Military Trained (82nd Airborne). Mission: Protect Your Child.

From Airborne to Unshakable Trust

John Nelson’s life reads like a movie script—82nd Airborne veteran, government work across continents, and now the founder of a student tour company built entirely on safety, trust, and integrity. In this episode, John shares wild jump stories, Cold War memories, surviving chaos during the Boston Marathon bombing, and why his military background shapes every tour he leads today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

All right, folks, welcome. Welcome back to another episode here of Interesting Humans. I certainly have one here with me today. His name's John Nelson. You won't know him by name, but I like to say this when I get to the great privilege of interviewing heroes like yourself. They don't know your name, but they know your work. And you go, how do they know your work? What is that? This is what I've come to the conclusion of. I'm able to get in my car and drive to the grocery store and come home and be safe. And I take these freedoms for granted. I do. I admit. I'm the first one. I just take for granted that I've got this freedom. You've stood on a wall. You've done things for this country that are just incredible that I think most wouldn't be able to even comprehend or fathom. so i'm going to start this episode by thanking you first off i want to say thank you for all you've done for our country everybody out there is soon to hear the list of those things but the interesting themes that we're going to cover today is so you have this funny story why you got into the military and i love it man i laughed for a long time after you shared it with me but why you got into the military once you got in the military Where did you go? You went into an elite, elite division. We're going to tell some stories from what happened in there. Your transformation then into government work, what things looked like. You lived in a bunch of different countries. Fascinating. And where you're at now. It makes sense to me, knowing, but it might not make perfect sense to everybody. Where you're at right now is operating this tour company for high schools that want to do these educational tours. And now that I know it and I understand it, it makes perfect sense and matches your background because of the safety component of it. And man, when I get the great blessing to help my kids book their tours... I now know how much safety means. They're younger, but we'll be there soon enough. I know now from getting to know you and your story, how important safety is on these trips. And you have some incredible stories that we're gonna talk about today of how your business, the partners in your business that are all former government folks, how you've stepped up to the plate when there were safety concerns and what the benefit is to the parents and the administrators out there putting these tours together. So enough about me talking. I cannot wait to open this up and have you share. John, why? What got you into the Army to start off with? Tell us this story.

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

Well, I got to tell you that my father served. in Korea after the Korean War conflict. So that was a big deal for me in the beginning. We were a close-knit family. Six of us. I had two brothers, three sisters. I'm the oldest. Big family. Yeah, Irish Catholic family. Grew up, you know, middle class, working class, we would call it. And went to Catholic school. Went to... Catholic high school for the first year and was unfortunately kicked out. I was kind of a bad boy in the beginning. Wow. And I had seven detentions and only had six classes.

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

What state were

SPEAKER_00: 3:32

you in? Iowa. Okay, Iowa. Clinton, Iowa. Clinton, Iowa. Got it. Okay. Wow. So after my freshman year, I was asked by the priest... to go to public school next year for my sophomore year. And I looked at him and said, gladly, thank you. So anyway, we had a parting of ways, but still a great school, St. Mary's. Went through there for the four years, graduated. Then went to two years of community college, which is like high school with ashtrays. And we... I realized my grades were okay, were good, you know, be average in that. But I decided this is not for me. And then I talked to my father about his time in the military. He was in the Army as well.

SPEAKER_01: 4:21

Okay, Army,

SPEAKER_00: 4:23

yeah. Yeah. So we talked to my brother who's just graduated. He's two years behind me, Jim. And Jim came up with the idea as far as, hey, man, I want to join the Army. I don't want to go to high school with ashtrays. I love that. Community college. It was a good community college. However, we and my best friend, Denny Lemke, at the time the three of us joined, went to the recruiter, talked to him in, this must have been 82, late 82, talking about recruiting. And all of us wanted to... going to combat arms. And that's just, we love to shoot. We love to hike. We're very, very athletic, the three of us. And the recruiter said, hey, this would be the job for you. You get to get to foreign countries. You get to see new people and shoot them. Now, granted, I was in my team... I was 20 at the time. My dad was, you know, talking about his time in the military. And so we all decided to go in. And that also, I just want to say that I was very young back then. My whole psyche has changed. And that I don't feel that way now about people. So we went in, did basic training at Ford Bennington, did jump school. Bennington, yep. Now is that...

SPEAKER_01: 5:57

So you go into Fort Benning, you're enlisting in the Army. Right. Okay. But there has to be a time period before you can go into 82nd. Right. Okay. So I don't want to get too far ahead. All right. Benning?

SPEAKER_00: 6:12

So what happened is when we all joined, they told us we were going to be part of a cohort unit. So I knew from basic training that we were all going into the 82nd Airborne right away. Okay. So we signed up for the 82nd. We, you know... They called it 11 X-Ray. I became an 11 Charlie. My brother Jim and Denny became 11 Bravos. Basic infantry. Infantry. Okay. I became an 11 Charlie through selection, which is a mortar man, 81 millimeter mortars. And that's how we got our start. So we went through basic training, got out of basic training from September to December. That's the time frame. And then took a month off. They gave us for Christmas break. Went back to our bending station for airborne jump school. And then we actually were the first... company to jump in to our new duty station at Fort Bragg. So the whole company jumped in all 160 of us. There was 240, 230 at basic training. By the time we jumped into our first duty station after that would be considered my sixth, sixth jump. because you have five in jump school. So we all got our sixth jump jumping into Fort Bragg. And the court unit basically meant that you stuck together for the three or four years, depending on your enlistment. And it was because of that that... really the trust that we receive from each other, spending all that time. Because most of the military, you go in and out. You go in, people are ETSing, they're leaving permanently, or they're coming in, just coming in. Our whole unit stayed together for all that time as an experiment to see if esprit de corps and morale would increase with that. As a result, they found out it did. And we're in the 3rd of the 325. And what does that mean? That's the 3rd Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment. So we're called 3rd of the 325.

SPEAKER_01: 8:21

Okay. 325, cool. So let's pause here. This is awesome, and you've said a lot of cool terms up until now that I want to unpack. But what was it like the very first time you jumped? Take me through that.

SPEAKER_00: 8:34

Oh, the very first time I jumped. It wasn't the first time that was the scary part. And everybody that's gone through this will tell you it's the second time. The first time you don't know what to expect. Everybody's scared. I'm scared. I'm looking out.

SPEAKER_01: 8:52

Are you afraid of your parachute not opening? What's the main fear?

SPEAKER_00: 8:58

Yeah, the parachute not opening. I've never jumped, so I have no idea. Breaking a leg if you land wrong. For three weeks, the basic training for airborne school is not to break your legs. It's called a parachute landing fall or PLF. Okay, wow. Also, you have to have the physical training. You have to have the mental training to go through this. This is where a lot of people, not in our particular case, company when we went straight from basic training into airborne school, but there were a lot of, uh, I'll say officers and, uh, other people that didn't even make it the first day. They just, yeah, they, you know, it was very simple stuff, but we were all well-trained. Some of these people weren't, you had to do pushups, you had to stand in a plank position for several minutes. And a lot of them, uh, Failed that.

SPEAKER_01: 9:53

What was the hardest thing of all that stuff for you, just for you?

SPEAKER_00: 9:56

For me? Again, I would say just the first jump and then the second jump.

SPEAKER_01: 10:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 10:04

So the second jump, I already knew what to expect. Yeah. It was scary. Going out the door, looking at all the other parachutes opening up and saying, thank God.

UNKNOWN: 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:16

And then mine opened up and it was, you know, we did all the PLFs. Everybody from my company, we didn't break a leg. And it was fantastic. It was exhilarating once the parachute opened. How high? Usually about 1,200 to 1,500 feet for training purposes.

SPEAKER_01: 10:38

Landing on what?

