Eric Mann

In this episode of Unreasonable, Josh Martino sits down with Eric Mann, President and CEO of the First Coast YMCA, whose 45-year career has been shaped by a commitment to service, mentorship, and community-building. Growing up in rural Georgia during the era of school desegregation, Mann reflects on the profound influence of his parents—particularly his mother, a teacher and civic leader—and the coach who instilled in him the discipline, resilience, and belief that would guide his future. From an unexpected YMCA internship that began with little more than a mileage reimbursement to leadership roles across the country, Mann shares how relationships, integrity, and a passion for helping others became the foundation of his life's work. He also discusses his impact on Jacksonville, including leading the transformation of the Winston Family YMCA along the St. Johns River, partnering with community leaders to launch Together Against Hate, and helping modernize and expand the Jacksonville Civic Council to better reflect the city’s future. Across every chapter of his journey, Mann returns to a central belief: that lasting progress comes from bringing people together, investing in the next generation, and having the courage to pursue ambitious goals even when others doubt they can be achieved.

Full video on YouTube.com/@UnreasonableJacksonville

Host: Josh Martino

Video and Audio Production: Nimble Creative Services

Artwork: Basis

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Welcome to Unreasonable, put on by the Jacksonville Civic Council. Interesting interviews from Jacksonville's most iconic entrepreneurs, CEOs, and wonderful success stories. They do things that are unexpected, unreasonably, in order to make their own change. In each episode, you'll meet passionate change makers who are rewriting the rules and daring to dream bigger for their community and our city. My hope that their stories ignite something in you, that you'll be inspired to reimagine what's possible and lead with purpose in your work, your life, and right here in Jacksonville. You're gonna really be inspired. Welcome to another episode of Unreasonable. I'm Josh Martino, a member of the Civic Council, and your host. Our guest today is Eric Mann, president and CEO of the First Coast YMCA. Eric has dedicated the majority of his career to community health, youth development, and civic engagement. He brings a blend of compassion, strategy, and vision to not only his role at the Y, but to Jacksonville as well. Today we'll explore his personal journey, leadership philosophy, the civic impact of his work, and times he had to be unreasonable in order to achieve his goals. Eric, welcome to Unreasonable.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Good morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

It's good to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Thank you. Thank you. I'm I'm somewhat nervous, but I I think I'll get through it. I have that effect on people, I've been told.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Uh we'll start at the beginning. So you grew up during the 1960s in Somerville, Georgia. I'm a Georgia boy as well, a town of less than 5,000 people that sits in the Appalachian foothills northwest of Atlanta. You had an extraordinary mother and a very hardworking father. Tell me about the influence your parents had on your life and uh what childhood was like back then.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Well, it was Georgia. I was born in 59, so it was the 60s. And um growing up in a small town, I didn't know it was a small town because I'd never obviously been anywhere else. So um it was the county seat, if you and so I was um grew up in a household of hard workers. My my dad was a a plumbing contractor and um went out every day as a plumber. And um he had a high school degree, but he he was a laborer and he was really good with his hands and machines and things of that nature. My mom was a school teacher. And uh my mom was the the head of the household per se. Uh she was she was uh disciplinarian. Uh she was from the value standpoint I learned about servant leadership and and but you're just watching it every day because you're it's your mother. But then you grow up and you figure out, wow, this is and I learned that in terms of um how to treat people, um integrity, um servant leadership. Um my mom was that lady, and I'm pretty sure every community has it, but in our small community, um being African American, she was a teacher, and so uh my mom was doing everybody's taxes, and and she was doing um refund check loans before it was popular because she would do their taxes and then they'd come and borrow money till their check came back. Right. And um she was always doing that, she was always helping people, and any politician who wanted who's running for mayor or city council or share, it pretty much had to come through my mom in terms of endorsement for the black community. And so I watched that but didn't realize what was going on. And um, so she was civically engaged, and but the values of how to treat people and the value of education. My sister and I at an early age knew we were going to go to college. We didn't know what for, but we knew that education was very important, and um that would get us to that next level that she saw for her kids. And I think most parents want their kids to do better than they have. And so um my mother and my father both supported education and uh were fierce, not only for us, but for the community around us. So then, you know, you had uh the the village really did raise you, and so um I can tell a story when segregation uh ended, I moved from my community school, which was all black, two classrooms, to a um all-white school district in which my mother taught in. And um it was tough. It was tough because I think it was like five blacks in the whole school district. Wow. And as a third grader, it it was very tough. The school teachers knew my mother, right? So I was I was not a happy kid. And so I fought a lot.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Yeah, I mean the South the South was still segregated in those days, and and playing little league baseball or swimming in a public pool was restricted. Um, you know, when did you realize? I think you said third grade, that you realized that the world around you was was different for the black community.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Well, uh education, especially. When we went to this other school district, um I was I was mad because uh I didn't have any friends there. And I I was it was tough that first year. I fought quite a bit. That was one side of it because the teachers would call my mother, and so I I would get a paddling at school. They would tell her I'd get another one. Then my dad came home from work at night, I got another one. So I was averaging about three a day for a little while. Uh but it it uh it taught me one by education. So I I really I think the foundation of of my education really happened during that process. And I had a third grade teacher, Ms. Smith, who kind of took me under her wing uh and kept me as much as she could out of trouble, but from an education standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

