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, CW2 Type Helicopter Pilot, Vietnam 1969.
And welcome you to our program today.
It's a really great one, I think.
We've got an author on it, Robert B. O'Conner.
His book is entitled Jeep Show, and it's about entertainers who went to the front lines during
World War II in Europe and did these vaudeville type of acts.
And three guys in a Jeep and a driver would go up to the front lines and do their shows
and then run like hell to get away from all the artillery and stuff.
And it's a cool story, and I'm anxious to talk to Bob about his book in just a couple
of minutes.
Later on in the program, we're going to be running our monthly segment from the NVBDC,
the National Veterans Business Development Council.
And this one is my partner, Jim Faustone, talks with Annette Stevenson.
And she's an Army veteran.
And she is the owner of Stevenson Consulting Corporation and a board member of the NVBDC.
So we always do our, at least once a month, we do a spotlight of the members of NVBDC.
And then I've got another guy I'm going to talk to toward the end of the program who
is listening in right now, and he's a Marine.
I was going to say former Marine, but I know Marines are never former Marines.
They're always Marines and never goes out of their blood, which is understandable.
And that's Brian Bay, a United States Marine, who was a member of the Vietnam Veterans of
America, Chapter 310 that I'm a member of.
And we were talking the other night and I said, Hey, come on down, let's talk a little
bit on the program.
So he's listening in right now and I'll bring him on later on.
But before we get into our interview with Bob O'Connor, I got to thank our sponsors
because can't do this program without them.
So number one is legal help for veterans specializing in veterans disability claims.
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Now, let's get into our program.
Okey-dokey.
Here we go.
All right, so I was sent this email by a, I guess it's a promotion company or your publisher,
I'm not sure what it is.
And the book was entitled Jeep Show.
And I thought, well, that's kind of interesting.
What the heck is a Jeep Show?
And so she was kind enough to send me a PDF copy of the book.
And I started reading it and I couldn't put it down.
So I went back to Susan and I said, hey, we got to get him on the program.
And she kindly did that.
So welcome to Veterans Radio, Robert B. O'Connor.
I'm going to be calling him Bob from now on.
He is the author of Jeep Show.
So Bob, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you so much.
It's a real pleasure to talk to you and to your audience.
Well, it's, it's, it's a real privilege, I think, to talk to you because this is, I thought
this was really a kind of a cool idea.
So to tell our audience, what exactly was it deep Jeep Show?
The Army in World War II went to great lengths to try to make sure that the troops did not
get bored and perhaps do things that the Army wouldn't approve of.
Combat soldiers, the soldiers on the front lines, though never saw the big USO shows
and never got many of the things that were done easier to do in the rear echelon.
Jeep shows were organized in late 43, early 1944 to get entertainment to these frontline
combat infantrymen.
And the way it worked is there were enlisted entertainers.
It was MOS442 enlisted entertainers that were in what I call in the book, the morale
corps.
It was actually called special services during the war.
These three of these enlisted entertainers would get in a Jeep with a driver and they
would drive just behind the front lines where the frontline combat troops may have been
brought back for a hot meal, maybe a shower.
As you know, because the United States did not have as many infantry divisions as some
of the other, for example, the Russians or the Germans, infantry divisions were never
rotated out of combat.
Unlike pilots who might do a certain number of combat missions and then be rotated back
to the states, when you were in an infantry division, the only way out was to be badly
wounded or captured or killed.
So the combat soldiers and keeping the morale of the combat soldiers up was a focus of the
Army and this was one of the more successful things they did.
I should add and all soldiers in the audience know this, but nothing beats mail from home.
But the next best thing is to get some entertainers to physically be present up at the front,
to physically be present.
And so that is how Jeep shows came about.
They were actually the idea of a famous director named Joshua Logan.
Among many other shows, Joshua Logan wrote and directed South Pacific.
He was a superstar Broadway director and he was in special services and put together this
idea of sending Jeep shows to the combat soldiers at the front.
It sounds so cool.
I love the concept of it.
What is your background and what caused you to write this story?
My background, I became a writer.
I went through a tough patch in my late 40s.
Maybe everybody does.
