world, I gotta wear a yellow vest, you know. It's what if it's 98 degrees out, and uh, and now it's a safety hazard because I'm gonna get heat exhausted. I mean, this whole thing. And I I'm listening to it, listening to it, and listening to it. I finally look over and I'm like, you have got to effing be kidding me. I said, why don't you put on a hundred pounds of gear and drive around in a closed-up Humvee with no air conditioning at 120 degrees, and then come to me with your silly ass little problem. And I remember someone in the background going, Man, that dude's got some severe anger issues, right? And and this just kept building. And so I was still having panic attacks. Um, and uh I was feeling depressed, and I just wasn't feeling good about myself. And then I would do things like that, and that made me feel even worse. Playing this board game where basically you try to get your pegs around the thing, and and someone can knock you off and send you back and whatever. And my two daughters are going at it because my youngest daughter is the button pusher in the family, and she's pushing my oldest daughter's buttons, and they're bickering back and forth, and it's like this cute little thing going on. And um, finally, like my youngest daughter sends my oldest daughter's last piece back to home, and my oldest daughter gets mad. And I look at them, and for whatever reason, I I just go, Why don't you two just shut the hell up? And I grabbed the board and I threw it at the wall and I walked out. While I was doing it, I felt justified in doing it. But after I had done it, I felt terrible, you know, and and that was getting worse. I I wasn't hitting anyone, I wasn't abusing people physically. I think mentally there's a little abuse there, but it it was like this spiral. And like I like I would be taking a shower and I have a panic attack, and and I didn't know what panic attacks were, so that was even worse because then it just feeds on itself. So this is going on and on and on and on and on. And finally, I was just tired. Like I just wanted to sleep. Like I just I was tired of the whole thing. My wife had gone shopping, and my kids were out in the back playing on. We had a trampoline there out playing on the trampoline like kids do. And uh I was upstairs. I remember just pulling a gun out of the gun safe and cleaning it because this stuff hadn't been touched since I was gone. So it's been a couple of years. So I cleaned it all up and all that stuff. And um, there was I remember there was like a bullet in the bottom of the box, and I looked at that and I was just thinking to myself, man, I'm just I'm tired. I'm tired of being this way. I'm just like exhausted, tired. Almost as if like it wasn't me, it was somebody else. I dropped that bullet in the chamber of the gun and I racked the slide forward and I put the gun to my head, and I was ready to be done. And all I could think of was, I'm so tired. I just, I just want to sleep. I just don't want to do this anymore. I'm getting ready to pull the trillion, my finger's on the trigger, everything's ready to go, and my phone rings. This phone scared the shit out of me. And I put the gun down and like it like pulled me out of this fog. And uh it was just it was a friend of mine that I work with. Uh somebody I don't really talk, I hadn't really talked to that much. But she's like, hey, just want to see how you were doing. And and I did what what military people do best. I lied. I said, Oh, everything's fine. I'm doing great, you know, life's so good. I'm living my best life, all the insert, you know, stupid saying here. And uh I hung up the phone, I put the gun away, I got the phone book out, and I go to the yellow pages. And for those of you who don't know what that is, the yellow pages is where all the businesses are. And I flip through like counseling services and literally just point my finger down. And I find the uh Wellness Institute of Michigan run by Karen Gallagher, and I call Karen's office and I get an appointment and I go see her. Now, while all this is going on in the background, my wife joins the military and she deploys to Iraq. My son joins the military, he deploys to Iraq. So there's a lot of stuff going on, and I was doing a lot of things I shouldn't be doing. When you live on adrenaline for a whole year, you want adrenaline back. I'm buying motorcycles, I'm I'm doing stupid crap that we won't get into here, but I am doing a lot of stupid things. And so I go see Karen and I'm in therapy like once a week, every week for a long time. In the midst of that, I start listening to podcasts. Like, I'll go mow the lawn, I'll listen to a podcast. And um, I start listening and I hear this story. This woman, Piper Kerman, she wrote a book called Uh Orange is the New Black. And um, I'm listening to her tell her story about how she gets arrested. