All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry and I'm really excited to have you here today.
You've got a kind of a mix and mash of programming that we're going to be presenting to you.
First off, we're going to be talking about a very dear friend of ours who recently passed
away and that is Guy Stern.
Guy passed away on December 7th at 101 years old.
And for those of you that are familiar with Veterans Radio, Guy was on our program a number
of times.
He was a participant in World War II.
He escaped the Holocaust, his family sent him out of Germany in 1935 and he came here
in America and ended up getting drafted.
That's kind of weird when you think about it.
But his story has been told and there's a film made about it called The Richie Boys
and I'll talk about that in just a second.
We're also going to be talking with Keith King of the NVBDC.
He's the CEO and kind of give us an update of what's going on there.
And then we're going to end the program with a short interview I just did recently with
a company called Leaf Home.
What Leaf Home does is they provide things like chairlifts and disabilities, safe bathrooms,
showers, and leaf guards, all kinds of different things.
But they have a program where they are giving away these in-home stairlifts.
So we're going to be talking with Nick Bussey on that in just a moment.
But first I want to make sure that we do thank all of our sponsors because we can't do this
program without them.
And first of all, we've got legal help for veterans.
Legal help for veterans specializes in veteran disability claims.
Give legal help for veterans a call at 800-69-34800.
The aforementioned National Veterans Business Development Council, better known as NVBDC,
the nation's leading third party authority for certification of veteran-owned businesses.
For more information, go to their website, NVBDC.org, or give them a call at 888-237-8433.
The Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center here in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
For more information, you can go to va.gov.
And Arbor Health Care.
Also I can't forget our local veterans organizations for their longtime support of us.
The Irwin Prescorps and American Legion Post-46 and the Charles S. Kettles Vietnam Veterans
of America Chapter 310, both of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
And of course, you, our listeners, we want to thank you so very, very much for your support
over the last 20 years as we are coming up to the end of 2023.
And let's see, what have we done?
A little over a thousand programs, and we hope to get another thousand in there as we
continue into the future.
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That's all we're asking for right now.
Of course, you can feel free to donate more if you'd like to, but 20 bucks for 20 years,
please.
We do need your help on that.
So let me get right into this first interview.
Guy Stern, this was done in originally in 2021.
And we talked with Guy back in 2011, I think it was, as I mentioned before, he was part
of the Richie Boys.
And the Richie Boys were German immigrants who had been drafted and they ended up being
interpreters and interrogators back in Europe.
And so Guy went into World War II, went in on D-Day and finished out his thing there.
But this guy's got a great background.
I'll tell you here more about him, though.
So we're going to go right to that right now.
So here we are.
This is a, I had the opportunity to talk with Guy and here it is.
And my guest today is Guy Stern.
And let me talk to you a little bit about Guy's background.
During World War II, the United States formed an elite intelligence unit of mostly German
Jewish academics at Camp Richie in Maryland.
Their job was to devise ways to break the morale of the SS and the German troops that
were captured.
These men were also often credited with bringing an early end to the war.
And one of those heroes is joining us right now.
And that is Guy Stern, who is a distinguished professor emeritus of German literature and
cultural history at Wayne State University.
He is one of these Richie boys.
And we're very fortunate today to have him back on Veterans Radio.
So Guy, welcome back.
Thank you.
It's good to be back once more.
It's nice to have you again.
As I mentioned when we were talking earlier, that the Richie boys were this group of soldiers
and so forth that almost all of them were from Europe at one point or another.
You mentioned earlier that some of them were also Americans that were fluent in German
and other languages.
How did you get involved with them and how did you get to America in the first place?
Okay.
My parents, seeing the growing restrictions and she cancery against Jews in Germany knew
that we had to get out of there.
When did you arrive in the United States?
I arrived in 1937.
And you were how old at that time?
I was 15 years old.
Okay.
So we've got you here now.
And you continued living in the States and you graduated high school in St. Louis, Missouri.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
And then entered St. Louis University.
Okay, and while you were at St. Louis University, the war broke out Pearl Harbor and you decided
to go down and enlist.
How did that go?
Yes.