And at the time it seemed to me that the best way for me to stay sane was to express my thoughts
through writing.
And I've always been fascinated with the concept of morale and how we do or don't do the things
that need to be done when they need to be done, the tough things.
So I actually wrote a nonfiction book on that subject.
And then when that was done, turned my attention to World War II, my father, as with many Americans
of my age, my father served in the armed forces in World War II.
So I was interested in that.
And then I had a few years ago, I learned about a real person, Jim Hetzer, who had been
an enlisted entertainer in World War II and had been in Mickey Rooney's Jeep Show Squad.
This is the Mickey Rooney of National Velvet fame and Andy Hardy fame.
Exactly.
Mickey Rooney was Hollywood's number one box office star in 1939 and 1940.
Mickey Rooney's and he was considered by his peers to be, along with Charlie Chaplin,
the most talented actor of his time, an absolute genius.
And as you know, where there are great strengths, there are corresponding weaknesses.
He had a few.
And his boss at MGM thought as it got into late 1943 that it would be good for Mickey
Rooney to join the army and serve because almost everybody was.
So this real person, Jim Hetzer, actually worked with Mickey Rooney.
Jim was a dance instructor before the war and had tried his hand at show business in
New York, but had not made a success of it.
I actually located his daughter, a very charming person, and learned that his family had published
a book of the letters he wrote home from, from his time in the army, both Camp Siebert,
where they did their training, which no longer exists.
And then the European theater of operations.
So I had a huge amount of what we call in the trade, primary sources.
Yeah, I would guess.
Yeah, yeah.
And could follow his adventures there.
I, Dale, I enjoyed the research a great deal, probably too much because one of the, one
of the things that that you learn when you write a book is three quarters of what you
write is going to end up in the waste basket.
And it's a terrible waste of time to, you know, do huge amounts of research.
And then, you know, you're not going to be able to use it, but that's okay.
I enjoyed the research very much.
And it does kind of give a depth, even if I, there was nowhere near room to put in all
the facts that I had learned.
It does give it some depth behind what I did put in.
So that's the, that's what inspired me.
And as you were saying, it's such an interesting topic.
And I have found that World War II buffs, and there are many World War II buffs of all
ages and genders.
I have not run into one of them yet that it was aware that there were enlisted entertainers.
I was, I was really interested in that.
And I think, you know, you just struck a nerve.
I was thinking, when you were talking about, you know, these amateur historians, I think
it comes down to a lot of us would really like to know what life was like when our parents
were in World War II or just prior to World War II.
What was going on?
Cause they never talked that much about it.
Exactly.
That is exactly.
Especially their, you know, their own experiences.
I mean, my dad was in the Pacific, in the Coast Guard, guarding Iwo Jima and Okinawa and
stuff.
And never said a word until we did a program here on Veterans Radio about the Coast Guard
and some really old guy called in and says, Oh, I knew your dad.
Oh, wow.
You know, so that's how I found out where he had been and so on and so forth.
But this was so interesting to me because not only does Jim Hetzer slash Tanzer, you're
talking about the late 1930s at the end of the depression.
So he's been in the CCC.
He's been to the Catskills for people from the East, you know, people from the East Coast
will recognize that.
That's for all the Jewish entertainment centers were and camps were.
And, you know, if you saw a dirty dancing, that's one of those places.
And so he was there trying to break into the entertainment industry.
He was able to avoid the draft because he was married and had a child.
But he volunteered.
So what was the idea behind volunteering, do you think?
Well, there's there's the idea that that, you know, he felt that he told his wife that
he felt it was his patriotic duty.
And so many men were were volunteering that there was as as you well know, there was great
social pressure on on men to be involved with the armed services.
I also kind of put in under the surface the idea that he might have been trying to get
away from the complicated situation of adult life and, you know, making a living and and
dealing with that.
And there is an undertone of of that idea that he is kind of retreating, if you will,
from the perils of adult life.
Well, you know, yeah, unfortunately, again, I'm not I don't want to give away too much
as a book because I want people to read this.
I think you'll really enjoy the read.
The read the book is called Jeep Show.
And you got to look at it and read it.