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. And so I I realized that I'm listening to the NPR's Moth Radio Hour. And then uh, so I I'm like, I'm hooked. So I'm listening to the Moth Radio Hour every Saturday. Well, then I find out in Ann Arbor, they do a show, they do a story slam. So I start going to the story slam and I'm putting my name in the hat, and I'm putting my name in the hat. And like for five months, I don't get called. Finally get called up on stage and I tell my story. I go back every month, put my name in the hat, I tell my story, and I'm telling all of these things that happened to me, a lot of combat-related stuff, just a lot of trauma, and I'm just putting it out there for 450 people I don't know. They're like listening and they appreciate it. And then this really cool thing happens. Like, this is really cathartic for me. Like I'm getting this off my chest, and I have people coming up to me, and they're like, I thought I was the only person ever felt that way. So there's power in telling my story, not just for me, but for people listening. And these are people who never even served in the military, but they had suicidal thoughts, or maybe they tried to kill themselves or or whatever. Many times you would go there and listen to other people tell their stories and think to yourself, oh, I'm not crazy. This really does happen. So this whole like therapeutic thing going on, uh, storytelling and counseling and all this other stuff. So I keep doing this storytelling thing and I win. I win like a story slam, right? And then um, I go to this regional event, this grand slam, where all of the uh winners from like the last six months go. And I get up and I tell my story and I win. I'm like, oh sweet. Well, what I didn't know was winning meant they're gonna send me to New York City. I get there, I'll be darned the keynote is none other than Piper Kerman. So so we all got to go up and like tell a piece of our story. I go to the producer, I'm like, I have to meet her. Like, she's the reason that I'm here. I have to meet her. And so she goes, okay, finally, I get my chance. Of course, I take a selfie with her. You know, we shake hands, we hug, and then the most amazing thing that happens. She asks me about my story. She doesn't want to talk about herself. She wants me to talk about me. I wanted to hear about her, so it was a great conversation. Um, but yeah, so we had this really engaging, wonderful conversation uh about storytelling and and how it helps people. And it was like the whole thing had come full circle. Like when you're in it, you don't see it happening. But once everything happens and you look back, you're like, oh, this all happened for a reason. And as a result of that, I got connected with the um USA Today Storytellers Project. Storytelling was really what really saved me. That and Karen Gallagher really kind of saved my life. I saw the power in that. Whether I was telling my story to her or as I was telling my story to other people, all of this happens. My wife gets back from deploy her deployment, her and I just aren't the same anymore. We like stopped talking, and uh, you know, eventually just that marriage ended in in a divorce. If you look at the whole timeline, like our marriage didn't just fall apart. Like I went to OCS, I did all of that, I came home, I went to five months of officer basic course. I came home, I deployed for 45 days, I came home, and then I deployed for essentially 15 months. So then she joins the Michigan National Guard shortly after I get back. She goes to basic training, goes to advanced individual training, becomes a medic, joins the uh the uh National Guard unit in Grand Ledge, and they're getting ready to deploy. And so she immediately deploys. So that all happened. In the meantime, my son, who later told me the reason he joined the military was because I joined, which really made me happy and made me cry all at the same time. But he was overweight and he had to lose like a hundred pounds, and he did it. Like over a summer, he dropped all this weight and joins the army. I feel like we're starting to bond again over his joining the military. The key to all of this is that as screwed up as I was, I didn't know I was screwed up. It was really good. Uh, and then he really kind of is doing his own thing, uh, ends up going to Hawaii and then deploys to Iraq from Hawaii. I was worried for him, but I was still like in such a fog. I was still kind of in my own head so much. It was just this really, it's a really weird time because I even get that like timing screwed up on things because I was just so screwed up. So I knew what he was getting into. I knew this is what he wanted to do. Um, and so it was hard for me because I'd been there and I knew how it was, and I knew that it wasn't war is not the movies. Anyone that thinks it is is out of their mind. It's terrifying and it's people aren't nice, and there's no pot of gold at the end of that. Um, so I know he's going into it. He literally deployed like right at the same time that my wife deployed. So it was kind of a double whammy. Storytelling was so important to me for my mental health. I've found that it actually helped other