SPEAKER_00: 10:39

Landing on, for airborne school, we landed in kind of grass areas. Okay. Sod, things like that. So you land on a rock or something. Yeah, we have before. I've landed in lakes before. As I continued on, I landed on a runway. Thank goodness I didn't break anything. That was one of my last jumps. On a runway? Yeah, it was at Fort, I believe Fort Stewart. Fort Stewart or Fort Gordon. My leg, I actually broke one of the runway lights as I landed. And I was... Thank God that I didn't break anything. But it was fantastic. The whole four years that I was in, I was also in with my brother Jim and Denny. So we had this special bond. And then all the other gentlemen, we built this trust that we had each other's backs. We had each other's sixes. We knew that if we were ever... going into a combat situation in the future that we built such this trust that, uh, we understood that we were, we were safer together than alone. That's for sure. Wow. So

SPEAKER_01: 11:54

together than alone. Yeah. I love that. So already we're a couple minutes in. And we're nowhere near Sun Tours, the company that you own, and already the theme of trust pops up. And I sit here as a father of four, again, eight, six, four, and two right now, thinking out to the future. I'm going to be on a committee hiring a vendor to do the trips for our kids, and I already hear why it's just so important. neat. Like your offering is so powerful that you've lived a life of focusing on safety and trust. And what did you say? Having each other sixes and all that stuff. So it's just, just so cool. Safer together than alone is the way you said it. Yes. Yeah. Alone. I love that. All right. So cool. You, so you go in, you do this, I'm guessing you got to deployed during those years or

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

we, um, it was 80 through 80, 83 through 87, which was the, Reagan glory years, I call it. All right. So we just got, when I was in basic training, our unit was deployed to Grenada. We didn't make that. Um, it was done before we even got out of basic training. It was like 20 days. And, uh, but my unit, the one that we're going to was there at the time. And we basically, we went through a lot of training. We went to Vicenza, Italy, Aviano, Germany, places like that, Turkey. Um, for a NATO exercise, which was awesome because a lot of the other paratroopers from the NATO countries, like Turkey itself, which was the host country, Belgium, France, Germany, they were all there. We got to talk to them, train with them. It was

SPEAKER_01: 13:38

fantastic. Like literally jump out of planes

SPEAKER_00: 13:39

together? Yeah, we jumped out there in Turkey as well. Did

SPEAKER_01: 13:42

you learn stuff from each other, or what did you get from it, ultimately?

SPEAKER_00: 13:46

Well, we learned camaraderie is number one. You always feel like you have these brother in arms no matter what from different countries. Wow. You know, they have different weapons and, you know, we would, you know, talk to each other as best we could. And a lot of the other countries, of course, spoke English, which is good. So the Germans, especially the French, the Belgian, the Turks, not so much, but the officers did.

SPEAKER_01: 14:10

The officers. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:11

And they were conscripted. So most of them were, if not all were conscripted, except for America.

SPEAKER_01: 14:17

Did you learn language during that time at all?

SPEAKER_00: 14:19

Learned Italian. Yeah. Learned Italian back then.

SPEAKER_01: 14:22

That's

SPEAKER_00: 14:22

cool. And then went to school there while we had a little bit of time off and we lived in Vicenza, Italy. So there was North court in the Veneto area. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:31

That's their military. They're during, during. Okay. During. Yeah. This would be 85. Okay. 85. You get out 87, 87. Okay. Out of the military total. Complete,

SPEAKER_00: 14:42

yes. Totality? Yeah, ETS, Honorable Discharge, September 20th, 1987. 1987,

SPEAKER_01: 14:47

okay. And then what was the next day like after being, you're in the military doing all this incredible stuff and now you're not in the military?

SPEAKER_00: 14:56

It was a hard transition for a while. You know, you're so used to being disciplined, waking up, doing this, doing that, you know, always checking your weapons, always training. We would train for weeks, especially when we were in Vicenza, we would go out into the field five and six weeks at a time three sometimes three but at the most usually six come back for a couple weeks and then go back out and you know you ETS the last day and all of a sudden you can wake up when you want and do whatever you want and I had a great support network where I had the safety of my family so and my wife Dana um, fantastic support group that I had. So what we did was, uh, you know, they, they helped me transition. It was, it was peacetime. So it wasn't, it wasn't hard, but it was, uh, it was different. So I went to school in September after that and, uh, enrolled at university of Maryland and college park.

SPEAKER_01: 16:03

Oh, very cool. So back home from Italy, uh, Then

SPEAKER_00: 16:07

went to Fort Bragg for about a year. And Bragg is where? Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00: 16:13

Okay. Got it. And then after that, we ETS from Fort Bragg and then went right into my last two years. of university. I had two years before that at the community college, like I said. And then I finished my undergrad at University of Maryland. University of Maryland. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:32

What'd you pick Maryland for? Terps, right?

SPEAKER_00: 16:36

The Terps, yeah, yeah, yeah. I lived right by that. Well, the crazy thing was, I was going, I had no idea of University of Maryland. I mean, my wife at the time, she took a job at the CIA. Yeah. And so she was working in Langley. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 16:52

And...

SPEAKER_00: 16:53

What happened is University of Maryland was close. They took all my credits and I finished my two years there.

SPEAKER_01: 17:02

So that led, so it was almost like following her. Yeah, I was. I like how matter of fact you said that. My wife took a job with the CIA. Yeah, so awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

My wife took a job with the CIA and that was mind-blowing at the time. It was fantastic. And also when I got to Maryland, seeing that the Terps were our mascot, I had no idea A turtle is our mascot. Couldn't we have a dragon?

SPEAKER_01: 17:30

Something a little faster.

SPEAKER_00: 17:32

A flamingo. A little more. It was a terp. A

SPEAKER_01: 17:36

terp.

SPEAKER_00: 17:37

But it was good. What did you study? I studied international relations, but in specific Russian and Eastern Europe. So this was still the Soviet era times. And that helped propel me to... a job later on in my career yeah and that so my undergrad was in in that from I graduated in 89 in 89 okay Dana was living in uh Switzerland at the time so 88 there was a transition where I stayed at Maryland to finish my senior year while she went in 88 June and I went with her initially and Couldn't find a good school to finish my senior year, so I went back to University of Maryland and finished my senior year there. They had an excellent Russian program. They had some of the best professors. They had, as a matter of fact, several of my professors wrote the books that a lot of other universities use for Russian language. Really? Yes, and Dan Davidson's one of them. Okay, Dan. Fantastic gentleman. Had an opportunity to speak with him several times. Actually got University of Maryland... to raise the credits from three to four in order to get more credits for the language. They weren't giving them enough credit. And so it's a harder language. Therefore, I appealed to them for a higher credit, four instead of three. And it took about six months, but we got it done. And I did it with Dr. Dan Davidson. Wow, is he

SPEAKER_01: 19:10

still there? And Tom Garza. And Tom Garza. Are those folks still at... The University of Maryland?

SPEAKER_00: 19:17

No. Tom Garza is in the Slavic Area Studies at University of Texas, Austin. Oh. My favorite professor of all time. Really? Tom Garza. Tom Garza. Dan Davidson. He might've passed away. I don't know. He's, but he was, he was a fantastic gentleman. I lost contact.

SPEAKER_01: 19:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:34

I only know him.

SPEAKER_01: 19:34

I knew him very briefly, but, uh, we're going to try to find Tom Garza out there and tag him or tag his department. And you said university of Texas, Austin, Austin. He's in the Slavic department. That'd be so cool if we can find them. All right. So you're how old at that time?

SPEAKER_00: 19:53

Gosh, I was about

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

24. Do you know what you want to do in your life? Were you still just doing things around what you think you want to do, or did you know what you wanted to be?

SPEAKER_00: 20:04

I wanted to do something that would involve international relations. I wanted to do something. I loved to travel. I loved to travel since I was a kid. I remember when I was six years old, I got this Hershey thing. Container chocolate had a bunny on it, a rabbit. And what it had on the back was, hey, send in two box tops and we'll give you this map of the world with coins that were on it. Legitimate coins. And so I did it. I asked my mom and dad. They said, yeah, sure. I said, maybe probably seven. Anyway, so I received the package bag. It came in a little brown bag. And I opened the map, and it had all these cool little coins from Turkey, from Greece, from France. This is before the EU, of course. This is in the 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And... Early 70s and I just looked at that Batman said and I looked at these coins and said I'd love to go there I would love to do that so that's when it really the the The progenitor of all that came from those two box tops in the map with the coins. So that's

SPEAKER_01: 21:17

a huge pivotal point. I mean, wow. But nobody would know that at the time. You would not know that. That was just cool. But as you look back at your life now, it's fun to look at that exact puzzle piece and go, wow, that... fit in there perfectly. And because that fit in there, I was able to fill the rest of the puzzle in because it's just so cool. All right, cool. So Hershey and the bunnies and the map of the world and the cool means was your, did your family travel? Like you said, your dad was in the military. Were you guys doing any kind of travel?