The first step was I tried to enroll in naval intelligence, which was trying to recruit
people proficient in the language of our enemies and they found me competent, but they also
deficient in one quality.
I was not a native born American.
My accent betrayed me.
So they said, no, we can't take you because we only take American born soldiers.
And then, however, the draft came and they apparently were less choosy and let me in.
But it wasn't the Navy.
It was the Army, wasn't it?
It wasn't.
It was the Army.
But when you got drafted into the Army, you went through your basic training and the next
thing you know, you're on your way to some special place.
Where was that special place?
Yes.
I got my basic training at Camp Barkley, Texas, and then was transferred on orders that I
could not open immediately as Lieutenant told me.
But I found out quick enough I was headed for the military intelligence M-I-T-C training
camp and that started me on my career as a interrogator and interpreter of German written
material or printed material that I was able to get a hold of.
Well, one of the things that I learned about the Richie Boys for our listening audience
is a great documentary out there called The Richie Boys.
You can find it on YouTube and other places.
And Guy was a participant in that along with a number of his other buddies.
It's really a nice way of telling your story.
And the training was very intense there at Camp Richie.
And you were actually, they called it, you guys kind of renamed it to military Institute
of Total Confusion.
That is correct.
We had a sense of humor.
That is true.
So can you tell me a little bit about what your training involved?
Yes.
It was every aspect of intelligence work, ranging from the Morse code to reading aerial maps,
drawing maps on very limited, confined to limited territory and learning some of the methods
of interrogating, of methods of looking for hints that appeared, say, by some chance,
got through the censor in German newspapers and to be very watchful for information that
would be of strategic or tactical value to our armed forces.
I was eventually put in charge of answering all the various increase that came from units
from the quartermaster to the medics to the artillery who wanted to have certain specified
information.
And it was our job.
I was, in fact, the head of the survey section, and we gathered all the information we could.
And as I found out later, by from an American historian of American intelligence, that more
than 60% of the valuable information needed for warfare came from the Ritchie boys.
We were decorated as a unit for that.
And yes, it was a good fight.
It was a good fight.
So after you were at Camp Ritchie and you were deployed, is the term, and ended up landing
on French soil at Normandy three days post initial invasion?
Is that correct?
That is correct.
Three days after, but of course we hadn't established more than a beachhead at that time.
How would you describe your feelings when you landed on Normandy?
Yes, the feelings as we were going on a PT boat were in our jeep that we had waterproofed
was as everybody else, whatever unit you belong to, we had fears and anxieties.
And so did I.
But in my case, two other anxieties came to the fore.
And one of them was that as a Jew, if captured, I did not think it would be a rosy future
for me in German captivity.
And the second private concern I had is that I was squeamish.
So if, let's say my mother cut her hand and when she was preparing a meal, I had to run
out of there because the side of blood really bothered me.
And so I thought that's not a good career, a characteristic coming ashore in on the bloody
shores of Normandy.
And but much to my surprise, the moment I set my foot on shore and saw some of the vestiges
of soldiers killed in battle.
I this whole concern went out the window.
And you got to you got to work right away.
Didn't you you mentioned that as soon as you hit the beach, somebody needed you to try
to interrogate somebody.
That is correct.
As I got ashore, I heard a familiar voice, one of our fellow soldiers who had arrived
in interrogate or where it arrived one or two days earlier than me shouted at me, Hey,
stern, get the heck over here, because we have too many prisoners.
I'm swamped.
I ran over there.
And a few minutes later, I was confronted by a German battle hardened artillery soldier
for my first interrogation.
I can only imagine how that felt.
Well, you know, the military, all your training kicks in, doesn't it?
Yes, all the training fell into place.
Camp Richie had superbly prepared us for what our assignment continued to be for the rest
of the war.
And when we're talking here with with guy Stern, who was one of the Richie boys and
he was sent back to Europe, he's originally from Germany, and he was sent back during
World War Two to act as an interrogator for captured German POWs.
So my question, I guess, is how long did you how long did it take you to get across France
or, you know, in back into Germany this June of 1944?
When did you finally get to Germany?
Well, I can pinpoint that, but any history book can tell us how we advanced through the
battle of Falaise-Argonton in France, how we went on through Belgium, finally got to
Germany, and that must have been maybe I can't specify, but it was quickly, it wasn't quickly.