people. Interestingly enough, this is a time when all this was going on. This is a time when many corporations were hiring corporate storytellers because businesses need to tell their stories. But when you have your staff meetings, you incorporate Incorporate storytelling into trying to get your team to do the things they need to do. Now you don't go up and go once upon a time, you're telling a story without telling a story. Um, and and if you can incorporate things that matter to people in that story, you'll get stuff done because people understand it. Now, a downside to that is when someone asks me a simple question, they get one hellacious answer. Because I'm telling a story every time I answer a question. But here's what happened is in 2019, um, I things were going great. I am at the pinnacle of my career. Uh, I'm married to the love of my life. My my life couldn't be better. My kids are successful. I'm successful, and uh, I'm working out of Flint. I thought when you went to therapy, you got cured. I thought, oh, this is like this is like getting surgery. I'm no longer, you know, mentally ill. Uh, but what started happening was I started kind of getting some of those old feelings back. Like I was starting to have panic attacks again and things were not going well for me. One day I'm driving to my office in Flint and I pull out the side of the road because I can't even drive. My buddy Keith had recently retired from Consumer's Energy, and he lived in a Wassa, which is like kind of on the way to Flint. And so I'm like, who the hell do I call? So I called Keith and I said, Look, there's something wrong. Honestly, like if I have to go to Flint one more time, I'm gonna jump off a building. And I don't mean it figuratively. And he said, Look, call Jeff, who was our vice president at the time, let him know what's going on, um, and then come out. You know, we'll have some coffee. So I do all that, call Jeff, and I'm like, Jeff, is there something wrong? I don't know what is. Jeff kind of knew most of my story. Uh, and he says, take as much time as you need, get it figured out. So I'm taking time off to get my head straight again. I start going back to counseling and I start seeing my regular doctor because my blood pressure is elevated. Independently from each other, they both said, You've been in leadership roles your whole life. You need to not be in a leadership role. You need to be an individual contributor, you need to have less responsibilities, otherwise, you're just not gonna get better. It's just gonna keep getting worse. And so I got to call Jeff. You know, I'm 55 at the time, like I'm disposable. So I called Jeff and I'm like, Jeff, here's what they're telling me. I can't do this job that you're paying me to do anymore, you know, for my own health and well-being. And uh he says, Look, you know, it's getting towards the end of the year. Take all the time you need. We'll get this figured out after the first of the year. Don't worry about it. So, like I'm off work for like three months, but I'm working on myself. It's not like I'm eating bonbons watching, you know, Jerry Springer. I'm working on myself. And so, you know, towards the end of the year, like mid-December, Jeff gives me a call. He says, Look, I'm on my way back from Chicago. He said, one of our co-workers, who happens to be a a veteran, killed himself. And he said, I don't ever want to do this again. How about if we create a position where you take care of the veterans we have? You know, not recruiting veterans, but but you know, at any given time, 10 to 12% of their workforce is veterans. And in a workforce of 9,500 people, that's a lot of veterans. And so he goes, I don't know what this looks like, I don't know how it's gonna be, but January 1st we'll make it happen. So they do a job description, they do all this other stuff. I get rolled into that position, and I'm thinking, veteran suicide. We lose 22 veterans a day to suicide, and so let's do something for veterans. So I start digging into it, and I find out that like over the last couple of years, we've lost like a bunch of people to suicide at Consumers Energy. And guess what? They're not all veterans. And so I thought, we have a bigger problem. If we can address this bigger problem, it will impact veterans. And so, um, because of you know the years of service I had there, I'd been there for 26 years almost. Um, I knew a lot of people. And we realized that people aren't getting the message about the benefits that are available to them. And so we decide as a committee, we're gonna go out to all 37 of our service centers. You know, we're gonna split them up, we're gonna divide and conquer, we're gonna get the message out, you know, huzzah, we're on our way. And uh, so we get the schedule set, everything's ready to go, and COVID hit. So now we're all working from home. No one really knows what the hell they're supposed to be doing. I worked for the chief diversity officer, the CDO, Angela Tompkins, vice president there. I reported directly