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So listen in wherever you're at to veteransradio
.org and its podcasts. We want to welcome to
Veterans Radio today two gentlemen who are deeply
involved in Detroit's efforts, successful efforts,
to bring the Medal of Honor Society Convention
to Detroit in October of 2026. One of the things
you know if you listen to Veterans Radio is we
kind of get the information before other people
do and we get to pass it on to you so that you're
in the know. So we're really happy to talk about
What's coming a year from now when the living
Medal of Honor recipients gather in Detroit for
their annual convention? First up, we have Russell
Schomburger, who is the chair of the committee.
Russ, welcome to Veterans Radio. Well, thank
you, Jim, very much. Appreciate it and looking
forward to sharing more about the conference
to the audience. We want to welcome to Veterans
Radio Adrian Kozakov. who is a committee member
that's working on this huge effort to bring the
Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient's convention
to Detroit in 2026. Adrian, welcome to Veterans
Radio. Thank you for having me, Jim. Very excited
to share about the convention. Well, Russ, let's
start with you. How did you get yourself involved
in this? You know big task of pulling off the
National Convention Well, I don't know how much
time you have but to make it simple I am also
on the board of the Detroit Public Safety Foundation
and I've been supporting first responders for
some time and I just I met some folks that are
involved the recipient community and said, you
know, we've never had this in the city Detroit
it would be cool to have. So I started working
with Detroit Public Safety Foundation and the
society to win the award or to bring it to Detroit,
which we were successful on doing. And now I
find myself having the tiger by the tail, which
is a labor of love. You know, I'm very fortunate
in my position to be able to give back to the
community, but doing so for about seven years
for Detroit Public Safety Foundation. And it's
just all about Detroit, the veteran community
and giving back. Well, why don't you expand a
little bit more on the Detroit Public Safety
Organization, because folks can go there and
donate for this particular Congressional Medal
of Honor Convention. And really, I don't think
most folks would go, I don't know what the Detroit
Public Safety Organization is. Well, the Detroit
Public Safety Foundation is a 501 C3. It is the
charity of record for this conference. And what
we do is we take care of fallen first responders,
their families and things of that nature. We
do things for youth groups within the city and
we provide things to the first responders. It's
just simple little things, creature comforts
for the fire department, you know, their housing,
things of that nature. But our main focus is
giving back to the community and taking care
of youth programs and first responders who are
injured or fallen in line of duty. Well, clearly
the Detroit Public Safety Foundation is a very
worthy cause and is sort of the base here around
which this Medal of Honor Convention is building.
And as you say, it's the financial arm of it
as well. You can make 501C3 charitable deductions,
contributions to the Detroit Public Safety Foundation
for the purposes of supporting the Medal of Honor
Convention, if I understand it right. Exactly.
That's perfect. It's perfectly stated. Well,
Adrian is... fairly clear that Russ just stumbled
into this, you know, the guy with a good idea
always finds himself being voluntold. Oh good,
you're gonna lead it. Jim, I say no good deed
goes unpunished. Absolutely, absolutely. Adrian,
how did you get involved? You know, I, similar,
in a similar fashion, I was voluntold to get
involved in this and thought one of the employees
and directors at the Medal of Honor Society said,
hey, Adrian, you'd be a good fit for this, and
talked with Russ. And Russ said, yes, we could
use the help. Let's figure out a way to get involved.
And from there, I started getting more involved
and seeing how I could help. Well, your committee
has a number of influential people on it. We
have a mutual friend in Volley Garcia. with the
NDIA, with the Michigan Military and Veterans
Hall of Honor, former state senator and I know
he's really excited about this as well. Are there
other committee members you'd like to mention?
There's none at this time and we have some feelers
out what we're doing is we have this year's conference
coming on next week. So that's in Chattanooga.