We're talking with Bob O'Connor, the author of the book, if you're going to look it up
on Amazon and look under Robert O'Connor.
And again, I'm sorry to personalize this.
My dad enlisted at the age of 39.
Wow.
Because he was afraid because they were drafting up until 40.
And if they he figured, well, they're going to get me.
I can't be in the infantry.
There's no way I can run around and do all that stuff.
And so, yeah, I mean, he ended up in the Coast Guard, guarding the wrong coast.
But that's amazing.
You mentioned that that that Jim was working in vaudeville was trying to break in, you
know, in New York and all these other things.
And he decided that he was going to enlist.
But he didn't want to go in as an entertainer.
Did he?
No, he wanted to go in as a paratrooper.
But like your guest later in the program, he was too tall for paratrooping.
And one of the recurring jokes in the book is he has he tried to make it into show business
as a song and dance man.
And he keeps being told that he's too tall for ballroom dancing.
It's like a buddy Epstein to me.
Yes, exactly.
That is that is called eccentric dance.
And yes, he kept he keeps being coached to get into eccentric dance.
So he wanted paratroopers, the Army, as you well know, sends you where they think they
need you.
And because of his show business background, they assigned him, they made him an entertainment
soldier.
Okay.
So can you in our audience, the book is kind of it's based.
Beginning of the book is loosely based on Jim Hertz there's life.
And then you kind of use your fictional writing skills right toward toward the end.
But kind of describe to our audience how he got to England, because it now he's now he
has met Mickey Rooney.
The real Mickey Rooney.
In fact, there were some other people that you mentioned that were part of this cheap
camp.
Yes.
Enlisted entertainers included, of course, Mickey Rooney.
Mel Brooks was in was in special services.
Sammy Davis, Jr. was in special services, the comedian Red Buttons, Bert Lancaster,
the great dance producer Bob Fosse, Dick Van Dyke, Borough Lives, Don Knots.
So a there's a long cast of men that went on to have or had already had in some instances,
you know, solid careers in show business.
And then there were dozens and dozens and dozens of Jim Tanzers who were performers,
but you know, were not had not made it in show business until the army, until the army
put them there.
Can you describe for our audience this, they all went over to England in what 1944.
This group, the special services battalion that these Jeep show men were part of, went
over on the Queen Mary in, let's see, it was about September of 1944.
At that time, they did not know that they were going to be doing Jeep shows on the front
line.
And then eventually the cast and the orchestra of a big army show, a big army show to be
put on in London and Paris, there were a feature of the times was that they would do large
theatrical shows with with enlisted men.
So they thought their show which had played in New York and and some other places in the
East Coast, they thought that they were going to be taking their show to England in France,
liberated France.
What's this?
However, I was going to say, is this the parody of Shakespeare thing?
Or was that something else?
Was that another show?
Yeah, that's that's another show.
The main character and this was just a creation of my imagination, it becomes a very interested
in Hamlet and is writing a parody called Spamlet, because Spam made up a large part of the GI
diet in World War Two, if they weren't eating carrot, and it was even in K-Rations.
So they got over to England.
And as you know, the army will decide things and not tell you why.
And the show was apparently the army felt that there was already too much entertainment
in Paris for GIs.
And there had been such rapid movement of troops from the breakout in Normandy to just
about the German border in literally a matter of three or four months.
So the army was stretched sort of thin and there were men on the front line then, literally
on the German border in Belgium and Luxembourg, especially, that needed to be reached.
And so the idea of Jeep shows was invented at that point to reach these far flung men
on the front line who were not able to be reached with by the Red Cross or the USO.
Now, I was going to say, I don't think Bob Hope didn't did any shows that close to the
front.
Bob Hope was an incredible contributor, but the USO shows could not go in these combat
areas.
So can you tell our audience a little bit about what kind of acts these chief shows
did?
Yes.
Essentially, it was a small variety show.
So let's say you were, you know, there was three, Mickey Rooney was one of the three.
There was one of the guys would play an accordion.
You know, he would, he would literally be a professional musician before the war and
he'd play an accordion and Mickey Rooney would do routine and probably what's known as a
two-man routine with the other guy where the other guy would be kind of the straight man
for Mickey Rooney.