to her as part of my job. She loved this whole idea, and I said, Well, Angela, what if we do like a podcast and we get the information out via podcast? And she said, I think that's a great idea. But nobody here knows how to do one, so good luck. So, like, me and YouTube became really good friends. I already know how to tell my story, so now I'm gonna learn how to get people, other people to tell their story. And so we developed this well-being podcast called Me You Us. Um, so we launch it and five people listen to it. And next month, four people listen to it. I'm like, well, this is not the direction we want to go. So I call Angela and I'm like, Angela, here's what I want to do. I said, we're just doing it internal, right? So you have to be on the company portal in order to listen to these stories. And most of our field employees don't have access to that when they're in the field, you know, and they can't access it from home. I said, So let's do a real podcast. Let's put it out on Buzz Sprout, let's have BuzzSprout put it out to every podcasting platform we can think of. And we did that. We got a couple hundred listeners and a couple thousand listeners, and then it just really took off from there. And what we did was we talked to not only people at Consumers Energy, like I interviewed the CEO of Consumers Energy. And guess what he revealed? When he and his wife graduated college, they had financial problems. Imagine being some person working in the field or a new hire that just got out of college, they're having financial problems, and they find out that the CEO of Consumers Energy struggled, right? How powerful is that? But we interviewed people from the field, we interviewed people who had survived COVID, we interviewed people who had mental health problems, regular people, and I pulled their stories out of them and we put it out as a as a podcast. And so I started learning the power of not just me telling my story, but there's a lot of other people out there who have amazing stories or powerful stories. Let's get those too. That's really where the power of storytelling came in for me. Um was not me, it was other people telling their stories and how it affected other people. So, you know, I again, 28 years at Consumers Energy, I had a lot of great things happen. And um, years and years and years ago, when I first became like management or a supervisor, they would do um these like management training cohorts. One of the people that was in that cohort was Alexis Popoff. So we worked together on and off my my whole time there. I would do projects. And so one of these projects, I would drive to Royal Oak every day from Holt. And there were like five of us on this project. And so the company provided us with a Chevy Cobalt. And so we call ourselves the Cobalt Club. And so for like a year, year and a half, we're driving back and forth. Well, one of the people that was part of the cobalt club was a friend of Alexis, and they would talk on the phone all the time on the way, on the way back. And so finally, when the project ended and I came back to Lansing, Alexis wanted to be part of the cobalt club. And so we would all go to lunch together. One point, like everybody got so busy that we kept canceling these lunches. We had a lunch coming up like the following week, and everyone canceled, except for myself and Alexis. So we just kept the lunch appointment. We'll get other people to join us later on. Well, little did I know that my marriage was gonna completely fall apart in that week between the planning and the execution of the said lunch. And so I'm out front. I'm going to lunch, damn it. Like, I'm not gonna miss lunch. So I'm out front, I don't have my wedding ring on anymore. And Alexis comes out of the building. Uh, she had washed her hands and she was complaining that she had like water in her ring that she was wearing. She was, she goes, Don't you hate like when you wash your hands, you get water in there, blah, blah. And she looks and she goes, Oh, you don't have your wedding ring on. And I don't know that this happened. I think I blacked out. But between the front door of the building and my car to go to lunch, I unloaded. Like my wife walked out on me. This is the second time that I've, you know, had a failed marriage. Love does not exist. I am never getting married again. I hate life, you know, just the whole nine yards. And she just listened. Then we all go to lunch again. She has season tickets to the Spartans football games, right? So she's got an extra ticket because her brother usually goes with her, but he's out of town and she's got no one to go to this game with her. And she's like, you know, I invited my cousin, but he's in Europe, and I invited this person and they're not there, and invited this person, but they're dead, you know. She's just going through this whole list of people. And our friend looks at her and goes, Well, why don't you ask Bill to go? So she does she does the best maneuver, right? She goes, You wouldn't want to go to