All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Hi, hey, welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry and it's really a pleasure to have you joining us today.
I think we've got a really exciting program.
We've got a documentary maker.
We've got an organization helping veterans.
We've got an interview with NVVDC.
So we've got all kinds of things going on today.
And as I said, I'm really excited that you've been able to join us.
First of all, before we get into the first interview,
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Now, let's get into the program.
All right, as I mentioned, we got a documentary maker on here.
And this came about really, it's one of those miracles of trying to put together a radio program.
Somebody drops off and an angel drops a great program into us.
So, joining me right now on the line is Jake Radimaker.
And Jake is a documentary maker.
He's made two of them.
One is called Brothers at War.
And the other one that is coming out in the next couple of weeks is Brothers After War.
So, Jake, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Pleasure to be with you guys today.
Thank you for having me.
Well, you know, I just, I was really happy, obviously, when Matthew dropped, you know, an email in asking if I wanted to talk to you.
So, tell me about, let's kind of go back to the first one.
Both of these documentaries kind of revolved around you and your whole family.
That's correct.
You know, my brothers, Isaac and Joe, told me the truth was not coming home from Iraq.
They came back from Isaac's second deployment, Joe's first deployment.
They were in Fallujah with the 82nd Airborne.
They done, Isaac did a year in Afghanistan prior to that.
And as a family member, to be completely honest with you, that pissed me off.
So, I decided to do something about it.
I took all the money I ever made.
I started a production company.
I got permission from the Department of Defense, eventually.
And I went to Iraq and I joined Isaac on his third deployment in Mosul, Iraq in 2005.
He, you know, your listeners will be shocked to hear I was able to film in a skiff.
Then I was able to get out by the Syrian border with his LERS teams.
And the film documented some of the mission, but really it was about the human being wearing a uniform.
And it also followed them back home as they came home.
So you're right, it was my entire family.
When Isaac comes home in the middle of the family, in the middle of the film, his daughter
who's one at this time doesn't recognize him and won't go to him.
And it's moments like this that we re-explore in Brothers After War.
I just finished watching the Brothers After War.
And I have to tell you, it was just heart wrenching for one thing.
And plus the photography, obviously you've got a talent and skill that's involved there
as a story maker and putting this whole thing together.
But just a couple of lines that I took from that is that coming home has always been the
hardest part of being a warrior.
And this really struck home with me.
You know, when you're off doing your fighting, saving the world for democracy and all these
other different things, it's amazing that you come home the next day and now you're
a civilian or now you're just home.
And I think that you really describe that really well.
Well, I appreciate that, Dale.
I guess it was unique.
I was, you know, as the first film went on, I found myself out there with Marines in combat,
Iraqi.
I went out with snipers.
But since the film, we created these workshops.
So since 2011, we've done workshops for about 40,000 service members and their families.
So I've had, you know, so many experiences trying to help our veterans walk through maybe
some trauma they experienced overseas or back home, frankly.
And it just occurred to me that, you know, a statistic, we lost 6,700 that were killed
in action overseas in 20 years.
We've lost 35,000 from my generation to suicide.
So five times more have taken their own life.
And so I really feel that that bears out.
And in making this film, that was sort of the summation statement.
You know, I started off with the film from that standpoint of having worked with so many
service members and really wanting to do a deep dive and understand how my friends were
doing, how they're really doing, and also my brothers.
And so I really went on that journey in this film.
And that was my, that's what I came away with, was that I think coming home is truly difficult.
It's been that way since the ancient Greeks.
The Native Americans had ceremonies to try to help that process.
But I think in the modern day, when less than 1% serve and society can sometimes be a little
affected, I think the disconnect between our war fighters on the front lines overseas and
then what's going on back here, I think it, it's exasperated.
And so it's more difficult than it was maybe in World War II.
Maybe not as difficult as a Vietnam, quite honestly.
The Vietnam bets have done a huge favor for this generation.
But I think it's very, very difficult to come home.
And I think a lot of people don't really understand that and it's hard for veterans to articulate
that.
So thank you for the kind words about the film.
I do hope that it does capture a nugget of what I think is an essential truth.
There are many essential truths in there, Jacob.
We're talking to Jacob Rodemaker.
His film is titled Brothers After War.
And we've talked about this topic many times here on Veterans Radio.
How do we assimilate how?
Can you hear me?
How do we?
I can't hear you.
Hold on one second.
How do we, you know, how do we transition back into being a civilian?
And it's very difficult, you know, in many cases it is.
Some people come home as a group.
Some people, you know, in my generation, we came home as individuals, which is really
the hardest part of making that transition.
You mentioned, and I can't remember the name of the, thank you.
I think Achilles in Vietnam was written by a psychiatrist from VA Hospital in Boston.
