How A Navy Veteran Turned Setbacks Into Community Solutions In Ocala

Ocala is growing fast, and the veteran community is changing with it. That sounds like opportunity, until you realize how many veterans still fall through the cracks between “here’s a number to call” and actual help that shows up. We sit down with Navy veteran, father, nonprofit builder, and serial entrepreneur Chad Walker to talk about what happens after the uniform comes off and why follow-through matters more than good intentions.

Chad walks us through his path from a rough high school track to walking into a Navy recruiter’s office, choosing the AECF pipeline, and becoming a Fire Controlman working systems like CIWS. We get into the reality of fleet life after 9/11, deployments that include Unitas and counterdrug ops, and why force protection and VBSS changed the day-to-day for sailors. Then the story turns hard and honest: divorce during a rapid turnaround window, full custody of three kids, and the moment the Navy couldn’t offer the shore duty option he needed. He chooses his children and separates, then rebuilds in Florida.

From working technical roles at Disney to navigating TBI, seizures, and VA disability, Chad explains how he finds purpose again through volunteering at Vets Helping Vets and eventually stepping into operations leadership. He also breaks down veteran entrepreneurship as structured problem solving, the creation of VetNet to connect veteran-owned businesses, and the launch of Cadre, a coalition built to close the gaps where veterans get lost. We dig into his “Battle Buddies” concept for trauma-informed crisis response and de-escalation, plus what a changing Ocala housing market and shifting veteran demographics mean for the next generation.

If this conversation helps you think differently about veteran resources, PTSD support, VA benefits, veteran-owned businesses, or building a stronger local network in Ocala, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What’s the biggest gap you’ve seen in veteran support where you live?

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Chad Walker

Gary Wise 0:28

All right, everybody. How are you doing? Welcome back to Words from the Wise. I like to still continue to be the host of this hopefully amazing show. My name is Gary Wise. And you know, I'd like to thank you all for joining us. And today I have a very, I have a very special and an honored guest. It's an honor for me because this gentleman is from my my hometown. I I've heard about him around around the the the veteran community. Uh he is a husband, he is a father, he's a serial entrepreneur, and he is a Navy veteran. He goes by the name of Mr. Chad Walker. Chad, how are you doing, brother?

Chad Walker 1:04

I'm doing good, brother. How about yourself? Thanks for having me.

Gary Wise 1:07

Man, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I had made a short list of people in Ocala that I was trying to get on my show, and you were on the list, man. I just keep I read your I read the stuff you publish, right? Like the things you write about Ocala, right?

Chad Walker 1:22

Yeah.

Gary Wise 1:23

And I think that you have definitely an insight into where the city that we both live in is going, plus uh the value that that I think people, the kids in particular, like the kids I teach in school, they should understand that as well, right?

Chad Walker 1:37

Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the joys that I've had here recently. Um, I decided I didn't have quite enough on my plate, so I went back to school full time. And uh so now you can find me on Tuesdays and Thursdays at CF as the resident old guy in the classrooms. But it's it's fantastic because I'm I'm in classes that are the same age as some of my kids.

Gary Wise 1:58

Right. Amazing, amazing. And I want to get into all that, bro. So let's let's I want to start off with are you originally from Ocala?

Chad Walker 2:07

No. So I'm a transplant. I've been here now coming up on 15 years. So it's it's I've been here for a minute. I'm originally from Polk County. So Polk County, Marion County have real similar vibes. Uh that's kind of why when I got here, I was like, oh yeah, I understand this. I get this. Uh the small town field, the agriculture, it all it all made sense.

Gary Wise 2:30

So native Floridian just you moved north, right? Okay. Native Floridian just moved north. When you were, because I want to get to did you join the military right out of

A Rough Start After High School

Gary Wise 2:40

high school?

Chad Walker 2:41

No. So I was uh I was a horrible high school student. Um you know, I was too smart for my own good, and I'd I would ask questions like, why do you want me to do homework? That doesn't make any sense to me. And, you know, I wanted to go to the beach one day. As soon as I had my car keys, if I was walking into a class, I was like, man, it's a nice day. I really want to go to the beach, I would just get in and go. Um, you know, so I made it through thinking that I had an exceptionally high SAT score. I thought, look, let me get out of here, I'll get my diploma, I'll take my SATs and go to college, and they're just gonna be like, oh, thank you for bringing your genius to our campus. Um was not the case. Not the case at all. Uh they basically said, look, uh, it's gonna be pretty expensive. You probably should have gone to school more. Um, so I was working just kind of odd jobs, figuring out you know what I want to do with myself, and was constantly getting the uh wasted potential speech from uh various family members. And my grandmother had a picture of her father in his dress white. Uh was on her dresser my entire childhood. I remember seeing it, and I would ask questions about it, and uh so one day I was like, you know what? Let's do this. And it was uh the product of an argument with my younger brother, and uh, trying to get him to join the army at the time. And I was like, look, if I do it, will you do it? He said, Well, you do it, I'll do it. So I walked into the Navy recruiting station and just said, Hey, I'm here to join the Navy. And it was probably one of the, if not the best, decisions I ever made in my life.

Gary Wise 4:17

You look, I can relate in a lot of different ways. And you, you know, most of us that have served have very similar, like pre-stories, right, to how we got our butts in the recruiter's office. Um, but a couple of things that really stood out to me, and I I like to kind of cover this part with the guests because I do teach high school now, and I do see these kids trying to figure out life. And I and I see children such as yourself that are super academically sound, right? But they struggle with other areas of discipline or other areas of focus or not really knowing what they want to do at that stage of life. And and they, and of course, they're gonna try to figure things out, right? And I think it's interesting that one, you have an attachment to the service because your grandfather, right? Even if you never met the man, you see that picture on your grandma's dresser and there's a connection, right? I was the same way my grandfather was in World War II, my dad was in Vietnam, both Navy veterans. When the Navy recruiter came across me one day, and then I decided to go back and talk to the recruiter. I think the fact that it was Navy made it even easier for me to say yes, right? Because it just felt like that was the way to go. Then the second piece that I thought was interesting, though, was you you were trying to convince your younger brother to join the service, right? So I did. How does that work out, right? He's probably looking at you like, what the heck do you talk about, yeah?

Chad Walker 5:42

So, so me and my younger brother, we are like opposite sides of the same coin. I was always like straight line, I'm not gonna get in trouble. Uh look, because we came up kind of rough. There were some problems when we were kids, and he went the exact opposite. If it was the wrong choice, he was making it. And so he had been kicked out of every school he'd ever been in, like from elementary school on. And uh he had come back from one of those like uh job core programs or something out of state. And while he was there, he took the ASVAT and he scored like a 75. Uh so the recruiters were calling, like, hey, we'll give him $15,000, he can see the world. And and one night we're just I was like, Look, man, you're gonna end dead or in prison. Why don't you just join? He's like, Well, it's so great, why don't you do it? And I was like, Well, if I do it, well, you I didn't have anything going on, right? So I was like, Oh, I'll take 15 grand. And just when I walked down there, this the Navy office just made more sense to me. So he um he waited for me to finish boot camp. You want to make sure I could actually make through make it through, and then when I finished boot camp, he joined the army.

Gary Wise 6:50

So good for him, good for him. You know, I think about that ASVAB score, and we just gave the ASVAB at my high school, and the kids got their scores back, and some some didn't a lot, unfortunately, a lot of kids don't do that good on the ASVAB. And it's disappointing because they're getting straight A's in high school, but they're not passing the ASVAB. So I think that's there's a disconnect there that we as a society need to figure out, right? Like, how does a kid got a 4.0 GPA in high school and their ASVAB score is single digits? Like something's that math don't math for me, right? Right. And so that's one problem. And I tell the kids, like, look, ultimately, you're you're not taking hard enough classes in high school. That's my personal opinion. You're letting them give you the easier class, and unfortunately, you're not probably possibly getting the education you need as you prepare for life after high school. And you'll see that come out in SAT scores and ASVAP scores, but then you see the other kids who

Walking Into The Navy Recruiter

Gary Wise 7:45

got relatively passing scores or even significantly high scores, all of a sudden the military is a viable option for them. Just the same thing as college, right? I'll see kids not think they're gonna go to college, get an SAT score back that's you know 1,250, 1300. And all of a sudden they're like, Oh, I could go to university, I could go to college. And that score may give them just the just the change of the perspective to possibly do something. So I could see your brother having that ASVAB score coming back from job core being like, brother, that's an opportunity. Like, you ain't got many, don't waste it, bro.

Chad Walker 8:20

Like, right, like, dude, please do something.

Gary Wise 8:23

Yeah, so when you went to the Navy, yeah, go ahead.

Chad Walker 8:26

The funny part was I ended up you know doing my full my full tour. I was I was actually up for reenlistment when I got out. That's all we can get into that later, but um, he would he went in, went to Korea, tore up his shoulder and got out on a medSAP in like two years.

Gary Wise 8:42

So that sucks, man. I hate when that happens to people, man. That's horrible because when your body breaks, it's broke for pretty much the rest of your life, right? It never goes back the same way, yeah. And uh that's all that's always a tough one. And look, I did 25 years in, and I was always nervous about something putting me out the game before I was ready to leave, right? Like that was always a fear. Uh, and then and uh I was very blessed, very fortunate that nothing significant happened because if you tear up like your shoulder or your knee, like you're out, they they usually look at ways to cut bait because unfortunately you're not gonna be able to be fit for full. And oh, by the way, it's a liability for them going forward, and then away they go, right? So I'm sorry to hear that for your brother. That's tough, man. When you went to the recruiter, did you have you had no ideas what you wanted to do in the Navy?

Chad Walker 9:36

I had no idea. I didn't even know what the ASVAB was, I just knew it was a test that my brother had taken. Uh so I walked in, first desk closest to the door, electrician's mate, second class, Julius Poe. Uh I walked in, I was like, hey, want to join the Navy? And he looked, he was shocked. He was like, Oh, okay. And uh I said, yeah, there's a test I got to take or something, right? And he's like, Yeah, yeah, have you taken the ASVAB test? I said, No. Uh, I took the SAT, is it like the same thing? He said, Well, kind of, but not really. It's it's a little different. He's like, Well, what's your SAT score? I was like, I got a 1480. And he went, Oh, you'll be all right.

Gary Wise 10:12

So you're gonna be a nuke.

Chad Walker 10:14

You're gonna be and I didn't know anything about that yet, bro. Like, it was it was bad. So I went and took the uh I took a little practice test there in the office. I got a 98, and he was like, Yeah, yeah, let's get you. It couldn't be the maps fast enough. Just let's get it. Let's get it.

Gary Wise 10:28

You're it's you're two for one, bro. I don't know if you know in the in the navy recruiting work world. At least I was a navy recruiter. What did what year did you join?

Chad Walker 10:36

2000.

Gary Wise 10:37

So I was a navy recruiter.

Two Job Options And A Bonus

Gary Wise 10:40

I was a navy recruiter in 2000. Matter of fact, I think I know your recruiter. I I remember that name, Poe. I was a recruiter in Clearwater. So I was in recruiter, I was in Clearwater, Florida as a Navy recruiter, and I recruited 2000 to 2003, but we were in the same recruiting district, and so I remember we as soon as you said the recruiter's name, I was like, Oh, I knew that dude, man. So yeah, I knew that guy. Well, back in those days, uh, when you put somebody in and they chose nuke, they went nuclear power down the nuclear power pipeline. The recruiter got essentially credit for two contracts instead of just one. So there it was a little bit of a Benny, right? They're like, Oh, yeah, two for one, buddy. Let's go, chilies.

Chad Walker 11:24

Yeah, but he didn't get it, he didn't get it in my case. He didn't get it in my case. What did you choose to do? I so I my choices were I gotta tell you the story about the choices, right? So we get to the maps, you go through the thing, I do my duck walk, you know, get on get my own stuff done, you know. And so I'm with like a group of like five guys, and like two of them are going back for the second time to take the test. So, you know, you go in the room, and you you've been to the Tampa maps most of it. So you got you you got the computers in there, and you sit down and you get your score and you come out, and so we meet back up, and everybody's like, hey man, I got like a 42, and they're like, hey, hey man, I got a 50. And I was like, oh man. And I'm looking at my score, and I and I was like, I'm not even gonna say what my score is. I was like, I did all right. Like, I'm not even gonna say it. So I'm just sitting there holding my score. You go in there and you go in the what is it, a classifier that you see when you go back in there? So we go in there, and there was I'm a walker, I'm a W, so I'm at the back of the line, you know, I'm just waiting. And these guys come in, they come out like, oh bro, I gotta pay for like 10 different jobs. This is great, I can do whatever I want. I'm sitting there going, like, man, the trumpets are about to sound when I walk back in this place. So I sit down with this chief and he goes, All right, you got two choices you can be a nuke or you can do the the advanced electronics and computer field. And I went, is that it? He's like, Well, we'll give you $15,000 from Nuke, and we'll give you $7,000 for computers. And I was like, I'm out. Yeah, like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So I was like, I need to talk to my recruiters. Yeah, I rolled out, I was like, hey, oh, what are they doing in here? Like, these guys got to pick from all these different jobs. I got two choices. That's it, that's all I can do. And one of them is nuclear. I'm not trying to glow in the dark when I'm 30, bro. Like, what are we doing, man? And he goes, Well, hey, just look, look, you're the only one getting a bonus here. Like they're giving nobody else is getting bonuses here. It's like, yeah, but it's like half as much money to do this computer thing. I don't know anything about computers. So he's like, give me a minute, give me a minute. So I don't know if he called somebody, what, they called me back in there again, and then it was like, we'll give you 11,000 for computers and 15 for nuke. And I was like, you know what? I'll take computers because nuke just scares me. I don't I don't know what it's about, and I'm not trying to do anything nuclear.

Gary Wise 13:41

Right.

Chad Walker 13:41

So I went, I went the AECF and then chose FC over ET. So I was F C C Wiz type, Harpoon. Um, I was T A D out at Port Waneme for a minute, out on the West Coast, and got to play around with the Tomahawk system. I thought it was gonna be a Tomahawk tech, but they sent me to Sea Wiz school. So I got to do a little bit of everything as an FC, and um, it was the right, it was the right path for me.

Gary Wise 14:05

Okay, and and for the listeners, just so you know, when he says C Wiz, it's like a what is it, close in weapon system, right? Yep. And it's essentially the defensive mechanism that we use on on surface ships to shoot down missiles or whatever that might hit our ship. It just slices and dices them all to hell, right? And the FC's jobs are to manage those. And FCs are like there's like two or three different variants of FC, right? There's like traditional, there's the there's the guys that are Aegis, and then there's the C Wiz, or C Wiz traditional.