SPEAKER_00: 21:49

No, no. We, uh, other than local, I mean, we lived in Clinton, Iowa, which is right on the river. Yeah. We would go to Wisconsin or Minnesota, but that was it. I didn't, I'd never been on a plane until I joined the military.

SPEAKER_02: 22:02

oh

SPEAKER_00: 22:02

wow until i joined the army the first plane trip i ever had was uh Flying in from Moline, Illinois to Chicago here to Atlanta, Georgia. Right,

SPEAKER_01: 22:13

for training.

SPEAKER_00: 22:13

Yeah, and they picked us up on a bus and took us to Benning.

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

What airline did you fly? Just curious.

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

Oh, I think, you know what? I think it was like TWA.

SPEAKER_01: 22:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:22

It was back then, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

And that's cool. So that was your first time on a plane. Yeah. All right, cool. So you're in University of Maryland. You're graduating. Your wife is overseas. Yes. She's employed with

SPEAKER_00: 22:35

the CIA. The CIA in Geneva, Switzerland. Then

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

what does the world look like for you? What are you thinking?

SPEAKER_00: 22:41

Well, I finished my last year. I had five other guys that I lived with during that time. And the only thing I did was, between studying, I did martial arts back then, Muay Thai, boxing. I would go. There was this famous... Muay Thai boxer. He was a 128-time world champion between Vietnam and Thailand. Master Kwok. And I would go to my classes. I would go to the gym, the dojo. And then I would go home, and I would walk. And it was three miles from the university to where I lived in Hyattsville, Maryland. And I was in the best shape of my life then. So it was fantastic. So I did that. Finished my year up, went back to Switzerland. I did go back and forth to see Dana about five times, including Christmas break and that. So I would take, if we had a long weekend, I would fly there to Geneva, fly back for a four-day weekend. And then I graduated and went back to Switzerland and went to school right away. Oh, you did? I went to grad school in October. Wow. For my MBA in Lausanne, Switzerland.

SPEAKER_01: 24:01

Lausanne, Switzerland. Yeah. That's so cool. What's school like? What's the difference, university abroad versus university here?

SPEAKER_00: 24:12

Oh, I got to tell you, it was fantastic. There was over 70 different nationalities here. At the business school of Lausanne, you had people from all walks of life. The Swiss, let's just say they were wealthy. Let's just say that. You had people showing up. At University of Maryland, they had great people. I love University of Maryland. You had a lot of diverse people. Culture is at University of Maryland. But when you get to Switzerland, especially in the Geneva-Lausanne area, that's a lot of international. The IOCC is there. The International Olympic Committee is in Lausanne. Wow. My school is in Lausanne. Still there? Oh yeah, the I.O.C.C.''s headquarters, the Olympic International Headquarters is Lausanne, Switzerland. Very cool. And we are right on the, close to the river, in Ushi, which is a suburb of Lausanne, but absolutely beautiful. You had, as I was saying, 70 different nationalities. I got to learn from a lot of different cultures that were fascinating. Got to have a lot of friends. In particular, the Pakistani community was well represented there. Loved talking to them. They taught me, you know, I studied them at school as well. Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans overall, Swiss and French. It was right on the French border, very close. Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 25:45

Very cool. A couple years there, did you say? Was it two, three

SPEAKER_00: 25:48

years? Yeah, I entered in, what was it, 89? Yeah. Yeah, and graduated in 92. Okay. I took an extra year after me because I actually started working for– Swiss company even before I graduated. Got it. So you worked during school? Yeah, I worked during school. Do

SPEAKER_01: 26:11

you live at home?

SPEAKER_00: 26:13

Oh, yeah. I mean, Dan and I had a place in Geneva.

SPEAKER_01: 26:17

Oh, so real close.

SPEAKER_00: 26:18

So we take a 40 minute train ride to Lausanne, Switzerland. Wow. Yeah. And we did it on Saturdays. It was a course where you could actually get. So for everybody that was working, you would have that. And we had a fantastic class because they're all professionals. All our professors were professional. They just weren't talking about widgets.

SPEAKER_01: 26:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 26:37

I had one guy that was the vice president who actually got me the job for the Swiss firm that I worked for. which was also part of a private Swiss bank in Geneva to be working in Czechoslovakia. So all that was done through the business school of Lausanne. That's our heritage is Czechoslovakia.

SPEAKER_01: 27:00

Polish and Slovak.

SPEAKER_00: 27:02

Polish and Slovak, yes. Yeah, I got to tell you, nicest people, greatest people, especially back then, the Americans that just opened up, they were more than happy to see us. So loved it. I mean, I've traveled to over 40 different companies, corporations. It's Czechoslovakia back then. So I date it that way historically because that's pre-'93. So I was in there 1991, 1992, so before they split to the Czech Republic and Slovakia. What's your

SPEAKER_01: 27:40

favorite food from that region?

SPEAKER_00: 27:42

It's called pstruch. Pstruch. It's a trout. And I love it because they do it with the head and everything. So just eating that. And that. Oh, they have so much. Pierogies. Pierogies. They... I can't remember pierogies. They have that in Poland a lot, I remember. Okay. The pierogies.

SPEAKER_01: 28:06

So that's

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

more of a

SPEAKER_01: 28:07

Polish.

SPEAKER_00: 28:07

I think it's more of a Polish dish.

SPEAKER_01: 28:09

Yeah. See, we're getting both of them. Yeah. Our family traditions are getting both Polish and Slovak.

SPEAKER_00: 28:14

They're both beautiful. Oh, I love Slovakia. I mean, number one, they hardly had any cars. So you could, I rented a bicycle. A mountain bike. And I would go on the weekends after work, and I would just travel through the mountains of Slovakia, especially in the area of Rohace, Habovka, in the whole oblast of Donikubin, which is in the northeastern section, and it borders Poland. On the weekends, we'd go to the Polish town of Zakopane, which is very famous for skiing. And it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01: 28:51

Yeah. All right, cool. So you graduate, and then what do things look like? You're working at a bank, you're finishing your MBA, and then

SPEAKER_00: 29:00

what? Well, that worked there for a couple years, and then Dana had to, we either had to decide whether we were going to stay there in Czechoslovakia, there, Geneva, or go back home, and we decided it would be best for us. At the time, this is 92, 93. I think 93. Okay. So we moved back to the D.C. area. Oh, you did? And that. So she went back to Langley, and I was looking for a job. I worked at NordicTrack for a while, which was fun at the Pentagon City Mall there in Arlington, right across the street from the Pentagon. Yeah. And then... I got a call from a little buddy of mine that was in the military with me. Actually, great guy. And he offered me a job in Atlanta. Wow. And so I thought about it and then... This was about January, February, and then we negotiated, and then finally moved in July. Oh,

SPEAKER_01: 30:15

wow. So I did the same thing, D.C. to Atlanta. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. D.C. to Atlanta. Did you come visit first, or did you just?

SPEAKER_00: 30:24

No, I knew this gentleman before, and he lived in Atlanta, so I would come sometimes with him to go home. He would drive. We'd drive from Fort Bragg. to the Atlanta area. Oh, so you've been visiting. Yeah, so I knew a little bit about Atlanta beforehand. And we were very good friends, and then I worked for him for a couple years, 93 to 96. Things, we parted ways in 96, and I formed my own company. The Olympics were in Atlanta. 96, the Olympics, and also my daughter was born in 96. What a year for you. Yeah, started my own company.

SPEAKER_01: 31:03

And that was, okay, so 96 is the flag in the sand for, was it called Sun Tours from day one? From day one. Okay, Sun Tours, and that's S-O-N

SPEAKER_00: 31:14

Tours. Christian Tour Company, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 31:16

Yeah, which is just so cool. All right, so Sun Tours starts. What is life like for you minus business? What's going on everywhere else? Is Dana with you?