And he was talking about the Greeks after a war, after a battle, they weren't allowed
to go home for a month.
And that was so telling to me.
And your film does this.
When you follow your brothers, you know, for this whole 20 years almost of these wars over
there, and how did you get them to open up to you?
So, I mean Achilles in Vietnam, actually the big, the psychiatrist for the big red one
turned me onto that book when I helped 700 of them transition home from Iraq in 2011.
And I saw more of that in 2012 when I was asked to work with the Oklahoma National Guard
after they lost 14 guys overseas and then had a suicide a week before I got there.
And as recently as the 2-1 Marines, I went down to Camp Pendleton and worked with them,
the guys who lost 11 friends overseas.
So I've been sort of in the thick of that and seen that firsthand.
You know, what one veteran told me, the magic of the film is you see the warfighter in the
war zone and then you flash to the veteran they become.
And so some of the corporals are master sergeants still serving, like my brother Joe's now deployed
nine times as a tier one operator, but is making a transition out of that for his family,
for his kids and his wife.
And then other ones have gone off into the civilian world and some are doing great, they're
owning businesses, and then some are struggling a little bit and trying to find their path
forward.
Another thing that another veteran told me they loved about the film was they said a
lot of times when Hollywood takes on the veteran story, they either do heroes like metal
von recipients or in his words they do zeros, guys that are struggling to get by and sometimes
in documentaries he cherry picks sad stories.
I think to your point, the reason why they opened up was twofold.
For one, I was there with him.
You know, I returned to one of those Marine gunners.
I was in combat with him.
There were three Americans out there, the Syrians were shooting at me too.
I almost got hit.
And then I was filming him taking care of a wounded Iraqi soldier.
And he opened up about that moment probably for the first time in his life.
And that's what he told me.
He brushed by it when I first asked him and I told him, hey, David, for me, that was grace
on earth the way you were caressing that wounded Iraqi soldier's face.
And he stopped, he looked down, he said, well, he was one of mine and he started to cry.
And he reached out to me a couple months later and he's like, thank you for coming.
It helped.
It really helped.
And that's why we're telling these stories.
They're not to make people, they're to inspire people, right?
Because you tell your stories, you open up, you start to communicate to your families
and the burden gets a little lessened and the people that love you most, they get a
little bit closer.
Their empathy goes up.
So that, I think it's a combination of having been there with them in the war zone, coupled
with the fact that they knew that I was out here thanks to the Gary Sneese Foundation
doing these workshops 25 a year.
And they felt like, as in Joe's words in the film, if my story can help another veteran,
that's why I've told you this today.
That's why I've opened up.
So I think it was the altruistic aim of trying to help other veterans and create a movement
across the country for vets to talk about their stories, coupled with the fact that
a little easier to explain to a guy what it's like to get shot at when he was next to you
getting shot at, right?
Right, absolutely.
We had a program around here before COVID hit where every month we would get together
and have a, you know, there I was kind of just gathering of veterans and people would
just tell their stories.
And I can remember one guy talking about his experiences in Vietnam and when he was finished,
his daughter came up and gave him the giant hug and she says, I never knew any of that.
He says, I felt I couldn't tell you until now.
And the idea of trying to keep consistently trying to get our veterans out there to tell
their stories to anybody that will listen to them is so important.
And I thought that you really did this beautifully.
And you know, yeah, there are sad parts of your documentary, but there are also so many
uplifting parts of it as well.
We're talking with Jake Radimike here.
The movie that's coming out at the end of the month is Brothers After War and They're
Coming Home.
And you've got a pretty big family history.
Can you tell us a little bit about that as far as military is concerned?
Yeah, it turns out my mom's, you know, great grandfather was actually a pilot in World
War One.
We go to visit her uncle in Sicily, who unfortunately he earned a silver star and then died in Sicily.
We visit his grave as a family in the film.
And then my father's grandfather, you know, filled his pockets with rolls of dimes and
eight milkshakes so he could make weight and then join the Army Air Corps.
He was a co-pilot.
He did 17 bombing missions.
The 17th mission was successful, but then they were shot down.
And he spent the last six months of the war fighting behind enemy lines.
And as it turns out, my brother Joe is named after him.
So in the film, we actually returned to the site where grandpa Joe dropped and spent the
last six months of the war fighting side by side with the Italian partisans.
So it's an incredible story.
And it was just sort of surreal to walk that ground again and then to be asking Joe to
reflect on his own experience because that's a little bit of what Joe did.
You know, he was the RRC of the 75th Ranger Battalion, one of those guys with a beard.
You know, for six years he employed six times.
We weren't always sure exactly where he was.
So it's so interesting that our grandfather had sort of done the same thing in World War
II, you know, hiding from the Nazis, hiding from the fascists and coordinating with like
2,000 Italian partisans, 200 square miles of the resistance with the British special
operations.