Chad Walker 14:35

Yeah, C Wiz in my opinion, C Wiz and maybe five inch, but five inch, you know, the the gunners mates own part of your five-inch setup. So CWiz is was one of the last true fire control systems where you own everything top to bottom. Like the only thing the ship gives you is power and chill water, and everything else you're making, you're taking care of yourself. So you own the the gun. Um now I think so. Funny enough, my my daughter is a C Wiz Tech right now. So um uh some of that stuff has changed, but back then you owned the gun, the radar, the computer, all the environmentals, you owned it all. So you had to know everything, you know, pneumatics, hydraulics, you know, everything up to a 40 kV coming out of the uh or 22 kV coming out of the transmitter or something like that. So it was a lot, and uh it was definitely the right path for me. I come from a background of people that have worked in like the industrial engineering space. Like my uh you know, my dad was a mill right and he's a you know plant manager in the industrial space. So it all just kind of came naturally. So when I got into the school, I didn't know that I knew it, but once I started to learn it, I was like, oh wow, yeah, this is it makes sense. Yeah, so you flip the switch and it goes to a circuit board and turn something on over here. I can do this all day. So it was um it was a blast.

Great Lakes In Winter

Chad Walker 15:55

Being in Great Lakes that long was not a blast.

Gary Wise 15:57

I was gonna get into that. So when did you go? When did you ship off to boot camp?

Chad Walker 16:03

You ready?

Gary Wise 16:04

Yeah, I'm ready.

Chad Walker 16:05

November 1st.

Gary Wise 16:08

So from Florida, you're going to Great Lakes at winter, the dead of winter. That's a that's a horrible time of year to go, especially somebody who's not used to that kind of weather. Like, let's be honest. It's I mean, look off.

Chad Walker 16:22

It's one of those things, like you always see these guys with these stores like, oh, my recruiter didn't tell me this, or my recruiter didn't say that. The only thing that that Poe told me was, yeah, you might want to get a jacket. So I'm not even lying. I went to Wilson's Leather at the mall and bought a leather jacket that had like a zip-in liner, so it was a little heavier. Because I figured it's probably colder up there. You're up north, right? I still have the jacket, it's hanging in my closet right now. But I got on the plane in Tampa and it was like 80. And we landed at O'Hare, and I'm looking out in the window, and there's like little flurries kind of on the runway. Right. And I was like, Oh, is that snow? And the lady's like, Well, it's a little too cold to snow. And I was like, my brain broke. I was like, What do you mean it's too cold to snow? It's got to be cold to snow, right? Right.

Gary Wise 17:14

I didn't back in those back in those days, everybody still walked every, you still marched everywhere, right? They didn't have the little ships set up because they did that, I believe, to keep people out of the cold, right? Because you gotta but back when I went to boot camp in '97, and we were marching all over the place in the middle of the blizzard, in the middle of the weather, shoveling snow, whatever it was. And so those of us that are pre-ships, right? At Great Lakes, you got that experience of out there marching to chow and marching to class and marching to wherever you have to go to. Do you remember? Did you have to go to the USO after you landed and like meet up with everybody that was gonna get on the bus? Do you remember that experience being with all those people that are going to that bus? Was I for me? That was actually my I'll tell you, that was my first. When I look back on it, my first veteran experiences, my military experiences, MEPS and that USO moment, right? You learn that all of a sudden you can become friends with people real quick, right? You can find ways to connect real quick, and you're gonna have that camaraderie to this day. I'll be in the airport and meet somebody and find out they served. Three questions later, we're like, What's up? We're like, we're good, bro. Like, we can hang out, right? And it was those moments that it started, right?

Chad Walker 18:31

Yeah, it's wild. Like you get those one, you sit in there in the USO and you you start asking questions like, are we all just from like Florida and Texas in here? Like, what's going on? Like, there's a whole lot of Florida and Texas in here. And then you got you know, get the rando from like New Jersey and the stuff, and you start talking, and and you and then you know these like second classes show up, like, all right, everybody get on the bus. Everybody's chill, and you're just like, Wow, this is not what I expected at all. You just you're on the bus, you're like, Don't fall asleep. You you're just chilling, you get there, and you pull up, the the brakes hit the door open, and all of a sudden, like, oh, oh, this this is the part where everybody like screams at you.

Gary Wise 19:10

Start screaming. What did you did you get what you paid for at boot camp? Like, was it what you expected?

Chad Walker 19:16

I mean, honestly, I I went into it so open-minded because I was at a place where I was working as a bank teller with absolutely no passion for what I was doing. Uh, I always felt like I should be doing more. I had, you know, because I had people on painting, like, oh, he's gonna be a doctor or a lawyer, you know. And uh I was kind of always had that like I'm letting everybody down. So I decided to do this, and I was like, well, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go all out. So I like a lot of guys like, yeah, you should just cut your hair now so they don't shave it off. Like, no, I want the f I want them to give me the full experience. So I let you know I let my hair get kind of shaggy so I got in there, I can get that this raw dog haircut that they gave you in there. And my biggest thing, the biggest benefit I carried through boot camp was I'm very good at doing what you tell me the first time. Um, and that was the advice I gave to I have two kids that are on active duty right now. They're both in the Navy. And I told them both when they left for boot, I was like, the best advice I can give you is if you can execute on what your orders are the first time, you're gonna set yourself apart from so many other people in the room that can't do it, that you can either just coast and stay under the radar, or you can get selected for leadership positions. Like I was in RPOC in boot camp, um, but on the ship staff side, which was a whole different thing. Uh that was where I really started to figure out like, oh, well, I mean, if I can solve problems, they'll like assign people under me that have problems that I need to solve. And that was like that first little taste of it, where like, oh, okay, these people who've known me for two seconds see value in me and are gonna give me responsibility. And if I live up to that responsibility, I will build more value and they will give me more responsibilities. And that was just that was right out of the gate in boot camp. I was like, okay, yeah, we can do that. So um yeah, it was it was a blast. I was already in shape when I went there, so I wasn't like really scared of like the physical part of it. I mean, like I was like in my I'm like, I'm gonna be a negative seal, like you know, like everybody else does, you know, but right that that wasn't in the cards. FC did become a source rate for SEALs, I think, while I was up there in A school, but I uh I had other A school uh stories that sideline that thing. So okay.

Gary Wise 21:33

No, no, I I always ask people about their basic training experience because I think for everyone it's we have our unique perspectives, right? We all we all have this unique experience together with a big group of people, but then when it's all over, for me, it was one of those remember the days take forever, but the weeks fly by. It was such a big experience. But then I look back on my life and I was like, but it was so fast. Like it was like made a huge Impact, but it was you know an eight to nine week period of time for me. It was anyway. I don't we weren't doing the what they're doing now, which is like 10 weeks. For me, I was only there for a few short weeks and then we were gone. And then I was undesignated. So after I graduated boot camp, I went across the street to the naval training command, did like a little three-day course and was on my way to Japan. You your schools, follow one schools were all in Great Lakes.

Chad Walker 22:26

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Gary Wise 22:28

So you were taking out Gurney Mills Mall like on the regular.

Chad Walker 22:31

On my first car, Gurney Dodge, bro, on Grand Avenue.

Gary Wise 22:36

What's up, man?

FC School And Choosing To Blow Stuff Up

Gary Wise 22:40

That's incredible. So, what's the school time for what's the A school for an FC? Is it like eight, nine months?

Chad Walker 22:46

So now it's it's a lot different than it was back then. So when I went through, you went through what was called tech core. And tech core is kind of like a B double E. It's like basic electronics theory and training. But they had two pipelines at the time. One was called Lock Step and one was called NIDA. And the NIDA trainers were these little computers, it was like a self-paced program. You're in these little um like portables outside the FCA school, and you'd go to these portables and you'd sit down in front of your little computer and had a little circuit card tester, and you learned how different components within a circuit card work, basically, and basic electronic theory. Now, if you were in lockstep, you were in a classroom like lecture style. And I think it was just at the time the NAD was trying to figure out which way was better.

Gary Wise 23:33

Right.

Chad Walker 23:34

And I blew through the self-paced program.

Gary Wise 23:38

Yeah.

Chad Walker 23:38

I remember uh one of the professors, they were civilians. Um, he came around and he's like, Man, you're really far ahead. Let me give you a problem to solve. So he goes up on the board, he draws out this cube with different resistances on each leg of the cube and then input and you want me to tell him the total resistance of the cube. So I walked over and I looked at it for a second. The first thing I did is I exploded it out and I made it flat and two-dimensional so I could identify series and parallel circuits. And he went, How do you know to do that? And I looked at it and I was like, Well, how else would you figure out how to tip it? Right. I mean, that's the only way I can think to do it. And he was just like, Yeah, all right, go back to your station, you know. So I I blew through that. I finished it really, really fast, and then I waited to class up for A school. And then when you go to A school after tech core, you went into this room and you had ETs that came in and kind of told you how awesome it is to be an ET. And then you had FCs that came in and like the ETs did their whole bit, and the FCs came in and like, yeah, we can do everything that they can do, but we get to blow stuff up. And I was just like, I'm in. I mean, how does anybody else how does anybody say no to that? So I was like, Yeah, I want to blow stuff up, cool. Um, so then you yeah, so back then I went through tech core really, really fast. So I think I made it through there. I don't know if it was supposed to be like maybe like a three-month program, and I did it in like a month and some change, but I blew through it. And then A school, you know, was your standard, you know, three, four months, something like that. But it was long, I was there long enough that I got to do two winters, and that's more snow and cold than I ever needed in a lifetime. So I've been avoiding snow literally my whole life, ever since Great Lakes. I don't go near snow, I don't go in the snow. My kids, my family have gone on Christmas vacations for years because the kids want to see snow, and we've always hit it like at inclemently like uh like irregularly warm periods where there was no snow. So my kids are all bummed out, but I was like, hey, don't happen by me. I don't need it. I've seen enough.

Gary Wise 25:50

Yeah, I get it, man. And I think that when people join the service and they want to go out and see the world, whatnot, uh being in school for that extensive of a period of time up front is a challenge, right? Because not everybody wants to go to college right away or get put into a program. Now, I like the idea that you could go fast in that one program that that's a period. Well, they got rid of it because not everybody was you, right? Not everybody was blowing through it and actually learning as they're blowing through it. Unfortunately, we were getting a bunch of people that didn't know what they were doing, but they they clicked through it real fast, right? And so they got they we as an organization, unfortunately, have to figure that part out, but I think um there's because people get okay. So when you get to your

First Orders And Becoming A Dad

Gary Wise 26:35

ship, what was how did you select your first ship?

Chad Walker 26:38

So uh A School is based on rank. Okay. Um, you had to you had to pick your first orders based on rank. And and when I was going through, everybody wanted Hawaii. Everybody wanted Hawaii, and you so you picked the system and then where you wanted to go, right? So if you wanted to like back then, I had it, I thought I had it all figured out. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go Mark 86 gun system because it's a dying system, which means I'm gonna get another school at some point. And then I want to go to Pearl. I want to go to Pearl. I want to go to Hawaii, that's where I want to be. And um, you know, the the you know, the chief senior chiefs would pop in everyone in a while. I was like, somebody ever wanna go to Hawaii, huh? There might be a couple of those orders out there. You better be at the top. You better be at the top. So that was that was my goal. Like, I always want to like, I was always charging for the you know the top of the class so I could control my fate. So uh at the uh day comes in, we find out that the class leader gets a bump in their overall GPA. So they're gonna get to pick between me and my buddy Luke. And we're like, oh man, I hope, I hope she doesn't snag those Hawaii orders. And she went in there and we looked at her, I was like, Look, you haven't said anything about Hawaii this whole time. If you come out of there with Hawaii orders, your life is gonna suck before you leave. We're gonna make your life miserable. And uh she came out, she picked San Diego, and then me and Luke, we picked, we both picked Mark 86, and we were set to go TAD to the Fletcher out of Pearl. So, like, we're like, it's happening, it's all happening, it's it's all happening. Now, not a uh insignificant side note, I found out in A school that I was gonna be a daddy for the first time. So, yeah, so I'm one of those guys. Um, no regrets. Love you, Katie. But so it changed, it kind of changed my thinking, right? Like what I wanted to do. So I was gonna have me a little beach baby out in Hawaii, it'd be great.

Gary Wise 28:42

Were you was that your girlfriend like back pre-Navy, like back home in Florida, or was this somebody you met in in Illinois?

Chad Walker 28:49

Yeah, somebody I met in Illinois, you know, it was like, you know, I was look, small town boy from Bartow, Florida. Small town kid, I'm running wild in Chicago, you know, the whole you know, Southern Gentleman thing went over a little too well up there. So, and I was much leaner back in those days. So, uh, but look, it was I found I was gonna be a dad, and that was one thing that I knew as soon as I found out, like this is going to drive every decision I make moving forward. So now I'm I'm responsible. And um, so I picked orders, and uh she was in the Navy as well. Uh and I was at the airport. I went, I went home, I did that uh little temporary uh go to your home recruiting office kind of a thing between school and your next duty station. And uh she was actually in C school um at the time, and we were supposed to kind of meet back up out at Pearl. That was the plan, anyways. Um well, she had a major complication, almost lost the baby. Um I gave up my orders to Pearl so I could be closer to her. Um, they actually they they they tagged me T A D to uh CentCom. There was like a personnel office at CENTCOM, and I went over, I checked in, kind of told them the whole story, said, Yeah, we heard. Look, call us, let us know how you're doing, what's going on. Because she was in Pensacola. Uh so I was like, okay. So I spent as much time with her. They had to change her orders, of course, because she was medically, she was not able to keep going the way she was going. That's how I ended up in California at uh Navsea at Port Waneme. Um, which for a young kid that didn't know anything about the Navy, it was like me, which I was an E4, nobody. Uh it was me, like a couple of chiefs, a first class, and like a master chief working with a bunch of civilians in a top secret environment working on Tomahawk. And I was just like, wow, this is teach me. I want I want to know all about this. Um, and then my my first daughter was born. They picked me up for Sea Wiz, went to San Diego. Um her she and her mom stayed in um California because she was attached to Point Magoo as a radar tech. Uh so I eventually the the idea was she was going to relocate to San Diego with me. Uh so I picked C Wiz and got into that class. And the more I thought about it, I was like, look, I don't have family out here, she doesn't have family out here, I've got a baby, I want somebody to be there to help, you know, kind of support her when I do deploy. So I started talking to my my chief. I said, Hey, um do we get many orders like back to the East Coast from here? Like, does that happen? He said, Yeah, it does, but it's not real common. You know, because there's a Sea With school in Virginia. You know, they they pick up all the East Coast orders. Um, and I told him kind of the my story, I was like, Look, you know, I've got a little girl now. I I I want her to be closer to the family when I deploy, so they're not out here by themselves. And he said, Look, you know, show me you want it, and I'll make sure there's at least one set of East Coast orders, you know, with your class goes to pick. So I was like, understood. So I just got on the grind again and I finished top my class at uh C Wish C school in San Diego and snagged one set of orders to Norfolk and off to Norfolk we went.

