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, a War Officer helicopter pilot in Vietnam, 1969.
Welcome to our program today. I am very excited to have you on.
It's all about a lot of entrepreneurs.
And we're going to be talking with a regular general, John Colavi.
And he has written a book titled No Soldier Left Behind.
It's a really cool story.
I'm anxious to talk to him on the air about his experiences, not only in the military, but afterwards,
because he's heavily involved in charity events and all kinds of different support things for veterans.
I think hence the title No Soldier Left Behind.
That's a great read. We also have a toward the end of the program,
we're going to be talking with another group from the Heritage Distilling Company.
And this is going to be Drew and Sarah Kellerman's story of their involvement with that.
They have just come out with a new war dogs edition of their whiskey, I guess you could say.
And so we're going to be talking about them and how they got started in that business.
And we're also going to be welcoming a new sponsor today.
And the new sponsor is Puro Clean.
And Puro Clean is a company leader in the property emergency services, helps families and businesses
overcome the devastating setbacks caused by water fire mold and other conditions.
They are known as the paramedics of property damage.
They provide water damage remediation, flood water removal, fire and smoke damage remediation,
mold removal and biohazard cleanup.
So we're really happy to have them here.
They also have a very special program of a franchises for veterans in which they offer 25% off their normal franchise fee.
And my partner Jim Fauston sent me a pre recorded interview that he did with one of their franchisees that we will be playing later on during the program.
So again, this is one of their statements from their website is Puro Clean is one of the nation's leading restoration franchise networks.
And it is made up of entrepreneurs just like you.
And the number if you're interested in finding out more information is 800 351 2282.
That's 800 351 2282.
Or you can go to pure clean.com P U R O C L E I C L E A N dot com.
Well, we're real happy to have another sponsor always helps us out as we want to try to expand expand our world of affiliate stations out there and always helps to have sponsors to help us do that.
While I'm talking about sponsors, I better get into our regular sponsors.
So first of all, we have legal help for veterans specializing in veterans disability claims, give legal help a call at 800 693 4800 or go to their website legal help for veterans.com.
The National Veterans Business Development Council, better known as NVB DC is the nation's leading third party authority for certification of veteran owned businesses.
For more information, go to their website and VB DC dot org or give them a call at 888 2378 433.
The Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for more information, go to va.gov slash and Arbor health care.
The Vietnam Veterans of America never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.
For more information, go to their website VV a dot org.
Locally the Irwin Prescor and American Legion post 46 and the Charles S. Kettles Vietnam Veterans of America chapter 310 both of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Hey, if you'd like to support veterans radio, please go to our website veterans radio dot org and click on the donate button.
Thanks in advance for your support. Now let's get right into the program.
So joining me right now by the magic technology of phone is Brigadier General John G. Colavi.
John is from Michigan and we'll talk about that a little bit as we get in there.
But he and his co author, let's see, I've got Dr. Donald steel as the co author of the book, no soldier left behind.
So let's give a veterans radio welcome to John Colavi. Hi, John.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Hey, it's really great to get to get you on the program after reading your book. I figured I had to talk to you.
Well, thank you.
And let me tell you the reason I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. I was just finishing up.
Reviewing, you know, your book a little bit ago, and I saw that you were in charge of academics at Fort Walters, Texas.
Yes, I was. I was my side but after Vietnam.
When were you there?
I was in Vietnam from January 67 to January 68. And then I went to Fort Walters.
I stayed there until the end of August 69.
You must have been my academic leader because I was at Fort Walters almost all of 1968.
Possibly that would be great.
I was a red hat, a big red one, you know, they're going to be one.
Yeah, I was a gold hat.
Okay. So for our audience, when you went to Fort Walters for the Army primary flight school, they had, I think it was nine, nine companies, something like that.
And each company had a different colored hat.
So that's where these colors all come in. So let me go back to the beginning, John, and ask you.
So you're originally from Michigan. Tell me a little bit about your early life here in the state.
I grew up in a small town in the northeast side of the state.
I went to Whittemore Prescott High School.
It was a consolidated school district of three towns, Whittemore Prescott and Skidway Lake.
I was sure Skidway Lake. That was considered the wrong side of the tracks, but I loved it.
Well, it sounded really like a very interesting childhood.
Yeah, interesting would be an understatement, I guess so, yeah.
My father left when I was 15, so I was the oldest of four children.
And my mother and the four kids lived in a one room cabin. We had virtually nothing.
But we, we all did fine.
Well, you weren't the biggest person in the world.
And at your high school, you were talking about that you tried, you know, you played on all sports.
Well, I went to school at West Branch through the ninth grade.
And then my sophomore year, they changed districts. I was going to go to Whittemore Prescott.
I didn't know any students from Whittemore Prescott, but the two things I did know,
they had very good athletes and they had good sports teams.
So I decided if I was to be accepted by my new classmates, I'd become an athlete.