So it was, and then we ended up in the setback by the Battle of the Bulge, the German counter
attack also, we had to retreat after that temporary defeat until our air force prevented
before by bad weather could help us and mash the German advances.
Yeah, and then you ended up back in Germany.
There is one story that you are well known for, and that is you're pretending to be a
Russian commissar.
And can you tell me how that came about and why would the Germans be afraid of you?
Yes, that's exactly was the premise that we could scare them in interrogation, which
otherwise they would see right through that we were trying to get vital information for
the air force on landmarks for targets on the movement of say one factory to another
place where we needed to locate it or the air force asked, we are not quite sure whether
we knocked out this factory completely.
Can you get some inside information from the prisoner?
So that all fell into place.
And I think the only real obstacle we had is when we used our various deceptive devices
to get information on ordinary questions that we asked, we could disguise the questions
so that the Germans would still would be tricked into answer giving away valuable information.
On the other hand, when we asked about stuff for the air force, an assignment that fell
to my friend Fred Howard, then the Germans could write through the sea through it.
Because why would you ask for landmarks to an optic factory or whether a factory had
real connections to the main system of tracks and they knew immediately we asked that for
the purpose of bombing them.
So they refused answering until we found a method of scaring them into answering.
And that was that we had known through the war that the Germans were deathly afraid of
being confined in a Russian pre-W camp because there were memories that they had of having
been rather brutal while attacking the Soviet Union. And so we found a way to exploit that
fear.
I after several we discussed all sorts of possibilities.
And then I disguised myself as a Russian commissar and my tent was was identified as that of
commissar Krukov, liaison officer that sign was in three languages.
And inside the tent, the Fred brought every prison there was a picture, an autographed
to commissar Krukov by comrade Stalin.
And some of them saw that.
So they really believed or many believed, in fact, most believed that we were able to
get a Russian there and that he would take them and ship them to the salt mines in Russia.
And that scared them or many of them sufficiently to give us even the information about your
first targets about landmarks and the like.
Well, you had you had to disguise yourself as this Russian commissar.
And the story of how you came up with your accent I found is interesting.
How did you do that?
Because that was my first of all my my I exchanged my GI uniform for those purposes by a Russian
uniform parts that came up in a fantasmagoric uniform.
And we exchanged that with Russian prisoners or liberated prisoners who got in exchange
some of our discard clothes.
And I put medals around that uniform that we took away from from memorabilia that the
Germans had hunted down and now had brought as trophies to them.
And so I was a medal behind soldier for the Russian cause.
And then the accent about which you asked that was a curious coincidence.
Every Sunday my aunt and uncle and I and their son and son and his occasional daughter listened
to a radio program by Eddie Cantor.
And he had a had a minor role for one of his actors who played the mad Russian and he had
found a way of suggesting a Russian accent in his English.
I did the same imitating him and put it into my German when interrogating the hapless
German who came to my attention.
I am sure that you scared them witless.
Let's put it that way.
The moment they came into my tent I was absolutely charging with anger at the particular prisoner
for any reason that I could find and that scared them even more.
And that's a new was a way we broke those prisoners frequently as well.
Not all of them.
But I want to point out to our audience that you mentioned that the the Richie boys always
adhere to the Geneva Convention.
You never touched a prisoner, never hit one or anything along those lines.
Yes we did not touch that was one of the first items of training at Camp Richie.
We have a convention.
They said we have a treaty among nations called the Geneva Convention that you can use pressure
but no ever corporal corporal real touching them or doing physical violence.
Okay and it's nice to know that we at least we adhere to that most of the time.
I think that's important.
When you were in Germany and the war finally ended were you able to go back to your hometown?
Yes I got special permission from my superior officer to go in my to my hometown in the
north of Germany.
And the reason he had to get clearance for that northern Germany or big parts of it were
under British occupation.
And so we got permission from the commandant in my particular city.
And so if a buddy of mine and I he had also relatives in northern Germany.
We could drive to Kildesheim and thereby I could go there and make inquiries about my
parents who unfortunately were lost in the Holocaust.