Gary Wise 32:27

Now, were you and your baby's mother married at that time, or were you guys just Yeah, yeah, we were married. You were married because I was curious about that because I would tell you a lot of people trying to navigate parents in the military and they're not married, that's a super hard challenge, right? Right. So you guys chose to get married at some point along the line there, which was where they could help you with the things because now you're dual military. And just so I understand you went to Port Wanimi, where the that's like a CB base, right? Is that Port Wanimi? Yeah, it's a CB base. Whole bunch of CBs up there. I've only gone there for like uh they've done like Port Waneme days or something like that every year. And like I pulled the ship up there, yeah.

Chad Walker 33:06

Yeah, so the that's the CB base, but they have the the Tomahawk uh probe set set up there, and it's also uh there's a uh weapon systems test ship that the West Coast uses for all different kinds of weapons testing, like different radar arrays. Uh, they test different seawiss capabilities and stuff. It's birthed up there in northern California. Well, it's not northern California, yeah.

Gary Wise 33:27

It's north from the central north, you're right.

Chad Walker 33:33

It's four hours, it's four hours in change from San Diego. I can tell you that much.

Gary Wise 33:37

Yeah, Cali's such a weird state, right? Because LA is so cowrilly, but if it's above LA, everyone's like it's northern California. When it's really not, right? It's really not. When it's really not. And then you said your your wife was at Point Magoo. How far was that from Winemey?

Chad Walker 33:53

It's real close. It's like right down the road. It's right down the road.

Gary Wise 33:56

You guys are able to live together and be together and take care of the stuff.

Chad Walker 33:59

Yeah, so my my oldest, she was born in Camarillo. Um, we had a a place right there, and um, it was it was great, but I was in school all week, and then I was home. I was there when she was born, and then I got my orders and I had to start school. So I got to be there for the birth and you know, those first little things, and then I went to school. So I was in school all week in San Diego, and I'd roll out on a Friday and drive up, and then I wouldn't leave until like 2 a.m. Monday morning and drive back to school, and go to school all week, and then as soon as Friday hits, back again. And I did that all the way through C school.

Gary Wise 34:43

Uh so you did Port Wineme, had the baby, went to C school, and then you got the orders to Virginia.

Chad Walker 34:49

Yep.

Gary Wise 34:50

And your wife got did she get out of the military at that point, or did she get orders as well to no, she got orders, she came with.

Chad Walker 34:56

She went to to Nick Tams, uh communications on the um on the east coast.

Gary Wise 35:01

Yeah, over there was was the Nick Times in the stuff. Is that where it was at? Or was it there over there?

Chad Walker 35:07

It was on the it was on the Northland base, Nick Times. Um and what and what ship did you go to? I went to the USS Stump, DD 978.

Gary Wise 35:15

DD9? There's no G there. That's an older ship.

Chad Walker 35:21

Yeah, it was older than me. I'm gonna tell you what though. Of I was on three ships while I was then. I was on a DD, a spruance class, you know, and we uh decommed that. And then I went to a DDG, the McFall, and then I went to the Oak Hill, which is an LSD. Yeah, uh down in Little Creek, which Little Creek is it. That's the spot that's where you want to be.

Gary Wise 35:41

It really is.

Chad Walker 35:42

It is. Uh, but that spruance, let me tell you what, that was the nicest riding ship I was on the whole time. That thing was a Cadillac when it worked, you know, it was it was great.

Gary Wise 35:57

Um when it worked.

Chad Walker 36:00

When it worked. What was it? Go ahead.

Gary Wise 36:03

What was the propulsion? Was it gas? Was it diesel?

Chad Walker 36:07

No, it was gas.

Gary Wise 36:08

It was gas turbine?

Chad Walker 36:09

Gas

Reporting Aboard And Leaving Immediately

Chad Walker 36:10

turbine, yeah.

Gary Wise 36:11

Okay. What what did you think when you got to your first ship? Because were you a second class by then?

Chad Walker 36:18

No, I was still a third. Um, the FC was rough back then. Uh, I made second and first class was mathematically impossible for like a couple of years. It was crazy, crazy overloaded. But I showed up out there as a third, and uh I checked on board, and I had when I was on the West Coast, they gave me my sponsors like contact information, and I hit him up and I was like, hey, I'm yeah, I'm excited. I'm going to the fleet, man. This is what it's all about.

Gary Wise 36:49

Right, right.

Chad Walker 36:50

And um, we had we traveled across country, spent some time at home with family. We got up, we'd found a place to stay, hadn't signed the lease yet. I was basically gonna go check in and then head out, get everything settled, you know, all of our stuff. Well, I get on board and he goes, Oh, you can just drop your seatbag here on this bottom bunk down here. We'll get you settled in later. I want to you know introduce you to everybody. And then we get back up topside, and the brow was gone. And I was like, Hey, um, what's going on? What's C and Anchor? Like, what is that? Yeah, I didn't know what C and Anchor was. I mean, I remember doing it in boot camp. Like, what what they're calling C and Anchor, what are we doing? I was like, Oh, yeah, we're we're running down to Puerto Rico. I was like, What? Like now, yeah, so I was like, Can I make a phone call? So I'm I'm calling, like, hey, um, we're leaving. I still have it somewhere is a video of my daughter, like as a baby, and the ship, the tug pulling the ship off the pier, and that's like my first day, day one.

Gary Wise 37:54

That's crazy.

Chad Walker 37:55

Yeah, I was like, that's crazy. Luckily, like I had all my uniform stuff in my sea bag, but like I didn't have anything, like anything. Like, I'm going

9/11 And A Changed Navy

Chad Walker 38:05

to the ship store for like a toothbrush and like like all that stuff.

Gary Wise 38:10

Has 9-11 already happened by this point?

Chad Walker 38:12

Yeah, so 9-11 went down when I was temporary, when I was at that recruiting on that recruiting recruiting gig.

Gary Wise 38:18

On the hometown recruiting thing, okay.

Chad Walker 38:20

Yeah, I've I've still got a picture of it. Um, when it went down, um, they turned the TV on because the Navy office was the one that had a TV in it. So the Army guys, the Marine Corps guys, the Air Force guys all came over and we're like all watching it happen. Like we saw the second plane. And there was a somebody had the wherewithal to snap a picture. Like it's it's all of us like right there in like the lobby area of the recruiting office, like taking a knee and saying a prayer, like as it's going down. Um it was wild. Like, because for me, I'm like, uh, so what does that mean for me? Like, what am I doing? I mean, I joined literally right after the coal happened. So, like the whole like going to war part was not like something I was adverse to, uh, because I was already fully committed. But it was definitely a wild like, what does this mean for me? Like, do I still go to school? Do I what about what's going on?

Gary Wise 39:14

Well, and the op tempo was gonna be ramping up, right? And so that's why I was wondering when you get out there to that ship, they're going down to Puerto Rico. I didn't know where they were at in the Navy stage of global war on terror to get ready to roll out, right?

Chad Walker 39:28

Yeah, so that was oh two. Yeah, oh two.

Gary Wise 39:35

So you're on the ship, you're you're unfortunately you don't know you're going to Puerto Rico. That's that's that sucks. Your wife handled that like a trooper, I would assume, right? She just wouldn't.

Chad Walker 39:46

Yeah, what choice did she have? Like, there's no choice.

Gary Wise 39:49

She's a sailor, right? So ultimately, I mean, right, maybe military spouses in general are just badasses, right? For the most part. I mean, some people struggle with it, and I get that, but for the most part, they usually figure it out. Um but you're on the ship. Did you enjoy your first ship?

Chad Walker 40:06

I loved it. Absolutely loved it. It was one of those things where you know, it's it's such an interesting cast of characters when you get on board a ship. You know, the whole like choose your rape, choose your fate is so real. It's it's just you get around a group and you start to see it like when you're in school and things like that. But then when you get out to the fleet, like you know, your work center, your division, like those are your people, those are your family. And if you got like the chiefs, the chief's mess is like paramount. If your chief's mess is strong, your ship is you're gonna succeed. Like you are gonna have a good time on at that command. If you've got a chief's mess that's you know, I don't want to say weak, but like they have different priorities, and like they're if they're particularly more so like career-driven or they're looking for specific things more so than like looking after the people more, um, it gets tough because they don't want you to do anything that's gonna hurt their their trajectory. So they're gonna cast you off. Uh but that that command was amazing, especially because it was it was like a comedy of errors. We were we went down to COM2X down off Puerto Rico, we're you know, and then we're doing the you know, we were hitting Viecas because Viecas was still open back then. Um we broke down. We broke down. We had to pull in there at Rosie, we had to pull into Rosie Rhodes, and we're we're there at the pier by ourselves. They opened, oh, what was it called? I think it was uh was it Woody's was the name of the bar on the base. I think it was Woody's. Um, they opened the bar just for us so we had something to do because they wouldn't let us leave the base because the understanding was, oh, we're gonna get this fixed. You know, we got cigarettes coming in. Right. Don't don't go anywhere, don't leave the base, which people still love the base. So we're sitting down there, and they finally were up and running, and all of a sudden, this weird, I thought it was like a stupid rumor, but they were like, Yeah, they lost the keys. I was like, What do you mean they lost the keys? The keys for the main control panel in engineering, they're gone. Are you telling me like we have to hot wire the destroyer? Like, what's going on with this? Right. And like legitimately, they I guess there was like the control keys that go into the main control. I don't know. Um, so it's like so we're gonna stay here for a few more days because we had to fly somebody in to re-key this console. So we were in Puerto Rico for like two weeks, just sitting there. You know, I see he was upset. Oh, he was sweating. Oh, he was sweating. That's why like when we got back, because so like it was COM2X, like, and then like the whole TR battle group just goes whoop and goes. Right. And here's us just chilling in Puerto Rico. Like, I guess we're not going, you know. Right. So um we ended up which actually worked out beautifully again. Like, I'm one of those people I don't complain about my

Unitas And Counterdrug Operations

Chad Walker 43:15

time in. I got a few bumps and bruises and things and had some bad experiences, but I don't complain. So my very first deployment, because I missed out on that one, was like Unitas.

Gary Wise 43:26

And bro, like Yeah, that's a good deployment.

Chad Walker 43:30

That's like hitting the lottery, man. That's a that is a tour of South and Central America paid for by Uncle Sam. It was beautiful.

Gary Wise 43:39

Hey, hearts and minds, man. And you you know what I think is amazing about the Unitas uh mission, and and and I will tell you the world that we're living in today, I'm a big fan of our pivot to the Western hemisphere and our prioritizing the relationships of the people in our hemisphere, right? Because we were doing missions like Unitas to keep these trying to keep these relationships. Relationships going. I'm a but I'm a Pacific coat sailor, I'm a West Coast guy. I will tell you that we do a lot out there in the Pacific to keep all these relationships going. And we've I've I've always thought for a long time we should be investing that same amount of energy in Central America, South America, because if you get our bad guys that don't like us on the same continental shelf as us, now they can drive north, right? And so I'm a fan of all that. So when you guys are doing unitases and things like that, that's what I think about because doing those hearts of mind tours, doing taking the Navy band down there and showing them that America, taking the the the hospital ships down and helping treat people that need to have illnesses figured out, whatever it is, I'm a fan of all that. Yeah, we don't do that a lot on the West Coast.

Chad Walker 44:51

Yeah, playing soccer on the beach in Brazil, like, come on, man. Like twist my arm. Yeah, okay. I'm good. The cool part was it was a split deployment. So we had the unit the top the unitas part, but then we had a counter drug op and it was a joint uh like DEA Coast Guard kind of a thing. Uh we actually birthed a Coast Guard Hilo uh for a while. And then we um we anchored in the the bay there at um Cartagena, um, which I guess nobody had done for a long time. Uh so we got to go down there and see like the old side, the new side, and uh we had a few guys that did not survive the command sweep after that, after Columbia. Oh yeah.

Gary Wise 45:35

Brother, you know, um unfortunately, just because people join doesn't mean they always leave their bad habits at home, right? We had the same thing out out in the west coast, right? Go to Thailand, go to the Philippines, whatever they'd come through afterwards and and sweep everybody. You know, we'd always just lose some people. Um, and it's unfortunate.

Chad Walker 45:56

Again, but again, our chiefs mess, Command Master Chief, they were they cared about us, like they cared about their sailors, and looking at the chiefs were out there turning it up in Cartagena as well. So we left, went through the Panama Canal, went down, pulled into Ecuador, pulled out of Ecuador, then did a sweep. Like it was like they gave everybody time to hydrate, round to hydrate, and then lo and behold, like like four or five people popped on the and then the CEO was just like livid because we ended up coming back through the canal. We did another round of the drug ops uh before we went down all the way around, um, which we did like a 70-something million dollar uh seizure on that round, and we had to take the the drugs all the way back up to Mayport. So we had to run them all the way back up to Mayport and drop them off. Well, so when we go up there for that, that next morning, you're like, Oh, we're gonna have Command PT on the pier. And everybody was like, What? We don't do this, like this is not a thing. So we're like, Do I even have PT gear? Like, let me let me find out what's going on. Like, because you needed like your your navy PT gear, right? Vietnam here for this. I was like, so we get out there, and all of a sudden, like, we're we're 10 push-ups in, and everybody gets gets called up and you stand parade rest as they marched them out off the ship. Everybody's positive, they walked them out, they they perk walked them in front of the whole command.

Gary Wise 47:37

I'm about to say that's a walk of shame, bro. Yeah, bro.

Chad Walker 47:40

They perk walked them in front of everybody, and we're all sitting there going like one of them was one of our best cooks, too, man. Like that really that one kind of bummed me out because I'd slide through the line in the morning, it's like, yo, let me get a let an egg white doll with some with some peppers. He's like, I got you, you know? Yeah, so that all went away for the rest of the deployment. So it was it was what it was.

Gary Wise 48:00

It's a big hit, you know. Uh, whenever people are unfortunately removed from a crew or any com any organization and it's not projected, it wasn't seen coming, it's gonna have an effect on everyone, right? Whether it was because of their own choices or not. And I I can appreciate the message they're trying to send with that on the reverse. It's just, I mean, what an interesting patrol, I guess you guys could call that deployment, whatever. Um I think about your rate as well, FC. I think about all the anti-terrorism force protection stuff you guys are also in charge of, right? Because I don't know how I don't know how it was before 9-11 when it comes to you guys. I was a damage controlman, I was a snipe, I was an engineer, so I didn't really pay a lot of attention to that kind of stuff until I got back to the fleet after recruiting, and I was it was after 9-11, and now I'm a DC two, DC one going to sea, but now it's like everything we're doing is like anti-terrorism, force protection. I'm going to force protection trainings, I went to school. How how was that for you learning your to play your

VBSS And Force Protection After 9/11

Gary Wise 49:05

position in that space? Because you guys were involved in all of that, right?