And they would sing songs and they would dance and they almost always would pull a soldier
out of the audience who his buddies would, you know, say he could perform something and
they know they pull him out of the audience and he might do a terrible impression of Edward
G. Robinson or he might sing or he might have real talent and do something.
So kind of a portable variety show, you know, a K-Rash inversion of a variety show.
I think that's kind of cool.
Yeah.
And when you think about it, the way you describe it, they had a kind of a wrestling routine
that they did in the book.
Yes.
Yeah.
That I, that was real.
Mickey Rooney did a famous movie in the, I think mid 30s called Boys Town and it included
a pantomime wrestling match and Mickey Rooney lifted that routine from that movie and he
and his Jeep show squad did that pantomime slow motion pantomime wrestling match.
Must have probably did it a thousand times, you know, between 1944 and 1945 and, you know,
they did it for, you know, two soldiers and a goat.
They did it for a thousand airmen, you know, at a big airfield in England.
So yes, that was the core of their routine.
Thanks for reminding me about that.
I just thought that was funny.
The whole description that you give in the book to book is titled Jeep Show and the author
is Robert B. O'Connor.
And I know you can get the book pretty much anywhere as soon as it comes out, which is
in the next couple of days.
It's coming out Thursday.
It'll be available on Amazon Thursday.
We'll get to regular bookstores a little bit later, but I wanted to get it out for the
80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.
Speaking of which.
Yes.
All right.
So we have our main character over in Europe and he's running around with, you know, doing
his Jeep shows and he gets stuck in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge and gets separated
from everybody, it seems like, and it ends up with a great description.
I mean, just a really detailed, unfortunately, probably a little graphic, but still such
an important description of what he was up to because he ran around.
Everything that could go wrong for him went wrong.
Right.
There were company sized strong points on the German, literally a mile from the German
border and he and Mickey Rooney and their colleague are doing a show in a little village
called Hosengin, which is a company sized strong point.
And yeah, he gets events happen and there's no room for Jim in the Jeep and he gets stuck
there and the next morning, the December 16th, 1944 is the next morning and the Germans begin
the artillery bombardment at about 5 a.m. and he is scrambling all the way to Bastogne
over the next three or four days.
He runs into a lot of really unusual characters too.
Yes, he does.
And I don't want to give them all away, but there are a couple about it.
All right.
Well, the one that he exchanges is gives his dog tags too.
Yes.
One of his, one of the infantry soldiers at, let's see, 28th Division Company, one of the
infantry soldiers in Hosengin is Jewish and during the German attack, it is clear that
this company strong point is going to be surrounded, bypassed and surrounded by the Germans and
the captain in charge of the company, the XO, asks Jim to give his dog tags to this Jewish
soldier because the fear is that this is SS or that the Gestapo will be right behind
the German troops and that they will murder Jewish soldiers.
So Jim does give his dog tags to the Jewish soldier and there is a plot twist, Dale, and
I don't know if you want me to mention it, but it leads to a significant and interesting,
I hope, plot twist later on of mistaken identity.
Right.
Misunderstanding.
We'll leave it at that.
Well, the other thing was that the, evidently, is that the protagonist, the hero of the story,
also spoke German or a little German.
And so the next thing he's drafted as an interpreter.
Yes.
His mother was an immigrant from Germany.
There were so many immigrants from Germany in the late, in the late 19th century.
So there was German at home, the protagonist, Jim's German is very imperfect, but he is
not afraid to use it to avoid other unpleasant duties.
And so there are a few interrogation scenes of Germans, both officers and enlisted men,
where Jim's imperfect German is causing some confusion.
And he picks up a buddy along the way, who was actually with a German prisoner.
He picks up, he picks up a fellow that was born in Milwaukee, whose parents went back
to Germany in the mid 30s.
This fellow was then drafted into the German army, was not thrilled about being in the
German army and gets captured by, actually by the protagonist, Jim, and ends up, yes,
helping with the interrogations.
Yes, Willie.
Willie.
Willie Hock.
Who, by the way, all his German colleagues just are always teasing him about his Milwaukee
accent.
Speaks German with a...