Well, I found that really interesting.
I just, I liked all of those things you have.
And you have a nephew who is in the service.
Is he still in the service?
He is.
So he's four years active.
He's now in the Illinois National Guard, you know, working in the motor pool there.
I actually think he's in SFAB.
So he's in the advisors kind of like Isaac is in the film.
He keeps falling in his uncle's footsteps.
You know, Quinton is doing great.
He has just found that he loves going to work in his uniform and he loves taking it off at
the end of the day and being a civilian soldier.
So and you know, that is an aspect of this film we've always covered.
You know, it's interesting to me that in the film Frank McCann is a sniper, but he's in
the National Guard.
And here we follow up with him years later and he's a master sergeant in the National
Guard.
But this particular war, I mean, right now across the world, 55% of the people that are
deployed are actually serving in the National Guard.
Right.
Yeah, it's kind of really unusual the way that they're filling in the troops, I guess
you could say.
And you're talking about the important party.
One of the major important parts of your film, of course, is you were talking about
was suicide prevention, which is this generation, unfortunately, whatever the reasons are, has
a much higher rate of suicide than any other I think in our history.
And you were talking to this one guy, I saw his bigger, Sergeant Ernest Ward, he was talking
about what can he do or what can we all do to help prevent some of these suicides.
Can you talk a little bit about the bigger and you seem like a cool character.
Oh, he's such a great guy.
You know, I met him years ago, he actually took me up to Kurdistan with his unit, he's
six foot six, he's super intimidating to look at when he's in his battle rattle, but
he's got the heart of gold, you know.
And so I wanted to follow up with him.
And shockingly, you know, I just happened to arrive in the weekend before one of his
good friends had committed suicide.
And so he was kind of reeling with how to deal with that.
And then the film, you know, he reads the note and that the guy posted on Facebook and
then he writes a beautiful note to the family about, you know, what kind of man he was and
that he was sorry for their loss.
Yeah, you know, Big Ernest is an incredible, incredible guy.
And he says in the film, I've never changed my cell phone number since 2004, because I'm
right here, call me, call me.
You know, I think to really prevent suicide has to be multifaceted.
Sometimes people just focus on the final day or the final moment.
I personally just this is just Jake talking.
I think we got to look beyond that.
I think we got to get way left a bang and look at, you know, communicating about your
story, maybe go in to talk to a counselor if you need to, you know, there's a lot of
solution that's in the film.
There's a lot of people that are go from being a sniper in this triangle of death to the best
father of a kid with special needs.
Now in the film, he says he went to the VA and talked to a counselor 22 times and she
was really nice.
I don't know.
I'm not a genius, but it seems like there's a connection there.
And my own brother, my own brother Joe talks about going and talking to somebody about his
anger and I've watched his arc.
He's just transformed over the years with his ability to handle his anger.
And I believe it's also on us as society.
You know, one time a veteran told me it's not just about asking vets to reach out.
It's about us reaching in.
And my hope for the film and the reason why we made the workshop was cast after the first
film we had so many veterans come up to us and say, I just had my first conversation
with, you know, his or her experience overseas after seeing the film.
And we found that movies make tough subjects easier to talk about.
So the vision for this theatrical release and, you know, thanks to Regal and a couple
of other places, we're getting an opportunity to, I think we're going to be able to release
on 125 movie screens across America.
And our big hope for that is that veterans will go see the film together and experience
communication and camaraderie and that this will be a very positive step for them in a
healing journey all the way home.
Well, it's a great film.
I really strongly recommend it to anybody out there, whether you're a veteran or not,
because I think if you're not a veteran, it's going to give you insight into the veteran's
world a little bit more.
And if you are a veteran, you're going to see that you're really not alone.
And I think that that's one of the things that so many veterans felt or maybe even feel
still today is that once they're done, they're done.
And you're never done.
That's the thing.
You know, it's like Marines.
You know, Marines are always Marines.
It doesn't make any difference when they served or whatever it was.
It's just kind of this mindset.
And I want to thank Jake Ruddermar for this film, It's The Brothers After War.
It's coming out.
I'm going to hit the theaters.
It says on February 28th.
It's just a mind-altering film, Jake.
I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it.
And I know that the veteran community is really going to appreciate it.
I think this is something that needs to be done.
Well thank you for that.
I mean, you know, Gary Sinise, when we were finishing up the film, he was my executive
producer, you know, we really wanted the film to have some fun.
You know, I jump out of an airplane.
There's a lot of humor at my expense as well.
But in the end, he said, I want to leave the vets with hope.
And I'll leave you with one final thought.
A veteran, to your point, agrees, sounds like exactly with you.