Chad Walker 49:09

Yeah, so I I was on the force protection training team pretty quick. Um, so I was on you know, rapid response team, I took it really really seriously. I went to, you know, you know, CQB training, um, I did VBSS. So like Oh, yeah, I'm sure I was all that stuff. Yeah, like I was I was in it, man. Like I wanted to do everything. And uh, because my goal on after I was in for probably after my first deployment, I got back and by that point I'm on Work Center Soup. Um, I'm working on my calls, you know, and I was like, you know what, this is I feel more at home when there's no land in sight than I do when I'm home. I guess. There's something about it, something about it just hit in here somewhere. Uh so I was like, dude, I'm I'm gonna lock in, man. I'll do 20. I'll do 20. I I can do this for 20 years. I I know that I can. Um, and there's a big part of me that wanted to cycle back and be an instructor and kind of teach the the next people coming through because I was that guy, you know, let alone be the work center suit, but I was just that guy whenever we got new bodies that would come in, new techs that come in, it's like I would teach them. I'd show them like this is how you need to do this.

Gary Wise 50:23

And so you said you decommissioned that first ship, right? And then you went to another DDG. Did that DDG, did you get the chance to go to like the Persian Gulf or over to the med or anything on that DDG?

Chad Walker 50:36

Yeah, yeah. So I did a med, and then my and then when I was on the Oak Hill, I got to do um counterpiracy off Somalia.

Gary Wise 50:47

Okay, no, no. I I look, I was on board USS Ogden. We were out there 2003, 2004, and just similar to an LSD, it's an amphib, and they've used those ships a lot for those kinds of missions, right?

Chad Walker 51:02

Yeah, like you load up the Marines, drive over, drop them off, then you hit you know the coast of Africa, and you start, you know, mapping pirates, you know, the campsites and then boardings.

Gary Wise 51:20

Brother, you know what I was thinking about the other day when I was watching the news and like the everything about Minneapolis and like the leering centers or whatever it was. I was like, I remember a time we were out there chasing around fools off the coast of Somalia doing stuff. Now these jokers are out north doing the lake. I mean, I'm not disrespecting their hustle, but what the hell happened?

Chad Walker 51:41

I mean, bro, I what killed me was like in 06, so in 06 is when I was out there. And in 06, dude, that's like the wild, wild west back then, you know, because you're you're part of watch surge, you know, we're all like, we're all going. What are we doing? We're all going. You know, it's like, okay. Uh so you get out there, you know, and and we we were we'd housed um a particular drone that uh we were using it in a way that had never been used before. Like we had the civilians rocking a con X box up on the on the flight deck, and like we're doing all this just random stuff that you just don't do. Yeah, so why not do it in a wartime? Let's just play it by ear. Um and it was it was it was crazy, it was it was absolute craziness. Um, and that's uh that that deployment, I was looking at, I was right on the edge of reenlistment. So I was already looking at reenlistment. Um, like the reenlistment bonus back then was like 48 grand. And we found out on the way home that we were doing a 90-day turnaround. Like we were gonna be home 90 and bounce right back out. Uh so in that 90-day window, I'm like, okay, if I hold off, I re-enlist when we get back out there, you know, get the lick on the taxes.

Reenlistment Plans Hit Reality

Chad Walker 52:55

So it was like 48 grand. I was like, Yeah, yeah, I'm in. I'm in. Well, in that window, my marriage ended. In that window, my marriage ended. So I'm right on the edge of my seashore rotation. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm close, right? It was basically I was guaranteed I'm going to shore duty when I got back to the next deployment.

Gary Wise 53:16

Well, I mean, you just did three ships, though, right? There was no short duty in between those ships, right?

Chad Walker 53:20

Nope.

Gary Wise 53:21

I mean, so that right there is a lot of strain on your relationship.

Chad Walker 53:25

Yeah. So my ex was on shore. So by default, I was not. It was not going to shore.

Gary Wise 53:31

So that's what happened there. That's why you didn't go to shore because he was on shore.

Chad Walker 53:36

And they tried to rotate me early, and my command said no. He's mission critical, like we need him. Um and then I got to the point where I gotten dinged up a little bit on the last deployment. So I was talking to medical and stuff, and I was like, I could, you know, I could have gone med step, but I wanted that reenlistment. I wanted to stay in. Yeah. And I played it all the way down. I was, I think I was like seven days from the end of my contract when I finally went and I'm I'm sitting there with my chief, Command Master Chief. I was like, look, is there anything? Anything I just if I can roll to shore duty, I'll re-enlist right now.

Gary Wise 54:17

Right.

Chad Walker 54:17

You know, find me an instructor. I don't care if I'm sitting at a at a desk in a birthing somewhere, just like on a you know, in the barracks, you know, I don't care. Just let me let me re-enlist and stay in and get myself situated because I got custody of my kids. Right. The judge granted me c full custody of my kids. So now I'm a single dad and I was like, I can't leave my kids. And they said, look, either find somebody to take care of them or you're just gonna have to get out. We can't we can't do anything. And for me at that point, like it's just not a choice. I'm gonna pick my kids first every time.

Gary Wise 54:54

Are

Divorce, Custody, And Getting Out

Gary Wise 54:55

you a second class petty officer at that time or a first? Oh, yeah. I'm a second class. Yeah, I'm a second class. And you have two children at that time, three kids at that time.

Chad Walker 55:04

Three kids. My son, my son was born in December of 05, and I deployed um in January on that deployment.

Gary Wise 55:14

And you're coming back from being operational 0607 because I was out there as well. Oh that's when I got my Iraqi campaign was during 0607 on the Ogden. So I understand uh operational what was happening out there around that time, and you're coming back and they're gonna get ready to do a turnaround, but you got you you had your marriage and you get custody of three children. Yep, you're looking at possibly, but now you're also a single parent with family care plan, all that other stuff going on, right?

Chad Walker 55:42

Okay, and so you're like, I was like, Can I get a hardship? You know, something like that. And really, what it was is we were one of the few ships that were able to keep sea whiz up. We had like a 90-something percent uptime.

Gary Wise 55:56

And just so I understand, did you have too many, too much time left on board that ship, and that was the problem they they couldn't roll you because you take my two-year orders to the ship or whatever?

Chad Walker 56:07

Yeah, and it in my so my seashore rotation, you know, back then for FC was like I think it was like four and two or something like that. Um, so I was where I needed 48 months of sea time, I had like 39 or 40 or something like that. So I wasn't quite there. Okay. If I had had like if I was like 47, maybe they would have said, okay, you know, put his time in. But they they wanted me out there for that deployment. And you know, they were like, just have your just have your parents come pick up your kids, they'll be fine. I was like, they just lost their mom. Like, yeah, I'm not bailing on them too. Like, I'm gonna be there for my kids. Yeah, um, so I look, I got out, I moved back home to Florida, and then uh started figuring out this whole veteran life because I don't think civilian life exists after you serve. It's one of the my biggest pet peeves. I hear all the time, oh civilian life, like you're not a civilian anymore. You're just not. You're a veteran, and that's a different it's a different thing.

Gary Wise 57:12

I I'm still figuring it out, I'll be honest. I retired in 2022. And I think it's because of my job as well, teaching ROTC to the kids. I still I almost feel like I'm on shore duty, to be honest with you. I still wear the uniform once a week, whatever it is. And I and I'm still figuring out who I am, right? After the service, and and honestly, I try not to think about it too much because it kind of will jack me up a little bit because right I told much of my identity was wrapped around, is wrapped around who I grew into becoming as a man, right? And then I'm thinking about you in your space. Here you are, now you're a dad, you got three kids, and you weren't planning on moving back to Florida. I mean, you took the Navy all the way to the very end, try but of course things all changed quickly, and then all of a sudden you're in Florida. What does I mean? Are you with your mom and your dad just like trying to figure out what's my next move?

Chad Walker 58:03

Yeah, so I moved close to where my mom close to where my mom was. I was right not too far down the road, it's a few

Transition Home And Landing At Disney

Chad Walker 58:10

miles. Um, and I so I got out, it was November of 06. Um, you know, my my son isn't even a year old yet. So uh I'm just kind of like, well, I'm gonna take the holidays. I'm taking Thanksgiving, take Christmas, I've got savings, I'm okay. Let me just settle in, settle in with the kids. My oldest was getting ready to go to school, so I just needed to figure that kind of stuff out. And um Thanksgiving came, Christmas came, and then like literally right after Christmas, like, I've got to get going. I knew that the local like career source place down in Polk County had a a veteran uh specific person. So I went down, talked with him and um Mike uh Mike Carew, maybe was the last name. Uh Mike was his first name though. Nice guy. He's like, you know what? Um with your experience, I got a guy out of Disney. Um they love to hire military out there. The hiring guy, he's retired Air Force. Let me just connect you with him. So I went out there and I got hired on December 28th. Um I took the little I took a little electronics, you know, test for the electronics part of their engineering program out there, and um they're like, I think you're hired. So the I had like the whole like finding work after transitioning out, I didn't experience any of that because the skill sets I came out with were so valuable that I just walked right into what really turned out to be a great job for a single dad. I mean, look, I I rode roller coasters for a living, basically, and then I could get off work on the weekend and take my kids to Disney for free um whenever I wanted to, you know. So my kids back then, so they would have been, you know, four or two and just under a year. Um they had pretty good when they were when they were little.

Gary Wise 1:00:10

So well, I'm I'm very thankful for you that that worked out. And so now you're you're you're out of the service. Well, how do you end up going from working at Disney, riding roller coasters for a living then to then migrating north to Ocala?

Remarriage And The PTSD Nobody Sees

Chad Walker 1:00:25

So after several years of uh just being a dad, um I think one of my daughters asked me kind of like um Daddy, you ever gonna get married again? Because like I didn't date. Didn't date, I wasn't talking to anybody. It was like me, my kids, work. That was it. And it was like that for a lot of years. Um and uh so I decided finally, I was like, you know, I don't know, maybe I'll start dating. Um start dating, and for some reason I I yeah, it just the universe is weird, but you know, through mutual connections, I met my now wife, uh, we'll be married 15 years this year. Um and what interest she had in a 30-year-old divorced guy with three kids. Like that alone was like a red flag. I'm like, why are you talking to somebody like me? Um but um everything just kind of clicked, kind of fell into place, and um she was great with my kids, which was kind of you know a big way to to work your way in with me. Um and my kid, my my son was four or five when we met. Um, he really doesn't know his biological mom that well um or at all, really. Um so she is his mom. Um she looked she's she's adopted all of my kids at this point, you know, they're her kids. But it was uh one of those things that I wasn't sure I would ever do again. Uh it's one thing for somebody to hurt me, but to risk somebody hurting my kids was something that I really really struggled with. Uh and that's the that's one of the craziest things. Like I talk to people, and you know, because you know, oh, do you have PTSD? It's like, yes, I have a PTSD diagnosis, but it's not like I was in Fallujah. My PTSD diagnosis was really wrapped more so around when I was coming back from that deployment, my ex had already made up her mind, she was leaving and she took the kids with her and wouldn't tell me where they were. So I had weeks, I came home to nobody on the pier, which is uh a real bummer, right? So nobody on the pier. I go back to my house that she had left, but it was trashed, you know. Just it was it was bad. Those cautionary tales you hear in the navy.

Gary Wise 1:02:56

I've no, no, I've seen it, I've seen it. You're not unfortunately, bro. I wish I could tell you you're the only one.

Chad Walker 1:03:02

Yeah, I'm not an anomaly.

Gary Wise 1:03:03

Unfortunately, you're not, and it's on the op tempo, it's the time gone to sea. There's a lot of these tick marks that I can tell you that we as a navy unfortunately do to our people that may and it makes us different than the other branches because we go to sea, right? And we we never stop going to sea, we never stop, even after the war, even in between the war, we're still going underway, right? You were doing unitas, you were doing patrol, you were doing whatever, and so all that compounds, right? But then unfortunately, something fractures, and yeah, I could a hundred percent see where that stress and that information, and having to sit on that information as you have to wait weeks, whatever to get home and then deal with the realities of what's waiting for you. I I can see all that. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Chad Walker 1:03:50

It was hard, man. It was hard because I I found out about it. I really found out about it on the way back. Yeah, so we had turned back, and like so what happened is all the communication stopped. Because you know what was back then, like you get satellite uptime, so you'd run and find a computer somewhere and see if you got an email or uh MySpace was a big thing back then. Like that's where MySpace, right? Right, yeah. So you know, people run into their MySpace, you know, to look at the stuff, and suddenly, like, all the email stopped, and there's no no pictures coming anymore. You know, I'm like, well, my son is three months old, I kind of want to know how he's doing, you know, and just all communication stopped.

Gary Wise 1:04:30

And you're on an LSD, right? That's not the most high speed platform, right? It's not like everybody has POTS lines at their desk that you can just call home from. I was on an LSD or I was on an LPD at that time. And when we would go without satellite, I would just have a running document on Microsoft Word that I would write on every day. And then when we get email, I'd hurry and send just that document off, right? And my wife would just get the email, and there'd be all these ups and downs and all these highs and lows because of how come I'm not hearing from you? Is it because of you? Is it because of the satellite? And so all of us were going for through that. But unfortunately for you, it was there was unfortunately reality on the other side of that that was horrible.

Chad Walker 1:05:13

Yeah, it was it was rough, man. But you know, I I made it through. Yeah, I I always put my kids first.

Gary Wise 1:05:21

Um, and I mean that's a you need to write a book about that part, bro. The three kids moving down to getting out of the service, going to get the job at Disney, right? Like riding the roller coasters. That right there is freaking some super dad stuff, bro.

Chad Walker 1:05:36

So the crazy part is that people always like, how do you go from working on guns and missiles to working on Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean? I that's the joke I always make. I went from pirates in Somali to Pirates of the Caribbean and like and we're talking about like a you know a four month window, right? It just was not a it was a short turnaround.

Gary Wise 1:05:56

Um being a BBSS guy, right? And I wanted to hit that real quick because for those of you that are listening, the United States Navy was taking regular sailors and boarding other ships and sending these guys out to go on board ships and like confiscate guns and drugs and whatever it was. And you guys would get some training here and there, but y'all were not like special warfare operators. You had a lot of cool gadgets, you had all the gear, you looked pretty high speed, low drag. And I remember just there was a lot of boardings happening back in those days, right? We were boarding everything moving, right? And you never knew if one you never knew if one was gonna go sideways on you, right? You never knew if it was gonna go bad. So and the FCs, the gunners made you guys are in the middle of all that stuff. So you're a guy that does that stuff, plus working on all the guns and whatnot. I you you had a lot going on.

Chad Walker 1:06:55

Yeah, but I mean, but I've I've always been fairly good at multitasking. Um it just it I I could divide my focus but still maintain focus. I can't do it anymore. I'm not nearly as good at it now as I was.