Yes, with a Milwaukee accent.
With a Milwaukee accent.
The battle of bolts caused so many infantrymen to be separated from their units that they
formed up, I don't know if the army did this or these guys did that, but they formed up
their own unit, sort of called the snafus.
We don't have to go through the whole definition of what a snafu is, because I think most of
our audience knows what it means.
Anyway, so it's kind of this ragtag group of everybody from everywhere.
Yes, Team Snafu is a lesser known participant in the Battle of the Bulge, and particularly
in the Siege of Bastone, in that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of soldiers, either
infantrymen from companies that had been overrun or barbers, telephone operators, band members,
various non-combat soldiers, fell back to Bastone or were stuck there and were organized
into Team Snafu, which essentially had an important combat role in trying to fill gaps
between the 101st Parachute Division battalions.
Because as I recall, there are four in paratroopers, there are four battalions, and they were spaced
around Bastone, and there were gaps in between that Team Snafu members would be trying to
fill at various times.
They also did other, are the duties like gathering food supplies from farms around the area,
and there is a chapter where Jim is involved with a Graves registration effort.
Yeah, that's, I mean, all these stories in there that you've weaved through the book
are all real.
Yes.
I know they're real, but you just go, oh, how did these guys do this?
And then, you know, when you read the stories, I mean, not only is he part of a Graves registration
thing, but then he ends up being at one of the concentration camps when it's liberated.
And you do a masterful job, I think, of describing the concentration camp and what it looks like.
And again, you're bringing in all these characters of Hollywood directors and filmmakers and so
forth.
And they want to, oh, we got to take a picture of that, we got to do this, because they want
to make a documentary to show to the German people what really happened here, folks.
And to the American audience, because there was, as Eisenhower said, and Eisenhower did
tour this camp, as Eisenhower said, you know, we'll show people what we were fighting for.
Because there was some significant, especially before the war, there was some significant
American opinion that, you know, this is not our business.
So yeah, I wanted to, I did not want to have a lively, you know, at times very funny narrative
of the war without showing the suffering, the, you know, the terrible, terrible toll
that war takes on the soldiers that participate, the combat soldiers in particular, and civilians.
So I wanted to show that through the eyes of this one, this one kind of misplaced, misplaced
soldier.
Yes.
Well, I think you've done a really a masterful job of weaving humor and trauma throughout
the book.
The book is called a Jeep Show and author is Robert O'Connor and really encouraged people
to go out and read this.
It's not only is it enlightening, especially for some people that are, you know, over 70,
let's say, yes, you know, want to find out what their folks actually did.
But then again, for the younger generation, what did grand, you know, what did granddad
do in the war and so forth?
Because many times, obviously, they did not talk about their experiences.
And some of it is, it's a laugh out loud, humorous, and it's also tear jerking.
You see what, you know, what modern day war does to a whole country.
And what to end up on a happier note, I guess, is that we know that our our protagonist did
survive, although he did get court.
They tried to court martial for stealing a Jeep, which he didn't steal.
Which I thought was well, that's just let me tell I have to throw in this story.
This is one of our local heroes, Charlie Kettles was a Medal of Honor recipient.
He was a helicopter pilot who lived here in Michigan and the VA center is named after
him now.
But he his Medal of Honor, he received it for going back again and again and again,
picking up wounded soldiers.
One time his whole company had pulled out and they thought they had everybody and somebody
calls on the radio and says, oh, we forgot something.
He immediately turns back and goes in and gets eight more of them out loses his door
gunner.
The helicopters just shot the hell.
So anyway, during that particular day, he wrecked four or five helicopters.
I mean, they're all full of bullet holes and all this other stuff.
So when he got his Medal of Honor, he received from the United States Army a bill for 483,000
dollars to two for all of the repairs on the helicopters he broke that day.
And that's so funny.
You know, followed up by a by a bill stamped paid in full.
That's absolutely.
I believe that the unit of patents armored force that relieved Bastone also presented
them presented the hundred and first airborne with an invoice related to the special trip
they had to make from France to relieve best on.
Well, you know, there's all that, you know, there's all that dark humor.
Yes, that that does go on in the military and it wouldn't survive without it.