And what we wanted to do is go sit down, go through
the whole thing. We'll be there all week. We're
going to set A to Z and talk to everybody and
say, let's learn from lessons learned. What went
well? What didn't? How should we restructure?
straw person, we have roles identified, we have
task and duties identified, we have some names
penciled in. But before we pull the trigger in
that, what we wanted to do is just go make sure
that we've done all of our due diligence before
we go asking people for, you know, time, energy
and effort. The Congressional Medal of Honor
Society is a sort of standalone organization
itself. And It's a way in which people can connect
with living Medal of Honor recipients and learn
more about those who have deceased. But do they
have conventions every year? Yes, they do have
conventions every year, and they pick a city.
You go and make a pitch, if you will. And so
Valdé and some others went down last year. in
San Antonio to do the pitch. And there's really
three purposes for this. And I'm, I'm non military.
So I'm just a Detroit fellow that's trying to
do a good job for the city of Detroit and veterans
causes, right? I'm often flabbergasted by the
fact that very few people know anything about
the society. very know very little about recipients.
When I booked the venue and it's going to be
at the Motor City Casino Hotel next year, you
know, some of the people there were saying, well,
tell me more about what the society is, even
visit Detroit. And so the main purpose of this
is to go and communicate all about the medal,
all about service. all about, you know, what
this stands for. The second thing is really to
educate the national audience about Detroit.
And then finally, what we come along with is
to raise funds for the society itself and for
veterans and youth programs within the city.
So those, I would say in general, are the three
legs of the stool. Adrian, did I forget anything?
I often get carried away and get excited in my
exuberance. Yeah, I think that covers it very
well. One item I would like to add more to was
especially the youth programs. It's to help inspire
our youth to live by not only youth, but the
people of Detroit, the people of Michigan, to
live by the values that the medal instills in
people. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting.
I think it's one of the things that you're going
to be able to do is remind the nation of the
contributions that have been made in Southeast
Michigan and really Michigan as whole to national
defense. The arsenal of democracy, right? World
War II was largely successful because of our
industrial production and what companies like
Ford were able to do in turning out necessary
defense equipment, planes, tanks, the famous
Jeep, right? So it kind of goes both ways. We're
going to learn what their lives were, what their
sacrifices were, but hopefully we're also being
able to pass on that message about what Detroit
and the area has done for the nation. Yep, it's
all about education and expanding, you know,
the reach, the knowledge base of who knows about
this stuff, right? I mean, there's really just
a small group that's, I would hate to say fading,
but it is in some ways, right? And so we're the
champions, you know, if you don't remember history,
it will repeat itself in the future right and
so learning those things sharing those things
and at the end it's really about um you know
youth programs and veterans programs as well
so it's just a very worthy cause and like you
said we do um have lots of needs coming up over
the next year so you know you could mention our
website or put that in part of your You know
announcements. It is the Medal of Honor Detroit
calm It'll be that's where you find all of your
information about what what's coming up coming
up events We will have somebody I do believe
coming in for the Navy ball on October 16th I
don't know, Adrian, do you want to talk about
your event coming up? Is it too soon to bring
that up? I think actually just prior to this,
I received confirmation from the University of
Michigan that we will have a Medal of Honor recipient
or two on the field and honored at the November
1st Military Appreciation Game against Purdue
at the Big House. Now, some of the details are
still being finalized on if we'll be speaking
or the Medal of Honor recipients will be speaking
or they'll be speaking on our behalf, but this
will be a great opportunity to kickstart publicly,
right? And our veterans here are hearing it first,
but publicly announcing that the convention is
coming to Detroit to showcase Detroit, the people
of Michigan and instill the values of the medal
and the people here in front of over 100 ,000
people. And that's the way you get the word out,
going out to the public. And here on Veterans
Radio, we've had the opportunity to talk to a
number of Medal of Honor recipients, and they
are the most humble guys you'll ever find. There
are approximately, I think it's 35, 3 ,600 who
have received the award. You don't, it is, You
don't earn it, you receive it. There's a big
difference here. I've learned what verbiage to
use. I've been schooled. One thing that I would
say in the world today, this is something that
transcends politics, religion, race. These gentlemen
did what they did for love of their brothers.