You had a high school coach that took you under his wing and mentored you. And tell us about that experience, how important that was for you, and why that's led you to have a passion for mentoring others.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Well, the elementary experience, I started playing sports, and then I and I was pretty good. I started seeing how people reacted to me as an athlete. And they act they reacted differently. And so I was competing against my hometown kid, my friends. So I I'm one of two blacks on the football team or the basketball team, playing against my friends that are my neighbors in a different school district. So um I get to time to go to high school, my local high school recruited me from this other district. So now I go to uh the high school where I lived, and um the coach, Coach Wendell is his name, buddy Wendell. He um I was a quarterback. I had a great, I had a really good arm, I I could run, I could throw, and so they recruited me back, and I was uh free safety and a quarterback. But he he taught me about hard work. I mean, he he was like, you can be as good as you want to, but you're gonna have to work at it. You got to work hard at it. And so he taught me about hard work, he taught me about uh continuing the education side. He was he was he said, you have a chance to go to go to college in a small division three kind of deal, but you have to have the grades, but you also have to have the discipline uh to stay out of trouble. I mean, that's really uh part of what he did. He was he talked about education, hard work, but also how to avoid those pitfalls that a lot of kids back then fell into, whether it's um having children at an early age as a teenager or the drug side of it, the whole all the things that get a lot of young men, uh and young women, but young men during that time, they get stuck and make bad decisions.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

You know, with mentors, it takes it takes trust and a lot of earned trust. So what was it about this coach, this special person in your life? Um, was it the timing? Was it their role in your life? Was it, you know, I'm I'm good at this, and and this person's really helping me get further. What was the trust that was built to allow you to take in that mentorship? It was consistency and it was discipline.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

It it was discipline. He was he was very tough, and we practiced hard. I mean, our our school practiced very hard, and um, but it was Georgia. And so I I think in his eyes, being the first black quarterback in this community was a big deal. And he was the coach. And so his discipline, he understood what discipline would do in terms of not only on the football field, but also outside of football. And so he wasn't afraid to challenge. He he wasn't afraid to call me and the other players out, but from myself, that discipline of working hard and uh really understanding the whole circle of what you need to do to be um a productive person as well as a good athlete. Um and he I ended up going to Mars Hill University because of him. He was a graduate of that school. And so um that's how I ended up there. And uh great guy. Uh I still he's he still lives there. Oh wow, he's older, but he when I was um Mars Hill named me alumni of the year back in 22, his letter, he had one he they contacted, he did a letter uh that's talking about that experience that I had back when I was in high school.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

So all those years later, you read that letter. How much does that impact you? What kind of emotions does that stir up? Because, you know, I know what it is um to to have an opportunity created for me by people I consider to be mentors, and the desire to prove them right and have an impact on, you know, their their ability to mentor others um and what it means to to be successful in the opportunities I've been given. So all those years later you read this letter, I mean, did it just hit you like a brick?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