That is correct.
That's correct and that's kind of the the transition I wanted to go to is that the remainder
of our program today is going to be about the Holocaust Memorial here in Michigan and
I know that you are involved in it and I wanted you to tell our audience a little bit why
that particular organization is so important to you.
It is important to me because I admire the people who actually survived the camps even
the designated death camps and I admired them and I thought if I did any civic voluntary
service I could help and the Rabbi our founding Rabbi Rabbi Rosenzweig asked me to yes he
could use me first as liaison to universities.
I coming out of the war I continued my education and he then I got into various roles at his
early unfortunately early death I was put in as temporary director of the Holocaust Museum.
I've served in various capacities currently I have been assigned a very satisfying piece
of work and that is the so-called Institute of the Righteous which put differently is
both the spread of altruism the service to others who was to strangers as an ideal and
implanted in high schools as a worthwhile cause and secondly to find out what prompts
people to do this heroic and dangerous service helping the suppressed in despite orders from
the Nazi powers.
And I know that you're involved with the educational program that you mentioned when
we talked before about putting the Holocaust into the curriculum in all of Michigan's public
schools.
Yes I said that not about myself so much no not at all in at the moment but rather we
were given a very important assignment we meaning the Holocaust the staff of the Holocaust
Museum because about a year nine months ago the law was passed that Holocaust education
became compulsory in Michigan high schools and so we needed so Michigan needed new staff
or staff proficient in other disciplines but had to acquire the additional skill of being
proficient in teaching Holocaust history and service.
So that keeps me still connected and employed by the Holocaust Museum it also keeps me in
keeps my wife and me in bagels.
So I'm still an employee at a fairly advanced age of a highly respected organization.
Well you certainly are and Geistern I want to thank you very much for your patience and
for being on Veterans Radio again today and I want to make sure that you and your wife
stay safe and take care of yourselves I mean you're only 99 years young there's plenty
more to go right.
That's highly optimistic but what I still want to say is that the Holocaust Museum is
open again and has showed us that additional responsibility beyond being showing our exhibits
and thereby help meet or for informing the public what happened in the Holocaust.
We have a website and the anybody who wants to contact us and bring anybody with him or
himself that is important taking parts in our rounds of leadership by our docents who
take the people through the museum inform them and we are only too happy to serve as
that purpose and just call us and I'll be happy to help anybody who came as a result
of your fine program.
Okay well thank you very much Guy again and we've been talking with Geistern of the Holocaust
Museum here in Michigan and also his history and his story with the Richie Boys German immigrants
who ended up going back to Germany during World War II to act as interrogators again
I encourage you to go to watch their documentary on the Richie Boys there's also a number of
books out there about the Richie Boys I think you'll find them to be great stories about
great men and women in the service of their country so Guy thank you very much and we'll
be in touch again hopefully in the near future.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks again.
That interview was with Guy Stern from February of 2021 kind of sad and kind of ironic really
when you think about it that Guy was 101 years old and died on December 7th kind of appropriate
don't you think?
Well he is a true American and he will be missed by so many.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat given a member of the armed
forces of the United States.
There have been over 3400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Walter Ellers of his brother were in the first wave to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Details after this.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals contact legal help for
veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims.
Your number again 1-800-693-4800.
Staff Sergeant Ellers' brother was several hundred yards away on the beach and they didn't
see each other.
Ellers' unit ran into a decimated unit of Bangalore torpedo men and provided cover
for them as they used their explosives to blow a hole in the German fortifications.
This allowed an American break out.
On June 9th, Ellers' platoon came under heavy fire.
He climbed a hedge row and called his men to follow.
He spotted a German patrol and killed four of the enemy.
Ordering his men to fix bayonets and firing from his hip, he destroyed a machine gun nest.
He then attacked a second machine gun, killing three more.
The platoon moved out the next morning and came under intense fire from both sides.
The commander ordered a withdrawal.
Ellers realized that someone had to provide cover.
He motioned his automatic rifleman to follow him, scrambled to the top of a mound of earth
that provided a vantage point.
They began firing on the Germans, drawing fire away from the rest of the platoon.
Ellers was hit in the back, but was able to kill the sniper that shot him.