SPEAKER_00: 31:30

Yes, yes. What does everything look like? Finally, our first house, we moved there in September, October of 92. Yeah, we moved to our first house. Sarah was born in 93, June.

SPEAKER_01: 31:49

Okay, 93, June.

SPEAKER_00: 31:50

June. So I started my own company March 1st of 93. Mm-hmm. And Sarah was born in June. And it was wild. It was wild. I've... Sun Tours was started on a Gateway computer by myself. I had... I found out... Now, this is 96. This is well before, you know, Internet was that popular and, you know, as far as connection value. So I purchased... for a nominal price, seven different states, middle school and high school listings. So it gave you the school, the address, the phone number, and I spent my time from March through August placing that data in the computer to generate a mailing list. Yeah. And that's how my company started. That's how you

SPEAKER_01: 32:51

started. Who was your very first client ever?

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

Very first client ever was in Knightstown, Indiana. Knightstown, Indiana. And her name, she just passed away recently, but we're very close. She loved us. She trusted us. Her name was Vianne Schmidt.

SPEAKER_01: 33:10

Vianne Schmidt. Yes. Cool. A school?

SPEAKER_00: 33:14

A school, Knightstown Middle. Knightstown Middle. Knightstown

SPEAKER_01: 33:17

Middle. That's so cool. I want to find them too.

SPEAKER_00: 33:22

Fantastic thing about them is Vianne, one of my first customers, landed her in 96. stayed with us the entire time. She actually came to work for us as a person that would, we call it escorting, where they would be the escort for the group to help them get from point A to point B to make sure the guides come on time, to make sure we get to the hotel on a proper time, and hand out the keys, so forth and so on. So kind of like your own personal valet or butler.

SPEAKER_01: 33:54

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 33:55

that's cool. So she was a client forever. She was a client forever, and then when she retired, she worked for That's so

SPEAKER_01: 34:01

cool. Is the school, is Knightstown Middle School, are they still a client, even though she's not there?

SPEAKER_00: 34:07

No, after COVID, something, things changed. Things changed.

SPEAKER_01: 34:11

Wow. All right. So, me and Smith, that's cool. Sun Tours. is now off, we're now off to the races, we're going. Do we have any competitors at the time?

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

Oh, there's always, it's a dog-eat-dog world in the educational tour business. You have several large competitors. Even back then? Even back then, yeah. And then you have what they call factional groups. What does that mean? You know, small companies... you know, one person, two people. I mean, I was that way in the beginning. Yeah. So are

SPEAKER_01: 34:46

you holding a child?

SPEAKER_00: 34:47

Yes. Yes. So my very first, uh, Sarah was born in June, June 16th. And I remember doing the database and then in August, you know, she's, you know, three, four months old and I'm getting phone calls. Thank goodness. Thank God. Right. And, uh, and I'm hoping that she doesn't cry. So I'm holding her in one hand.

UNKNOWN: 35:07

I'm like,

SPEAKER_00: 35:07

Phone in the other. Right. Hey, how's it going? And then talking at the same time. Please don't cry. And so it all worked. It worked out. Wow. And I did that for a year. And the bonding that we had was fantastic. You know, I was working out of the house on the computer, had a phone, mini little phone system, you know, two lines and a fax.

SPEAKER_01: 35:30

And a fax,

SPEAKER_00: 35:31

yep. And a fax machine back then. And that's how I started the company. Dana came to work. with me a year later in 97.

SPEAKER_01: 35:40

You're awesome. Cool. And today with you, both are still...

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

Yeah, we're both... Which is incredible. Sarah's still working. Sarah's the best thing that's ever happened to us. Next to Dana. And Sarah had an amazing career. I mean, she's 28 now, but she graduated from Fordham in three years instead of four. She graduated a year early. I made a contract with her. I said, I will pay for four years of your school. So she completed Fordham in three years. And then she went to King's College London and completed her master's in a year. So I'm like, Sarah, you got me. So I paid for her for four years. Come on. She did all that in four years? She did all that in four years. She moved back to New York. Her Fordham's in Manhattan. There's two locations of Fordham. The first one's in– well, where she went was Lincoln Center.

SPEAKER_01: 36:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 36:39

And I think the other one's Rose Hill, something like that. Yeah. And– Anyway, so she completed that. Then she started working for, she was a humanitarian by heart. She loves people. So she took a job with a company that dealt specifically with the homeless in Ward Island, which is part of the psych hospital for the criminally insane.

UNKNOWN: 37:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 37:09

So she worked in one part in the hospital for the criminally insane was right next door. And a lot of the clientele would obviously in her mesh. So she had quite a start to her career. And yeah, she did that for a couple years. Then she went to another NGO called Fortune Society. And that was in, I believe, Long Island. She worked there for a couple years. And she did fantastic there. She became the youngest director there for ever at like 23. At 23.

UNKNOWN: 37:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 37:51

And then things changed as far as New York. We're concerned with her. And let's just say that there came a time and a place where she felt it'd be better if she came back and kind of grew her roots with her family. So we offered her a job. We let her think about it. And a month later, she started working for us. And

SPEAKER_01: 38:12

this was what year she came back?

SPEAKER_00: 38:14

I'd say 2023. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 38:16

Okay. So fair. So recent. Yeah. Pretty, pretty recent. She's how old is a 28 about to be 29. Okay. That's so cool. So a fam. So another reason is a family business. It's a family business. Yeah. You've brought some talented folks together, right? Some. Yes, I believe so. Former. You have some, some other former government. I mean, right.

SPEAKER_00: 38:41

Yeah. So like Dano's, you know, uh, with the CIA, um, Chuck, who I've known for over 40 years, was in the same company with me. And he was living in Italy, speaks fluent Italian.

SPEAKER_01: 38:54

Was he one of the first guys that you said you jumped out of the plane with?

SPEAKER_00: 38:58

One of them, yes. Yes, he was in the company. So we did everything together. And then we became even closer at Ford Bragg and Vicenza, Italy, and so forth. And he became my weightlifting buddy at the last year.

UNKNOWN: 39:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 39:11

So, yeah. Here you are

SPEAKER_01: 39:14

all together again doing this. Yes. So cool. What a story.

SPEAKER_00: 39:20

Oh, my

SPEAKER_01: 39:21

goodness.

SPEAKER_00: 39:21

Yeah, he heard about my company when he moved back to America. And he asked for a job, and I said,

SPEAKER_01: 39:28

yeah. What was his first position when he came to work with you?

SPEAKER_00: 39:31

Operations. Operations. He's still there. He's the vice president of operations now. Wow. So he grew that position as well. I mean, so... We have a, you look at it, a security foundation between the 82nd Airborne, two of us from the 82nd Airborne, one of us from the CIA. And I wanted people that had the right attitude. And I can always find that with a veteran. so veterans because they know all about safety they know all about security especially in combat arms which we're in Dana knew all about safety and security what she did with the CIA and there's other great people too that are family members that were military wonderful person named Karen that works with us now and what did she do she's in sales sales and travel all of us travel everybody has to when I hire them I always hire on attitude and aptitude but attitude's always got to be number one and I only have three rules in my company as far I make it simple as possible yeah for sure and it's you know you don't you know like military you know no insubordination I won't incompetence and I that's to say that you got to start learning your job somewhere but to become competent in that and they all are For sure. So those two, and then you don't steal. So other than that, I pretty much give them free reign. So I taught every single one of them what I like, what I want, and what we need to do as far as a company. They follow that. They have their own particular... Once they get to the groove of the company, I let them do what they need to do. That's so cool. I'm not a micromanager. And... All I want to do is drive the bus. I'll steer the bus. Everybody else is with me, but that's what we do. They do their jobs. I don't check up on them. We do have meetings every day. We do pray every morning at our conference to kind of consecrate the day. But excellent, top-notch people with great attitudes. That's

SPEAKER_01: 41:55

awesome. Special. All right, now let's focus in. So that gets us up to Sun Tours, which we've spoken a little bit about, but we're going to now go in. Now I want to go into depth. So I want to talk to you about, I want you to explain to me, Quantity versus quality. You have interesting insights there. Okay. So you've told me that Sun Tours, from day one, you didn't want to focus on being a quantity company. Right. Tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00: 42:28