The first thing I did was try it out for the football team. I made the team.
But at all candor, everyone had tried out for our bandit.
We never had more than 15 players. And at one time we were down to 12 because of injuries.
If we'd lost a couple more, we had to pull somebody out of the band.
I was also in a marching band. So at half time of the game, I'd go to the locker room, take off my football uniform,
put on my band uniform, go out and perform, change clothes and go back, play the last half of the game.
We had four clarinet players in the band. I was fourth chair.
I know you're thinking fourth out of four is not very good, but let me tell you the good part.
No one, I mean no one ever challenged me for my chair.
The next thing I did was went off for Junior varsity basketball. I was the shortest guy on the team.
It didn't take me a long to conclude basketball wasn't my sport.
The only time the coach put me in the game was if we were ahead by more than 20 points with less than two minutes ago.
I played three and a half minutes the entire season.
Next game, baseball. Coach Fagan had a bottle of Kauhavi pitches. Everybody hits.
Last but not least was my favorite sport, track. Once again, I was the shortest guy on the team.
And as if it was them, coach, do know maybe a hurdler. He may as well maybe a polebolter. That's the only way I was going to get over those hurdles.
But I enjoyed all of it.
I know it just cracks me up because my son is hard to believe now is a retired band director.
And he was at a small school here in southeast Michigan and he would have football players that would go out and run with the marching band as well.
And then go back and continue playing the game.
So that's the story.
You played offense and defense. I was left out back out of offense and I played safety and defense.
I loved being part of the team.
Well, sure. That was the whole thing. I remember I did the similar thing.
I was an end on offense and I was a safety on defense and you just played the whole game.
And I loved and probably you did too. I just loved running into people.
Well, if you were an end, you were much taller than me. I used to be 5'7". I'm shrinking. I'm now 5'6".
At the rate of going three or four years now, I may be a dwarf.
I hope not because I'm starting at 6'2". And I'm afraid of where I might end up with that story.
We are talking here with retired brigadier general John Colavi.
His book is titled No Soldier Left Behind and I should get to that right now.
So why the title, John? Why No Soldier Left Behind?
I was a huge believer in that and I flew many combat missions where we went in to extract soldiers
in a couple of occasions where they're out of ammo and just down to knives and bayonets
that are killing each other and we landed right in the middle of full amount.
I was always a believer you could never direct a soldier to go on a patrol or on a combat mission
knowing if he were captured, no attempt would be made to retrieve him.
So we made every attempt. I think if you read the book, of all the missions I flew and I flew over 300 combat missions,
as I'm sure you did too, I was the lead helicopter of 50 Hueys.
We flew in Cambodia in the middle of the night. We had an agent report. There were five captured Americans.
We found the remaining members of their patrol are all shot in the head.
So we determined they tried to surrender and they killed all but five. They took them captive and we retrieved them.
We got them out of a village in Cambodia and we flew back into South Vietnam.
That was my very favorite mission. We accomplished what we were out to do.
Well, I can certainly understand, John, what you were talking about.
And it was something I think maybe all of us learned during our time in the service that you never ever left anybody out in a field.
And, you know, in reading your description of your experiences in Vietnam is very similar.
The company I was when was a 195th assault helicopter company and we flew chemo camouflage aircraft as a matter of fact, with no identification, no numbers on the aircraft and no identification on us.
And so we went into Cambodia before it was, you know, popular and official and up north of Tainin and I know you were in Kuchy, which was in Srikor, which is where I was.
Tainin was in our area of operations and I often see it at Tainin because we pulled counter border.
We picked up sit reps in the middle of the night from our salary outposts.
We retrieved wounded soldiers. We brought bodies back. I mean, we did everything we were asked to do and we accomplished it to the best of our ability.
That's what they say about Army and Eaters above the best.
That was our job. All right, so you obviously you survived Vietnam.
I want to go back just a little bit back to your college experiences over at Central Michigan.
Yep.
Nobody, my father agreed to pay for my first semester tuition, room and board books, anybody else on my own. And then after the first semester, I was 100% on my own.
I worked a minimum of three jobs all the way through college. And at one time I actually had five different jobs, but I was able to do it.
I believe anybody wants to get through college can do it if they want to pay the price and the price is hard work and additional effort.
Absolutely. I can relate to that. I, before I was in the Army, I didn't have a very good experience college wise.
As soon as I when I was out, I went back and finished up the bachelor's masters in five, no, what three years.
Yeah, I got to do a class, go to class and do the work. It's not that hard.
That's right. Yeah. The jobs were there if you wanted them. I did everything. I worked the as a butcher at a supermarket.
And then it was a supermarket close at night. I had to clean all the meat cutting machines, which is you know, it's a kind of a job.
I worked at a fast food restaurant on Sunday afternoons. I drove or hitchhiked and bet on whether or not I had a car to a grocery store that I grew up in.