A veteran saw the film and he said, it made me realize I'm not broken.
I'm not alone.
It's OK to be vulnerable.
It gave me hope for my future.
So our hope is that that'll be the experience of tons of veterans.
And you know, the website's brothersafterwar.com.
You can go there and see if it's playing in your neighborhood.
If it's not, let us know or go to the local movie theater.
We are trying to get the film out to as many veterans as possible and we'll be doing Brothers
After War seminars for years to come.
OK, I think that's another great opportunity, again, is for these veterans to gather together
and talk about their problems, or their issues, or, you know, just, you know, there's always
that sense that something's missing and you need to be around, I think, other veterans
because they're the ones that can kind of put that missing puzzle piece back in there
for you.
So.
Well, Dale, you're right, there's a spiritual element to this and there's a social element
to this.
Never in the history of time have we ever asked veterans just kind of figure it out on the
road.
You know, like you said, the ancient Greeks didn't just let them be on their own for a
month.
They also created theater.
Theater was created for veterans to try to explain to the rest of society what it was
like to go to war and what it was like to come home.
And I'd like to think we're borrowing from that tradition with our American art form
by putting this film in our current cultural town square.
Well, get out there and watch it, folks.
Get out there.
It's brothers after war.
Coming out February 28.
Check your local theaters.
If it's not there, let us know and we'll make sure they'll start showing it, all right?
Thank you, Dale.
Thank you, Jake, very much for being on Veterans Radio.
We are going to make a quick transition to our next guest.
And speaking of supporting veterans, and I muted Mike's microphone, so you may want
to turn it on again.
Anyway, joining me right now on the line is Mike Sully Sullivan.
He is from Red, White and Blue, Team Red, White and Blue.
And this is an organization that has been helping veterans for a long time.
And so Sully, how are you doing?
I'm great.
I'm knocking things down over here, but I'm doing great.
That's all right.
We get so excited sometimes things just start flying.
I asked Mike to join us on the program because I was contacted that Team Red, White and Blue
has got a big event coming up in May.
And Sully, I'd like you to kind of, well, let me back up.
Tell us all about Red, White and Blue.
What is it that they do?
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, I was getting excited just to get to talk listening to Jacob because a lot of
what he just spoke about is like the vision of Team Red, White and Blue.
So Team Red, White and Blue, or we commonly refer to him as Team RWB, started 15 years
ago founded by then major Mike Irwin.
He was an Intel officer.
He and I worked together in Third Special Forces Group.
And he came up with the idea while he was at Michigan, studying to get his, he was getting
his master's in psychology to go teach at West Point.
And he thought at that time, he was seeing a lot of veterans coming home from Afghanistan
and Iraq.
People were transitioning out of the service.
And what he was seeing was a lot of veterans lacking purpose, accountability, a loss of
community and that kind of team environment that they were so used to in the military.
And he wanted to do something that would bring veterans back together in a positive way.
And what he leaned into was physical fitness.
It was that crucible of doing physical fitness together in the military from basic training
on that many veterans bonded over every morning at 6.30 after a revelry went off, we would
face right and go on that two mile run.
So he used that as the conduit to bring folks together, both veterans, active duty, reserve
guard and community supporters, both family members and those in the community that just
wanted to help veterans out as they transitioned out of the military, especially those folks
that had just come back from Afghanistan and Iraq.
You fast forward 15 years later, we're 300,000 members strong across the entire United States.
We're a chapter based organization, but we have a very effective application.
But you can download from both Google and Apple.
And that serves kind of as what we call our digital garrison to keep the glue together
and allow people to understand what's going out there in terms of our events, as well
as we do a lot of fitness and health education and challenges in there, whether it's nutrition,
sleep, you think of it, we got it going on in terms of activities that you could do
via the app.
We pair that with monthly missions that highlight generations of veterans throughout our history
and significant events.
And it just teach people motivated and going, it gives veterans that purpose and community
that they, you know, that that so connectedness that they need so they don't isolate.
So when Jacob was talking, hey, we need to get well left of things like, you know, chronic
mental illness, that's team RWB, you know, we know that a five mile run is not going
to fix it if you're the day before something very tragic is going to happen.
But if you're just out of the service or you've been out for six months, you're sitting on
the couch and you want to like, I'm going to get moving again.
You realize that, you know, you've isolated yourself, team RWB is there to get you, get
you going, get you active, keep you going.
You know, our mission is to enrich veterans lives.
And we do that through building, you know, the nation's leading health and wellness community
for veterans.
So that's the down and dirty of it.
Well, I understand that.
And I, we have talked to, you mentioned that, you know, Erwin went to U of M, the University
of Michigan for our last audience and invited me to go out and run, but I'm a little bit
beyond that right now.
And I guess they probably run, I know they run every weekend or somewhere.
