Rebel Vets Podcast

0:00:00
(Speaker 2)
Hello, and welcome to the Rebel Vets podcast. This is a podcast that will be centered around the experience of going to college after military service. I'm your host, Derek, a former ammo troop in the US Air Force, and I served for 20 years. Let's start the show. I want to kick off this inaugural episode with the man that every veteran meets when
0:00:25
(Speaker 2)
they enroll here at UNLV, and that is the Executive Director of the Military and Veteran Service Center here at UNLV.
0:00:33
(Speaker 1)
He's an Army veteran, Ross Bryant. Say hello. Yes, very nice to meet you.
0:00:38
(Speaker 2)
So tell us about yourself, Ross. Where are you from?
0:00:40
(Speaker 1)
Well, I grew up as a Navy brat. My grandfather, uncle, and my father were all Naval Academy graduates. In fact I took my dad to his 70th Naval Academy reunion this month. Wow that's incredible. Yeah and I was quite the hit coming out of high school. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew what I didn't want to do and that was be on a farm in Virginia. Had no money for school, so I enlisted in the Army.
0:01:06
(Speaker 1)
They gave me a huge $3,000 bonus to be a tank driver in Europe. I thought that sounded really cool. All right, when was this? 1979.
0:01:15
(Speaker 2)
1979, okay.
0:01:17
(Speaker 1)
And they left out a couple key things, like I would be the lowest ranking guy in the Army. And back then the Army was pretty large, 800,000 troops in Europe and things. Wow. And it was freezing cold in Germany but hey I had some great mentors who mentored me and coached me and I was one of the
0:01:35
(Speaker 1)
youngest tank commanders of the new M1 tank that's 40 years old now. Right. And from that I got a green to gold scholarship. Cool. And went to Army ROTC at Old Dominion University in 1984, and graduated 87, and then finished my career. And then my last assignment, ironically, was at UNLV. I was the ROTC commander of 100 cadets the morning of 9-11. Wow.
0:02:00
(Speaker 1)
And I was working out with the cadets, and during that workout, one plane had hit the buildings, one had hit the Pentagon. When I got to my car, of course all that was on the news, and when I called my fiance and my ex-wife back east to see what's going on because we had friends at the Pentagon, I got inside my apartment and saw the second plane hit and I knew we were
0:02:21
(Speaker 1)
going to war. And ironically I had four cadets that signed their contract that afternoon that was already scheduled but of course that morning the whole world had changed. Yeah. And I commissioned about 34, 35 officers from UNLV that went on to fight in the war and continue to serve. There are some many of them still serving that are colonels and majors now. I still remember them as cadets. Wow.
0:02:50
(Speaker 1)
And so that's how I was at UNLV. And when I retired, I went to work at Homeland Security with an institute. My background had been a foreign area officer for the Ukraine, of all things. With all that going on in the news now.
0:03:03
(Speaker 1)
Right. And the military paid for my college, my bachelor's in German. I was a German language guy in Europe. And then they paid for a master's in basically national security studies with a focus on Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
0:03:20
(Speaker 1)
So with everything going on, all the background on how we got here, I know all of that, which is interesting. Long story short, when I got out to work for Homeland Security, great people, great mission. We did, it was grant funded, and when that grant ran out, I had to change what was I going to be doing. And that was about 2011. And in 2012, President Smatrix and Dr. Fain was the Vice President of Student Affairs at the time.
0:03:47
(Speaker 1)
They had approached me about what are we going to do with this new GI Bill and all these veterans coming back from the war with funding. Funding was great. It continues to be great. But President Smatricks' concern was what do we do to take care of these combat vets coming back? Because they're going to have some challenges. I acted like I knew what I was saying. I said, we ought to have a veteran center.
0:04:10
(Speaker 1)
And I got hired. And then I'm like, holy cow, I better learn about this GI Bill thing. And now we've served about 9,000 people.
0:04:19
(Speaker 2)
Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, I know the program gets a really high marks here all that time spent in Europe man. That sounds awesome yeah, so you were a Active duty during the Cold War. Yes, so I know there was a lot of like troop station in Europe
0:04:33
(Speaker 1)
yeah, there's about 500,000 troops in Europe mainly army and Air Force at the time and You know give it some context. There's about eight divisions in the army now, back then we had 18. Yeah. But there was about almost eight divisions in Europe and that's obviously scaled way back now. But we were also outnumbered by the Russians. The Russians had about two million troops in Eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact outnumbered us, so we practiced for what we thought would be World War Three. Yeah. And that was interesting to go through all that.
0:05:05
(Speaker 1)
And then when the wall came down, which is one of the most incredible things I was part of, I was in the countryside with 1st Armored Division as a lieutenant speaking German. And on our border mission that we were at, we got news about the Berlin Wall coming down.