this game, would you? So I said, Yeah, I'll go to the game. Why not? I like I like to watch football. I show up at this tailgate because she's part of this huge tailgate thing, and uh we're we're chatting and we're talking about family and everything. Well, we didn't even watch the game, we were just talking with each other the whole time. So we go back to the tailgate after the game, and I don't know anybody at this tailgate. Somebody made chili, so I grab a bowl of chili, and uh the people that she came with are leaving, and she goes, Oh, I gotta go, jumps in this this freaking Tahoe and takes off. And I'm standing there eating this bowl of chili, like, aren't I just the biggest idiot on the planet, right? So, yeah, so I get out of there, and uh one of the guys at Tailgate goes back to where they're watching the football, and she goes, He's like, Oh, hey, I really like your guy. He's he's good. And she goes, My guy. She goes, He goes, Yeah, you know, your guy. And she goes, Who the hell are you talking about? She goes, The guy you brought to the game. She goes, That's not my guy. But she had left um some of her stuff in my truck. Um, and so I had to get it back to her. So we met for lunch and we started do like chatting, we started texting and then talking on the phone. Trying to remember, she oh, she was putting up Christmas decorations, so then she's decorating for Christmas, and she goes, Well, you want to come over and help me hang up the mistletoe? I'll bet you're good at that. So this is her attempt at flirting, and it was a pretty good flirt. Um, so I come over and we we hit it off really well, you know. We um we have a lot of the same um values, and we're out one night, and um, she goes, Well, let's go to my dad's house. She goes, My um, my cedar chest is there and I want to get it. So, like, there's these two like um, they look like crowns, they're like they have pearls on them and they're really decorative, but they're super old. And I'm like, What are what is this mess? And she goes, Well, these were my grandparents' wedding crowns. And when you get married in the Orthodox Church, the bride and groom both put on a wedding crown that's tied together in the back, and then they walk around the the altar three times. It's just part of the ceremony, and it's it's really kind of cool. And so uh she puts this thing on her head. I've said this before to people. Like, like when you're about to die, you know how your life flashes before your eyes when she put that thing on her head, like my future flashed before my eyes. Like I knew that this was a person I wanted to be with, you know. G. Gordon Liddy once said, the key to a good marriage is not finding someone that you can live with, but finding someone that you cannot live without. And I knew like right then I had found that person when she put that wedding crown on. Like I I don't know how to explain it, but that's what happened. Right after that, I sat down with her and said, She goes, first of all, she said, Look, we've been dating for a while. If you really don't want to get married again, then we need to not, because I'm I want to get I'm I'm in my 40s, I'm ready to get married. And I said, Look, here's here's the deal. I I do want to get married again. And then I spent two hours telling her all of the terrible things that I have done. All of them. I said, This is who I am, but I don't want, I don't want any more kids. I've had my children, and you know, so we had this really deep conversation pretty early on. We talked about waiting till my youngest daughter graduated high school, and then we would get married, and and so forth and so on. But I was at work one day, and uh the ladies I work with were like, When are you gonna do storytelling again? We want to come watch. I'm like, I don't know, let's go let's see what the let's see what the stories are gonna be about. So I get on uh the the website and I go and look and I go, Oh, it's it's about weddings. And I'm like, oh, it's about weddings. So I'm thinking, what better time to propose? So I invite a bunch of my friends, the kids come, I invite my attorney. Like, there's a bunch of people that don't ever come to storytelling. And of course I invite Alexis, and so we're all sitting there, and she's not like connecting that. Why are all these people here? And I had called Patty, the producer, ahead of time and said, Look, I really want to propose to my wife at the storytelling, you know, help a brother out. So she did. And I was like, uh, after the break, I was like the seventh or eighth storyteller. And I got up and I told that story that I just told you. And I I said, you know, there's only one thing left, and that is, you know, will you marry me? And like the whole time, she's not getting where this thing is leading to. Um, but yeah, she said yes. And I did it in front of it, must have been 400 people there. So that's and it's just been amazing ever since. She's she loves Disney princess movies and um, you know, believes in a happy, happily ever