Well, in 96, I started my company. But in 93, I was actually doing this with the other company in there. And the thing I learned right away is our competition, they were mixing groups together from different schools, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can create a lot of angst, especially between the schools and that. Well, if you don't know personalities, too. Right. Yeah. But they do it because of the cost. The more people you have, the cheaper it is. Got it. So I learned several things. just from experience, but I also learned several things from grad school. And one of the things back in the 80s and 90s was a gentleman by the name of Michael Porter. And Porter was required reading. And in Porter's books, one of them in particular, he had what you call a quality-quantity curve. So you had quality on one side, quantity on the other. And what you don't want to do, and it was a downward curve, so... like a smiley face, between quality and quantity. So you don't want to be in the middle because you're going to lose both. So I learned right away that either I'm going to have to go for quantity or quality and focus as much as possible on that. I decided right away I wanted to do quality. So I wanted to run a lean and mean company. I formed that as kind of like a special forces team where everybody, Everybody in the SF, and they were just right down the road from us, and we would talk to them. You had A&B teams. You had 5th Special Forces, Group 7th, 4th PSYOPs. And it was great to talk to those guys. And the thing they always had was everybody had to have a primary and a secondary. Some even had a tertiary assignment. So you could be like weapons and then a medic or heavy weapons and then commo. But you always had in case somebody, they were lean and mean, if some person fell, you had somebody else to take it over. Makes sense. So all of us have a primary and a secondary in our company. So if someone's out of the office, another person can take over. Like me, for example, I can do them all, and I taught them all. Right.

UNKNOWN: 44:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 44:48

But the first one I wanted to get away from was accounting. Dana was an ace in accounting. She was the top of her class. She actually got an award in Switzerland for the best student. And I said right away, Dana, this is my weakest point. Can you take accounting? Absolutely. She did it. And she's stellar. Stellar. Yeah. Great. She's the one that holds the company together. But she can also do operations. She can also do administration. She can also do sales. She can do everything I can do. Yeah. Only... better, which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 45:22

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_00: 45:23

And the greatest thing about this is, so that's what I do. I have Chuck. He can do operations. He can do sales. He can do administration. Sarah can do it all. Sarah. Wow. I hope that someday that I can just hand the business over to Sarah, but I'm not, I don't want to force that on her, but she's, she's the, uh, Best human being I've ever known. And it's not just because I'm her father, but it is because I'm her father. There is a bias there, but she's genius level, brilliant human being. And my people, when she came on board, couldn't believe it because it's like, for example, Chuck told her, hey, I need you to do something. Check back with me by noon. This is her first day. She was back in 10 minutes. I got it all done. We're looking at her like,

SPEAKER_02: 46:17

what? Right. By

SPEAKER_00: 46:19

noon. So she's great with people. She goes on tours. She just got off a New York tour a couple days ago. We've all been traveling. This is the big season now. But it's because of that special forces trust, that communication. I can fill your position at any moment. I've got your six, like I said, in the military. I've got your back. You've got my back. Safety is the other issue, trust and safety. We know how to safely take these students from point A to point B back to point A again. Let's

SPEAKER_01: 46:53

unpack that. Let's stay right there now for a little bit. Do you have any stories of like when– when something hit the fan, so to speak, or something went awry or something went, went bad and your background came, came forward.

SPEAKER_00: 47:10

Well, yes, yes. And, uh, I had a couple of them, but, uh, um, we've all had that. I've had one where three of us, we had groups, we had three groups from California and in March, this is several years ago when there was a winter storm and they were flying, I believe United. And, um, We were all snowed in for four days. What city? Newark, New Jersey. Newark, New Jersey. So I had two groups from, they're all from the LA area. I'll just say that. And three groups there, all at the hotel at the same time we get snowed in. And they're there for five days, for five days. And what we decided is we had one of our main people stay there, an escort.

UNKNOWN: 47:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:59

Others had to get back to the office, but we had our lead person. Sarah was there. So we made sure that they were clothed and fed. We didn't care about the insurance, but they were insured. We knew that. But we paid everything out of our pocket, all the hotel rooms, three meals a day, dry cleaning, if you can believe that. We couldn't go anywhere. We were on the phones, you know, rearranging their flights back to L.A. from Newark. So we were able to do this. One of the groups actually had to fly out of Logan Airport, but we paid for the motor coach to take them from Newark to Logan to fly out back to L.A. We got everybody back five days later safe and sound. And we worried about the insurance afterwards because it's about money. That can wait. It was the people's safety and security. They need to be clothed. They need to be fed. They don't want to be there. They want to be back home. But hey... It's no. Out of our control. It's out of our control. So it's one day at a time. It's do what we should do for the other person and make it happen. And that's been my motto. It's just make it happen. Make it happen no matter what. Don't worry about anything else but the safety and security of those people, students and adults. We're on that. The other one, the one that I highlight for our company is– During the Boston bombing, we had a group in Boston.

UNKNOWN: 49:28

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00: 49:29

Dana was on that tour.

SPEAKER_01: 49:31

What year was this? This was about 2020-ish. That's a good question. Okay, let's just, yeah. Okay. There's not multiple Boston bombings. No, no, I'm talking about... The one where they were running

SPEAKER_00: 49:46

the marathon. Right, yeah. Running the marathon, the pressure cooker went off. That was the bomb. You had a group there? Yes, we had a group in Boston at the time. And what happened is they weren't next. So first off, they were safely far enough away where they weren't by them. They were like at Bunker Hill, I believe, in Boston, but far enough away from the marathon. Right away when we heard about it, we got a text. Dana was there. So she was the lead. Dana was the text. Right away we went through our protocols. Get to, you know, call the parents right away. We had every student call their parents. We had the parents, there were parents on the tour, calling the school. The teacher was calling the school. So we wanted to make sure, number one, that everybody was safe and sound. So we got that communicated in our network. Okay, next thing we did is we changed the itinerary around so that we could see everything safely that was far enough away. Because Boston's kind of a big city. So in one section, it was total mayhem. In the other section, there were certain problems with traffic and that. But once we were safe, once we were secure, and everybody was calm, we continued on. So we made that happen. But that was only through Dana's training. And as far as being safe, secure, checking, communicating, making sure that– we could get to the places on time. If we not, she would make a change. So, and, and she had to do that, but, uh, we got through that safe and sound secure. Everybody made it back. Everybody was, uh, very happy with our company and that. So, and that, but that's, that's the main thing right there is the safety and security of the, uh,

SPEAKER_01: 51:36

the student. So, uh, Without me saying why is Sun Tours different, I don't even need to ask that question. There's no reason to ask that question now. For the last 30 minutes, we talked about it. Wow. All right. So you guys have our, I know we're five years premature, but you have our trips. I could tell you right now because I will be on the committee making the decision and it will not be made over dollars and cents only.

SPEAKER_00: 52:03

Well, fantastic.

SPEAKER_01: 52:03

This is different. I mean, I could sense the difference. Like I want my kid. going with people like this and not that not that it's a bad thing but not coming not going with somebody who's in sales

SPEAKER_00: 52:17

right exactly yeah

SPEAKER_01: 52:19

right

SPEAKER_00: 52:19

and that's yeah and that's the thing too I told you about quality over quantity the big thing that we won't do we won't like other companies will we will not Unless they ask, and we've had a couple of groups throughout the years that have said, yeah, we want to combine because otherwise they couldn't go. But it was their decision. Their decision, not yours. Not mine. We would never combine, just to say. So we asked them, okay, if you want to do that, that's fine. But we'll take groups as small as 25, but we have groups as large as 800. So we will not combine a group. It's that important. And that has a lot of trust and safety issues as well. I mean, you can overcome them. You can do them. But I just, in general, don't want to do that. I'd rather go for the high quality and have less quantity than run it like a cattle car truck company like some of our competitors do. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 53:10

because these are people's kids. Yeah, exactly. All right, you have some cool stuff moving on. You have some really cool stuff out on the internet picture-wise. And I know there's... There are stories behind each of them. So I want to ask you about two of them. One is Chernobyl. Okay. And the other is the picture that you have out there. I think it's on the website with a couple of you guys up at the old Berlin Wall.