0:05:19
(Speaker 1)
So you were there in 1989 when the wall fell. Yeah, but in Germany, in Berlin, it was like 100 miles away or more. And in the countryside, nothing had changed. And back then, it seems really weird now. But they had these fax machines with a cryptic coded message.
0:05:35
(Speaker 1)
And you had like a Dick Tracy book. You had to decode the message. And we couldn't decode things fast enough before the next message arrived because things were changing so quickly. At the end of the day, had to wake up my colonel.
0:05:49
(Speaker 1)
You never want to wake up the colonel in the middle of the night, but I guess if the wall's coming down. And, uh... That's a good one to wake him up for. We got a historic order to pull all the troops off of the border.
0:05:59
(Speaker 1)
And so when I'm making these phone calls from battalion down to these guys on the front line, these are sergeants that have done this their whole career. And in our sector, nothing had changed. And they're like, what are we doing? Like, yeah, we're gonna pull everybody back to the base. And we did. And then my colonel, the master gunner and I,
0:06:17
(Speaker 1)
in civilian clothes, went out in a old school, unmarked Bronco, an army truck, and drove out to the border and handed out Coca-Colas to East Germans coming across the middle of the night to freedom.
0:06:30
(Speaker 2)
Wow, that's an amazing story.
0:06:33
(Speaker 1)
And the other thing that's interesting is, for whatever reason, there was no Grenze Polizei, the border police, it was just us, and we're watching these people come across. And back in the day, if you were East German and you escaped to West Germany,
0:06:48
(Speaker 1)
the West Germans treated you as a German citizen and gave you 100 marks, which was like 44 bucks to start your life again. And in the middle of the night, thousands of people were coming to me when they heard me speak in German,
0:07:02
(Speaker 1)
thinking I'm some sort of government person, and they're asking me what time does Deutsche Bank open so they can get their 100 marks. I'm like, man, I don't know what Germany's doing about all that.
0:07:13
(Speaker 6)
Oh my goodness.
0:07:14
(Speaker 1)
But I also remember a woman, an elderly woman, probably in her mid-70s, which means she had survived World War II, this is 1989, and she hadn't seen anybody from the West German village since the wall went up in the 60s. And when she came across, she told the colonel and I
0:07:33
(Speaker 1)
that when I saw American troops, I knew I was free. So you'll never forget that.
0:07:37
(Speaker 2)
That's an amazing story.
0:07:38
(Speaker 1)
All the adventures the United States has been in since, good, bad, or otherwise, we've always tried to stand for freedom for most respects, you know what I mean? And so that was an interesting time. And then, of course, everything changed.
0:07:51
(Speaker 1)
The Army drew down. We got involved in the Middle East pretty rapidly.
0:07:56
(Speaker 2)
So during my time in the military, I was stationed in RAF Lake and Heath in England. So of course, I've been through Europe and around Europe just traveling, but it became an important staging area for everything going on, for all the combat operations in Afghanistan
0:08:12
(Speaker 2)
and the Middle East, so I've been through Ramstein. So I know you said you grew up on a farm in Virginia. You decided to join the Army for opportunity or just?
0:08:21
(Speaker 1)
Well, my father was a Naval Academy graduate and then he worked civil service at the Pentagon, which every day he would get up an ODARC-30. Yeah.
0:08:29
(Speaker 2)
So your dad was an inspiration for joining the military?
0:08:32
(Speaker 1)
In many regards. And we moved out to a farm, sort of, I don't know why, to get out of the suburbs of DC and it was cheaper. And I had four brothers and sisters, five kids, my grandparents on my mom's side live with us and so we're on this...
0:08:48
(Speaker 2)
It's a full house.
0:08:49
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, we're on this farm. Not a fan. We're not farmers. We were doing a lot of farm type work. I had no idea what my future was going to be but I knew what I didn't want to do. I'd worked in a restaurant and things that, you things, like a kid's job. And I just was gonna join the Army
0:09:07
(Speaker 1)
just to go figure out what I was gonna do. And then it was the great mentors that mentored me.
0:09:13
(Speaker 2)
Awesome, how long did you serve for?
0:09:14
(Speaker 1)
I don't know if you mentioned that. A total of 24 years.
0:09:16
(Speaker 2)
24 years, and that was enlisted as an officer?
0:09:18
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so from private to lieutenant colonel. I made the lieutenant Colonel's list and I turned it down, I was here at Vegas at UNLV, I loved the job here, and I was getting ready to retire and they said, hey, you made the Lieutenant Colonel's list. And I'm, wait a minute now, you told me a back-to-back ROTC assignment
0:09:35
(Speaker 1)
was like the kiss of death. And, but now the war was on and I'm like, well, if I'm going to deploy or something, I would stay in. He's like, no, no, we need you to go to the Pentagon and be a staff guy. That was enough for me. After watching my dad do that for 30 some years, I was never a Pentagon guy.