And something that you really got to understand
is that they've done this not because of who
you are or what you are, but because they're
your brother and they've gone above and beyond
in unsurmountable odds for that love. There were,
and this is a historical line that again, we
don't teach much history in grade school or high
school anymore, let alone college, but In Michigan,
I think there were something like 69 Medal of
Honor recipients in the Civil War. I think overall
Michigan's had 125 maybe Medal of Honor recipients.
I think there's only one living Medal of Honor
recipient in the state of Michigan at the moment.
So when you start looking at these stories, I
suppose this is part of what you're trying to
get across to the general public, Adrian, when
you bring the convention The town is like this
long history that exists. Yes, the long history
and how truly special and rare it is, right?
As your point earlier, fewer than 3 ,600 medals
have ever been awarded in, well, we're coming
up on 250 years here of the United States of
America. And there's only one living Medal of
Honor recipient left in Michigan, 61 as of today.
living, and 45 of them are from the Vietnam War
era or later, where they're in their 70s or older,
where in the next five, 10, 15 years, we may
be down to 10, 15, 20, maybe 30 living Medal
of Honor recipients. It really is quite an amazing
club. The price you have to pay to get into the
club is unimaginable. And if you want to know
more about the Congressional Medal of Honor Society,
you can go to their website, which is cmohs .org,
cmohs .org, just to learn more about the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society and the things that they
stand for. You have a new website up. We mentioned
it a minute ago. I actually found two pages I
wanna promote. One is detroitpublicsafety .org
slash about dash five dash one. Real catchy title,
but if you go to detroitpublicsafety .org and
search for it, you'll find the Congressional
Medal of Honor page that they have up and how
you can donate. And there's also one that the...
Your committee's got up now on medalofhonoredetroit
.com that we referenced a little earlier. And
I assume that over the course of time, the public
will be able to go to those websites and learn
more about what's coming a year from now. Yeah,
you can do that today. Actually, there are links
from our site to the Congressional Medal of Honor
Society. You know, you can call that one stop
shopping, if you will. There's ways to reach
out to say if you want to volunteer in some way,
you can contact us for more information. There's
ways to contribute. So that will link you to
the Detroit Public Safety Foundation website.
That's all filled out for you already. So it
is the easy button, if you will. And I think
the only thing that right now that we don't have
on there that we want to share is a little bit
more about some of the sponsors. We've already
gotten some good sponsors that we want to highlight
and articulate and some of the upcoming events
because they're relatively new. The site's been
up in full for a week maybe or something like
that now so you know there's a You know lessons
learned we got to put in there yet, you know,
there might be some additional bits of information
So anybody looking at it, they have suggestions,
you know, they can make suggestions as well things
that we may have forgotten But it's pretty much
the one -stop shop Medal of Honor Detroit dot
-com and we can link you to all those places
So let let me ask the dates of this or September
30th to October 3rd 2026 Have you guys at the
committee level sort of said, hey, we need 100
volunteers or 50 volunteers or I would think
you need boots on the ground getting people in
the right places at the convention to different
events. Do you have any idea how many volunteers
you want? We have classifications. We don't have
numbers. And what we wanted to do again is get
back to see what's going on in Chattanooga. and
come back and just say, you know, how did this
work? How did that work? We do have a lot of
resources from the Motor City Casino Hotel, because
it is a casino as well as the hotel area, but
they have a lot of people there. So they do have
like EMTs. They do have security staff. We do
have to check with, you know, The city of Detroit
is going to provide some support. So basically
it's, it's we're at the point where we're herding
cats. And to be honest, when this first came
out, when I first got engaged, this has been
going for over a year now, right? Uh, we said,
Hey, you know, we need help. And we got inundated
and we were totally unprepared, you know, for
the eagerness to help. And so what we're trying
to do is put a little bit more method to the
madness. And when we come back from Chattanooga,
we get to the first part of October, we're gonna
put together those numbers and those plans and
have an idea how we wanna go about this, right?