Gary Wise 1:07:09

Age does that to us, man. That was on my to you to that point. One of my biggest challenges was when I started learning that that was becoming harder for me to do, right? And I the because compartmentalizing things, right? I'm a damage control man, I compartmentalize everything, I fight fires my compartments, right? I set boundaries on the Joker. And as I got older, um, I mean, this is why I don't drink anymore, because I just I I grew too many vices that I was using to numb, right? And one of the one of the things I learned is that I just could no longer compartmentalize the things that I've been ignoring for years or suppressing or whatever it was, and it was catching, it was leaching into everything else. Um, because you're not supposed to just do that, right? That you're supposed to go and work through it, but some crap you'll never resolve, right? You just it's it's so it's so shitty, it's just you can't never fix it. It just is, and you just got to accept it and move forward. And it's just the reality of I think everyone's got stuff, right? In this world, we've all got stuff. I think that for those of us though that um have taken the opportunity to serve, especially during some of those years, is just extra stuff, right? That came along for the ride. And then you got even some more stuff after that. Um, when you when you one of the things I I like about you is you said you're a serial entrepreneur, right? Um, what I like about that description is I I think of a person who doesn't always want to have to be dependent upon somebody else to make sure that they have stability for their family, right? Like in my mind, a per I one of the things I hated in life was when somebody would do something to affect my family and I felt like I didn't have control over it, right? And of course, you got a choice, you can always quit, walk away, or whatever, right? But then when I start taking control of the things that I can control, that's how I get into that entrepreneurial mindset because I don't want to always have to rely upon other people to take care of my people. Is that how you got yourself into the entrepreneurial space?

Chad Walker 1:09:22

Honestly, I I just kind of fell into it. Um, so I had moved up here to Ocala at that point. Uh, my wife and I, we got we got married, um beautiful, right there in our backyard down in Polk County. And afterwards, after you know having family around at the wedding, it was really kind of an eye-opening thing that she had way more family um concentrated than I did. Um, yeah, I had family down there, but it was not like the environment that she had. So we wanted to be, she said she really wanted to be closer to her family. So, you know, happy wife, happy life. Plus, as a sailor, I'm I'm home wherever I'm at. So it's not like I'm, you know, I have to be married to any one place. Right. Uh so we we made the move up here and immediately just driving the roads, driving through like downtown Ocala, I was like, man, this is really comfortable. It's familiar, it makes sense to me.

Seizure, TBI, And Losing Work Identity

Chad Walker 1:10:20

But the big change that happened to me right before we moved was uh so I have I have a traumatic brain injury, um, and it causes intracranial hypertension. So I have increased pressure on my brain at all times. It just is what it is. Um, so uh at that time I was working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hour weeks. Uh I had moved from Disney over to Publix and I had a massive seizure um while working on some fairly you know dangerous equipment. And uh I you know I'd already started working on the whole VA disability thing. Uh I was learning that on my own, kind of navigating those waters. And my doctors basically came back and said, Look, man, you can't do this anymore. You can't push your body to this level anymore. You need to stop. Um so I ended up um because I hadn't really filed the entirety of my claims. I came back, I was 100% permanent total. Um and I figured, okay, well, am I done? Like, is that am I retired now? Like, what am I supposed to do? And right then, as I'm asking myself these questions, we moved here. So I'm sitting at home, I'm no longer working every day like I I'm known to do. Like that my identity as like the provider for my family is just gone. So I'm home, uh, not a particularly pleasant person to be around, right? Because I'm trying to figure this all out. And mercifully, uh, they opened the the vet center there on uh Silver Springs Boulevard, where you have the veteran services office, and then Vets Up and Vets is on the other side. And they had done their you know big ribbon cutting ceremony, and

Volunteering At Vets Helping Vets

Chad Walker 1:12:20

uh my wife was like, Look, these people are looking for volunteers. You're veteran, they want veterans, go volunteer, go do something, get out of the house. So that's what I did. I walked in and I said, Hey, you know, I see you guys are looking for volunteers, you know, how can I help? Is there something I can do? Um, and I was volunteering just two days a week, answering a telephone. And uh I came in one day and uh I don't know if you ever got a chance. How long have you been in town? Brother, 2022. Okay, so you probably didn't get a chance to meet Hank Whittier. Um so Hank Whittier, I used to tell people like Hank's what I want to what I want to be when I grow up. You know, Hank built Vets Helping Vets from nothing. Like he ran it out of a storage unit um into you know the building that it's housed in now. He built that from the ground up. Um and it was one of those things like when you were a veteran, you came into Marion County back then, you know, they was like, Well, you need to go talk to Hank. You need to go talk to Hank. And like just all roads veteran related just somehow ended with Hank. Um so but he um he could run hot, he could run cold, uh, and he was a Marine. Uh so he comes in one day and he's just livid because I guess a donor was trying to get a hold of him on the phone and he missed their call. So he's reading the Riot Act to you know, all these volunteers. And I just raised my hand and like, hey, um, what systems do you have in place to make sure that you know this kind of thing doesn't happen? You know, the relay communication from here to your office, you know, what do you have? And he's like, What are you talking about? So I was like, I you mind? I'll I'll kind of sort all this out for you and I'll I'll come brief you on what I've done and how it works. So, you know, I've sat down, I was like, okay, this is the method for relaying, this is you know, how do you prioritize? Here's a note, you use your message pad where you prioritize the level of the message. Here's your script for answering phones for everyone, so everyone's answering the phone the same way. You know, this is not your house, this is the business. Um, so I got all that squared away in pretty short order, and one day I'm down there answering phones again. Hank goes, um, I feel like we're not utilizing you, your fullest potential. I said, Well, you know, what else do you got? He said, Well, we've got a pretty big audit coming up. Um, and I will I want you to take a look at it. And you know, the audit basically was like going through case files and making sure that the money they were granted was being used in the right way. Well, I got into the case files and there was no continuity. There was no structure. It was just paperwork and receipts and things thrown into file folders. And I said, And we're talking about thousands of files. So I said, okay, I got it. So created a structure. Here's your sample file for all of your caseworkers so they know exactly what goes where on which side and in what order. So every file will be uniform. And um, so I went from answering phones to being the director of operations there in about six months. Um it was great. Like that that place saved my life. No, there's no doubt. There's no doubt that it saved my life. Being able to go in there, having a mission again, having purpose, you know, and that focus. You know, with the disability stuff, financially, I was, you know, I wasn't making what I used to make, obviously, but I was making enough that you know my family wasn't destitute. Um and but it it showed me that I still had value, I still had, you know, I still had the ability to do some something. Um, and just the innate thing where I treat every veteran like family, like that just and being in that building, um it was great. You know, it was great. Well, my brother, who we talked about earlier, you know, he since he had been out of the uh army, he had been out of jail a few times, um basically wound up right in the track that I was trying to keep him out of. Uh, but it found himself working in the trades um and he was a contractor and somebody ripped him off. Basically, one of his customers ripped him off, didn't pay him and uh he was looking at losing his business. Uh and he called me just a vent one day and he said, Man, I wish we can just rate these jerks the same way they rate us. And that was it. And we kind of I just kept stewing on it. I was like, why can't you rate these guys the same way they rate you? I mean, your customers know everything about you. So um that's when I realized that's where I found myself in entrepreneurship was you know, owning a business and entrepreneurship is

Entrepreneurship As Problem Solving

Chad Walker 1:17:05

really just about problem solving. So you if you go to a group of people and say, what's one problem in your life that if you could push a button and solve it, what is it? And if you can get you know a hundred people that say the same thing, okay, I'll build the button, right? I'll build the button. And then if I can get a thousand people to pay for that button, okay, well now you've got something. That's a business. All right. And then and then it's just about structures, right? Organizations and structures to make the business move forward. Um so that was really just another way to to kind of leverage that innate kind of problem solving capacity that I've always had. I just never monetized it before, like ever. Like there were some things that I did at Disney that if I had known better, I'd probably be a millionaire by now. Like animatronics and things, like figuring out how to make them more efficient. And uh it just like I just didn't know. It never occurred to me like you can make money doing this. Um, so yeah, I built my first company, it was a mobile app for contractors. Uh, it let them rate their customers. Um, it was very well received, it did really well. Um COVID hit. Uh since then, I've done um some government contracting work in the software on the software side of things. I had another tech startup in the AI space, in the very, very early, early AI space. Um, I've done a little bit in real estate, you know, flipping, you know, just uh it's one of those things where now it's just it's something fun that I get to do. It keeps me relatively sharp, it helps me provide for my family. Um, and that original business had pretty much run its course, as many things in tech do, but I just revived it uh through a program with AWS. So we've incorporated AI into the old platform, and now it's um it's next level. It's it's amazing. It's amazing what you can do with AI.

Gary Wise 1:19:01

It is. Well, I I need to make sure I get that information from you so I can plug it into our notes and whatever it is, just to get it out there for you, right to share it. And and I mean, I'm just very proud of you to hear all the different things you got into because from going back to working in a nonprofit, from hearing the news that you can't do the work that you want to do, dealing with the medical stuff on the side, but then figuring out a way you can help your brother, you know, kind of punch back a little bit of the people that are always throwing stones, right? And and then figuring out different places you can provide value to the community, to the world, all are amazing things, right? And I think that that's the kind of stuff that gives people hope for finding uh opportunities in the future. Because whenever I hear people say there's not there's a lack of opportunities, I know that I know that's not true, but you have to find the inspiration, right? You have to find there may be an absence of inspiration. There is not a lack of opportunities, you're just you're going through an absence of inspiration and you got to find your muse, man. You got to find this thing that's gonna get something to become an idea for you. And you know, and then and then you have you have to figure out the way to also fund it, right? Because I got a bunch of ideas, but the funding piece is also the other challenge. But did you step away from vets helping vets as you were doing all the business stuff, or did you continue all of them?

Chad Walker 1:20:22

So I I continued for a little bit. Um, I started the business thing, and in the in tech, look, I'm not a coder, I'm not a programmer, you know. I I understand it enough to know if somebody's lying to me about how much something's gonna cost. So I educated myself to that level. Um, in the

VetNet And Veteran Business Community

Chad Walker 1:20:40

middle of that, one of the things that I found all the time at Vets Open Vets is I was constantly asking, well, where are the veterans that aren't homeless? I mean, there's tens of thousands of veterans in this county. And, you know, on any given week, you might see a couple hundred roll through the doors there. So where are the rest of us? You know, where are the business owners? And then when I started my first business, like, yeah, I really want to talk to some other veterans that have already been down this path that can kind of like give me like a no-nonsense, like look avoid this, this is where you want to go, don't use this bank, like little things like that. So um I figured, well, I'll go down to the chamber. So I went down to the chamber and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm looking to kind of meet some veteran business owners. And you know, you get the standard, you know, ch chamber thing. Well, I become a member and this and that. And I was like, so you know, do you know how many veteran business owners you guys have? And they were like, Well, we don't keep track of that. And again, just kind of a light bulb went off of my head. I was like, Well, how do we not keep track of in a community that has this many veterans? Right, there's gotta be, you know, you know, at least a hundred veteran businesses around here that they would probably want to hang out and and you know, share their stories and uh not networking. I'm not a networking guy. Um, but you know, veterans, we get together, you know, it's like a family cookout if there's more than five of us there. So I got on LinkedIn one weekend and like went in to like previous employers, uh, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, right? And looked under titles of president, founder, owner, things like that. And I found over 300 in one weekend on LinkedIn by myself. And I had a good friend that owned a business here locally, and we were both kind of on the same track. Well, let's try to get us together. And that's how my my first nonprofit was born. Um, so we founded VetNet about seven, eight years ago. Uh, with really just the initial mission was just, hey, let's get us together and try to help each other succeed, right? Um, and that was great. Um, and then we just kind of expanded the mission from there.

Gary Wise 1:22:47

I was wondering about because I joined VetNet. I don't know that I joined it or not. I I know I I found it, right? So when I came to Ocala and I started my I started my business a year after I came to Ocala. Uh, and I went to I joined the chamber, right? You know, I figured why not? But I'm a teacher full time and I'm a dad. I got an 18-year-old and 11-year-old. So I don't have all the time to just go to all these daytime events, right? That people go to because I'm teaching school, right? And but I made the time to go, they had the veteran meeting, it's like once a month or something like that, right? Like long, yeah.

Chad Walker 1:23:22

So they started that after they started that after um vetnet kind of started picking up pace. Yeah. Um, we talked about bringing vetnet into the chamber. My biggest thing was, and look, the the CEP does incredible things for businesses in this community, but we weren't trying to be a chamber. Uh we wanted just to be a group of veterans helping and supporting each other. So I always pushed back against the whole, well, they have to be a CEP member to be in vetnet. I'm I'm never gonna, we don't charge a membership to be a part of VetNet, right? We we're just here to pool our resources and our experiences to help each other succeed.

Gary Wise 1:24:02

Yeah, that's what I got there. I I'm connected there, but you know, I went to that veteran thing and there wasn't no one was there, right? Nobody was there. So I go downstairs to the front desk, I'm like, hey, it's and it's like July, there's like no school. So I'm like, I finally got a month with no school. I'm gonna go to this veteran thing, I'm gonna meet some veterans because I don't know about you, but for me, bro, again, I just retired in 2022. There's so many veteran organizations, it feels like church, right? And I don't know which church to join because I'm not sure which one is true. You know what I'm saying? Like it's like, so I mean, I I just pick one and run with it, right? That's I mean, I went, I go to Ocala's Church of Hope down there on Marit Camp because I went in there and I just like the vibe, and I was like, this is good. That dude's a he's a vet, I like how he gets down, I'm running with it, brother. And I and and that's where I I and I found myself doing my volunteer hours at the church because I also do a lot um at the school, but I I have aspirations to get involved in the veteran community at some point because I do want to continue to to build to get to know people, right? Yeah, um, but when I went to that one meeting, that one time it's just there was nothing there, and I was like, well, that sucks, right? Like maybe I missed the day or whatever it was. I found vetnet, but and I I'm I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing uh more opportunities to get to know people in the area. I I knew you, I found you through all of the vet net stuff, seeing your social media posting, right? And then you I'm actually I know Miles McConicho uh relatively well because I met him at an event when he was doing cut different stuff and before he got with vets helping vets, yeah. And him and I got connected there. Like I put on a uh I did a live speaking event last summer called Ocala Inspired, right? And I wanted I did that, and Miles Miles helped me out and was a speaker for that, and and so then I that was the other place where I recognized you and him were connected to Vets Helping Vets, and then I see your you publish these really cool articles about problems in our community, right? In Ocala, yeah, yeah.