0:09:54
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, lots of administration and paperwork, I imagine.
0:09:58
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, and then back to running the Vet Center, we had one woman. Her name was Gail Reese, she's amazing. She worked at Financial Aid, she took care of about 800 vets, and now we have about 1,800 vets.
0:10:12
(Speaker 1)
And a lot of those are also family members on benefit. And I've had a really great team that has been together for almost 10 years. I've been there since 2012. But this team has carried us through the pandemic. We built a paperless system that you enjoy now.
0:10:32
(Speaker 1)
Used to be we had paper files and craziness, and you had to chase signatures and all this craziness. And so all of that was developed during the pandemic with this team. And a lot of people don't realize, every veteran who has benefit, like yourself,
0:10:49
(Speaker 1)
there's five different chapters of benefit. I won't bore the audience with that. But all that has to be certified to the VA, that all your classes count for your degree, that you're a full-time student, you're in one face-to-face class for your housing.
0:11:05
(Speaker 1)
And then my team ends up doing about 3,600 certifications a semester to the VA. And then when the money arrives, my team posts the payments. And then if there's a change of your class, if you had a debt, we manage all of that. So the grind never ends.
0:11:24
(Speaker 2)
Well, and I do have to say from my perspective, your team is pretty awesome. So whenever I have a question, somebody is always there to answer the phone or reply back to my email. So I really appreciate that,
0:11:35
(Speaker 2)
especially I served for a long time. So I'm used to filling out paperwork and all that stuff, but it can be a little daunting to realize that, okay, hey, okay, here's my enrollment list, here's my credits that I need to get, and then for whatever reason, like lately, I've had to kind of drop some classes
0:11:51
(Speaker 2)
and move some things around, so I've had to go in and change my certification requirements, and your team's always on top of it, because then I'll get the, oh, OK, your enrollment changed, still meets your degree plan. And then the information comes back to the student fast and in a timely manner so that we can be like, OK,
0:12:09
(Speaker 2)
VA is going to pay for my next semester. I don't have much to worry about. So I got to say, at least from my perspective, I really appreciate the time. And we're always happy to hear that. It would be embarrassing if you were here with a challenge. but I'm always amazed at the team because, and we have student workers that help us.
0:12:26
(Speaker 2)
It's a lot of customer service, a lot of information sharing.
0:12:30
(Speaker 1)
But you're also one of 1,800.
0:12:32
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, okay, that's a lot of veterans.
0:12:34
(Speaker 1)
And that's a lot of individual changes in people and we track all that and I'm very proud of the team. And you know, the office brings in about $9 million a year in VA funding and a lot of people don't know, for just a state school like us, 33,000 students, we make 6% of the population.
0:12:53
(Speaker 1)
And we have a lot of children, of veterans, who have either you're 100% disabled, your kids get a benefit.
0:13:00
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that's one thing I was turned on to once the VA explained to me, you know, hey, you're 100% service connected, your kids also get a benefit of college tuition. And I was like, that's an amazing asset or benefit like to hand off to your children. I was kind of surprised by that too, because I think I went up to your office once to ask a question and I was talking to a younger student in there and I was like, hey, well, where did you serve? Because he was wearing the veteran's shirt. And he was like, well, I didn't, but my dad did. And I was like, okay, you know, this is really great to give educational opportunities to our kids through
0:13:39
(Speaker 2)
the VA like this. You know, I got gotta think, especially people from your generation for fighting so hard to get those benefits.
0:13:47
(Speaker 1)
And when you think about it, a 20 year war of volunteers. I read a thing in the newspaper one time, that in an article, that during World War II, all those movies of World War II, the average time in combat, if you and I were drafted or joined back then, you'd be in a unit the whole time
0:14:07
(Speaker 1)
and you would fight for the duration. The average time in combat was about two years, which in World War II, that's enough. And then Vietnam, all the movies about Vietnam, if you were drafted, you went to your basic training, you spent about nine months of your one year draft
0:14:21
(Speaker 1)
in Vietnam and country, again, more than enough. But we have people who have five, six, seven years of deployments because they were part of the volunteer service that kept going and going and going. And so as a Department of Defense retention program, they allowed you to give your GI bill to your children. So we have about 500 kids who have transferred benefit,
0:14:47
(Speaker 1)
then if you're 100% like you and you had 10 kids, and every one of your kids would get about $45,000 in a GI Bill benefit, we have 600 of those kids.
0:14:56
(Speaker 3)
Wow, it's that high.
0:14:57
(Speaker 1)
It's that high. That's incredible. And what's happening across the country, because the wars have drawn down, those kids are of age going to school. And now we have probably about 50% of our population is family members.