after and and you know, happy endings, and it's just, you know, that's how it worked out for us. So that's how we, you know, that's how we got together. Veterans Archives is kind of a long story and a labor of love, and that is because um my grandparents uh grew up in the south on my mom's side. So my grandfather was born in Kennett, Missouri, but he lived he led a really colorful life. He was a bootlegger, he lived on a riverboat, you know, he went in and shut up um, you know, speakeasies, he did all kinds of stuff. And uh anyway, he marries my grandmother and they go to a tent revival meeting, which in the south is a big deal. Like these guys would, these ministers would come along, they'd set up a tent, and they would get people to um to commit to Christ. And so my grandfather goes to this thing and he finds the Lord. So he's like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I gotta change how I live. So he and his partner had just bought all the stuff to make another batch of uh hooch. And uh he goes to his partner, he says, Look, I'm leaving this business, you can have it all. And his partner was like, Yes. And so my grandfather packs up the family and they they move to Michigan and he goes to work for motorwheel. Him and my grandmother would drag me to church with them every Sunday. They wanted me to be a minister. They would have paid for my college if I would have been a minister. They really wanted a minister in the family. Um, but one of the things that they did, and um, you can research this in the old Lancy State Journal from years ago, is they would sponsor families from other countries and they would let them live with them. They would, uh my grandfather would buy them a car, fix it up, get them a job, and then get them out on their own. And they did this for family after family after family. But my grandfather had the best stories and he had like that Missouri accent, and we loved his stories, and we tell them till this day, but the truth is you can't, it's not his words, and it's not his voice, right? And so um I came up with this idea that we would capture people's voices and and stories um in their own words, right? And I actually formed a company called In Your Own Words and um started talking with um a lot of retired folks, a lot because those are the folks who want to preserve their stories for the most part. It did pretty well. The problem is it's expensive, and people on fixed income can't really afford that. And I can't really afford to do it for free. I'm still working at Consumers Energy at this time. This is 2022 when I started putting this all together. But I thought, you know, there's gotta be a way to save these stories, right? So I really thought about it, and then I thought, well, you know, I'm a veteran. You know, I retired from the military back in 2010, and um, I work with veterans now at Consumers Energy. So all this stuff's kind of coming together. And I thought, well, why don't we just do this for veterans and we'll set it up as a nonprofit to defray the costs of doing these stories? And so that was really where it started from. I just started calling people I knew and recording their stories. And, you know, the idea was even if we didn't have money in the bank, we're still doing them. Like we'll just figure it out later on, figure out how to pay for it later on, but we're gonna do these stories. And so I started that in 2022 and I was working full time. You know, you just don't have the time to do everything you want to do. So it was very shoestring budget. It was very, if you listen to the early recordings, they're not they're not stellar. Um, but we did what we what we could do. Further along, um, I ended up uh retiring from Consumers Energy in uh 2023, um, but went to work for the VFW National Home in Eaton Rapids, which takes care of veterans and they do an amazing job. Um, but I was working like tons of hours and not concentrating on you know this other project that I had going. And so um I left the VFW National Home last July and really in earnest put everything I had into veterans' archives. And so um, you know, we currently have 89 stories um recorded, and some of them are audio and some of them are video and some of them are both. But this is a gift that veterans can give to their families and to future generations. I mean, if you could take a memory card and put it in your computer and listen to George Washington talk about crossing the Delaware in his voice, in his words. We know the history from him then. You know, the history books are written by whoever wins, so they're not always accurate. Um, and I'm not gonna say every story from every veteran is 100% accurate, but it's their perception of what happened, and that's the real history. But to hear it in their words, and yeah, I haven't interviewed George Washington, but I've interviewed uh uh people who uh were in the Pentagon when it got hit on 9-11. Um, I've interviewed people who were former Navy SEALs, I've interviewed people who took a shot to