And Northern Michigan, I worked there Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, go back to my own pleasant. But it was a great experience.
I wouldn't trade it for anything. I think it made me appreciate more later in life.
I agree. And in reading the stories of your experiences at Central Michigan, it sounded similar to a lot of people who went to college. Unfortunately, in the 60s, sometimes that animal house, the movie was the life story of, you know, the fraternity, whatever fraternity you were involved in.
When I saw that movie, I thought they patterned it after my fraternity, five things, the epsilon. And actually we had a reunion two weeks ago prior to homecoming. All the guys are over 80, but they're still above ground and moving and pretty sharp.
That's that's that's the great part. When when everybody's above ground, that's that's good. That is terrific. I wanted you, you know, this is kind of a biography autobiography.
Tell me about your relationship with with Don steel, Donald steel.
And Don and I were fraternity brothers in college and actually we were roommates for a period of time.
We lived in the country upstairs in a older house and the elderly couple lived downstairs and four of us lived upstairs.
And Donald was a very accomplished musician. He kind of worked his way through college playing. He had a band, all the guys that lived there were in the band except me, and they would perform three, four nights a week at bars around while pleasant.
And they made enough money. He got through it. He is a very talented man. We got to be good friends. And then we lost track of each other. Many years later, Don became one of the premier motivational speakers in the country.
He was under contract to the company I were for Merrill Lynch, but he came to our office. It was mandatory attendance. And that's how we kind of reacquainted ourselves with each other.
And one of the times he came to our building and we've gotten to be very close friends.
Well, I'm sorry he wasn't able to join us on this. We would have gotten some more inside stories on your real behavior at Central Michigan, probably.
But to move along from there, one of the great things I really enjoyed about the book, John, which is the book is No Soldier Left Behind. It's available everywhere.
If you wanted it was the use of songs from the era. And I wish I'd had time to put together a mixtape or something of the music that you have in here.
You've got John Prine in here. You've got clearance, clear water. You've got everything in here. And it was a really great up. It was fun just reading your book.
That was all Don's idea. Don's a very accomplished singer and musician. He cut it out many years ago. It's really, they all said one with Tammy Winnat and two of his own albums have come out in the last two years.
And they're both very, very good. And I enjoy listening to them on a regular basis.
I have to go listen to them. I just opened the book to a page where he uses the song Crazy as a Loon by John Prine.
That's one of the songs.
And, you know, many people regarded helicopter pilots especially as being crazy as a loon and many other things that they call us.
I'd never seen a helicopter before and I was very inquisitive. My first day of flight school, I asked the instructor, I said, what do you do with the engine quits?
He said, you ought to rotate. I said, what exactly is that? He said, the power, the collective. That's in your left hand. You immediately lower that.
There's a centrifugal clutch. The transmission releases the blade. The blade becomes free willy. And as long as you maintain your rotor RPM, you guide the aircraft down.
And I said, what do you do with the rotor quits? He said, very simple. You immediately go into the helicopter pilot's emergency position.
And I said, what exactly is that? You spread your blade, you spread your blade, you kiss your ass goodbye. I'd never forgot that.
Oh, the memories of those instructor pilots. I don't know how they put them close.
Chris Christofferson was a Huey pilot as you know. He flew out of Kuchy, my base camp. I was on one side with a 25th infantry.
He was on the other side of the airstrip with the 160 portents. And he wrote a song about his flight instructor called Skygate.
It's a lorry that has not said you the album. I'm sorry, I'm losing it. I'm not being very professional today.
Yeah, you are. You're having fun. That's what's out.
That's exactly it. I hated Kuchy. Every time I flew past Kuchy, some guy from the rubber plantation would take a pot shot at us and we couldn't shoot back at him.
You know, we flew as you know. We were off 52 pilots. We never had more than 46. We were always short pilots. We were flying on gobbly hours.
And almost every night when we fly, come in, they shoot at us from the village of Kuchy. We could not return fire because they had a pacification program going on.
These guys are shooting at us night after night. We can't do anything about it. Some of them we have to retaliate. So we came up with a brilliant idea.
As you know, there's a lot of monkeys in Vietnam. We got a monkey. We put a collar on, a log rope, plodded him with a stick.
Made this monkey so mean. Everybody that walked by, he wanted to jump on it and bite you.
Anyway, what we thought he was good at, we took a parachute from the flares and he dropped the illuminator. We took the lanyard, the ropes to connect it and we rigged it easy to get out of harness.
We put the monkey in harness and we pushed him out broad daylight over the village. Now this monkey is very inquisitive.
Halfway down, he climbs up the ladder, the ropes got on top of the parachute, neither say it collapsed, he went down like a bank of concrete.
We got a second monkey. That one was even better than the first one. But we thought he was good already. We dropped him over the village.
Now the 25th Division, about every two or two and a half weeks, published a newsletter about all the operations going on within our area of operations.