And that, but I think it's so cool that they, you know, that they just keep active and,
you know, they keep gathering up their brothers and sisters and saying, okay, let's, let's
go out for a run.
And, you know, and if there's somebody's having an issue, there's an opportunity for
them to talk about it or, you know, because again, the veterans community, you know, as
open as people would like to think it is, it's pretty, pretty narrow, especially in
today's world, you know, with what less than 1% of, you know, people serving in the military
nowadays.
And at, you know, at the end of this 20 years of conflict that the year generation, you
know, had to go through, I'm sure that I think it's just great that you're providing these
opportunities for these people to get out there and do something different.
Yeah, it's an awesome opportunity.
Mike, Mike called me in when I was still a major in the special forces and he's like,
hey, Sully, you're going to need this someday yourself.
And then I just retired myself after a 30 year career and stepped right out of the uniform,
put on my new red shirt with the eagle on it as my uniform.
And each day I get, you know, I have purpose myself.
I'm driven to, you know, continue to serve veterans.
And it's cause of, you know, the way, the way I see it.
And no matter the generation you came from, you, you know, you raised your right hand
and you were willing to fight for your nation.
Right.
We answered the call, you know, whether it was for the global war on terrorism vets or
if it was the Vietnam vets like my dad, you know, it's, we all have done something for
our nation and whether it was in crisis or in combat.
And now, you know, we kind of see it as an opportunity to kind of charge vets with a
new mission to kind of lead the nation, kind of be that example of what a healthy lifestyle
looks like, you know, and hopefully by giving them that purpose and that sense of accountability,
they can kind of get after it.
Yeah.
To your point, we try to meet people where they're at, you know, we have Tuesdays and
Thursdays here in Fayetteville, North Carolina, we do a five day, but it's if you want to
walk it, you walk it.
If you want to put on a ruck and luck, you can put us some weight on your back.
I like to jog.
So I jog it with some friends.
But it's just that opportunity to continue to get out, you know, interact with everybody
and provide yourself with some purpose that's going to allow you to enjoy what you fought
for while you were in the service.
I think there's so many great organizations out there now, especially that, you know,
any veteran, you know, whether you want to run, or you know, stay healthy, or you want
to be an artist, or you want to be a singer, or, you know, you want to write a book or
write poetry, whatever it is, there are so many programs out there for veterans now.
And I like to think that our generation, my generation had a lot to do with that.
And so I'm very proud to, you know, to say to tell people, you know, I am a Vietnam veteran.
And you know, especially when we're talking to your generation, you guys are going, oh,
wow, you guys did this and you guys did that.
And you know, mainly because we wanted to make sure that there weren't any, there wasn't
any opportunity for veterans to isolate themselves.
We wanted to provide activities for them.
And I think you guys, along with, you know, so many other organizations out there are
doing a great thing.
But what I wanted to bring you on for, Sally, is what in the world are you guys doing in
May?
What is this running across the country thing?
Well, so we've, for the last 10 years as an organization, we've run a flag from one
part of the United States to another.
We did that, that activate our members and members would get together.
And it would be kind of like a day time event.
And usually it took about 60 days for us to get a flag from one place to another.
It was a great event.
It got a lot of folks out.
It was losing a little bit of its luster, but you know, it was something that we still
thought was like part of our core mission and like to show that we were still carrying
the flag.
This past year, last year, there was a Navy officer active duty who decided he wanted
to raise some money for Team RWB and he wanted to try to set the single person transcon record.
So he ran from Los Angeles to New York City last year, a young 03 in the Navy named Paul
Johnson.
And he did not make the record, but he put in a herculean effort and it created a lot
of like advocacy for veterans, their issues for Team RWB.
And we were like, how do we create that this year?
So we decided to take what we called the old glory relay, this amazing run that he did
and we kind of married the two things together.
And it's always been kind of a dream of micro ones to do this to see how fast we could get
a flag from one part of America to another.
So on the 2nd of May, we are going to be on the deck of the USS Midway in the in San Diego
Harbor and 12 veteran runners who have been picked and who have been training for like
the last few months, 10 men and two women who represent multiple different services,
multiple different generations coming together.
And they are going to relay that flag as fast as they can humanly possible.
We think they can do it in about 17 days.
So we're starting on the 2nd of May, we're going to go kind of the South Southwest out
of San Diego over through Phoenix, Albuquerque down into Dallas, up through Nashville and
then in through to the kind of Shenandoah Valley into NC.
We'll end on the National Mall, ideally on the 17th of May at the future home of the
Global War on Terror Memorial, which is just off of, it's on the mall just off to the side
of the Lincoln Memorial and just adjacent to the Vietnam Memorial.
So we're really excited.