Chad Walker 1:26:19

So I I'm look in in the veteran community here, right? Right, we tend to kind of create orbits around individuals that are kind of they're determined to be the guy, you know, they want to be the guy. I've always been the mission, right? I'm I'm more about the mission. So I'll get behind whoever the guy is if we can push the mission forward. Um now occasionally, like, you know, with an op-ed or something like that, I'll see something in the community and I just I feel a certain kind of way about it. So I put that out there. And most of the time you'll find like I I'm very much I try to be more of kind of a de-escalating voice in those situations. Um, because like I'm I I am that person that's kind of been on on both sides of things. Like I grew up in Polk County as a kid in Polk County. You couldn't vote if you weren't a registered Democrat. So like I listened to my grandparents and and their input on things, and then like I've been a registered Republican my entire voting life. Uh I consider myself conservative. One of my best friends in the world is definitely not, but we work together and we get stuff done because we we can check all that stuff whenever we get focused on the mission at hand. Right. I used to one of the things I you I cried this from the mountaintops. Like, look, if you want to see diversity in action, go look at the military. Go look at the military. We do it every day. Every day. Um, so I just focus on the mission. You know, I've I've never tried to be that guy that's got to be like, everybody, come this way, come with me. I I work around the community and say, what are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to do? Because within the vendor community specifically, the these organizations are all very, very siloed. So, you know, Vets Help and Vets has always kind of been that central, you know, hub for everything, and because that's what Hank built it to be. But then, you know, you've got American Legion posts that don't even talk to each other. VFWs don't talk to the American Legions. You've got all these different um like 55 plus communities and and subdivisions that have their own veterans' clubs, right? Right. Don't talk to each other. And then you have all these other ancillary organizations, like, and they're incredible people doing incredible things, but nobody supports each other. It's it's come do what I'm doing, follow me what I'm doing. Not, hey, if we work together on this, then you know, maybe we can all kind

Cadre And Building A Coalition

Chad Walker 1:28:55

of push forward against this problem. And that's where my most recent project came from. Really, that's where that's how I was born. Um, it was we just had those incidents in North Carolina and Michigan. Yeah. And as a community, um, you know, Todd Belknap over at Vets Help and Vets, he wanted to do something, you know, kind of proactive in the community. Um, and and you know, I I've known Todd for a while. Uh, I first met him over at the Veterans Park. I was on the board of the Veterans Park Foundation. Um uh, so he wanted to put together like a big summit and and wanted my input on it, kind of helped kind of bring it together. Um, because I that's kind of what I'm good at, right? Is is pulling all these these different moving parts together and giving it kind of a cohesion so it can all move forward. Um, so but in the process of it, as I was looking at the way things were siloed, I was like, you know, we need something, we need to tie the binds. We gotta have something that pulls together. Um, so I came up with the this idea, the simple idea is like, oh, let's build a coalition. Let's see who's really up for collaboration, and then provide a way to monitor and reward that collaboration. And that's where you know Cadre was born. Um, we had the the PTSD summit in November. It was amazing. It was one of the best out outside of the Hall of Fame event, which was next level. Um, it was one of the best attended you know veterans events in the county um in quite some time. And the whole idea, it's it's simple find local resources for a given issue, put them in a room full of veterans, let them explain what they do and why they do it to the veterans themselves, and then allow the veterans to engage with them. Um and this is where you know my stuff comes in is follow-up. So create an actual system to follow up, not just with the veterans, but with the vendors. Make sure the veterans are staying engaged, make sure the vendors are providing the services that they said they did, and then managing that referral process. Um and uh from the the success of uh the PTSD summit, I guess, well, what other what are issues in the veteran community can we really tackle? Right? What do we got going on? We got 45,000 veterans in this community. What what can we look at so we can kind of cover the basis for everybody? So we came up with a four-summit structure, like a quarterly event. Obviously, the PTSD event is very important to the community. Um uh next month, end of May, we're gonna have the housing and finance summit. So we've got resources coming in locally for you know to get your personal finances, get your you know, estate in order. If you're looking to use a home, they're gonna teach you about how to use your VA loan in ways that you may not be aware of. Um, we're gonna have lenders in-house if you want to get qualified and really rock. We're gonna have you know real estate agents in-house that are veterans. Um, so it's um it's gonna be a good time. And then we've got uh employment and education, health and wellness. And I mean it's we've it's it's all we're gonna bring these resources to you. I'm not gonna send a hand you a card or give you a phone number or a website. I'm gonna put the person that is in charge of that resource in front of you, show you who they are, let them tell you what the resource is about, why they do it, and then if you want to engage in that, I'm going to follow up because it's it's in between these services is where we keep losing people. You know, you you engage with one organization and you get a referral after you've finished whatever services they provide to go somewhere else, and that referral never picks you up. Or when you don't show up, they don't follow up and say, hey, what happened?

Gary Wise 1:32:41

Right. Or it goes down, it dies on the vine somewhere.

Chad Walker 1:32:44

Right. Or if the veteran calls and leaves a message and they don't get a call back, they're you know, they throw the call away, right?

Gary Wise 1:32:51

I get it.

Chad Walker 1:32:52

They're not trying to, they're not trying to help me.

Gary Wise 1:32:54

I get it, man. Is cadre, because you said vet net was a is a nonprofit. Is cadre a nonprofit as well?

Chad Walker 1:33:02

Not yet. Not yet. It will be. So the idea with that is you so with vet net, we self-funded for years. You know, my my partner Julian and I, we we self-funded, we've done some fundraisers here and there. One of the big ones we did was the uh, did you see these when they went out? The the business business owner's directory. I got I'm in it. I'm pretty sure I'm in it. So with the directory, you know, that was our first like look, let's just show everybody all these better-known businesses. Um, we just put out the the link for the new directory this year. Uh, now you're gonna have a physical directory and an online. But we put out you know four or five thousand copies of these in the community, and people loved them. Yeah. Um so we connect businesses. Cadre is more cadre is is my heart in in physical form. It is trying to maintain that continuity for veterans between services. Um you know, we started the conversation very early, and we we'd already reached out to local municipalities about how do we keep this moving, how do we be proactive. And then we had the incident over on 14. And and it was heartbreaking because we were really kind of starting to build momentum. And I like to be proactive. If anything, I'm aggressively proactive. And now, forever, regardless of what we do, we are forever going to be in a reactive state. So the dangers when you're in a reactive state like that is you want to make these knee-jerk decisions, you want to put something out just be so you can say, hey, we're doing something, right? Uh, rather than making sure you've got it right. So, you know, my goal with Cadre is to just identify every organization, veteran or non-veteran, as long as they're serving the veteran community, I want to work with them. I want to be able to refer veterans to them. But everyone signs a coalition member agreement and it spells out well what our expect expectations are as far as follow-up and referral processes. And if they want to sign it and they want to join up, I want to work with them. But we're gonna hold them to those agreements so that we aren't losing those veterans. And Miles, Miles is the first one I ever, you know, heard him say it out loud was it's it's in the gaps, is where we lose people. And you know, first of all, I heard him say it, I was like, You're 100% right. You're 100% right. So, how do we close those gaps? You know, one of us or many of us are gonna have to step into those gaps and take responsibility. Um, so I can't fill them all, but I'll work with as many people that want to help out.

Gary Wise 1:35:45

Well, and as I hear that, right? And and for the listeners, just so you guys all know, when he says the Fort King incident, we had an unfortunate incident where we had a veteran-involved uh attack on a on a on a person that resulted in a death, right? And then it was right around the same time they were getting ready to do their cadre, uh their get together for you guys were working towards veteran-involved shootings, right? And PTSD involved. That's what it felt like to me, anyway. And like you said, the timing was like back to back, but even though you'd already scheduled your thing to happen, right?

Chad Walker 1:36:19

Because we had done the sum the summit was November.

Gary Wise 1:36:22

Yeah.

Chad Walker 1:36:23

And then part of the cadre program is what I've called the Battle Buddies Initiative.

Battle Buddies And Crisis De-Escalation

Chad Walker 1:36:30

So uh the Battle Buddies Initiative is really designed to take veterans in the community that want to be trained in crisis response, um, and give them the very specific trauma-informed training and crisis response training so that when first responders encounter a veteran in crisis, we can get a veteran to that scene as as effectively as possible. Um I've seen this work in real time uh multiple times through Vets Helping Vets, uh, where a veteran is in crisis, they're waiting to have that confrontation with law enforcement. They're waiting for it. But if you put another veteran in front of them, they can just sit there and look them in the eye and say, Look, brother, this is not the way. Let's talk about this. It immediately de-escalates and it becomes a conversation. You know, all too often we've had you know veteran interactions, which one just happened down in Polk County where when you have a veteran, you know, first responders, they have to protect themselves, right? So they're gonna assume that this person is a veteran, that they've had some level of training. So the best way to overcome is just overwhelming force. That that's that's the best way to ensure my safety is just overwhelming force. And unfortunately, what we've seen is that does that never ends well. It never ends well. When a veteran gets to that point where they're in crisis, fight or flight goes, flight goes away, it's all fight. It's all fight. And more often than not, the veteran ends up in a very on the losing end of that equation. So I I wanted to think of a way where we could put a veteran who's properly trained, um to, you know, because you you have to address, you know, as a business owner, you have to address certain liability issues and things like that. Um and then have an MOU in place with local first responder organizations. You know, we were making some progress with that and be able to facilitate that de-escalation. Um because I I just and even if it's even if it's training the the veterans that we have as first responders, again, again, uh this is where it doesn't have to be me. It doesn't have to be me. I don't have to be the guy. Figure out who you want the guy to be and let me help you succeed in it. Because either way, we have less veterans ending up in potentially fatal conflicts with civilians or law enforcement. Right. You know, and that's again, that's where you have to fill those gaps. You get a veteran that's in crisis, comes out of the jail, he hasn't received any mental health services to speak of. You know, SMA is in the jails now, which is great, but you know, he gets released, it's one o'clock in the morning, he's got nowhere to go, he's not resolved any of the issues that put him there in the first place. Something bad is probably gonna happen.

Gary Wise 1:39:26

Yeah. Well, I'm on I'm on I'm on that message that you guys have, that vet that chat group or whatever it is, where you guys I've seen you guys rally to help out guys and like air conditioner's broken. Can somebody help us get this fixed up? I'm on that chat group and I've watched that happen. And and I will tell you that uh I've I've got a few different perspectives on this. Number one, I feel like for me, when I've gone to some of these veteran organizations, nothing against them. I just don't feel comfortable in the room because more often than not, there's usually a 20-year age gap, right? Um, and I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but I've always been one of the youngest guys in the room, right? I've always been one of the, I mean, I made cheap and young age, I made mass chief in a young age. So I get that part. And I'm retired, right? Like I'm literally retired, but I'm still also a full-time teacher. But when I go to these organizations, they're doing things on hours that are not aligned with me when I'm working a full-time job, right? And oh, by the way, the things that I'm interested in are probably not the same things they're interested in. And and and I just don't feel like that's for me. Does that make sense? Like that isn't it doesn't feel like it's for me. And I think there's a whole bunch of young, younger vets out there. And we did a we did a color guard for the Elks Lodge, right? And the Elks Lodge, there's I I start to see the same faces at different events, right? Because these guys are a member of like two or three different organizations, and so I'll see, I'll see them at the different events and they're and the recruiting, right? Hey, you should come join our thing, come be a part of our thing. And I'm just thinking to myself, like, if these social groups do not recruit, they're gonna start to age out. And I mean, I know I know there's a lot of transplants that come here because they retire from other places, they move to Ocala, maybe they get connected, or like you said, maybe they start their own group or their little community and they do not connect with other people. But I can definitely see uh the need for access to the younger veteran community. I would say possibly 50 and junior, right? 50 and younger, right? Yeah. And the other thing that I will tell you that I was looking for that I couldn't find was you know, in the Navy, we have like Fleet and Family Support Center at like every base, right? And there's tons of like sponsorship information for an area through there. I was told I told my wife, I was like, it would have been amazing if there was like a veteran sponsorship program for veterans relocating to Ocala or to Marion County. That right, and and so I and that's something that I thought.

Chad Walker 1:42:10

Talk to me later about it. We've got something cooking.

Gary Wise 1:42:12

That's good, right? Because I will tell you, that's something that I thought about. Like that would be a worthwhile, even if it was just a Facebook page or a website just to show. And then when I first saw your guys' business listing, right, and I got involved with that. I'm I'm pretty sure I got my my leadership solutions business in there, but I wanted to be in that book because I wanted people to know, like, hey, I'm here too, even though I'm a teacher, even though I'm an ROTC guy, I'm still a I still want to get to know people, but you know, like I know it's hard, right? Like I plus church, plus other things that we all do. So I'm I'm very happy to hear you guys are doing all those things because this is where I plan on dying, right? Like, I'm gonna live in Ocala till I die. Like, this is I'm gonna die in the Gainesville VA. Like, that's my intention. I mean, that is my intention. I mean, I moved all all around the world, all these places. And when me and my wife got ready to retire from the service, and I got the opportunity to come to Ocala, I was like, this is gonna be it, and I love it here, right? I I love it here. I'm my younger son's 11, he's been here since second grade. He is going to be flow grown, right? He's gonna be a Florida boy, right? And my older son, he's been to a whole bunch of schools, but now he's done four years at Vanguard and he's about to graduate Vanguard and go to CF. And I wanna, he's gonna go to the Florida State Fire College and he's doing the Marion County Fire Rescue Mentorship Program, and he's he's probably gonna serve that way, right? He's probably gonna serve through the fire service, which I was a damage controlman for a lot of years, so he sees that connection, right? So I have a vested interest and puts all my students who are going to be in this community with us. So I a lot of them join, and then a lot of them don't join, but I got a vested interest in helping this community to be as good as freaking possible because I love those kids, man. Like I got such a relationship with these kids four years together in high school. I you go to a Friday night football game, go down to Booster Stadium, you will see America, right? It's an amazing place to be. That's what I love about our community. And I love that you guys are doing what you can for the veteran organizations or for the veterans, right?

Chad Walker 1:44:31

Yeah, it's for the vets, man. That that's that's it. And people ask me all the time, they say, hey, you know, and my wife, one of her favorite is like not every fight is your fight. Like she says this to me classly, right? Um, and but I have two children on active duty right now. I have six children, six, two on active duty that I hope will return here and you know, start families of their own. And I'll have my grandchildren here. So yes, I I do this. I do what I do for veterans because I have a heart for it. I think of every veteran as family. Uh, that's you get the good and the bad with that. And if I call you family, that means I'll do anything I can for you. If I give you the shirt off my back, don't ask me to wash it for you too. Right. So let's there's gonna be some accountability to it. But I I have two veterans of my own that are gonna be coming back here at some point in the not too distant future, we'll see. I want the resources in this community to be firing on all cylinders when they get here, and I'll do everything I can in my power to make sure that to make that happen. And if I have to go to every organization and say, okay, you don't like talking to these guys, I get it. Yeah, talk to me. I'll talk to them. You don't have to talk to them, but talk to me and let's work together and push this forward. You know, like you mentioned with the with the eight with the HVAC thing that happened, that was an incredible thing. You know, I I created that group a few years back, and I invite people in periodically when I think they're gonna add you know the right kind of you know mix to it, where if I run into a problem that either my wife says, No way, we're paying for all of that, you gotta get somebody else to kick in on this. Um I can go in that group of just strong veterans and say, look, I've got this problem, I can't solve it on my own. What do you got? And bang, it happens. Like, well, I can do this, I can do this, I can throw this much at it, I can put this much money in, I've got these materials, I've got this skill set, let's make let's make it happen. And when you put all that together and put all the all the silos away and just work together towards a common goal, look, we did it every day. We did it every day when we were in. I don't care what you were doing. If you're doing DC drills, if we're doing pack fires at C Wiz, I I can't fire my gun if I don't have power and chilled water. Somebody's got to make that happen. So, you know, I need the GSMs doing their job, I need the EMs doing their job. You know, I just everybody's got to push for toward whatever that goal is and get it done. Yeah, and you have incredible people in some of these organizations, really. I mean, I've met I've met like real heroes, like people like people like Steve Petty. Dude, spend spend two seconds next to Steve Petty when he's in uniform. And bro, his rack is ridiculous with that silver star cherry on top, right? So you're like, you know, legit hero. Like there, there are, but there are so many of those in our community that are like legitimate heroes, these giants that are walking through this community, that for whatever reason they've gotten a bad taste in their mouth because they had a bad experience with somebody, or you know, there's a personality conflict, because that look, we're not immune to that.