18.8 m, rabid monkey bite six villagers. Yay, we got back in those F.O.Bs.
That's the kind of stuff we did for laughs as you were...
No, I know. I understand it. You're sending 19 to 22, 23 year old boys over there and they're going to think of ways to solve their problems, which is retaliation.
And I still won't buy Michelin rubber tires again, you know, my son says I have to get
over it.
I can't.
I was very fortunate three and a half months after I arrived in country, the flight, the
primary flight leader rotate, it was a major and the company commander made me the primary
flight leader.
So I got to pick every crew.
I've talked about the aircraft commanders, the pilots, the crew chiefs and gutters every
day before all the combat missions we flew.
And if there were a full suppression mission where you're going in, go out, guns blazing,
coming out, guns blazing, the guys that I didn't think were upset.
They loved the action and I love that about them.
They risked their lives every day of the week and they, but they loved the excitement of
it.
I mean, I depended on them to do their job.
Like they depended on me to fly the aircraft and we had great relationships.
Well, absolutely, I mean, I can never praise my crew chief enough for keeping me alive.
I had a reunion in Florida last winter with my former crew chief and my favorite gutter.
Totally lost my gutter.
Bob Masterson was my crew chief.
And we got together for three or four days.
There was a great reunion.
He said, I saved your ass on me.
Okay.
I said, yes, you did because of me.
You never had to walk home.
So we have a great relationship.
He wrote a book called highest tradition that I'm in that book, I think five times.
Okay.
I'm not to check that one out.
We're talking here with retired brigadier general John Colhabi and his book is titled
no soldier left behind, which is, you know, for anybody who's been in the military and
whatever branch it is, you never leave anybody behind.
So when you got out of the service, well, shortly after you got home from Vietnam and
you did your tour at Fort Walters, which is probably almost worse probably than Vietnam.
Actually, I really enjoyed it.
I love the people in Texas.
They were very friendly.
I got to be friends with a lot of locals and I thoroughly enjoyed that assignment.
I enjoyed every assignment I had.
The worst one I had was the division I was in and the reserve was chosen for inactivation
in the early years of the Clinton administration.
I spent the last few years going around the states of Michigan to Indiana doing closing
ceremonies on units or in some case, a third generation family members.
That was my worst assignment.
That was very sad.
I'm sure I can certainly relate to that.
So my point was I was going to say that when you and your wife at the time decided that
you would take a year off to decide if you wanted to stay and go back to civilian world
or eventually go back to the Army and you ended up with Merrill Lynch.
Can you talk us about that a little bit?
Well, you know, my last assignment at Fort Walters, I was to see your captain in the
academic division.
We had a major and sometimes he was there and he, my first day there is the job.
You're capable of running it.
I'm capable of running it.
We both don't have to be here every day.
So we took turns running the academic unit.
I had 27 captains that reported to me, but by virtue of time and grade, I was a ranking
one.
At the end of the month, I had the most responsibility put in the most time and we all got the same
pay.
So I decided what I was going to leave active duty.
I'd like to find a job that would reward me for my effort and my ability rather than
those of the masses.
I turned down multiple offers from General Motors because that didn't fit that criteria.
Great company, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
I didn't know much about the brokerage business other than what I learned from a couple of
my instructors at Fort Walters.
And it sounded interesting to me.
I sent letters to the five Maryland office forms that thanks for no thanks.
The fifth one said we'd like to have you in for an interview.
And in the early years of the war, if you're in uniform, you got a discounted airfare.
Later, they told you not to because you'd be harassed.
Well, this was before that.
So I flew from Texas to Detroit, Michigan.
My flight was later arriving.
I was in khaki uniform.
I was going to go to my mother's house, put a suit on and go in.
I had a preliminary interview.
I have to take two tests.
One of them had to do with one of the intelligence.
The flight was late.
I told my brother, take me straight to the Maryland office.
I don't want to be late.
The manager of the office was a former naval officer.
I think he recognized some of the remnants.
And I believe that's what got me the job.
I didn't have any of the traits or experiences they were looking for.
I had no background other than working at a grocery store and finance, banking, anything
to do with that, even sales.
But he gave me an opportunity and that's all I was looking for.
And I had a wonderful career.
Five months after leaving Astroduty, I was recruited to come in the Army Reserve and
infantry-created division headquartered in Lavonia, Michigan at Forman Aviation Unit.
They were authorized ones, but they didn't have a pilot.
So I spent the belt and I spent the next year, year and a half writing letters to the world,
getting an alert hangar itself for Geron� National Guard Base, recruiting pilots, crew
chiefs, mechanics.
And I had a hangar full of aircraft.
Anything can be done if you try hard enough.
I got aircraft, old Healers, OH-23s from the Boneyard in Arizona.
I got rebuilt to U.E. from the rebuilt facility in Corpus Christi, Texas.
I got a fixed-week twin-engine beach baron from the California Department of Natural
Resources.