the head from a sniper and survived it. I mean, these are all amazing stories. I've talked to people who served for two years and uh stayed at one place stateside and never went anywhere, but went on to do amazing things after their military experience. This is all part of our combined history. And the question is, would you rather read it in a book or would you rather hear the person that did it tell you what they did? And that's to me, that's the power. Like I've watched storytelling and what it's done for me and others around me for all of these years, and now I can give people a way to do that. And even people who are reluctant or who don't really think they have a story, everyone has a story. Everyone. Uh, and it's amazing what people talk about when they tell you their stories. It's amazing what you hear. But the really cool thing is um, you know, I'll give you two examples. One, I interviewed a Vietnam vet, um, and I'm really good friends with his family now, but they've called me and said, gosh, you know, he never told us that stuff. And you know, he's still alive, but he shared it with them. Um, but the big so what for me happened this year. Uh, in January, um, we got a partnership with the Michigan Veterans Homes. The very first person that I interviewed was Vicki Kane. And Vicki was an Army veteran. Um, she was a mechanic at a time when women weren't mechanics, um, but she was a hard charger and she raised a family and she had an amazing life. Um, but Vicki had stage four pancreatic cancer. And so we wanted to make sure we got her story recorded. And she was getting ready to go to Disney with her family, and uh she wanted to wait. And I said, I don't think she should wait because she's gonna be tired when she gets back. I mean, this takes a lot out of you. So I don't know how, but we wrangled it together, and uh I met with her uh for a couple of hours and we got her story. And um, I've been back to the Grand Rapids home a couple of times, and the last time I was there, um, I ended up working later than I wanted to, and I was gonna stop in and see Vicky, but I didn't. That weekend her son called and Vicki had passed away. And they were so thankful to have her story and to hear her voice. Like it made the memorial service that much better. But now her grandkids and great-grandkids and people that she never knew will hear her story and I think be inspired by it. And she was very humble. She didn't think that she had an inspiring story to tell. But hey, you know, back in the, in the in that time when you were a mechanic and you were a woman and you were in the army, like, you know, you paved the way for other people. And so that's the power. And that that was really the aha moment for me was, you know, I talk about this all the time, but this actually happened. She passed away, and now that's really all they have. If I look back on my life, I would want my legacy to to be a lot of things. As a leader, did I impact people that made them better leaders? Did I impact people that sent them in a direction that saved their lives? You know, don't we don't always get our it's a wonderful life moment where we get to see what it would have been like if we're not there. But every once in a while, someone will come up and say, Hey, you might not remember this thing that you did, but it it made a difference to me. All of that aside, I think to boil it down into the simplest terms is really like the guy saving starfish on the beach. He's walking along the beach and he's throwing starfish back in, and somebody comes up and says, What are you doing? And he says, I'm throwing starfish back in the in the water. And the guy says, There's a thousand of them out here, it's not gonna matter. And he picks it up, throws it in, and says, It mattered to that one. To me, that's legacy. You can't help everyone, you can't be the great leader for everyone. But for those one or two people that you threw back in the water, that's your legacy. And you may never know it. I look back on my military experience and career with a lot of mixed emotions. I think I made a lot of mistakes. I think I did a lot of things right. I'm happy. Sometimes, and I'm sad sometimes, and I'm angry sometimes. Um, it was such a full life. Like there were so so many things about the military that made me who I am today. Um, and those are all good and bad things, not just good, not just bad. I don't have any bitterness towards the military at all. Everything we do brings us to the point that we're at right now. And so every experience that I've had, good and bad, has shaped who I am and has brought me to this moment. And so I don't dislike any of them, but I can look back and say, Oh, that was such a wonderful time. Or I can look back and say, that really makes me sad. Um, so it's all of those emotions um kind of all at one time, and it's it can be a little overwhelming um when you when you think about it sometimes. When you reach the age of 60, you know, you're not this sage old man yet, but this really weird