It's going to give us an opportunity to highlight our mission, to highlight the power of veterans
that can do like amazing things.
Some of us will be doing a lot of support as it's going to take a whole team to get
the team there.
I wish I was as fast as some of these runners, but the goal is that they'll run.
Electively, the average pace will be about seven and a half to eight minute miles with
a flag.
So they'll be on eight hour shifts every day, 24 hours a day until it's done where they
get 16 hours to kind of recover as athletes and runners.
And it's it's going to be quite the journey.
We're pretty excited.
I am hoping that this is going to be recorded.
I'm sure it's going to be the I see a documentary here.
We definitely we have a we have a veteran owned documentary company veteran made who's
already started to do the work.
They've filmed some stuff already.
We had a practice, so to speak, over a weekend at a small place called the University of
Health and Performance in Northwest Arkansas.
We're bringing the team back together at the end of this month because they're all remote
and different parts to get together, do some more rehearsals, practice doing that eight
hour shift.
And then just before the second of May, we're all going to get together and get this thing
going in San Diego.
So we're pretty excited.
There'll be a lot of short form media.
You'll be able to follow online through our Instagram.
We'll have the flag tracked 24 seven with a GPS tracker.
So you know, no one can claim that we didn't do it.
And it'll be filmed the entire time.
I think it sounds great.
So let's go.
How do I go about supporting this your mission and this run?
Yeah, absolutely.
So team red, white and blue are our website is team RWB dot org.
And you can find the details about the old glory ultra relay under the things we do
tab.
So you go to the things we do tab go to events.
It'll say old glory ultra relay.
You're good to see the route.
You'll get to see more information about the event.
You'll see kind of baseball cards and all 12 of the runners.
And then later in the month, you'll see the sponsors that are going to help us make this
happen because we're just the small nonprofits.
So luckily we're benevolence of others are going to help us do that.
And then there's a donate button, you know, because we're using this as a fundraiser as
well because the money that we raise for this, we'll be able to, you know, feed our programming
that gets after, you know, that community and physical fitness that we're providing
for veterans.
Absolutely.
I want to make sure we have you guys come back, you know, at especially, you know,
when you're on the run, but you know, so make sure if you come up with any PSA or anything,
let us know and we want to play them up until more.
I want to get people out on the road wherever you're running, you know, waving flags with
you.
We'll definitely send you the route.
And we'd love to back in while we're on the road and let the audience know how things
are going.
So ideally, we're going to be telling you, we're going way too fast and we're going to
finish before the 17th.
But you never know, it's like any military operation.
We doubt the plan is going to survive first contact, but we'll be prepared to adjust.
Well, you know, you always have a plan B.
Exactly.
So we've been talking here with Mike, Sally Sullivan with the team, Red, White and Blue
and they're running is coming up the whole glory ultra relay is May 2nd to 17th.
They're going to be running.
Why from San Diego to Washington, hopefully in less than 15 days.
So we'll let you know how it goes.
Mike, thanks very much for being on Veterans Radio.
I appreciate the time.
Thank you very much.
All right, we're going to take a quick break here for our Medal of Honor segment.
And then we're going to go straight into our interview with Dick Miller.
Dick Miller is the president of the NVB DC, which is a national veteran business development
council.
And I'll be back after that.
So you're listening to veterans radio.
Stick around.
The Medal of Honor is the highest awards for valor and 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.
Sergeant First Last Paul Smith gave his life to protect his troops.
Tales 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 April 4th, 2003, a call went out for a place to put some Iraqi prisoners.
Sergeant First Last Paul Smith volunteered to create a holding pen inside a walled courtyard.
Soon, Iraqi soldiers, numbering perhaps 100, opened fire on Smith's position.
Smith was accompanied by 16 men.
Smith called for a Bradley, a tank-like vehicle with a rapid-fire cannon.
It arrived and opened up on the Iraqis.
The enemy could not advance so long as the Bradley was in position, but then, in a move
that baffled in angered Smith's men, the Bradley left.
Smith's men, some of whom were wounded, were suddenly vulnerable.
Smith could have justifiably ordered his men to withdraw.
Smith rejected that option, thinking that abandoning the courtyard would jeopardize
about 100 GIs outside, including medics at an aid station.
He manned a.50 caliber machine gun atop an abandoned armored personnel carrier and fought
off the Iraqis, going through several boxes of ammunition.
With a battle wound down, Smith was hit in the head.
He died before he could be evacuated from the scene.
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.
Welcome.
I am Jim Fosso and this is Veterans Radio's spotlight on National Veterans Business Development
Council, better known as NVBDC.org.
Veterans Radio America Nonprofit has a partnership with NVBDC, which is the nation's leading
third party authority for certification of veteran-owned businesses of really all sizes.