And fill the main roles. other committee. Like
I said, we've got people we've been talking to,
we got finance, we got, you know, logistics being
done, we got, so we just don't know the numbers
at this point in time. And we picked the Motor
City Casino Hotel, we're doing this, you know,
blame this on me, if you will. We're picking
local companies, you know. you know things of
that nature people have done stuff for the city
of Detroit locally owned businesses if you will
and then we also picked it because of we could
fit everything in one building right so we have
room for the gala on October uh third that's
the big black tie event that will be everything
going to accumulate into that we can fit that
it's convenient for the recipients in case they
got to shuttle up and down during any of the
events and stuff like that um so we're going
to be we we have a lot of resources there it's
not like we're going to be traveling from venue
to venue to get the things but there will be
logistics there will be uh uh people trying to
you know, guide folks from different events.
We'll post the full schedule sometime after October.
We have main events that are required for the
convention. You know, the board meeting, there
will be a memorial service or some things that
are for the recipients only. And then now that
we've got that schedule nailed in, we're going
to be putting other events. So we would like
to host a veterans event. Sure that that taken
care of so we're still working out some of those
details Adrian Throw this one to you, which is
this costs a lot of money. You got to have big
sponsors and little sponsors. Don't you? Very
true, very true, Jim. And yes, and we've made
great headway with some of the support too, right?
Where we have an outpouring of support. And of
course, monetary support is always great to help
put on this convention and be able to fund more
educational programs for our city and our state.
Where so far, NDIA Michigan chapter, Others First,
General Dynamics, Simmons and Clark, Visit Detroit,
the Michigan Veterans Trust Fund. Michigan Veterans
Affairs Agency, Berkshire Capital, BBC Title,
and Motor City Casino Hotel have stepped up to
partner or sponsor with us already before even
being publicly announced, where we are actively
looking for sponsors here that could help bring
this event to life and help make themselves or
their business affiliated with the Medal of Honor
Convention and support the values that the Medal
of Honor instills and stands for. Well, the Metro
Detroit business community is very veteran friendly,
and I'm sure you're going to find the support
as the word gets out even more. What's the best
way of folks who are listening here on Veterans
Radio and say, this is something I want to get
involved in, I even want to financially support
it, or I'd like to get involved and be a volunteer,
whether it's just directing folks to the right
rooms or helping people out? How do they get
in touch? How do they stay in touch and offer
those kind of services? I would say go to our
website, medalofhonoredetroit .com and keep that
in mind for updates on the volunteer side as
we, Russ had mentioned that as we formulate a
plan and heard the cats to figure out the best
ways for people to volunteer and as we ask gratefully
for their time. and any financial support or
any ways to sponsor or partner with us, go to
the website, learn a bit more about it, and shoot
us a contact or email us at info at medalofhonoredetroit
.com. So that's just info at our website. Russ,
you know, I got you down on tape here, so I want
to get a commitment from you that you'll come
back in three or four months when the details
are more fleshed out. And we can give our veteran
radio listeners even more specific information
about this really exciting conference a year
from now. You have my commitment. It would be
my greatest honor to do so. And I'd like to thank
the audience for their service as well. We we
appreciate that very much. Well, we're glad to
have both of you on. And this is one of those
things that you want to know ahead of time. You
want to mark your calendar and let's let's round
up the troops to help out. So this is a hugely
successful conference. Thanks, gentlemen. Thank
you. Thank you. You can follow Veterans Radio
on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet
radio shows by visiting us at veteransradio .org.
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VA can help you on your claims and your appeals.
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or 1 -800 -693 -4800. And PuroClean, a leader
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VFW Graf O 'Hara Post 423, the American Legion,
Erwin Preskin, Post 46 in Ann Arbor as well,
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the National Vietnam Veterans of America Association.
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