When his rifleman was wounded, Ellers dragged him to safety.
Ellers was treated at a field station and insisted on returning to action.
Unable to strap on a backpack, he strapped on two bandoliers of ammunition, picked up
a rifle, and went to find his men.
A month later, he was informed that his brother was killed on Omaha Beach.
Ellers was presented the Medal of Honor by Lieutenant General John Lee on December 19,
1944.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
This message is from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
If you were exposed to toxic substances in the military, a new law called the PACT Act
may make you eligible for extra benefits and care.
The PACT Act benefits veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf War, and post-911 eros.
Learn more at va.gov.
Call 1-800-MY-VA-411.
Coming up next is Jim Faustone's interview with NVVDC's founder and CEO, Keith King.
Here we go.
Welcome.
I am Jim Faustone, and this is a Veterans Radio spotlight on the National Veteran Business
Development Council, commonly known as NVVDC.org.
We have the opportunity today to talk to its CEO and founder, Keith King, about NVVDC, which
is the nation's leading third-party authority for certification of veteran-owned businesses,
really of all sizes.
This nonprofit started in 2013.
We're going to talk about some of the really amazing things that NVVDC has been able to
do here in 2023, validating what's been going on in this space.
Keith, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thank you, Jim.
It's good to be back.
Well, yeah, exactly.
You're coming off a great 2023 year with a couple of national events, one down in Louisville
in particular.
Talk about some of the cool things that you're able to do now with your NVVDC team and the
certified veteran-owned businesses and folks who are helping out.
One of the companies everybody knows.
Well, that company is, of course, one of our corporate supporters and what we call corporate
members.
We're talking about Denny's, in the sense of Denny's restaurants.
As the event was coming up, we were talking to them and we started brainstorming because
I laugh about it, but they asked me if I knew that they had a food truck.
Now, when somebody says food truck, I'm thinking one of these little food trucks.
Tacos and burgers, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, come on, big deal, really seriously.
And he goes, no, no, no.
We have an 18-wheeler.
We have a five-star restaurant inside the, I went, what?
In other words, the more we talked about it, it became a situation in which we were in
Louisville.
And just a little bit south of Louisville is a place that I knew very well back in 1969
because I did basic training at Fort Knox.
Anyways, General Miller reached out to the commanding officer down there and said, hey,
we can bring in Denny's, we hate to keep calling it a food truck, so we'll call it the
trailer.
We're going to bring in Denny's and serve the family's breakfast.
And they said, oh, we would love that.
And I got to tell you, anyone who's ever been in a restaurant, anybody who's ever seen
food being produced, I mean, those live on the spot cooking and they would cook it, pack
it into a go box and then hand it out.
We set it up to where it was like a drive-through.
But the people from that base, Fort Knox has kind of been turned into an education center.
And so we literally had people from all over the country.
We had people from all the different branches of the military.
And the news had spread.
And then, of course, once we started serving and people got the food, then the word really
spread because we ended up serving 975 meals to the active duty military on that base and
their children and their families.
And I mean, it was just such a great day.
It was just to walk and see the impact of that.
And Denny's had enough.
They had 200 people extra that we wouldn't deliver down to the Red Cross who immediately
started putting those to use.
So it was something that when we talk about the military, we talk about our vets, we start
talking about military families.
We had a chance to not only do that firsthand and see that.
It was a very heartwarming, very sophisticated program in the sense of how it was all handled.
And I got to tell you, we were looking forward to working with Denny's in our next national
event.
And this is the kind of things that we hope that people understand that, yes, we certify
veteran-owned businesses and they're disabled veteran-owned businesses.
But the impact of what we do and, frankly, what our corporations are now willing to do
with us and the ideas we share.
All I can tell you is that was one of the best days for us in to be able to sit back
and say, hey, thank you to a corporate partner and they did an outstanding job.
Absolutely.
And it's just really inspiring to see the results of this kind of networking.
It's the networking between, which is what NVBDC is so good at while it is a certifying
company entity, what it's really good at in my opinion is this networking you do with
your 175 corporate members and your over 2,000 certified veteran-owned businesses.