This 501C3 non-profit was established in 2013 and addressed the growing need to identify
and certify both service disabled and veteran-owned businesses in the commercial or corporate
marketplace as well as for government work.
It administers a vigorous certification process designed to withstand scrutiny of governmental
and corporate entities seeking to utilize certified veteran-owned businesses.
And we're really pleased today of all the interviews we've done on NVBDC.
We've never spoken to its current president, Reg. Gen. Richard S. Miller, retired.
Dick Miller, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, thank you for having me.
Well, it's been an effort to get on each other's schedule to get this done and we had
the opportunity to speak with NVBDC's founder Keith Hing many times, but you've been involved
for quite a while.
Tell us how you got involved with NVBDC.
Well, I like to say that if you look at the organizational chart, I'm employee number
one.
There you go.
I met Keith at a meeting and I had just retired and I'd been out floundering around trying
to find something to do and my lovely wife suggested I get out of her kitchen.
So that's a true story.
But anyway, at the end of the day, Keith and I met at a Starbucks at 12 mile and Mound
in Detroit and he said, look, I'm starting up this organization to help our fellow veterans
and would you be willing to join me?
And I said, yeah, why not?
You miss a good program and I like what he's doing.
So he and I joined forces and the rest is history.
Well, and timing was everything here.
You had just retired in 2012.
You had done some consulting and sales work and getting familiar with the business world
again.
And as we said earlier, NVBDC started in 2013, which is how you became employee number
one.
But why don't you talk about the vision that was now a decade ago as you guys were starting
this up and saying, what are we trying to accomplish here with NVBDC?
Well, corporate America at that time was frustrated by certification agencies or groups because
of fraud.
And there wasn't a lot of accountability for these people.
You could just say you were XYZ and there was no way to verify it.
So they suggested to us, and I'm talking about this, as a matter of fact, it was GM Chrysler
and Ford, that we take a look at, we bank the NMSDC Minority Supplier Development Council
and pattern ourselves after them.
Their certification programs were vetted, they were accepted, and if we patterned ourselves
after them, we would be in good shape.
And we did just that.
We banked the women's organization, mentored us, helped us develop our policy procedures,
and we did just that.
Keith and I did it, and it was just him and I at the time, and they were really gracious
about helping us through their process.
So we ended up having a group, I mean this was GM Chrysler, Ford, Consumers Energy, Kellogg's,
all came to our facility, and we actually vetted three companies.
I can't remember who they were at the time, they're now, but anyway, we vetted three companies,
they approved our process, and that is when the spigot turned on, and we went forward
from there.
But the whole process and the vision was to assist our fellow veterans with the certification
process with corporate America.
And you know, I gotta tell you, we did everything by hand.
All the applications, the processing was all done by hand, and now we're at a point where
we've got a very, very sophisticated computer system.
But the one thing that the corporate America wanted was access to our database.
You know, when they became sponsors of ours, we would give them access to all these veterans.
Yeah, and that's sort of the interesting thing about NVBDC is there's two sides to this,
there's the corporate partners who had a need to fill, that you guys filled, and then the
members of who go and get certified, and then have the ability to connect, network.
Talk about each side of this equation.
Well the one thing we kept hearing from corporate America was, we want to do business with veterans,
but we can't find them.
Where do we go to find a veteran?
Well, you know, that sounds easy on the surface, but they were 100% correct.
You may have what, we'll tell you, Ford Motor Company, for example, they had a number of
veteran owned businesses in their database for suppliers.
They didn't know they were, they didn't know they were veterans.
And so we helped them vet that list.
We went through and we identified all these veteran owned businesses, and Sonoma Gunn,
it was like $40 million worth of spend.
That they were already spending with veteran owned businesses who needed to be vetted or
certified so you could recognize that spend then.
Exactly, exactly.
And then that was like the light bulb moment that maybe there's a whole bunch of other
people out there have that same situation.
And then I will tell you that you're probably more aware than most, but we fast forward
now as of last year, we have just revised the numbers from the billion dollar roundtable.
They have spent $6 billion with our certified vendors or suppliers.
That's an amazing number, $6 billion with a B.
That's correct.
And how many corporate, well, first off, let me stick with this.
The billion dollar roundtable is not all of corporate America.
It's sort of the big guys, right?
Oh, most of the big guys, they spend, they call it the billion dollar roundtable because
they spend a billion dollars every single year with supplier diversity suppliers, I guess,
diversity suppliers.
And you have corporate program partners who are in the billion dollar roundtable, but
you have a much broader list of partners.
Tell us a little bit about that.
There are currently 37 corporations that are in the billion dollar roundtable.
We have currently 187 corporate partners, if you will, and it is a who's who of America.
I mean, my goodness, it's here.