Gary Wise 1:48:03

Yeah.

Chad Walker 1:48:03

If and look, there are people in the community that I don't necessarily get along with. I mean, we're not all, it's not all kumbaya, but the more people we can get on board with trying to make something happen and just check the egos at the door and get something done, great. Like, look, if you want to you want to rescue Pomeranians and that's what your heart is for, right? And there's eight other people around here rescuing Pomeranians, you don't think for a second, if you pulled your resources, you could save a lot more dogs. Like that's this is the kind of but the mentality around here is like, oh no, this person rescues Pomeranians better than anyone else because they really care, and that's just not the reality. We all care, right?

Ocala Growth And Younger Veterans

Gary Wise 1:48:45

I think what I think we're about to wrap this up, but I do have one more question for you, right? I appreciate the conversation so much. This has been great. And the final question I got for you is I feel like that our hometown, Ocala, Marion County, and I travel all over representing Okala, Marion County. We're the only Navy junior ROTC, right? There's no other Navy in this whole area. The Gainesville's got two schools, but we're a huge organization in the state of Florida, right? So if you go to Tampa, there's tons of Navy junior ROTC, Orlando tons, Jacksonville tons, right? But we're the only ones in our pocket. Every time we go places, people are always like, Where's Ocala? Where's Ocala? And we're trying to tell our kids are always like not only defending Ocala, but definitely representing. Like, we're from you're gonna learn who we are. You're gonna learn about Vanguard and who we are. But then I see the news like number one move to city and all these. I can smell the people moving here. And I feel like there's there's a disconnect between the people that were in these silos that have been here forever and the flood of migration. Of other Americans that are getting replaced in their areas, moving to Ocala, right? Because you've got all these people moving to the state of Florida. So, and I think it's exciting. Like I tell my students, like, there's a ton of opportunity coming to Ocala. Like, do not be upset about it, be excited by it. But there's going to be some growing challenges or some growing problems as we come through it. Uh, am I seeing that wrong in your perspective?

Chad Walker 1:50:28

No. Um, look, and and we'd be in here another hour talking. We don't jump off into the macro versus microeconomic weeds. Um, and plus I'm a political science major, so uh so I I get I get deep in it. But yeah, Ocala is is a freight train right now. We're we're moving in one direction. Um, and I I can I can sit down and show you every all the different indicators that have been happening over the past 15 years that have put us on this track. But there is a lot of opportunity here, um, especially like in the home market. If you're a veteran, your VA home loan is a powerful tool in this market. Uh I believe it was February EXP um said that uh we supply outpaced demand by 31%. So that's a buyer's market. But the caveat to that being is you've got to be a qualified buyer, right? So if you're a qualified buyer, you can do some, you can make some noise in this market. Um, so let them learn about that, teach them about that, show them the indications of how this is going to shift a little bit. You know, you're starting to see home prices are starting to flatten out, they're flattening out, you know, you they checked the millage rate this last cycle, the county commission did, but you know, non-advalorum popped up a little bit because you have to have services for all of these people that are pulling from those dollars, right?

Gary Wise 1:51:53

Right.

Chad Walker 1:51:54

Um but if you look at the demographic Right. I mean, but if you look at the demographics where, you know, your your your Otos, your Oak Runs, your Spruce Creeks, you know, the villages, the the veteran community, the demographics within the veteran community is shifting at the same scale as as everything else. So the median age of the veterans in this community is dropping rapidly. And the needs of a 72-year-old veteran and the needs of a 32-year-old veteran are exponentially different. Exponentially different. So we as a veteran community, we need to recognize what those needs are. And again, that's kind of where you know the the stomach process for Cadre kind of came from, was like, okay, you know, I might have these older veterans that, you know, estate planning and things like that might be on their radar. They want to make sure they have all this stuff squared away. Whereas I've got a young guy that just finished maybe six, eight years, he's transitioning out, you know, he might be taking advantage of vocational rehabilitation, he might be going to school using his GI Bill. Um, he might be going straight into the workforce, wants to buy a home, he wants to take care of his family. You know, he might have two or three kids. Right. Um, so he wants to be educated on you know the better school districts. Where should he be looking to buy these houses? You know, those are the things that are gonna be important to him. Affordability. Uh so we have to be able to rec read the room and the kind of the changing of the tide here. Um, because you're not it will slow down. We we're not gonna stay the number one metro in the country, like they like to say, um, you know, forever. It will eventually have to slow down. But in the meantime, my goal is every veteran that lands in this community, I want to make that landing as smooth as possible. You know, I want to have a pool of resources ready and waiting. And say, look, you're looking for a job, you're a combat vet, you're having a hard time with that transition. Well, guess what? I've got 400 veteran business owners in this community that will connect and understand where you're coming from and can help you navigate through this transition. Who better to hire a veteran than a veteran business owner, right? Um, and then we've got an organization maybe is coming online that is here to show you and walk you through, not not just give you a card or a brochure, but take the time to walk you through. Because look, you and I, we're not that far apart, bro, as far as age goes. You know, I grab a young 22, 23-year-old vet at CF that he wants to start a business, but he doesn't know what he's doing. And I can take him and I can take him to vetnetnet and I can show him how to go through that process, and I can be there as a guide for him through that process. If I've got someone that's looking to move in to uh buy their first house here, I've got veteran realtors that I can connect them to and introduce them to and say, look, this is my guy. You know, you you're both in the army. Like maybe they would just want to work this way in the army. We've got Army, Navy, Air Force, we've got them all. I can connect them and say, look, we'll take care of this, we'll take care of you. We've got you. Right. You know, we speak the same language, sometimes a little more colorful than the average person is willing to accept. But having those relationships here and have that ecosystem really connected rather than siloed is gonna benefit every veteran that comes here. It doesn't matter how old they are.

Gary Wise 1:55:27

It doesn't matter. And and the better you can build it now because they're not gonna stop coming, man. They're not gonna stop. And and what and you wanna, I personally want them to stay, especially if they're gonna bring value to the community, right? If you're gonna come to Ocala and you want to invest and become a part of the community and come watch MCYFL and come watch football and get to know your neighbor and help, you know, all those things are what I'm looking for when I wanted to come back home to the States. I did a lot of overseas duty and I loved living on base overseas because it was like living in a small town, right? And we all had a common bond in that we all were military, attached, connected, screened to be overseas. What I love about Ocala is for a lot of those very similar things. And I want, I wanna, I wanted to continue to attract people, hopefully, that see opportunity, and then they can find like-minded people that have similar perspectives and want to and want to work together to make things better and do do our part for the whole country in our own little pocket of the world, right?

Chad Walker 1:56:28

And yeah, that small town vibe, that's that's something you hear a lot here, is people, oh, I miss when O'Calo is just a small town. And it's because they they've got this bias that they think that a small town is based on your population number. And that's not that's not what it is. That that small town feeling, it's about courtesy, it's about caring about your neighbors, it's about engaging in the in your community, right? You all these things naturally happen in a small town because you don't have many people. So everybody kind of pitches in and builds the place up. But just because you have a bigger population doesn't mean you have to lose that spirit of a small town. You just have to engage.

Gary Wise 1:57:09

I I will tell you that when I was on active duty in the Navy, there was a tradition that the your the best command was always your next command or your last command, right? People were never able to say, I and meanwhile, I was always happy getting rank at my current command, right? And while everybody else was either reminiscing about where they used to be or hoping about the future, I was just happy to be where I was and getting work and getting the job done. And you know, every I love working at Vanguard, I love investing in, you know, I I have a lot of ideas from for myself and my family in this community, and I just see so much potential here that it's exciting, you know. I guess that's also because I I didn't never get the chance to put out roots because, like you said before, military, I can put down roots pretty much anywhere, and then I'm not afraid to move again. Well, I kind of don't want to move anymore, I kind of want to stay here and do it and and and and see the grandkids and all that here in Ocala. So, brother, I got a feeling you and I will be getting to know each other for a long time because we're not going again.

Chad Walker 1:58:10

Yeah, man. Yeah, I'm gonna be here. Come find me, sir,

Rapid Fire Navy Questions

Chad Walker 1:58:14

for sure.

Gary Wise 1:58:14

All right, so as we wrap up today, I've got some rapid fire questions and then we'll call it a day, okay?

Chad Walker 1:58:21

All right, shoot.

Gary Wise 1:58:22

All right, we're underway, we're on the ship. It's Saturday night. Are you looking forward to the pizza or the wings?

Chad Walker 1:58:28

Bro, wings all day.

Gary Wise 1:58:30

All right, the wings. All right, man. I need someone to go clean the birthing or I need somebody to go to the worker party. Which one do you want?

Chad Walker 1:58:38

Bro, I'm at the birthing.

Gary Wise 1:58:42

All right, hey, we're gonna go back to the shop and watch a movie, man. Do you want to watch a De Niro movie or a Pacino movie?

Chad Walker 1:58:49

Oh, De Niro.

Gary Wise 1:58:51

Okay, De Niro. Hey, looking back at your time in the service, uh, did you have a favorite duty station? Like, did you like Cali better or Port Winemy or Virginia?

Chad Walker 1:59:02

I think for me, uh the best duty station I had was Little Creek, bro. Little Creek, Little Creek was fantastic. You you you go from that Norfolk vibe and you slide just a little bit down the road and you walk on base, and you're like, it's like like it's like at the Wizard of Oz when everything turned color all of a sudden, you're like, whoa. So like we can be chill and just kind of come and go as we please. Yeah, but the even the gate guards, the gate guards are there. You know, you go to Norfolk and they just want to give you a hassle when you know you're just trying to get to the ship.

Gary Wise 1:59:38

Well, it's because you got all that naval special warfare bubbles down there in Little Creek, man.

Chad Walker 1:59:42

Exactly right.

Gary Wise 1:59:43

That's it. All right, looking back at your time in the service, what was your favorite Liberty port?

Chad Walker 1:59:50

Seychelles.

Gary Wise 1:59:52

I've heard I've heard good stories, I've heard good things about the Seychelles.

Chad Walker 1:59:57

Seychelles was fantastic. I as I tell my wife all the time, there are some places that I would love to take you that I've been, and Seychelles is like top of the list.

Gary Wise 2:00:08

Awesome. Looking back on your career, what do you think? So, what was what do you think was the hardest watch qualification you ever achieved? And then what do you think was the most challenging personal qualification? Are they the same thing?

Chad Walker 2:00:23

Hmm, the hardest one is I well, and I I never achieved it. I was in the process of trying to do it. I wanted to become officer of the deck underway as an E5. Um and I got a lot of static for even talking about it. So the the the pressure from like, yeah, you're not ready for this, um, was the hardest thing that I got. Um personally, I don't know, probably e swass. You know, just um because I had this thing in my head about e swass when I was in boot camp, one of my RDCs, he was at EM1 shout out EM1 Shafer if you're out there somewhere. Um he didn't have his pen as a first class, and you know, our other two RDCs have their pins, and he made a point of one night just telling everybody like, you see these pins on these men's chests? Like, that's because they're real sailors. I'm a dirt, he didn't say dirtbag. I'm a dirtbag. There's no pen on my chest. Don't be like me. Go out there and get your pen. But that's when everything shifted where they started making the pen mandatory. Right. And I balked at first. I was like, well, if everybody's got to get it, why am I even this is I'm not gonna be in any hurry to do this. Yeah. Uh but eastwalks was great because you got to go around and learn about every part of the ship, right? That was that was cool. Because like as a topside guy, I don't get down into engineering, you know. When you go to your board and they're like, All right, I'm a drop of water, take me from the main evap to your birthing, like bulkhead by bulkhead. You're like, oh, uh, okay. So that that was cool. That was cool for sure.

Gary Wise 2:01:55

But I think that's a pivotal qualification for most people because they learn so much more about the the greater organization, right? Right. Yeah, you appreciate what everybody, what everybody does, and you learn how it all how it all interrelates, right? Right.

Going Back To College At CF

Gary Wise 2:02:10

That you said you're going back to college now.

Chad Walker 2:02:13

Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna finish my degree. So I I went to college 10 years ago, roughly about 10 years ago. And again, just kind of relying on a smart guy, I'd be fine. I didn't realize, you know, with brain injury and everything else, like I was gonna have to relearn how to learn. Like I was not capable of learning in the same way. And then I didn't know anything about going to college. Like I didn't know about like students with disabilities or any of this other stuff. I just showed up, got my books, and went to class and found myself just struggling immensely, um, which was something that was completely it was alien to me. I'd never been in an academic setting and just could not get it together. Uh, so I failed just miserably. Uh, and I'd kind of given up on it because you know I started businesses and nonprofits, like I can do valuable stuff. I don't need a degree to do anything that I'm doing. But it was just kind of this unchecked box. And then the past few years through the nonprofit work, we've been trying to engage with the college so we can engage with the younger veterans, right? We want to, you know, see what their needs are uh so we can make sure those needs are getting addressed when they step out into the community. And I just wasn't getting anywhere with it. So I was like, you know what, I still got education benefits left. Um I'll just go to school. I'll get to school, finish my degree. And now, you know, I've kind of figured out all those things that I hadn't figured out 10 years ago. So, you know, I'm pulling down the 4.0 average. Um political science track, I'm taking history and philosophy, which is all stuff I like, anyways. You know, I gotta suffer through like one math class, I'll get it done. You know, I'll get on the other side of it. But I can engage with the students. I'm part of the students, you know, the veterans club on campus. Um, I meet students that are veterans all the time because I I wear it, I'm out. I'm out there, I got the stars and stripes kicks on, I got my veteran club shirt on. You know, I get into a room, I see a young guy kind of rocking, still kind of rocking a high and tight, and I'm kind of like, yeah, what's up, bud? You see that you or you see that telltale tattoo on their on the forearm, and I'm like, When'd you get out? You know, it just because I want to engage with these younger vets, because I want to know what their needs are. What are they looking for when they get out in the community? Because if there's not an organization out there that's providing that or or taking care of that, if I can't find somebody that's doing it, I'll start it. I'll start it, build it up, put them, put all the stuff in place, find somebody that to get in there and wants to run with it and let them go. You know, I again it's just I that's that was my whole motivation for going back. And plus my wife says, I don't know if you can you kind of off camera. So like my wife's got a master's degree, and she's outpacing me. She's outpacing me on that side of things ridiculously, and I just can't have it. I gotta have at least at least one piece of paper in my name hanging on it around here.