You know, one of the things, Josh, is you don't realize a lot of these um impacts, because at that age you're not thinking about impacts. But now I look back whether it's disciplined my mom and dad and uh coach Coach Wendell's mentor and shit. I look back at it and it's like, wow, they were they were being intentional when I thought it was just everyday kind of thing. It really wasn't. I think uh that's the part that I look back and and I'm most proud of that I had people around me. There's a lot of people around me growing up, including my parents who were your baseline role models, but other people in the community, and coach was one of them that fed into me. And as I grew older, I started to understand and see, okay, that's why. That's why. Right. That's why. But at the time you're kind of like, yeah, you know, uh you're That's just coach.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

That's just coach. Yeah. Yeah, that's just coach. I get it. Well, hey, so recently you announced that after 45 years of YMCA leadership across seven cities and 14 years as CEO of the first Coast Y, you're retiring. But before we get to that, let's go back to the beginning. When did you know the YMCA was going to be your life's work? And how did a mileage reimbursement perk lure you to the why to begin with?

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Well, um, it took a while for the for me to get to the point the why would be a career. So I attended Mars Hill, which was college, Marseille College then, that's Mars Hill University. But um I started as an accounting major and I did accounting for the first year, and I'm like, man, I can't do this. Yeah. And I always I grew up wanting to be uh a coach. So I figured I would be a teacher, coach football or baseball or basketball, and go back home somewhere around there and work, you know. That was kind of my that's what I knew. Um and then I switched my majors to recreation and then a minor in psychology. Part of that is I had to do an internship for a semester. Uh I sent out my resume to five, I think it's five or four organizations, the YMCA, Parks and Rec, Boys and Girls Club, and the Jewish Community Center. So a lot of synergies there. Yes. Yeah. And so I sent the resume out because who doesn't want free labor for four months, right? And so uh they all said yes. And but the the Y gave me 50 cents a mile reimbursement. And you can imagine in college driving, if you know Asheville and Mars Hill, it's about 15 miles. Yeah. So about 30 miles, I'm like, cool, I could get some gas money, have some money, buy some pizza. At least it was something. Yeah, right. It was it was better. So that's how I ended up at the why. I didn't grow up with the why. I didn't I didn't know the why at all uh where I grew up. And so there was no why. The closest why was in Rome. And I remember they didn't they didn't allow blacks in it. So I didn't have a I didn't have a history with O YMCA. And so I go into the internship at a nun facility uh at a church, and uh it was in the black community in Asheville. And um after I enjoyed it, you know, I started like a day camp program. I started after school, I did fitness classes. Part of my major, I had to get a WSI, so I I knew swim, so I did swim lessons, and at the end of my internship, I was graduating, and this conversation is really funny. So it wasn't any cell phones. So I'm talking to my parents about coming to graduation. And they were like, you know, what are you gonna do after graduation? I was like, well, I think I'll come back home, uh, umpire some baseball games and make some money, kind of take it easy, and then send out some resumes in in August to September. And I I heard my dad in the background say, What about that place you've been working for free? And uh mother said, Yeah, what about? I said, Yeah, they offer me a job, but it's a $5 an hour youth worker. It wasn't a director job. So I'm thinking I've been to college four years, I'm gonna get out and get a real job. I need to be at a certain level. Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Well, uh, they said, Well, we thank you all to take that job. Basically they said, Don't come home. And so I took the job. Uh, it was the good thing about it, it offered benefits. Yeah. So, but I took the job in Asheville. Um for some reason I've always been able to attract and people around me by not intentionally, but um some people would call me a Pied Piper. So the programs we started, all you know, all these things just would happen. And so I like what I was doing. I was working with kids, working around sports, uh, just you know, at 20 and 21 years old. So that's how I started. Really, how my first director job came as a result of uh the New Haven Central Y in Connecticut. Yep. They tried to recruit my boss. And my boss told them, you know, no, I'm not the person you want. Uh, because he was a he was going to be a branch executive. He said, You really want someone I have working with me. So he recommended me as a youth director. Wow. And so um that's how I ended up going to New Haven for the interview, and that's how I got my first director job. And one of the things in my this journey as we go through the why is all of them have one thing in common. I had never been to the communities before I moved there. I didn't know anybody, and I didn't have any relevant anything about so you gotta imagine 1981, leaving the South. I had never been anywhere north of DC. Yeah, New Haven's pretty different.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