It was all orange naturally.
We repaid them.
I got aircraft from the customs that were confiscated in Florida.
Really problem with those, most of them had salt corrosion.
But we had a hangar full of aircraft.
We got the job done.
It was challenging, but it was interesting.
After Vietnam, buddies of mine had stayed on board and were flying 30, 40 hours a year.
I was flying two to 300 hours a year in the reserve.
The funds that they took from the active component, the reserve, we were able to get them.
The air section, I was in charge of, I think, great pride and saying, we won the Fifth Army
Aviation Award.
I don't remember, five or six years in a row, the best aviation company in the country.
And it may be because all of the guys were Vietnam veterans, all but two had over a thousand
hours combat time, half were dual-readed, several instructor qualified, all of us became
extra-readed.
It was a pleasure to fly with these guys.
They were good.
They were pros.
Wow.
I wish I'd run into you about 50 years ago.
Yeah, a while before.
That would have been great.
One regret is that when the last time I landed at Carnes Army Airfield in Fort Rocker, Alabama,
I said, I'm done.
I just felt like I'd pushed that envelope far enough at that time.
But I wanted, John, before I let you go, I wanted to find out what you're up to right
now because I know that you've retired.
I think you've retired from Merrill Lynch, according to your book.
What is it that you're doing now and how does the no soldier left behind come into play
again?
The reason for the book, Don Steel said, of all the people I've known in my life, you
have by far the most interesting background, I'd like to write a book about you.
The biggest reason I did it, my wife and I combined, have 15 grandchildren.
None of them know anything about my background, and only one has ever even asked me about
it.
So I wrote the book.
If my grandkids will know more about me, I'll give a copy of the book and they can read
it.
I was very fortunate.
I had a great career at Merrill Lynch.
I had a great career in the Army.
And I've always maintained a say that I have been blessed and I really believe that.
I'm a very positive person.
You certainly sound like it.
I look forward to, I'd like to look forward to meeting you in person since I noticed that
you have a Michigan phone number.
Maybe we can arrange that.
Yeah, I live in White Lake, Tautra.
Okay.
Well, I thought it was between Waterford and Heartland, not far from Brighton, very close
to Milford, at the small community.
I've been there 53 years.
I'll die there.
And I also take great pride in saying I've been the president of the White Lake Tautra
Civil Service Board.
This is my 46th year.
So I do the testing and the interviews for the place of fire department, promotion boards,
grievance hearings, and so on.
That's my contribution to my community.
Well, you're doing a great job, John.
And I want to thank you so much for being on Veterans Radio.
The book is No Soldier Left Behind.
I strongly encourage, especially our Vietnam-era veterans out there listening to check this
out.
I mean, if you were listening earlier on and you got me laughing, there's some stuff in
here that will just crack you up in addition to the serious stories.
So John, thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio.
I'm looking forward to meeting you and hopefully having you on again in the future.
You have my number.
Call me anytime.
I'll drive to wherever you're at.
I retired from Peral Age at the end of 2017.
But I own a number of businesses and that's spent.
I don't golf.
I own three golf courses.
Someday I'll tell you my theory why I stopped buying golf courses.
But I would love to have the opportunity to meet you personally.
You have my number.
Call me.
You're available.
Okay, John, thank you very, very much for being on the program today.
Again, the book No Soldier Left Behind is available everywhere.
I encourage all of you to read this.
It's very enlightening and it's also very uplifting and it's very motivational too.
So I just want to say what I think of that Afghanistan debacle and the way we left there,
that saddens me and actually sickens me.
That would have never happened in our era and our day.
It just wouldn't have happened.
It saddens me that we left so many good people behind.
But anyway, we'll move on.
Thank you so much for being here.
It's been an honor, a pleasure, and I look forward to meeting you personally at your
caveat.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
Thank you, sir.
All right.
We're going to take a quick break here.
As I mentioned earlier on at the beginning of the program, now we have a new sponsor,
Puro Clean, and my partner, Jim Faustone, interviewed Jesse Wines, who is one of the
franchisees for Puro Clean.
So we're going to play that interview.
And then after the interview, we'll play our Medal of Honor segment, and then we will
come back and we will join where they go, Drew and Sarah Kellerman from the Heritage
Distilling Company.
So you're listening to Veteran Radio.
We'll be back live again in about seven or eight minutes.
All right.
You are listening to Veteran Radio.
This is Veteran Radio's spotlight on Puro Clean and its franchisees.
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And by the way, there's a Veterans discount on the franchise.
But today we get to talk to two business owners, Jesse and Jennifer Wine.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
We're happy to be here.
Thank you.
Well, we're going to talk a little later about your time in the Wisconsin National Guard.
Jesse, you served, I think it was eight years, came out as a sergeant.
Jennifer, I think you had a 12-year career in the Army National Guard, and we want to
talk about those experiences.
But here we're talking to you specifically because you are business owners.