SPEAKER_00: 53:33

The Brandenburg Tor, the Brandenburg Gate.

SPEAKER_01: 53:37

Yes, yes. So let's start with Chernobyl. So what happened there and what is the importance?

SPEAKER_00: 53:42

Chernobyl was something that– My daughter and I love to travel, and she got the travel bug through me. The first time I took her to New York was with her grandparents. Both sets were there. It was fantastic. She was four years old, went and saw The Lion King. She loved New York ever since. And we love to travel together. We're great travel companions. And when she was going through, we always knew that she had a certain amount of time. to have a Christmas break, winter break. And so she loved her Jewish heritage through her mother. She studied Ukraine. I studied Ukraine from the international perspective, from the political perspective. And I actually lived in Italy at the time that Chernobyl, on April 26, 1986, had a meltdown.

UNKNOWN: 54:38

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 54:39

And in Italy, it was actually found out by a university or an area in Sweden. They found out that there was actual debris, that something happened in Chernobyl. So anyway... back when we lived in Italy, they told us, hey, you had to wash all your food, some of the food you couldn't even eat. It was at your discretion. So even back then, from that point, I went to school. I studied, again, Russian, Eastern Europe, so forth and so on. Studied the Ukraine as well. Fantastic people. So I had that desire to go there. You couldn't go at the time. It took like 20, I think the first group's Don't quote me on this, but it was around 2014. Sarah and I, because of her age, couldn't really go until 2017. So you have to be 18 to actually go to Chernobyl. There's a 30-kilometer zone and there's a 10-kilometer zone. And you have to go through radioactive detectors to go through that. You have to be cleared through the government. You have to have your Social Security number, so forth. So it all has to be done. And I give a shout out to the company I went through, Solo East. Solo East in Kyiv. Solo East. Kyiv in Ukraine. Okay. So I went through them, had a great guide. We went into Chernobyl. This is January 8th of 2017, the day after their Christmas, because they go by the Gregorian calendar. And we spent, it was funny, we spent Christmas in America and then we spent Christmas in Kiev. So it was nice. And we, you know, I studied a lot about it. There's a famous author who actually won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Chernobyl Diaries called Svetlana Alexievich. Svetlana wrote the Chernobyl Diaries and won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. It was a must-read book about it. And another gentleman by the name of Adam Higginbotham. So I read their books. I read some of the others when I studied it. I was always fascinated with, I hate to say this, but the human condition and how far people can fall. And what happened as far as how did Chernobyl happen? And it's detailed in the books, but a lot of it had to do with just so much human error. And also the whole idea that, and it was a very, very basic reactor that used graphite rods. And how it happened was they decided to run a test on the reactor. And it has basically 200, I forgot, 200 or 311 graphite rods around it. And they let all but eight go. fall or descend and one thing led to another the uh the water that was supposed to cool it down uh immediately dissipated evaporated the special water that came in the heavy water that was supposed to for emergencies cavitated pipes and the pipes exploded and next thing you have a complete meltdown yeah so it is just fascinating how 50 000 people had to go through all this They had a town called Pripyat that was about a kilometer and a third from Chernobyl. You had literally, like I said, 50,000 people that were immediately affected. And the Soviet Union at the time was not reacting. It took several days. It took like the 29th, May 1st for them to react. And then they started busing everybody out in this huge mass of lines. Why didn't they react? They didn't want to admit it happened. It wasn't until Sweden told them that this was going on, and also at the University of Minsk in Belarus, the Minsk called the Chernobyl people. And anyway, they found out. They got them out of there. They never came back. Basically, you couldn't live there. You couldn't even travel there until, I said, like 2014, 2015. You can only stay there for a day. There are some people now they allow back that are like 70 years old and above that can come back and live, but outside the 30-kilometer exclusion zone. Yeah. But it's amazing. You can travel through Pripyat, which is the town. It's like a little city. Yeah. And they had to leave everything there. And the most memorable room that I saw was... And it really goes to tell you what they thought of us and we thought of them. I mean, they were just as scared of the Americans as we were scared of the Ukrainians and the Russians. The Soviet Union back

SPEAKER_01: 59:48

then. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 59:49

right. And I went through a kindergarten classroom with our guide Boris and Sarah. And... We saw this on the ground, hundreds of gas masks, kindergarten gas masks for five-year-olds. They would practice every morning putting on their gas masks just in case America decided to nuke us, hit us with bioweapons, everything. So it was just amazing. It just struck home. I have a picture of it that I can show you, but it's literally, and there's a little doll in the middle of it. None of it's been moved. And you can't touch anything. You can't take anything out. So everything has been left there. Now, some people have gone in and pilfered here and there, but you can't get in there without a licensed guide now. So it's very closely watched. They have just abandoned hotels and restaurants and houses, and you go through the residence, the jail cells, everything, everything. Still. Still. Still

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:56

this day.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:57

Yeah, there's books laying on the ground that, you know, language books that'll say, like, for example, you know, German. They call it niemetski. Um, you know, Italian, they were learning different languages, uh, the, um, the Russian books and that, cause they're Ukrainian. They had to learn Russian as well. Very similar languages, but different. Yeah. And, uh, All of them laying there. All of them haven't been touched for decades. And seeing these people that suddenly had to be uprooted. And to be in Chernobyl at the time, a lot of people don't know this, the Communist Party thought this was the place to go. This was for scientists and engineers, especially the Communist Party. This was the place to go. They had the best food. They had the best education. If you were a Communist Party member, You got first rights to go in there if you wanted to go there, and a lot of people loved it because it was a beautiful area until 1986. Luckily, the winds were traveling north, and only 3% of the Ukraine was affected by the direct radiation. 26% of Belarus up into Minsk was affected, which is basically uninhabitable now. So it was spectacular for us. And then we got to see what happened during World War II. There's a place called Babanyar. Babanyar is one of the biggest travesties of the World War II era against the Jews. Like I said, my daughter's Jewish heritage. She studied this as well. And without going into it, I mean, it was a very tragic event with a lot of, you know, 20,000 civilians within four days were exterminated. Okay, exterminated. Exterminated. Not bombed. No, they dug trenches, executed them, and then buried them. And then there's a park there now that commemorates this, about Babanyar. And so we went there. We also went to go see Golda Meir, one of the prime ministers of Israel. She lived there when she was six years old, so we visited that site. It was... Educational, to say the least.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:18

To say the least.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:19

Yeah. So we love doing that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:22

Yeah. Then tell me about the picture. So there's a great one. There's four in uniform, four of you guys, I think it was. Yes. And what's in the background? The

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:32

Brandenburg Gate, but from the east side. So we took a picture. This is back, again, this is 1987. Our unit went there for urban combat training. Yeah. Yeah, we stayed at, I believe... I think it was called the Roosevelt Barracks. But it was... There was this large town within Berlin that they made that was exclusively for urban combat training. So you learned door-to-door, wall-to-wall, house-to-house, top-level, down-level, how to scale, things like that, shooting around corners. You know, all the fun stuff that we learned in the military. So... It was a blast. I love Berlin, literally. It was fun. But we got a day, we received a day where we could go out and visit East Germany. That was East Germany. We went through Checkpoint Charlie, January of 86. And we decided, hey, we got a picture from the west side. Let's go to the east side.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:41

And get a picture of the Brandenburg Gate from the east side. So we did that. We got to see the famous needle. It's a long, big tower. I don't know what it's called properly, but it's a large tower. Kind of reminds you of the Seattle Needle. And we spent half a day there, but we went to one of my most memorable moments, and I have a picture of this. We went to Spandau Prison. which I think it was Hess, last name, I believe it was Alger Hess, who was a spy. And it stayed open for him. He died a couple years later, but this is 1987, I believe, 89, and then they closed the prison down. But it was a very famous prison back then for World War II. During the Nuremberg trials, some of them were placed there. So... So it was fascinating to see East Germany and just how different it was. Because back then, the Western German capital was Bonn. The Eastern German, anyway, Berlin. But when they reunified, they made it Berlin again. But at that time, it was absolutely... dark and dismal and the people were not happy you could just the dynamic between the east and the west germans yeah and that where you see the the uh capitalist side the western european side yeah um versus the total socialism that happened in in eastern europe they are just dark dismal their their uh products were 30 years behind the times their communication their um It was sad. It was very sad to see, but very memorable. Yeah, very memorable. And like I say, educational. Can