If you look at the people that we have as our supplier or sponsors, you know, Amazon,
American Express, Best Buy, BMW, I'm just looking at the list here.
I played this game with Keith a while ago and I said, well, A to Z, who's Z?
And actually he knew who Z was.
So it was pretty, pretty funny.
It's 187 corporate sponsors.
And those are the people who wanted, who want access to meet with NVBDC certified companies
and hopefully place work with them.
Exactly.
And how many companies have been certified?
We have over 3,000 at this point.
And as I mentioned at the outset, it's a rigorous process.
The veteran really has to own it.
You get into the corporate records.
You figure out, you know, do they have all the articles and bylaws and operating agreements
in place to protect the veteran and make sure he's not just being scammed.
He or she.
But it's not just big companies.
I want to get across to people.
You don't have to be a $10 million company to be with NVBDC.
You're able to certify smaller companies and help them network and grow, if I understand
it.
Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, I'm just making this number up, but probably 70, 75% of all our
members are small business.
And I think that's important for folks who are out there maybe just, you know, starting
their veteran owned business.
Not generational.
And they're going, well, I don't know if it's for me.
I think this is one of those groups that's for you.
There's going to be a cost associated with doing it, both internal and external costs.
But there's a lot of value that can be received.
Talk a little bit, Dick Miller, president of NVBDC, retired Brigadier General.
U.S. Army, tell us a little bit about the benefits that members do get.
Well, the members, we do, well, for example, this Thursday, we have what we call a jump
start and we have a number of corporations.
I mentioned all those corporations and we have a how to do business with these people.
And well, for example, Eli Lilly, they'll be on their corporate purchasing folks will
be on the line.
We typically end up about 40, 50 people that are on these webinars.
And they basically tell the company young, somebody's calling, I apologize.
But anyway, they take the deep dive into how do you do business with Eli Lilly?
You know, we have a supplier portal, you can do all these things.
And the people that show up to these webinars, the corporate person purchasing people take
the time to talk to them to help them and understand and help them with their process.
For example, you know, capability statements, different things.
And we've been doing this for a couple of three years now.
It's free.
We just do it to be supportive.
Yeah, that's what one of the things that things really great about NVBDC is they don't just
certify you, patch on the button and say good luck.
There's a whole method here for, hey, if you want to participate and you want to grow and
you want to seize maybe some opportunities outside the box, use the certification by
being with NVBDC on these networking and marketing opportunities.
Dick, if somebody is interested in either being a corporate sponsor or being a member
of NVDC, what's the best way for them to get some information?
Just go out to our website, NVBDC.org.
And everything you need is there.
It is correct.
And you can call in.
The staff is extremely helpful.
So don't be put off by the process.
I'd encourage our veteran radio listeners to dive in and see if it's something that
their company should do.
Dick, thanks for your time today to put a spotlight on NVBDC.org.
Well thank you for having me.
And you know, we're all about serving our fellow veterans.
It's another great organization helping out veterans.
That was my partner Jim Faustone talking with Dick Miller, who is the president of NVBDC.
If you're a veteran known business, these are the guys you want to check out.
Get yourself certified so that you can do business with the federal government or with
some corporations that require you to be certified.
And now today we talked a lot about helping veterans in different ways.
And I encourage you to go to look at the film, The Brothers After War, if you can.
And I think that that's an important film that I think will be very beneficial for all
of you to see.
Jake Ruddermaker, it's got just an incredible amount of talent as far as telling a story.
You might want to look at his first film, which is Brothers At War.
And that one was his real brothers.
This is what is so cool about these documentaries is that he just felt a need, he felt a need
to go overseas and be with his brothers while they were in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And the newest film is about the transition that his brothers and other people that he
met during his time making his first film, how they are transitioning, how are they
doing, how are they surviving.
And it's really a great story.
And it's uplifting, it's got some really upsetting parts to it, but that's something
I think you should check out.
The other thing of course is Red, White and Blue.
And Red, White and Blue is another one of these great organizations that's out there
to help veterans.
It was formed by veterans to help their fellow veterans.
They're going to run across the country in May from San Diego to Washington, D.C. from
May 2 to May 17, 24 hours a day.
And I'm sure that you'll be able to follow them all the way along.
That's teamrwb.org.
For more information on that, evidently they're going to have a Google map that say you could
follow the progress of these men and women that are running across the country.
Again, it's a great organization.
Go to their website.
They can use some donations as well.
You have so many of these nonprofit organizations out there that are trying to help threat
veterans and help their fellow veterans.
So this is Dale Thromberry for all of us here at Veterans Radio.
Until next week, you are dismissed.
God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her and guide her through the night
with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam.
God bless America, my home sweet home.
God bless America, land that I love, stand beside her and guide her through the night
with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam.
God bless America, my home sweet home.