You have a franchise with PuroClean.
Why did you settle on a business with PuroClean?
Jennifer, I'm going to toss that one to you.
Sure.
So we decided to go and because we were looking for a franchise that's kind of exhibited
like all of our values.
And when we settled on PuroClean, we had gone to the Meet the Team Day.
And when we walked into the front office for the first time, they had brought all of the
employees out to greet us.
So we got to meet everybody from the top down.
And we were accepted as if we were already family members.
And that experience is very similar to the experience you have as a military member,
no matter where you are, where you come from, if you're in the service, Marines, National
Guard, Army, Navy, it doesn't matter who you are.
You walk into a room with prior service veterans and you are instantly family.
And that is the connection that I felt the moment I walked into PuroClean.
And from that point, there was no other choice.
This was the only place for us.
Well, and I should mention that Steve White, Chief Operating Officer of PuroClean, is
an Army vet, served in the US Army, was a captain.
So he probably had some of those same values and experiences and wanted to make sure that
you felt them as well.
So it's good to hear that you did, Jennifer.
Yes, absolutely.
You know, that gets us to another question.
And I'll toss this, Jesse, your way, which is, what's the best part of owning your own
business?
That's a great question.
Obviously, running, being able to call the shots is important.
Being able to expand my business in the way I want to grow it, to how I want to grow it,
is very important to us as new business owners.
And what's great about that is PuroClean corporate, they don't stand in our way.
They support us and encourage us.
And, you know, sure, you have some bumpers, some guide reels, but it's for your own good.
You know, and so, you know, it's really great.
You know, I enjoy helping people.
You know, it's a very satisfying job to go in and help people with, you know, their homes,
you know, some of their biggest purchase they're ever going to make, you know, and we come
in and when it's destroyed and we rebuild it.
And, you know, it's just a very fulfilling job, you know, and, you know, it's just a
great part of, you know, what I want to do, you know, in my life to help people.
Well, Jesse, you have a long history in construction.
We'll talk a little bit about that later.
But one of the things franchises have are sort of standard operating procedures.
And you're meeting people on the worst day of their life.
They've had a flood, they've had a water break, they've had a fire.
And you've got a process.
Explain how standard operating procedures, not unlike in the Army, kind of help you go
through and fix the worst day of somebody's life.
Sure.
Yeah, you wear a lot of hats.
So your SOPs, you know, we keep them in the trucks, you know, like, hey, we're dealing
with a situation, you know, we got to follow the steps.
You know, it's important because a lot of people don't do this every day.
You know, we can look at a situation and know exactly how it's going to end, you know, two
months from now.
But the homeowners have no idea.
And so we're there to educate, to help, sometimes, a shorter to cry on.
You know, and having guidelines in place, your SOPs, it just helps when you have no
employees.
It allows the experienced guys to have a resource, just like your dashed chin and your humbies,
you know, you got, where do you go if you need something.
Yeah, I want to, before we're on time, I want to talk about one other thing, is you mentioned
you like helping people, but you get to do it in your community in Wisconsin.
Talk a little bit about how that's the most, certainly a satisfying part of the business.
Yeah, I don't know.
Jim, you want, okay, I'll take it.
Well, I mean, you know, why'd we join the Army?
We wanted to help, we wanted to serve, you know, we joined the National Guard, you know,
we helped people in our own communities through disasters.
And I've been deployed on multiple scenarios and fields of operation, but you know, nothing
beats helping your neighbors.
You know, it's a very satisfying feeling.
Well, let's, let's point people to, if they're interested, you can go to PuroClean.com, read
more about what this business opportunity looks like.
As I mentioned earlier, they have a veteran's discount on being able to get in.
So it's PuroClean.com.
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 3,400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Navy Captain John Cromwell gave his life to preserve the security of his mission.
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.
Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
Cromwell was aboard the USS Sculpin during the ninth war patrol of that vessel in enemy
controlled waters off Truck Island.
Undertaking this patrol prior to the launching of our first large-scale offensive in the
Pacific, Captain Cromwell possessed secret intelligence information of our submarine
strategy and tactics, scheduled fleet movements, and specific attack plans.
Constantly vigilant and precise in carrying out his secret orders, he moved his undersea
flotilla forward despite savage opposition and established a line of submarines to southeast
ward of the main Japanese stronghold at Truck.
Cool and undaunted as the submarine rocked and battered by Japanese depth charges sustained
terrific battle damage and sank to an excessive depth.
He authorized the Sculpin to surface and engage the enemy in a gunfight, thereby providing
an opportunity for the crew to abandon ship.
Determined to sacrifice himself rather than risk capture and subsequent danger of revealing
plans under Japanese torture or use of drugs, Cromwell stoically remained aboard the mortally
wounded vessel as she plunged to her death.
The Metal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
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A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Hey, we're back here on Veterans Radio and today we've been talking all about entrepreneurs.