Exactly.
And I think the other thing is that you weave all of these characters in their real characters.
I mean, like the patents and the Eisenhower's and the Bradleys and all these famous names.
You even bring the Russians in and they have a big party together and they're singing and
dancing and he goes off on a drum playing riff.
I don't know how much of this is true or not, but I sure suckered me.
I thought it was about half of it.
Probably about half of it.
But anyway, I really want to thank you for being on Veterans Radio.
I really encourage again, as I said, people just go and read this book.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
I mean, the title grabbed me.
That's why I wanted to see what it was all about.
But as you said, it's going to be out on Amazon in a couple of days.
Big Christmas present for older relatives and younger relatives as well, just to see
what the world was like back in the 1940s.
Great.
Dale, thanks so much for letting me talk with you and your audience.
It's been a real pleasure.
Okay.
Thank you.
Let me know the next time you write a book.
I'll talk to you in a couple of years.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
All right.
So, quick break.
We're going to do our Medal of Honor segment.
And then when we come back, we're going to do our NVBDC.
But come back to me, Derek, when we get a chance.
All right.
So, here we go.
So, this is our Medal of Honor segment for today.
Stames Fox.
And it happens to be during the Battle of the Bulge.
So you're listening to Veterans Radio.
We'll be right back.
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.
First Lieutenant John Fox called in artillery fire on his own position.
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.
On Christmas night in 1944, enemy soldiers in civilian clothes gradually infiltrated the
town Fox and his men were in, and by early morning, the town was largely in hostile hands.
An organized attack by uniformed German units began at 4 a.m.
Being greatly outnumbered, most of the American forces were forced to withdraw from the town,
but Fox and other members of his observer party voluntarily remained on the second floor
of a house to direct defensive artillery fire.
Fox reported the Germans were in the streets and attacking in strength.
He then called for defensive artillery fire to slow the enemy advance.
As the Germans continued to press the attack towards the area that Fox occupied, he adjusted
the artillery fire closer to his position.
Finally, he was warned that the next adjustment would bring the deadly artillery right on
top of his position.
After acknowledging the danger, Lieutenant Fox insisted that the last adjustment be fired
as this was the only way to defeat the attacking soldiers.
Later when a counterattack retook the position from the Germans, Lieutenant Fox's body
was found with the bodies of approximately 100 German soldiers.
The Medal 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
it's you.
Even the toughest of us sometimes need help, but don't know where to turn for support.
You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life.
We can all help someone going through a difficult time.
Learn how you can be there for veterans.
Visit veteranscrisisline.net VeteransCrisisLine.net A message from the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs.
And we're back here on Veterans Radio and right now we're going to go to our NVBDC segment
or our spotlight of the month.
My partner Jim Falzone interviewed Army veteran Annette Stevenson.
She is the owner of the Stevenson Consulting Group and she's also a board member of NVBDC.
So here we go.
This is, as they say, this was recorded earlier.
So here is Jim Falzone and Annette Stevenson.
Welcome I am Jim Falzone and this is a Veterans Radio spotlight on the National Veterans Business
Development Council, better known as NVBDC.org.
We have a partnership with NVBDC, which is the nation's leading third party authority
for certification of veteran owned businesses.
Of all sizes, this 501C3 has been in business doing its good work for over 10 years now
and it addresses the growing need to identify and certify both service disabled and veteran
owned businesses for a commercial or corporate and marketplace as well as the government.
It provides a rigorous certification process designed to withstand the scrutiny of corporate
entities seeking to utilize certified veteran owned businesses.
And we want to welcome to the program today Annette Stevenson, an Army veteran.
Annette, welcome.
Thank you.
Great, great for the opportunity.
Well you're a tenure Army veteran and we'll get to that in a little bit but let's start
with as president of Stevenson Consulting Group and you have a long business history in supplier
diversity.
How did you get involved with NVBDC?
Well, when I came off of active duty trying to figure out what my next step was, I wound
up working for the state of North Carolina for about seven years in contracts and grants
and some minor purchasing and then had the opportunity to go to corporate America.