And it's that result, which is, hey Denny's, would you like to feed a bunch of military
service members and their families down by Fort Knox and you get them to say yes and
they show up with the semi-trailer full of sausage, hash browns and eggs for breakfast.
It's really, and I think there's a, I want your reaction to this.
My sense is there are a lot of companies out there who want to do more than just say,
thank you for your service.
And this is a good example of Denny saying, hey, we want to do more than just lip service.
We want to actually help people.
And is it your sense there's a lot of corporations out there who want to do more than just give
lip service?
Yeah, one of the things that, you know, we don't get a chance to talk about very often
is the employee resources groups at these corporations, which really is the veterans,
if you will, that were hired as employees.
And these, what they call employee resource groups, they pull all their veterans together.
And one of the things that we have been offering now for several years is for either myself
or General Miller to come in and sit down and talk to these groups about what are they
actually doing?
And can we plug in, use our networking experience to their efforts?
And I tell the story of we did this with one of the corporate resources groups, and there
were three homeless programs in their headquarters area.
And we introduced them to one of the houses that really kind of needed a lot of repair
work.
And, you know, when I was talking to them, I just asked them, hey, anybody knows how
to swing a hammer?
And they went, what?
I said, anybody know how to do a paintbrush?
You know, how about anybody know how to do a roof?
And you know, these guys said, oh my God, we're going to want to meet these people who
have been on talk to them.
They did.
And I call them about six months later, and all of a sudden that house became their house.
And I went, what?
Oh yeah, we don't let anybody touch our house.
What do you mean?
Yeah, they're invested.
They get invested in it.
Absolutely.
And that's where the networking is so important, which is what NVBDC does so well.
And we're talking to Keith King, who is the CEO and founder of NVBDC.
You can find it at NVBDC.org.
Right.
Here we are.
We're back here on Veterans Radio.
And you know, we've all heard stories about toys for tots and clothes for veterans and
homeless veterans and so forth.
But I got an email the other day about an organization that helps veterans to stay in
their homes.
And the organization is called Leap Home.
And what they do is they provide in-home stair lifts so that veterans our ages can get
from one floor to another.
And I just thought this was so cool.
So we've got Nick Bussey on.
He is the military engagement manager at Leap Homes.
He's also a US Army veteran.
And welcome to Veterans Radio, Nick.
Thank you, Dale.
Thanks for having me.
Okay.
Tell me about this giveaway, basically, that you had for these in-home stair lifts.
Yeah.
This, in particular, means a lot to me.
Being a veteran myself, but also having a lot of veteran friends and people I know within
my city who are struggling with mobile issues through service and war.
And what we really wanted to do is, you know, Leap Home, we're very well aligned when it
comes to safety and home improvement.
And we have a company, Leap Home Safety Solutions, that is dedicated to enhancing home accessibility
and safety with stair lifts, walk-in tubs, and showers.
And you know, we said, you know, what this installing stair lift systems for our veterans
really does align with our commitment to supporting those who have served our country, ensuring
that they can maintain independence and mobility at home.
And it's honestly a tangible way to express gratitude and enhance the quality of life for
those who have sacrificed for our nation.
So this is when we started to do our stair lift giveaway.
And we started it last year.
We've had, I think, 700% increase of people who decided they wanted to opt into this.
So 286 entries and 13 winners across 17 markets.
And we were able to run this program and offer a free stair lift system, including installation
into these veterans' homes so they can live a better and mobile life.
I think that's cool.
I've got so many, unfortunately, I have so many veteran friends now who are not quite
as mobile as we used to be.
And they want to stay in their homes.
And many of us live in two-story homes and everything is upstairs or downstairs.
And you want to be able to get around.
So if I wanted to do this, how do I get involved?
I know we can't do it for this year, but how would I register and get involved with this
program for next year, possibly?
Yeah, absolutely.
Every year that we create a certain timeframe for us to go ahead and get this ready and
put out to the public.
And we publish this to all over different social media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn.
I believe X, which used to be considered Twitter, and we spread the word across the country
digitally.
And so if you come across our ad when it comes to doing the sterile system in 2024, all you
have to do is click the link and fill out the form.