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:33

anybody travel to that? So it was socialist? Communist?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:37

Yeah, it was communist,

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:38

yeah. Can anybody go in there?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:41

You had to have special permission.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:42

Okay, so it's like Cuba is now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:44

You can't just walk in. Yeah, it was even tighter back then. But because we were military, because we had certain people that... We could go over there, but we always had to be in uniform. We had to wear our Class B uniform. So we had to be immediately recognizable as military. Right, right. And we were given special permission to pass through Checkpoint Charlie, and we went through there. Yeah. Saw the Bundestag and several other places. Were you allowed to take that

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:13

picture?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:14

Oh, yeah. You could take pictures.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:16

They weren't looking at you funny?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:17

Oh, we always were followed. They always had somebody there. Really? Oh, yeah. They always said.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:22

Like military?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:23

Military. Yeah. Yeah. You had military following you around, walking around.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:27

Yeah. Okay, so we understand it was like black and white, basically. Yes. One side of the wall versus the other. Yes. A lot of people out here aren't going to remember the wall, myself included. Like, I was still very young. Tell me through your eyes. So, What happened? Where were you at? Were you in that area for that time? I

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:43

was in Switzerland at the time, so we witnessed all that. As a matter of fact, I can get into this far. There was never so many people defecting from the former Soviet Union trying to get into Geneva as back then. So, I mean, former KGB agents, former people that worked for East Germany. Yeah. and that were coming to Geneva seeking political asylum. That were at the top ranks of their political people. All

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:18

right. I have a couple more questions for you here. They'll be a little bit more personal in nature, not about some tours or about military, but... Do you have a favorite time in history that you just love studying and latching on to more than anything else?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:33

I love the comparative history where things are happening in different parts of the world. I love art, so I'll just say right away, I love the Italian Renaissance and then a lot of the Dutch painters. Yeah. used a lot of the Italian Renaissance and brought it to the Netherlands. And they had the Dutch Renaissance in the 1500s, like Rembrandt, Vermeer, De Witt, artists like that, that would use... especially my favorite term is chiaroscuro, which means light dark in English from Italian, which Caravaggio was a very, very illuminated artist where he actually brought light into a... 3D format I would say when you see any painting by Caravaggio you'll see like a dark outside but then you'll see this luminescence from the middle and it's a light and it could be a candle it could be a flame but it's beautiful and the Dutch actually loved that so much that Rembrandt took a lot of the ideas of Caravaggio and brought it into the Netherlands in the 16th century as well as others as I mentioned before so that I love that part of history 15th century, 16th century. Historically, I love the Punic Wars. I was reading a book by Victor David Hansen. And he talks about revolution and the decimation of certain cultures simply because one wanted to fully dominate the other, that they wanted nothing left of them. And that's hard for me to understand until I actually read it of another culture. And so it was the Punic Wars were in the 200s in B.C. And down to the one. So there were three Punic Wars and it had to do with Carthage versus Rome. And there's some main characters in there that I absolutely love. Hannibal, his father, Hamilcar. And Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal Barca, Scipio from Rome. And talking about the trials and tribulations of what, from the First Punic War to the Second Punic War of... In the 200... The Second Punic War and then leading into basically the Third Punic War and... Basically, Carthage lost each time, but the Romans were getting more upset with them each time. So finally, the Third Punic War is where Rome basically surrounds the main cities of Carthage and raises them to the ground, and they don't want them to succeed again. But just the dynamic of two different systems, two different cultures. They both had comparative marine... trade at the time they're both you know in the Mediterranean area yeah but they were always scared of one another vying for uh dominance of the Mediterranean and again this is you know 300 years before Christ so wow so to the absolute annihilation of them in the in the like 140 149 yeah sometime I'm in that area in that area yeah yeah

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:13

yeah That's cool. So favorite time. That's neat. Favorite time in history. All right. I'm sure you've been around a ton of weapons, way more than even an avid marksman. Do you have any favorites?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:26

I have a couple of favorites. I'd say the one that if I were to absolutely love to have, because number one, it's well-made. You can actually bury it. For a week, a month, pick it up and shoot it is the AK-47, which we were trained on in Europe. But also my favorite is American-made Colt M4 without the scope. I love to use iron sights. That's what we used when I was in. There was no such thing as using a scope like they do now.

UNKNOWN: 1:13:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:04

But the Ironsight M4, and it's not like the M1 or the M2 where all the carbon built up, and all the former military guys back in the 80s know what I'm talking about as far as having to clean your weapon. And you still have to clean it, but it's not like it was before, and it's very accurate, and the barrel's beautiful. I have a bull barrel, stainless steel, and I love shooting it. I mean, that's mine.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:31

What's your favorite? Do you have a sweet spot of a distance you like?

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:35

I like to take my AR-10 out, which is a.308, and I love shooting long distances, 200, 400, 600 yards. Yeah, 200, 400, 600. But the M4, you can easily– there's a great range in the Buford area, Buford-Lawrenceville, where they have 100 yards. It's the longest range in the southeast.

UNKNOWN: 1:13:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:57

It was true back then, but it's still a 100-yard range where you can take your rifle, M4, and shoot it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:05

You ever hear of a place called Peacemaker National?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:08

That sounds familiar. I think

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:09

it's Peacemaker National. We may have to go up. Okay. It's outside of D.C. Well, two hours outside of D.C., but they have a 1,200-yard range. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:20

I would love to take my.308 out there. They are

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:24

10. But, all right, cool. And then I want to end on this part. So you're how old?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:29

61. Man. 62 in August.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:33

So I want to know for me, selfishly, how do I look like you when I'm 61? Quit it. Quit it. You're a fit, man. You are fit. Well, thank you. But more the actual nuts and bolts of your routine. What are your theories on food? Do you eat more carb, less carb, all that stuff, and exercise? And just your routine in general. So walk

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:57

me through a week for you. In general, I'll tell you 80% of it is what you eat. 20% is working out. That's the first. As Americans, and I've learned this the hard way, but I also learned how to research. I researched back in my undergrad. I worked at a library. I mean, I love research. One of the things I found out is that, unfortunately, America eats too many high-process foods. So I went back to the naturals. And also, I'm endorsing this guy. He's Gary Brekka. Gary Brekka is excellent for amino acid intake. He actually breaks it down so that when you're eating proteins, a lot of that is just flushed out of your system. Gary Brekka has this thing called Pure Aminos that allows you to ingest like 30 grams of protein, two calories. It takes 50 calories to break a fast.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:55

Okay, body health here

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:56

it is. So 30 grams of protein. You can get through the amino acid and take that with only two calories. So you can ingest all that with a 98% metabolism rate. So I've been taking it for a year and a half now, and I have to make sure that if it gets down to a third of a container, I get the next container on Amazon. It's like a

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:22

scoop a day type of thing?

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:23

A couple scoops a day, I do, yeah. I try to make sure I have a gram of protein per pound of weight.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:30

Okay. Okay. And that's this focus? Is this protein focused?