thing happens. I start seeing the people older than me passing away. So I have a real understanding of my own mortality. I know for a fact I am not going to be here forever. And I don't know when this ends. And maybe years ago I looked back with regret on things, but now I look back and go, yeah, good. Good that that happened to me. Because it made me do this, it made me think about something this way, or it made me treat this person this way. Good that that bad thing happened to me, and good that the good things happened to me. It's just a different as you go through the seasons or chapters or whatever euphemism you want to use for your life, you learn things from that. Now, some people don't ever learn things from it, they're just bitter old people. They're yelling at you to get off their lawn. Great, but that's not how I see it. We have a finite number of years to live on this life on this planet. I have seen it cut short for some people, and I've seen people live long lives, and I've seen everything in between. Um, but I do know that none of us get out of here alive. And so what we have to do is make sure that what we do matters. You know, just like we say your story matters. It's not a tagline, your story does matter. Because if we circle back to legacy, which we kind of started talking about earlier, that's your legacy. This is what I'll tell you about my family, and I'll talk about my blood family, the family that I didn't choose, the family that I just have. Um for a long time, I was angry with my father because he was absent and because of some of the decisions that he made. But we've reconciled that. We get together and we we we can be father and son. For years, I was angry with my mother to the point where I kicked her out of my house one time and didn't talk to her for years. What I learned was my mom is who she is, my dad is who he is, and I have to have the right expectations. I can't expect them to be who I want them to be. I can expect them to be who they are. And if I can do that, I can accept them. So they are part of my family, and we've kind of come together there. Um, like I said, my sister and I were like really good friends for so long, and then we kind of fell apart, like we didn't see each other, and we're our lives went on and we did other things. And our younger brother, who was a musician, led a very interesting life. I wish that I could have recorded his stories. Anyway, he in 2014 ended up getting congestive heart failure from a medication issue. He was given, you know, several years to live, but uh he just kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And he finally moved back to Michigan a few years ago, uh, and I reconnected with him. And so I spent every Tuesday having dinner with my brother and listening to him rant and and um, you know, do the things that he did. You know, we did things like play guitar together and just talk about life and um disagree on things, and we really connected uh and we lost him uh last March. And my sister and her family came up as we were going through his house and all of that, and I really reconnected with my sister and her family. And so I have that going now. And you know, I have my my wonderful Greek wife, and so I have that huge family that I inherited, um, which is weird to me because I'm not used to family acting like family. Um, so I have that. And then, you know, I have my children, and my son and I um have reconciled our differences. It's me to blame and not him. You know, I've apologized for the way I treated him, but we can't make up for the past. We can only go forward and try not to make those same mistakes again. Uh he's an amazing guy. He served six years in the army himself. He has a wonderful family, our only grandchild, our granddaughter, Annalise. And so our family is getting bigger. And uh then I have my two amazing daughters, uh, McKenna, who's a school teacher, who knew she wanted to be a school teacher in in like eighth grade and is now living out her dream um and really enjoying it. I have my youngest little smart ass Caroline, has her degree in hairstyling, cosmetology. So she owns a salon and cuts hair. She's very successful. She's married to uh a guy, Jacob, who is in the Michigan National Guard and currently deployed. All of that to say that my family has grown and shrank. Uh we're all kind of together and on the same page now, and all of those differences that we had when we were younger are sort of by the wayside. And I think it's really about setting expectations. Yeah, I think I've that my search for family, the search is over, but the growth is still happening every day. I meet people at things like how to fundraise, and they become part of my family. And every person that I interview, all 88, 89 of them, I feel like they're a part of me now because I know so much about them. I think that thread throughout my life has just kind of come around. And as I get older, I see the importance of putting our differences aside and really concentrating on family.