So I wound up working at SAS Institute for 18 years, got credentialed as a procurement
analyst and then was working actually for a retired Army warrant officer in procurement
and he gave me the opportunity to stand up and manage our supplier diversity program.
So a couple years into that, you know, when veterans were coming to the forefront of business
opportunities in corporate America, it's where I met Keith and you know, he didn't believe
I was a veteran at first, you know, Keith is just always questioning.
Because I had actually served in the National Guard and reserves in college before I came
on active duty and got my RA.
So we talked and see how we could help veterans in the corporate space.
I helped them build some relationships through the industry groups and you know, was able
to reach out to Apple, Oracle, Dell, all those big corporations, AT&T and Google, when they
were looking at the different certifications for veterans that were coming online, you
know, aside from the VA CVE because there was so much fraud, a lot of corporations did
not want to take the CVE verification.
So when Keith stood this up and you know, became gold standard and you know, really understand
what it takes to be a vet according to the public law, reading the 214s, you know, we
just drove it now I serve as a board member for the NVBDC and my own consulting company
is NVBDC certified also.
And I believe you're also the vice president of North Carolina Veterans Business Association.
Well, I was, I was, but as my business started to grow, I did.
Yeah, pick and choose.
Yeah, we all learn we can't do it all, but this was obviously an important thing.
We were just at the National Convention for NVBDC in Detroit, Michigan.
Why is it important if you're a veteran owned business to get certified?
Annette, can you give us your vast experience as to why is this important?
Yes.
So thank you for that question because it's, it's funny, we don't know what we don't know.
You know, all most veterans understand is the federal sector, right?
The SBA, the CBE program, now the vets first program.
And that's to do business in the federal contracting arena, right?
Has really nothing to do with the corporate mindset, but veterans don't understand.
There's three different sectors to have opportunity, federal, state and local and corporate.
And so for an organization like SAS and a lot of the major corporations, they do business
in all three verticals, right?
And there's different requirements that you have to meet.
And ironically enough, even if you're verified or certified through the SBA now, if you outgrow
your NAICS codes, right, or your number of employees, you're no longer eligible to be
certified because you've outgrown the small business requirements.
That doesn't happen with NVBDC, okay?
So if you notice it's that little S in the SDVOSB versus SDVOP, right?
acronym, sitting, but by getting certified through NVBDC, you know, they've been accepted
by the billion dollar roundtable.
And as you mentioned in the introduction, they thoroughly vet you that you own operating
control, your company, and even more so that you meet the standards to be a veteran, okay?
And we didn't make them up.
It's not pick and choose.
We like you.
We don't.
It's by the public law, right, that you meet the criteria to be a veteran.
And so the corporations appreciate that standard of certification.
And when you go through the process, and it is a fee based process, I always tell people,
it's like getting a college degree, right?
College degree does not guarantee you a job.
It's a hunting license.
It's a credential.
And that's what certification gets for you.
It's a badge that you've been thoroughly vetted.
The corporations that look at you now know you've been through that process, and they're
willing to give you an opportunity and a seat at the table to go through and look for those
corporate opportunities.
And really one of the things that NVBDC, as you mentioned, is sort of the gold standard
for veteran certification.
That's on the individual company side, certifying the company.
But it has all these relationships with these really large companies who want to do business
with certified veteran owned businesses.
And that's sort of unique as well, those introductions to all of those big companies.
And that's also the side of the table that you've been able to play on.
Yes, exactly.
Well, because businesses want to have the value, right?
So if I'm paying that certification fee, what's the value?
They want to do business with veterans, because veterans like myself, I'm Asian American.
I'm an Army brat.
Our father was an original member of Special Forces back in the 50s.
He was a Vietnam vet also.
And I grew up at Fort Bragg.
But the characteristics that veterans bring to the table, well, I mean, one, I got sideways,
but I'm a minority woman's service-assabled vet.
So veterans cross the whole spectrum, right?
And you can have multiple certifications.
But the value we bring from our experiences by serving in the military, you know, we can
make a lot happen with limited resources, working well under pressure, hard work, the
leadership, the innovation, the teamwork, you know, it's something and logistics, right?
We're great at logistics and problem solving and big picture thinking.
All that goes into entrepreneurship.