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:34

Protein focused. Well, yes, a lot of focus, but I use that from Gary. I also make sure I eat natural foods. I also make sure that I've eliminated everything in my diet as far as high processed foods with the exception of... And I hate to say it, Tombstone Pizza.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:54

See? I can't help it. This makes it more real. I don't want to sit across from somebody who says they eat perfectly. No, I do not eat perfectly. So Tombstone Pizza. Tombstone Pizza, baby. I love it. I love it. Now, how many of them? You're not eating 10 of them.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:07

No. I'll eat like one. I always give myself a break. everybody knows this that's into athletics and a proper diet. Always give yourself at least one meal a week that you can go nuts.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:21

All right. And that, so I'll take like a Wednesday or even a Sunday and you know, I'll throw in a tombstone pizza on a regular base once a week.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:28

Yeah. And you're eating the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:29

I mean, you're not sharing. No, no. You don't, you don't strike me as one. Yeah. Okay. I do that. This is awesome. But then I also have a routine where like today, for example, I usually get up between 3 and 3.30 in the morning, and I either read a book and read a couple pages of book, not a whole book. But read a book, and then I read the scripture. And so today I was reading about Mark 8.30, where Jesus is talking about the– the loaves of bread and the fishes and then getting on the boat after he fed, um, you know, the 5,000 and then the 4,000 and having all the loaves left over all these baskets. Like the first one was 12 baskets with the 5,000, a couple of fish. The second one was 4,000 and they had seven baskets left over. And then he gets on the boat with his disciples and states, Hey, um, Jesus, this is the disciples saying, we only have a loaf of bread between all of us here. And he was going to another, they get in the boat and they're going to another town, village. And he's going, I haven't, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but haven't I, you know, you've seen this happen in the last week. You've seen what, you know, has happened, what God can do. Right. And you're worried about a loaf between the 12 of you? Right. I can make this happen. Right. So anyway... But it was, yeah. So I was studying that this morning. And then, you know, that's around four o'clock. I'm drinking coffee. I'm putting in my pure aminos in my coffee. And so I do it that way. So coffee, zero calories. Pure aminos, two calories, you know. I do that. And then I go to the gym. It opens at five. I'm there at five. We have a mutual friend named Jack, a buddy that he's always there. He's highly disciplined. And I talked to him at 530 this morning. And then I had another meeting at seven. And now I'm here.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:42

So you're up two hours before your gym even opens. That's awesome. So three to 330. Did that start in the military? Or when did you start that habit?

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:51

A lot of it had to do with military training, so I could draw from that. I'm not saying we woke up at 3, 3.30. Sometimes we didn't go to bed. But what I'd say is I got to tell you, to give people credit, several years ago I was watching a podcast and a talk about Mark Wahlberg, and he had a similar story.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:18

Similar athletics. Yeah. So he was at two or three, but he went to bed at seven, eight. So I usually, I go to bed about eight, sometimes nine, depending on the weekend. But I'll get up, I'll work out. But it's generally... Five days for sure. Six days. I'll wake up between three, three 30 and then I'll, I'll hit the bed about eight o'clock, about

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:39

eight o'clock,

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:40

about eight o'clock between seven 38. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:42

And so you're, so working out consistent three to three 35, at least five days a week. Got it. Let's just say that we were doing this podcast at a breakfast meeting or if we had breakfast this year, what, what would that look like for you? What are you ordering? 7am breakfast,

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:58

six eggs over hard. Okay. That's what I eat. So every breakfast, that's what I have because the egg, I think, is the perfect food God made. You always hear about cholesterol. That's not true. You read the recent studies. Actually, the eggs are the best thing for you. Wow. They've got all the protein. They actually break down cholesterol. What they say gives you cholesterol. It doesn't. It breaks down cholesterol.

UNKNOWN: 1:21:22

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:22

So eating the egg, and I do it. I don't do it every day. I usually, like I said, I do the protein and the coffee. But when I'm meeting with buddies and we're at breakfast, I order six eggs over hard. That's

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:35

it. No toast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:37

Oh, absolutely no toast. I try and stay away from bread as much as possible. Yeah. And just because of the carbs. And if I do it, it's got to be organic. It's got to be... whole grain. It's got to be sprouted. Things like that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:53

What I don't hear you saying is you're eating six eggs with cheese and lots of butter because people could take this and go, oh, I'm fine with my six eggs from Waffle House every morning that's cooked in so much of that. You're cooking with what or trying to have what in them? Nothing? Just plain eggs?

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:18

Plain eggs You've got to use something olive oil. Yeah, but that's it. So I'm a big fan of olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette. It's got to be pure. It's got to be extra virgin. It's got to be first press. So things like that. I just make sure I like to go to Whole Foods. I go to Republic's, not to endorse them, but they're great places to go here in Atlanta. Yeah, sure. Especially where we're at.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:40

Okay. So then walk me through, are you into fasting at all? Do you do any 16-8?

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:45

Intermittent fasting I do all the time. So I do, like I said, the pure aminos, only two calories. Okay. Okay. Put it in the coffee. Zero calories. I don't black. That's how I drink my coffee. Black, pure aminos. And I don't eat from other than that. And I might have two of those. Yeah. It takes 50 calories to break a fast. So with that being said, I don't eat beyond that until noon. So from the time I wake up till noon, I'm drinking the pure aminos. I'm drinking the coffee unless I'm having, you know, if it's a breakfast, like we were talking about with friends, but that's rare, but that's rare. Yeah, no, that's not every day. Okay. Yeah. So I make exceptions for that, you know, so I'm not bringing my pure aminos with me and going, you know, do you mind if I scoop this

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:34

first meal? And usually what does it look like? Is, are you a salad guy? Are you, you're avoiding

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:38

carbs? I look, well, I love salads. Um, carbs are okay. It just, want to be careful with what kind of carbs. You want more complex sugars. This is me talking, but I'm a carnivore. I like chicken. Eating chicken, just regular chicken. You can season a little bit, but beef. My favorite is lamb, so I'll eat lamb. But just stuff... Pasture-raised, I like that. I think organic. Whole Foods has got a great place for that. You can also go to Publix and get that. So you're getting

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:16

it on a, let's say again, use the analogy, we're going to lunch, we have a lunch meeting. You're getting that on a plate. It's not that with four sides of rice.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:27

Oh, no, no, no. If I'm having a side, it's broccoli or asparagus or spinach, baby. That's it. That's it. There's no potatoes, nothing like that. And I know I'm Irish Catholic, but I gave up potatoes a while ago. So we had them plenty when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:45

Okay, that's clean. So that's clean. And I'm guessing dinner looks similar.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:52

Dinner looks similar. I like to add fish. I love fish. So, you know, fish, chicken, lamb. You know, I've said beef, of course, I'll do that, but I have a lot of lamb at home.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:03

And your fulfillment is throwing that tombstone pizza in

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:07

one day a week, not nightly, not every night. No, no. One meal a week, one meal a week, I'll take out and say, okay, I can eat whatever I want.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:15

What do you get for sweets? Or do you not have a sweet tooth?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:18

Sweet, dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is organic dark chocolate. It's very good. Because of the health benefits. Yes, the health benefits. And it's a little sweet. I try at least to keep it up at 70% or more, dark chocolate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:31

Once a week?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:32

On the weekend. Okay. On the weekend, I'll take a bar and I'll eat it throughout the two days.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:38

Yeah. Okay, cool. Are you measuring, using like the heart rate monitor or any of that stuff to measure calories you burn during your workouts or?

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:45

No, I do it, I kind of free form it. I look every morning in the mirror seeing where I'm at and I'm very, I just check out and if I see a trend, I'll, change it up. I do weigh myself, and I'm about 191 right now, and I've maintained that for the last year. So that's the right weight for you? Yeah, for me, yeah. At 5'10", 190 is good for me. I've been working out since I was 13 years old, and I had some good times, I had some bad times, but I tell you, I became wiser in my late 50s, my mid and late 50s, and I've been sticking with this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:24

What's wiser for you? What does that mean? Safer?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:27

Wiser meaning that the first thing, getting rid of ultra-processed foods out of your diet. That'll kill a person. It's horrible. you know, Cheetos and snacks. Good. But when you're eating all this processed food, I used to eat healthy choice. Now, no, if you're going to eat one or two healthy choice, but it's all processed, it's got so much chemicals in it. Yeah. And so you really have to be careful even with, if you're going to eat bread, you have to be careful with your bread, you know, so you eat so many phosphates, so many chemicals and that. So, yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:05

So, yeah, this has been, this has been incredible. What, what a blessing to, I mean, to me selfishly, but to everybody that you've shared your entire story, like wide open. Well,

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:20

thank you. Wide open. Yeah. Well, yeah, I appreciate it. And I thank you. It's, it's a, it's a privilege to be with you. And I thank you for that. Yeah. So thanks for

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:29

your time. I want to shake your hand. Thank you. Thank you all the best. All right.