Consider yourself a candidate from there and we will pick random winners and take care
of you if you were one of those winners.
So it just kind of comes out of a hat.
So can I just go to leave home and is there a link in there for that?
Right, absolutely.
We just can go leave home.
And there's various different information about the company and the verticals we have
within the company.
But there will be an available link for that when the time comes next year and we'll make
sure that we market out to all of our veterans.
So they have the chance to be able to go in there and put their name in for 2024.
I think that's great.
We're talking with Nick Bussey here.
I wanted to also talk a little bit about the company itself.
I mean, I know that this is a great prize, I guess, that some of us can get around our
homes.
But tell me a little bit more about leave home.
It seems like you're very veteran oriented.
It seems like you have a number of veteran employees and so forth.
Yes, leave home is actually considered and no pun intended is home for me.
I was a veteran myself.
I was transitioning out of the military in 2019.
And this is when I found leave home and leave home as a brand is the nation's largest direct
to consumer home improvement company.
And I like to tell a lot of my veteran friends and probably your audience to describe how
leave home is.
Think of leave home as the brigade.
It is the parent company of multiple different home improvement companies.
Leave home is the brigade.
And what to say we have four battalions.
Leave home safety solutions, which is dedicated to enhancing the home accessibility and safety
with stair lift systems and walk in tubs and showers.
We have leave home enhancements.
We have leave filter, which you may know is a very great gutter system that we offer to
our nation.
And of course, we have leave home water solutions, which works on our water systems within the
homes.
And so this is a large company that does everything around the house, every core inside and out.
But what's most important about leave home to me personally is a company that's about
its people and definitely its veterans.
And so since 2020, when we started to build our veteran initiative to bring in a veteran
center, build a community, a community, a community, and of course, programs to bring
veterans from the military into the company, we've have seen, I believe, a large increase
into our employees who are now veterans to include, I think, 5% of our company now are
veterans.
And we didn't have many at the first place.
It's a great company.
It does a lot for veterans.
Philanthropy is one of our main objectives.
And every quarter, we plan to do something for veterans as well.
I think that's great.
We've been talking here with Nick Bussey is the military engagement manager at Leaf
Homes.
And we've been talking about their program to donate in-home stairlifts to veterans
as needed.
So we encourage everybody to go to their website, which is leafhome.com.
I'm right.
That's right.
Leave home.com.
Okay, we got the right thing there.
All right.
So I think I think it's terrific.
And I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day.
And also, I want to make sure you have a happy holiday with everybody at Leaf Homes.
Thank you for being on Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Dale.
I appreciate it.
We're going to have Nick back on in January to talk more about what the Leaf Company is
doing to help veterans.
They've got a lot of different programs out there that do help veterans and their families.
Yes, Nick has a foundation or nonprofit of his own that goes above and beyond.
So this is a really interesting young man.
And I'm excited to talk to him again and introduce you to some of the things that he's doing
across the country.
I hope you enjoyed today's program.
Of course, when we talk about Guy Stern, it's always difficult.
He was such an incredible man and really an American hero in my book.
To leave home to come here and get drafted, no less.
Go back to Germany.
He's got some great stories about what he did.
I encourage you to look him up on Google.
Just Guy Stern, S-T-E-R.
And you're going to find some great stories about him, about the Richie Boys, and check
out the movie too.
I think you'll find that to be pretty interesting too.
We also want to thank Jim and Keith King for their little interview about what's going
on with NVBDC.
It's a great organization.
If you are a veteran-owned business, these are the people that you need to talk to.
Just listen to the interview and you'll see how involved they are, what they're trying
to do to help young veteran-owned businesses become bigger and become more successful.
So again, I encourage you to listen to that as well.
So we're coming up on the end of today's program.
And next week is going to be a special Christmas program for kind of going to have some Bob
Hope in there for you and some other things from the USO to talk about on Christmas.
So until next week, this is Dale Throneberry for all of us here at Veterans Radio.
We encourage you to go to our website, hit the donation button.
We greatly appreciate it.
Have a very, very happy holiday season and Merry Christmas to all.
Today's God Bless America that we're playing is going to be the original.
So let's sit back, relax and enjoy Kate Smith.
Thank you.
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