And this isn't to say that other groups or minority women don't have that characteristic.
But it's pretty much what we do in the military, you know?
We've learned how to step up to the plate and take ownership.
And that's what corporations and businesses are looking for from their suppliers.
How can you help me fix this problem?
Can you save money?
Can you help me save time?
Is there something else I should be doing?
Is there innovation that you can bring to the table?
And a lot of time that is through veteran-owned businesses being able to provide that.
And the stat that Keith just shared was the billion-dollar roundtable members, the corporations,
spent $4.3 billion with NVBDC certified vets last year.
Well, if that's not enough to motivate you to say, hey, maybe I want a piece of that
opportunity, let me go get certified by NVBDC.
Certainly the experiences of Annette Stevenson across a broad range of having her own businesses,
working for a major corporation, understanding supplier diversity ought to be enough to motivate
you.
And you can go to NVBDC.org to get started.
They're very helpful, but it is a rigorous program.
Hey, we're back here on Veterans Radio.
I'd nothing like muting your mic when you want to talk to somebody.
All right.
That was Jim Faustone talking with the representative of NVBDC, Annette Stevenson.
I wanted to bring on a new friend of Veterans Radio right now.
He's a Marine.
We had a couple of minutes to talk with him, Brian Bayhub.
Brian, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thanks for listening in the whole show.
Hey, that's all right.
It's good stuff.
So tell us, tell our audience.
We got a little story about it, that you were a Marine and that you were on your way to
Vietnam, but they said you're too tall.
Yeah.
The whole platoon went.
I mean, I guess it was kind of a shock, but they just pulled me aside and said, you're
not going.
You're too tall.
I was officially the tallest Marine they ever had.
How tall are you?
I was 6'11".
I'm getting old, so I'm not as tall anymore, I don't think.
Well, I know you're one of the few people that I really have to look up to.
No pun intended there.
Ironically, I have found in the last year, there's a guy in California that has a website
called the world's tallest Marine, I mean, Marine Corps tallest Marine or something
like that.
And he's only 6'9".
Oh, wow.
Hey, that's nothing.
And I was aware of him because the articles that they had about me being the tallest guy,
I have an article that says there was a guy that was 6'9".
And I don't want to bust his bubble, but you know, sorry, he's got a website I don't,
so that's all right.
Well, we'll start promoting.
We have the tallest Marine on our program.
So what did you end up doing in the Marines?
Well, heavy equipment mechanic in North Carolina, and ironically, I saw a lot of returning veterans
that both well adjusted in, shell shocked.
And then I ended up on from left camp of June, I ended up on Cherry Point.
And there was a bunch of guys showing up from there and by then they had started to rebuild
their barracks into two man rooms.
And I ended up having my own room for about two weeks.
And then they put a guy in there that was pretty extremely shell shocked.
And we had some good conversations, you know, because nobody else would room with them.
So, you know, it's just what it is.
I know, I know you're a good guy and you are involved in a lot of things here with our
local Veterans Service organizations.
You're in the Honor Guard.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're all ages of funerals that we do.
There's not as many from World War Two anymore, but a lot of Korea now and guys our age, you
know, right?
Yeah.
And you get to read about their obituaries and stuff if you want to.
So, well, I think it's great that you are interested in, you know, coming on to our
program and, you know, I'm looking forward to you, you know, maybe gathering up some
of these taller Marines and so forth.
And maybe we could do a program about that or any of the other stories that you've been
exposed to because we're coming up to the end of the program here.
Yeah.
It is what it is.
I had the experience of graduating boot camp with my utility uniforms because they didn't
have my dress uniform yet.
We got to go, Brian.
I'm sorry to cut you off.
All right.
We'll be back next week.
So, you've been listening to Veterans Radio.
Go to our website, veteransradio.org.
You are dismissed.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
White was born, God left America, My home, sweet home.
God left America, Land that I love,
And He's hight there, and hight there, To the night, to the night from above.
From the mountain, to the prairie, To the ocean, white before.
God left America, My home, sweet home.
From the mountain, to the prairie, To the ocean,
White was born, God left America, My home, sweet home.
God left America, My home, sweet home.