Our first guest, John Colavi, another helicopter pilot, but when he got out he worked for Merrill
Lynch for years and was very successful and he's continued offering opportunities to veterans
ever since he got out of the service and so forth.
You just heard Jim doing a little spiel with Puro Clean about their franchise opportunities
for entrepreneurs and joining me right now on the line are some more entrepreneurs.
I'm going to introduce you to Drew and Sarah Kellerman and they are with the Heritage Distilling
Company and they have just come out with a salute.
This is to America's salute, War Dogs Edition.
So let me bring them on here right away.
It's another helicopter pilot.
So if I start laughing again, folks, I apologize.
It's just too much talking to broderheads.
I love it.
So Sarah and Drew, Sarah first, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you, Dale.
True pleasure to be on the show and thank you so much for all that you are doing for veterans
and veterans causes.
It's a true privilege to be asked.
Thank you for your interest in the distillery and Sir, especially being a former instructor
at Fort Rocker, Alabama, those are memories that are near and near to my heart and serenity
for your bio was very fun for me and it's just a pleasure to talk with you and I thank
you sincerely for your service.
Thank you and to remind our audience, you also flew helicopters.
I did.
I was lucky enough to be assigned UH-60 Blackhawks and I flew that at Schofield Barracks on the
beautiful island of Oahu for about four years.
I know it was tough duty but someone had to do it right.
And then transition over to the EH-60 platform and finish my career over at Fort Wachuken,
Arizona.
Okay.
And husband Drew, Drew, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Dale, a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Thank you and tell me a little bit about your background.
I know that both of you met each other as second lieutenants at the University of Colorado,
the ROTC program.
Yeah, we were both commissioned out of the ROTC program, met there as cadets in training.
We proceeded then into active duty.
Both of us were able to go the honor of being regular Army commissions and so we ice her
to the infantry, light infantry with 27th Infantry Wolfhounds and at the 25th Infantry
Division Light in Schofield and as part of the Army and Marine Couples program, that
allowed Sarah to get out of a forced deployment to Korea to come join me in Hawaii.
Oh, her fellow pilots weren't real happy about that.
But we both, yeah, we ended up both at the 25th Infantry.
She was with the Salt Battalion and I was with the infantry company and we trained together
all the time actually, which was a lot of fun.
My guys loved it.
They knew that if we ever really got in trouble, we had our unit was going to get pulled out
because we had a pilot who was really going to get us in it.
Right, yeah.
We were newly married and I was motivated to come get him wherever he was at.
So that's right.
Yeah.
We were on the airfield there.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's great.
That's great.
So let me get into this thing about this heritage distilling company.
Who would like to tell me the history of this?
Sure, I'd be happy to.
Yeah, go ahead, Sarah, please.
Yeah, I know we've got a limited time here, so we'll make it rather brief, but we have
a president and CEO who are also a married couple, Jennifer and Justin Stiefel and I
met Jennifer on a field trip when our boys were in the first grade.
Our sons are about to turn 21 this year, so it's been a very long and fruitful friendship.
And as friendships grow, the moms get, moms enjoy each other's company, the kids get along.
The next step is to see if the husbands get along, right?
So we were, hadn't known them for very long, had them over the house for dinner, a beautiful
spring night in the Pacific Northwest and we were deep in our cups, the whiskey and the
cigars were flowing and Justin held his glass up to the night sky and said, this is great
whiskey but we can do it better.
We had no idea what he was talking about, but Washington State was just about to allow
the rule of change for that craft facilities could be allowed and legal in Washington State.
And so I said, if we're going to do this, we need to get ahead of the game and get ahead
of the ball game and beat everybody else to the punch.
So we were fascinated by the idea, weren't quite sure if you were serious or not.
And the next morning when the haze of the previous night were off, so to speak, we had
a multiple page business plan in our inboxes and during I looked at each other and we said,
my goodness, these people were serious.
And we learned rather quickly that the steeples are people of action and a lot of people talk
about starting their own business or person in the American dream.
These are people of action and we thought, what a fantastic entrepreneurial idea.
Let's hitch our cart to their wagon, if you will.
And 13 years later here we are, we're the most awarded craft distillery in North America
for the last decade.
So we're really proud of not only having survived COVID and being on the other side of that
fence, a lot of small companies didn't make it, but we persevered.
It's going to be on the other side of that fence and we're just proud of the quality
that we're producing.
And great to be here and share a story.
Yeah.
Well, it is.
So, Drew, how did you feel about this?
What were you doing before Paradig?
Yeah, no, it's a great question.
So, you know, Sarah had been doing some my jobs.
She was a state-owned mom for many, many years and had re-entered the workforce and was doing
some small projects with some local communities, companies and nonprofits.
And I had my own firm as an investment advisor, financial planner, doing retirement planning,
and so kind of set my own schedule.
So when this opportunity came along, you know, being an entrepreneurial, we jumped at it.