College town, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, it is a college town. So I take off, everything I owned was in my car. I go to New Haven. And it was a culture shock, to say the least. A culture shock. Again, another one of those seminal moments where, you know, I grew up in the South, you're either white or black. There was no ethnic. Yeah. You know, I didn't know anybody in Jewish. I'm pretty sure we have Jewish people that's not revealed, but I didn't know them. And so you get up there and you're Irish, you're Puerto Rican, you're Catholic, you're Italian, you're Jewish. All this, and I have just, it just opened my eyes, but you have to learn how to navigate all this newness. Um some of the people used to call me Country Time because I had a southern accent. So uh good nigga. But I I progressed through the Y, uh, got uh to the level of senior program director and got a call to come look at a job in Los Angeles four years later.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Sounds like a reasonable path. You know, Somerville, Asheville, New Haven, Connecticut, LA, and then I know Pittsburgh and Jacksonville. Cincinnati. Cincinnati. Yeah, several cities that, you know, I think what what's resonating with me about the story is, you know, what the why represents. There are pieces of your mother's influence in there, being an educator and how she was perceived and affecting youth, um, your coach, mentoring people, affecting youth, um, and changing people's stars, you know, whether that's your goal with every every intentional thing that you do, but it is the, you know, that's the result. And it sounds like it started to feel pretty good for you, and you were recognizing that it was in you this whole time. Like you said, I didn't realize it at the time when you were a kid, but these values that were instilled in you were now starting to manifest as a career, a career that you were really good at, and that you were being sought after by wives across the country.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah, and it's really about relationships, Josh. I would say that um and values of treating people genuinely the way you want to be treated, communicating that to them regardless of where they are, who who they are. I've I've never been afraid of communicating to someone who supposedly at a higher level. And so all through these journeys, um, you know, I just I learned how to play golf in New Haven. Never played it in my life. And someone said, Eric, you know, if you want to grow in any business, golf is a game that will afford you not to be left out with the important people. Yeah that's literally what they said. And my first golf swing, golf, I played at Yale, Yale Golf Club, and I borrowed some clubs and went out there at a golf outing. And so the relationships with that, and also under starting to understand how you can grow in a career that's really around people and having a comfort and success around building strong relationships. Um that's that's where it started, but I still didn't understand it. You know, God had a plan for me, but I didn't realize it.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

You know, so speaking of impact, a specific incident in 2023. Um, anti-Semitic messages were projected onto downtown Jacksonville buildings. And you teamed up with Adam Chaskin of the Jewish Community Alliance to begin an initiative called Together Against Hate, promoting unity in our community. What was the impetus uh to make this effort, and how important was it to use your platform at the Y uh to amplify the support?

SPEAKER_01 22:01

It's interesting. It's uh the Y has uh has three pillars, uh youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. And part of that is in each one of those pillars, we we do a lot of things inside there that really helps us guide in how we go about our work. So social responsibility is one that there's no prescription of what's inside that pillar. So wise are able to create what they believe is their social responsibility. For us, uh, our social responsibility is to get outside our normal offerings and be part of the overall community. And therefore, issues that affect the overall community community, we want to be a part of the solutions for that. So it really started with that as a baseline, but it really started with uh Adam and I, our relationship. So Adam moves from Albany, New York, yeah, and he had had a relationship with the Y MCA in Albany. I know the CEO, and he had told him when you go to Jacksonville, call up Eric Mann. So Adam calls me, we meet, and we develop a relationship of peers. And so a lot of things in common, but uh, so that's how that's how it started. So Adam and I knew each other a couple of years. We had done some things together, our organization. So there was a baseline of trust. So there was a visual down here at the park, downtown from right across from City Hall, uh, a candlelight deal based on those issues that were happening. And so I'm there. Uh I see Adam across the way. We just come up and, you know, hey, done, we say this is some crazy stuff, and Jacksonville's going the wrong direction with this and this return, this particular issue. And we just said, man, we should we should get together and talk about how our organizations can come together uh to help help fight hate. That's really cool. And so that's that's really how it started. And uh meeting right here in this room, his staff team, him and myself with two or three of our, we sat down and started talking about a a 5K race against hate in February. And what then turned out the staff took it and said, okay, we should create a series out of this. And so Adam and I were just uh, I would say the because of our roles, we really empowered this, the team to create more than just the 5K run or race, but let's create, let's take this opportunity to create something that has legs that educates the community about. And so that's really how it started. It was it was just the the vision of helping.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