Gary Wise 2:05:10

No, I I I admire it and I think it's important. I I did education my entire career, I didn't do it because I cared about education. I did it because I was trying to make rank, right? I was trying to be competitive with my peer group, and that was one of the ways you could be competitive. But for my son who's gonna go to CF, and we were in that veterans organization, we were in that veteran's office literally last week because he's going from now dual enrollment to being a no-kidding going to school using my benefits. And we were in that that office trying to understand how here he is, my son, who I drug all around the world as a military dependent, now gets to go to college because of my benefits, right? And I and they took they were taking good care of him, but like he was like he was me. And I appreciated that because that's kind of what I hope for, right?

Chad Walker 2:05:59

Right. That's the crazy part with mine. With my older three, I had to set up between my benefits and other other things we'd done that they could I expect all three of them to go to college. You know, I said, look, you do your job in high school, you take care of your schoolwork. When you go to college, you'll go to school debt-free. You'll never have to incur any debt for school. That's my promise to you. Um, and my oldest went to went to school. She went to St. Leo uh for education. Uh, she wanted to be a teacher like her mom. And uh then my younger daughter came up and she's like, Dad, I'm going to the Navy. So I was like, okay, well, um, have you thought about the Air Force? So um, but uh so she joined, and then my son, who is like the he's smarter than I ever was. Right. Um he I took him to UF, I took him to the swamp. We did the tour, and we're standing there in the swamp, and I'm just like, yeah, you look ready for this, bud? And he looks at me, he's like, I'm starting feeling that I don't think I don't think it's for me. I was like, what are you talking about? Like, you are like pretty much a genius. Why how how are you not gonna go to it's like I think I was running the Navy like Caroline did? And I said, Okay, I can't be mad at that. Um, let's talk about it. And uh, so he's the nuke. So he's uh he's in he's in nuke school right now. He's about to finish, he took his comp test uh just yesterday, I think. And um so he's about to graduate. The star all the star paperwork is signed. He's um he's gonna be cash flush and an E5 here in about two months.

Gary Wise 2:07:39

What flavor is he gonna be an MM, an EM, or an ET?

Chad Walker 2:07:43

He's an EM.

Gary Wise 2:07:45

Is he going surface or submarine? Surface aircraft carriers, got it. Hey man, I love nukes, just so you know. Like they're a little weird their first couple of years, but they age out of it. They age out of it.

Chad Walker 2:07:59

So he's been he's one of those that's like um I said like he I've always said like with the the technical ratings, so nuke is like the most spastic typically, then like it trickles down to ET, but then you get like into your FCs, they're like they're smart, but they have social skills, yeah, and that's kind of how it goes. So, like my son, you know, he played football, he ran track, you know, he loves to hunt, you know, he loves his truck, you know. Like so he got to nuke school, and these kids that are like freaking out over stuff, and he's just kind of like, Dad, these guys are stressed out like all the time. I don't get it. I raised my kids, like, look, first of all, don't ever worry about what other people think. When we're sitting at this dinner table, look around, and the only people in this world whose opinions matter are sitting around this table right now. Everything else is just noise. So don't worry about what anybody else has to say or think. Focus on you and take care of the people at this table, and you're gonna be all right until you have your own table, and then you take care of the people at that table. That it's that simple. You don't have to complicate it with extra stuff. And so he's um he's really pushed the boundaries. So the nukes have this thing where they don't let anybody get a 4-0. Um, and he's gotten a 396, a 397, a 398, um, and they just won't they won't let you get a 4-0. So he's uh but he's he's gonna graduate, he's gonna go to the fleet. We're anxious to see where his orders are because you know there's only so many carriers, right?

Gary Wise 2:09:34

There's only so many carriers, but there is one in Japan, right? And and and I was I I did I was on board the USS George Washington up in Yokusuka, Japan. I was on her 2010, 2013. But I just I would tell you that it he's gonna love it. You know, the aircraft carrier is an amazing, it's an amazing place to work, right? It's such a cool team to be a part of. And by the way, not only is his whole team gonna have all the best training in the world, but they're gonna have all the best tools, all the best, you know, they're not gonna be like those of us that run LSDs, right? That are like duct taping crap together trying to get it to work right, you know. I I was a Steam, I was a regular snipe that went to an aircraft carrier and I had to learn how to do things the right way. And there was a steep learning curve because the submariners and the nukes and the carriers are in a whole different level, right? But I learned so much from those guys that made me such a better human being for all of my time after my carrier tour, right? Especially when I became a command master chief, the critical thinking skills alone, because those guys they just love to pick things apart, man. They will they will beat a dead horse until it's flat, right? They will, and uh yeah, so uh he'll he'll be just fine, bro. I I'm I'm um please let me know what ship he gets, though. Looking forward to more about that.

Chad Walker 2:11:00

Oh well, yeah. I'm I'm proud of my kids, man. And now I've got three little grown and three littles again, so it's uh it's wild.

Gary Wise 2:11:09

That's awesome. All right, next question. Do you have a favorite movie series or TV series?

Chad Walker 2:11:15

Ooh, movie series or TV series. On TV right now, I I love the boys. Like I love that series. I've got kind of like that the whole uh science fiction, sci-fi, fantasy kind of stuff. Yeah, like the fact that you know the all the heroes are sociopaths, they flip the whole thing on its on its head. I find it intriguing.

Gary Wise 2:11:39

Have you ever watched that TV series, The Expanse? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chad Walker 2:11:44

I watched that one.

Gary Wise 2:11:44

I'm watching that right now. I'm like in season four right now, I'm crushing it.

Chad Walker 2:11:48

Yeah, it's it's trippy.

Gary Wise 2:11:49

It's a good one. I gotta watch the boys. I've seen the commercials for it, but I have not yet dove into it. So I gotta make that happen. Uh, would you rather be independent or On a teen. Got it. Would you have a personal leadership philosophy?

Chad Walker 2:12:14

The one I always come back to, it always comes across as corny. I never mean it to be, but like I just I got married to it at an early part, and I just keep proving it over and over again is we rise by lifting others. I just I I just I live it. We rise by lifting others.

Gary Wise 2:12:31

Yeah, man, a rising tide lifts all ships, right? There you go. That's it. That's how it goes. Okay, so in the United States Navy, you talked about this earlier, our chief petty officer's mess. Uh, we have some principles that we follow. We have a deck plate leadership, we have institutional technical expertise, professionalism. And I don't mean professionalism like creased uniforms. I mean like you literally care about what you do. It's your freaking profession, right? You're you're the best tech on your equipment, you're the best, you whatever your thing is, it's not just having shiny shoes. I think we sometimes people forget about they think professional is just how you kind of act. Well, I mean, that's a piece of it, but it's also do you take your profession seriously? So we have that character, right? Loyalty, active communication, and then a sense of heritage. Uh, out of those principles, which one of those most resonates with you?

Chad Walker 2:13:28

Character. Character. I just if if you don't have it, nothing you're a part of is gonna work. I just you know, I I I ran across that with one of my early work interviews because he was that guy. He creased his coverall. Like boots or like glass, and his equipment was trash. And and he would lay it off on anybody, it was always somebody else's problem. Um, and I had an OG red stripe 20 plus year chief that uh said, I think uh you boys need to work this out.

Gary Wise 2:14:14

I'm sure that guy was chapping his ass, man. I'm I'm sure that guy was just chapping his ass. He was probably more than happy to let you guys work it out. He was, I'm sure he was, and sometimes people need to get it worked out on them, right? Sometimes they gotta learn.

Chad Walker 2:14:28

Hey, dog the door, let's work it out.

Gary Wise 2:14:30

That's it, dog the door, let's work it out.

Chad Walker 2:14:32

I think the navy's missing that these days, from what I hear.

Gary Wise 2:14:35

Um, I will tell you that it is I retired in 2022 for a few different reasons, but one was I was very, very, very frustrated with how much we backslid during that period in time, right? And I was the Naval Base Guam Command Master Chief all during COVID, so I ran all that COVID crap from the Theodore Roosevelt to all that. And while operationally there was a lot of fun, I will tell you, just looking around and the climate and the way everything was going, I could not bet that we were gonna get it fixed, right? Well, thank God we did. Thank God we did, like we got the right people in the room, I believe, to start fixing things and to get people back out there to start fixing. But I will tell you, after um the first time President Trump got elected, I was out there in the Pacific Theater. I'm a Pacific guy, right? But I but the difference was I was a command master chief at that point, right? So I was actually in the rooms and I saw how much progress we were making against our near peer average, or you know, our adversaries in that theater, and then to watch all that freaking progress just get swiped away was just embarrassing, right? And it was hard. I that was I I looked at my family, I looked, I looked at my wife, I looked at my sons, and I said, you know what, I think it's time for us to just go find somewhere else to call home and move on with this phase two, right? But I also was I knew I wanted to become a high school ROTC instructor, I knew I wanted my son, my older son, God, he's been to so many schools. So I knew I wanted to find him a home that he could call, you know, make friends that he could actually have for hopefully for the rest of his life and and have somewhere that he can have a connection to because I was always nervous he was gonna grow up and leave and not have any connection to the place I was living at, right? Because he never lived there with me, you know, and so I had all those concerns, but I will tell you if it was kind of going the way it's going now, I might never ever retire, right? Truth be told, right? Truth be told, because there was a lot of complications out there. I will there are still some strong leaders out there, but for a for a period of time there, it was tough. Man, when you're sitting in a room full of war fighters, or we're getting training about gender identification and orientation, you're just like, Are you serious? You got like the main leaders of this whole area in this room, and we're getting literally preached to like in the chapel, like, stop, bro. Let me out, let me out, let me out now. This can't be what America's like. And then I got back home and I was like, Oh my god, Ocala's amazing. I'm gonna go these kids are freaking awesome. The football players are tough, like they'll yeah, they'll go out there and hit each other hard. Like, okay, we're not lost as a society.

Chad Walker 2:17:28

It's just yeah, I think that's one of the things I think I love them. You know, that O'Cala really does still represent. Like, if you like if you're a patriot, like and you love your country, you're gonna be surrounded by predominantly like-minded people here. Yeah, you know, I love it here.

Gary Wise 2:17:44

What I what I love about it is when you go to the first of all, you go to the school, you'll see all these kids getting along, right? So don't believe the narrative that people aren't getting along, because if you go to the high school, they're all getting along, right? And then if you go to the football game on Friday nights, you can tell who what the hell was a high school with who, because they're all seeing each other and they all they they may not hang out together every day, but their kids are all going to school together. And right, I want to grow old sitting on those bleachers on Friday nights watching football games and have people say, Hey, Master Chief, good to see you. You know, like someday my kids that I taught will have kids, right? And they'll be out there, and that that's the part that gives me so much hope. And you kind of lose sight of that when you watch the news too much because you start to think of you know, at least for me for a while there, I was my first two years after retirement. I did not watch nothing news related, bro. Nothing. I turned, yeah, I cut it all off. Man, I was so so so disenfranched, I was so over it all just because I knew again, I knew what was happening out in the world, and then what they were talking about on TV was not anything that mattered, right? Yeah, um, but now I'm I'm super optimistic for those guys out there. I keep my foot to the I I got a lot of friends that are out there doing things, and my buddy, as a matter of fact, was I got the buddies, the CMC of the ships that was going through uh the straits today, right? Yeah, and talk about a crew that had to be freaking fired up, right?

Chad Walker 2:19:18

My daughter got her combat action ribbon, she was in the Red Sea just a few months ago, bro.

Gary Wise 2:19:22

Yeah, oh yeah, the Navy's been getting it, the Navy's been getting busy, and this is what um a conflict on this side of the world looks like, and and let's pray through strength we never have a conflict on the other side of the world because that will look completely different, and I don't ever want to see it, right? But yeah, I and I'm also very grateful that we've hopefully almost got this one behind us, and it went so freaking amazingly well because all the other times I've talked about it before with other people, and then when we've we've kind of played it out, it didn't go nowhere near as good as it went because I think those leaders were freaking incredible, right? Yeah, but we're not done yet, we're not done yet. Um, but I'm not gonna do that.

Chad Walker 2:20:07

But I it definitely had much more of a storm and Norman Gulf War vibe in those early days when we we decided we were gonna go, we went. There was no hesitation, we went all in.

Gary Wise 2:20:18

Oh, yeah. No, we were taking we were knocking off chins, bro. We were knocking off chins, and I and I think it was just so strategic the way they did things, the way they leveraged technology because that's the other thing that's different in the world, right? Yeah, um, cyber has changed the game, space force has changed the game, and I think we finally we let people recognize how far behind they really are, yeah, right? So for for me, that was the bat signal that just sell told everybody on the other side of the world that you thought you were gonna be ready for us because you built a bunch of ships. No, bro, it's not about just having no bro, our joint force is freaking incredible, and we can just you know, and so I'm very, very proud of all those guys. Uh, all right, last question would you rather lead or would you rather follow?

Chad Walker 2:21:13

If I've got a great leader in front of me, I'll follow. But if they're not there, I'll step up. That's just me, man.

Final Thanks And Subscribe

Gary Wise 2:21:20

Like, I love it, man. All right, bro. Do you have any saved rounds or alibis?

Chad Walker 2:21:26

Nah, I'm open book, brother.

Gary Wise 2:21:28

All right, man. Hey, dude, chat. I appreciate your time, appreciate you sharing your story. I appreciate everything you're doing from vet net from out there working with Cadre, from working with vets helping vets, uh, being involved in the Ocala community, taking the time to write the words of hey, just everybody recognize this is what's going on, think about this. I read all that stuff, right? I and and I take it because I want to I want to try to explain it to my students who are citizens of this community too, are gonna be the future adults and maybe future veterans that are gonna come back to O'Cala. So keep it up, bro. And if there's ever any way I can be an asset or an ally, you know, give me a call, plug me in, and I'm still looking for a veteran home. I gotta figure that part out. I gotta come see me, brother. Come see me. I will, I gotta figure out how to make that work, yes, sir. All right, brother. Everybody, if you like what we're talking about, please do not uh stop here, check out all the other episodes, and like and subscribe. All right, bro. I'll talk to you later, man.

Chad Walker 2:22:30

Appreciate you, brother.

Gary Wise 2:22:31

Yes, sir. Bye.