We thought this sounded just fantastic.
We had no idea how to get started.
And none of the four of us came from the spirits or beverage background in any way.
So Justin's a chemical engineer and an attorney.
So he's got those two disciplines, which actually are a perfect pairing for the distilling
industry.
And so we just literally started learning, took some classes, read a bunch of books,
bought us still, got some commercial space, raised some money, you know, wrote strokes
and big checks, you know, a big gulp.
But no, it really was a small startup, you know, community-supported, community-driven.
We decided to call ourselves Heritage Distilling Company because we want to celebrate the heritage
of whatever community we're in.
And, you know, the tagline is every spirit has a story.
We really wanted to create something unique and different, create an experience for our
customers, create the highest quality spirits we could, even though we didn't know what
we were doing when we started.
And then also create the spaces.
We have tasting rooms, six of them now, that we're visually intoxicating, you know, for
people to come in and really enjoy and celebrate their community when they come in.
Well, it sounds like you're doing a really wonderful job of, you know, not only as entrepreneurs,
but offering up a good product for those people who like, you know, like they're fine whiskey
and bourbon and so forth.
And you mentioned that.
But tell me about the service to America salute that you're doing.
That's what got my attention.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, real quick backstory on that.
So we're in Gig Harbor, Washington.
We're small, little town, but we're in the shadow of Joint Base Lewis McCord, or Fort
Lewis.
And the Air Force Base McCord just down the street from us.
And a couple of years after we'd gotten started as a distillery, we had a company sergeant
major from First Special Forces Group, which is headquartered out of Fort Lewis.
They came walking into our office one day and said, hey, I love what you guys do.
Love your whiskey.
Love to partner up with you and do a tribute whiskey to the First Special Forces Group that
can then, of course, the proceeds can support the nonprofits that support our unit.
And at the time, 2014, operational tempo was incredible.
You know, the deployment schedule was crazy.
There was lots and lots of opportunity, unfortunately, to support Gold Star families at the time
and the other nonprofits.
So we jumped to that chance.
And it was just a fantastic opportunity for Sarah and I as veterans who hadn't really
been connected to the military community to jump back in and be a part of something that
was really meaningful and support First Group.
And they really adopted us as kind of one of the companies that support them and just
really fantastic.
So we got started.
And with that, we've raised about $150,000 of last eight years for them.
But that led to a lot of other folks saying, hey, what about us?
It's nice you guys are supporting First Special Forces Group.
So this past year, about a year ago now, this month, we launched our salute series, which
is a much broader, larger, very top shelf whiskey fundraising project that has both
our special operations salute side of it and the service to America salute side of it,
using our highest quality whiskies to basically it's whiskey that honors the worthy.
It's whiskey designed to honor and celebrate different communities of folks that are willing
to put their lives on the line for us.
And then raise a bunch of money for the nonprofits that directly support them and their families.
I'm running out of time here, so I got to make sure that I get you in here.
So the latest new one is the it's called service to America salute war dogs edition.
So Sarah, why war dogs?
I got two minutes.
Absolutely.
Well, it's a little known fact to a lot of people out there that war dogs have saved.
The current statistic is about 40,000 soldiers since World War II era.
And we've been partnering with fantastic nonprofits who their mission is to treat
those war dogs like the veterans that they should be treated post service, caring for
them, paying for health care needs, that sort of thing.
It's a very much overlooked segment of the population.
They're four-legged warriors, quite frankly.
And in Vietnam, I'm sure you're well aware, there were dogs there and they were left
behind.
And we've talked to some of those folks and they still can't get through a sentence without
breaking down talking about their war dogs.
We were really in passion to start this.
Our technical advisor, Rick Hogg is a almost 30 year US Army special forces veteran.
He had a war dog named Dukoe.
His paws on the label.
It's 98.6 proof to honor the temperature of the human body for all the lives saved.
35 years, age 35 years and dog years, which we were pleased the federal government let
us put on the label.
So we just want to honor that very special population.
Okay.
So for people who want to find out more, they go to Heritage.
www.saluteseries.com.
All right.
Saluteseries.com.
And if it's legal, you will send it to them.
That's right.
We ship direct to 45 states across the country.
And so appreciate the opportunity to be on the show, Dale, and all your support.
All right, thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'm sorry to make this short, but we are coming up to our regular.
This week, it's going to be America the Beautiful.
And it's going to be Alan Jackson's version.
So next week is our benefits program.
I encourage everybody to tune in next Sunday to find out what's going on.
Well then you are dismissed.
That's right.
Thank you.
God shed his grace only and crowned the good with brotherhood from sin to shallowness.
O youth, for a page you drew that sees beyond the years,
thy laughter bastard is green, undemmed by human tears.
America, America, God shed his grace only and crowned the good with brotherhood from sin to shallowness.
And crowned by good with brotherhood from sin to shining sea.
Oh beautiful.