This podcast is titled Unreasonable, uh, because of the George Bernard Shaw quote that Gary loves so much. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, and the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. How does that apply to you? And what's the most unreasonable thing people say that you've done in your life besides this podcast?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

I was asked to come to Jacksonville to work with the Y. One of the key things that uh the search committee and the and the board wanted to do was to replace the old riverside Y. And so uh I get here, start learning the community, listening, talking, and you know, we create this, we got this property on the river. So we create this this new Y that happens to be 72,000 square feet on the river. And then 2013, it was going to cost 20 million dollars. And I'll tell the story with one of um one of Jacksonville's heroes, uh, was Jim Wilson. And so I went meet with Jim, and Jim was a huge advocate for activating the river, the why. Then uh, you know, he he would always talk about the why needs to be what sparks the growth of Riverside. And um and so I I remember going to his office and showing him the plans, and he was like, man, this looks great, and da-da-da. And he says, Well, how much? I said, 20 million dollars. And he looked at me, he says, We've never, the why's never raised 20 million dollars for an individual project. Eric, I'm not sure if it's gonna happen. And it was this the vision and the kind of the promise of what it could do for the community kind of drove, you know, and everybody I would talk to. And so you can imagine uh talking to the Jim Winston's and the John Bakers and the Rusty Newton's and the Peggy Bryant, all everybody who was involved on our board and getting them on board to take this significant challenge on. Um, but then slowly as we started making progress, uh, I remember going to Jim, and Jim was like, he'd already made his gift, and we were getting close, and he was like, Eric, I I didn't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

He says, I would have never thought that we would be able to pull off um raising the resources to do that. And so he gave some more dollars toward it at the end, but that was probably here in Jacksonville, one of them, along with having a great staff team and great board, that I believe changed the trajectory for our organization, but also showed that Riverside. Now you look at Riverside 13 years later, it's beautiful, it's unbelievable. Yeah. But the why was at the forefront of the beginning of a lot of that transformation.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

And so everything's impossible until it's done.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Until it's done. Until it's done. And so I, you know, it really wasn't about me, but it the the vision. I I will tell you a story about this is Jacksonville. When I was talking to community people about the potential of having a Y on the river. So I I was talking to a lady, older black lady, who was a member at Riverside, and I asked her, What does that mean? Because we were able to stay open at Riverside while Winston was being built. So there was about 12, 13 months where, and so this lady, she was probably in her 70s. She says, uh, I'm excited about it because um in Jacksonville, you've made it when you have a home on the river. And, you know, I'm like, okay, this is an older black lady from the north side. And I'm like, okay. And she says, now I have my piece of the river. And it really hit me when she said that. I was like, okay, they everybody sees this new why uh differently. Shared ownership. Shared ownership. And so that was, you know, I was like, okay, now I I get it even more so because again, if you walk into Winston, that's that's what we want Jacksonville.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

That shared ownership represents what it means to be a community.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

And you have you have someone who might be a cook at a restaurant on a treadmill next to a multi-millionaire. That's exactly right. And they are they are friends, they look forward to seeing each other when they go to the Y.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

So well, let's pivot to the Civic Council. You're the immediate past chair of the Jacksonville Civic Council, and during your tenure, um, you started making some big changes in how it operates. You sought greater transparency, created a long-term strategy, expanded and diversified the membership, and helped procure a dynamic professional staff. How and why was this the time for all of that to happen?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

This story is is another one that it wasn't intentional. I think that the individuals who helped recruit me to Jacksonville um felt like that the Civic Council, the why should be sitting at the table, that I should be sitting on the Civic Council, which at the time there were little or no nonprofit CEOs of a service delivery organization on the Civic Council. Um the hospitals were on the foundation, but not the why wasn't thought about. I'm I'm sure when that opportunity came and civic council said, do we want a Y CEO on the Civic Council? Because it was all business leaders from for-profit companies. And so um that was interesting, but then I I got involved and I was I think I ended up on the membership committee. Um, but it was also uh the why. Uh having the why around the table was a a first, and then younger African-American guy, and so I got involved like I do. If I'm gonna get on being there, I'm gonna get involved as the best way I can to help the organization. But when I was asked to be chair, it surprised me. It was surprised, it surprised me. And I had I had been involved and kind of I understand organizational development. So the civic council, you know, they were growing up. They started at baby steps with the non-group and then taking steps as an organization. And so I believe what people saw in me is that I deal with boards, uh, I understand strategic planning and execution and all and and bringing people together. And so I I have to believe that was uh some of the reasons they they sought me as as the chair. And then I watched because I was on the board during the time of the JEA stuff, and I I watched what the dynamics politically and uh understood kind of what was going on in this the role of the civic council and the potential of the impact the civic council could make on the community, but transparency had to be one of the things we dealt with. Because I I'd read the papers and they'd say this group of people that nobody knows is making secret handshake society, yeah. And so uh so that was one. I I believe the development of our strategic plan, not obviously it was critical at the time. And so we were fortunate uh to really get a uh probably a hundred people engaged in the process of developing our strategic plan. And um when it's not about me, not about it was more about okay, what does this organization want to be and how can it it really change Jacksonville? I I truly believe that the Civic Council is one of the organizations in the community that has the not only the capacity, but the potential to help take Jacksonville to the next level. And because of where I've in Pittsburgh and Charlotte, some of these cities, I had watched how cities have grown and when they were here. And so I lived in those communities at that time. So I was I had that perspective as well. And so um I I just took what has been successful with my work with the Y. And now it's the difference is you're working with a bunch of CEOs who are good people and rallying that group around one cause.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

And so, you know, the Civic Council's got this vision to make Jacksonville a world-class city, like you said, by 2032. I know I believe we can get there, and we we discuss often the things that we'll take to get there. What are your beliefs in how we get there or where we need to go from this moment right here?

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Aaron Powell I think we can one continue to go about bringing everybody into the tent and uh the execution of the plans, right? But it's also um you know, I believe the civic council doesn't have an agenda other than helping Jacksonville, yeah. Um but also bringing people in like yourself. So part of that transition was from um an older group, because we were at one time like twenty uh thirty members, now we're like a hundred. But the diversity is not only of uh kind of sectors, but it's also um age, experience. It goes with the transition of Jacksonville. Leadership has all of them have timings, right? And so people come through and they lead during their season. Well, I believe that we're bringing two seasons together, folks who have been leaders, who are still leaders, but they've been there a long time, but we're cultivating and bringing in the young next generation of leaders at the same time. And now we have this nexus of young leaders coming through, working with those leaders who've been around for a while in a the same direction. And that's what gives me hope for where we're going. Um, the other piece that I'm probably most excited about and and really want, I think it needs to happen is for all of our community to benefit from uh the prosperity of growth that we see in our community, not just now, but for 2032. It's you know, Jacksonville is a um, I think it's uh could be an example of a community that has really acknowledged what some of its weaknesses are, but at the same time are ready to address those and bring everybody together. And so that's that's another piece to uh why I'm involved. I believe there is an opportunity to have all the voices and all part of our community to grow and and prosper.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

It's a great place to conclude. I just want to say thanks. Um thanks for coming on. Uh and if it's true that the you know the quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your contribution, um, it's no wonder to see you living so well. Um and I know that Jacksonville is better because of your commitment to what you've done in this community uh for future generations. And I know I'm grateful, and I know so many others are grateful for what you've done for this city. So thank you and thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

You're welcome. It's uh it's kind of awkward to talk about that because your intentions are not that. You just do the work. You just and and so um if I had any small part in helping Jacksonville grow as a community and the impact. That's because of the people that are around me. No doubt that you have, so thanks again. Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

And thank you again for joining us on uh this episode of Unreasonable. We'll see you the next time. Thanks for joining us on Unreasonable. Look for us online, follow us on social media, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.