0:15:11
(Speaker 2)
Trevor Burrus Yeah, I can attest to that. I mean, so I'm 44, my daughter is 18, and she would be primed for that benefit if she decides to attend school. I decided not to transfer my post 9-11 to a family member because I worked hard while I was enlisted to finish my degree.
0:15:31
(Speaker 2)
I got my associates, but I didn't quite hit the mark. So once I retired, my wife was like, hey, you're never gonna get a good opportunity like this again to go and finish your degree and be a full-time student. She's like, this is why you joined in the first place
0:15:46
(Speaker 2)
20 years ago, is for these educational benefits. And I'm like, you know what? You're right. This is a good opportunity for me to go and finish my degree.
0:15:55
(Speaker 1)
Well, I even like your comment where you said, hey, I served all these years in the Air Force and I know the bureaucracy. Now when we're dealing with these kids, they don't understand and they don't read emails for the most part just like my kids don't and of course that's how we try to communicate with it. They don't allow me to text everybody, nor would I have time unless there was a platform I could
0:16:16
(Speaker 1)
do that. So yeah it's it's an interesting dynamic but that's going on across the country. But also the military kids and the veterans graduated at a higher rate because I think there's a sense of purpose. You're not coming here on mom and dad's money, you're not taking out a loan, you've earned your benefit the hard way. You remember every deployment, every early morning, late night, all the things you do. And so when you're like tired and don't want to get out of bed or maybe you don't want to do your homework, you're like, hey, this is my mission now.
0:16:47
(Speaker 2)
Well, and I have to say, and this is a story about me, you know, I, my dad was like, hey, you can live here after high school, find, try to find some work and go to school. attending community college, but the discipline, I wasn't there for education, I didn't have it. So I kind of piddled around through community college and didn't do so great, and then I kind of just gave it up. And then 9-11 happened and I got married, and the opportunity was like, hey, you know what?
0:17:21
(Speaker 2)
The military gives me benefits and good stuff, so let me go and have to thank the Air Force for giving me a good career and instilling in me a level of discipline that I did not have in 18, 19, so that when I approach school, I'm like, okay, I take this seriously.
0:17:40
(Speaker 2)
I treat it like my job. These are the tasks I must accomplish, these are the things that I must get done, you know. How to complete things on time and in order is what I can really thank the military for instilling in me.
0:17:54
(Speaker 1)
Well, you bring that up, and so not only do we do certifying, I'm sure you'll interview Dwayne. Dwayne is a retired Air Force, and he and I have been together for almost eight years, but he runs our peer-to-peer mentoring program. And so a lot of veterans come back to school
0:18:12
(Speaker 1)
and there's a lot of mentoring that goes on from the culture of wraparound Air Force life to now you're on a campus where it just seems like chaos. There is no drill sergeant or gunny sergeant telling you what to do. And left to your own devices, you could also screw this up.
0:18:31
(Speaker 1)
And we've had instances where I remember a Marine who wasn't doing well in school. And I said, hey, Ben, what's going on? He goes, well, Ross, I did eight years in the Marine Corps, but I never knew that I was a procrastinator. Because in the Marine Corps, but I never knew that I was a procrastinator, because in the Marine Corps, no one let you be a procrastinator.
0:18:47
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, that's a good point. It is on you to be a self-starter and to meet your tasks on time. But yeah, that's the thing. There's a little bit of a learning curve. Like we said, once I became a full-time student, and I'm like, oh, well, my day is kind of my own. Like I can exercise here and I can go to class here and then I'm like, okay, but I need to set aside a couple hours to make sure I'm getting all my weekly tasks done.
0:19:12
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, treat it like a real job. So it sounds like Germany was your favorite assignment.
0:19:18
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, Germany was my favorite assignment. I would say job wise, I was really blessed to have two ROTC commands. And one was while I was working on my master's for being a foreign area officer, which later got defunded. But training cadets training young soul, that was my way of giving back to the mentors who talked me into green
0:19:40
(Speaker 1)
to gold.
0:19:40
(Speaker 2)
That's great. So I mean, it sounds like, you know, active duty, like Germany was, but you got the most fulfillment in life out of bringing up the new generation to join,
0:19:51
(Speaker 1)
of officers to join the military. And my generation was all raised by these Vietnam guys who stayed in and then raised us to be the army of Desert Storm. That was the most lopsided in history, you know what I mean? Because we were so well prepared. And that led us to maybe other conflicts we might not have gotten into, who knows. But so that was always very rewarding
0:20:14
(Speaker 1)
and you can never pay back mentors. You know, if a colonel who becomes a general helps you in your career, what are you gonna do for him? And so the other therapy for me, because not to get into it, I lost about five guys in my Army career in my units
0:20:31
(Speaker 1)
just to accidents and just stuff that still sort of haunts me a little bit.
0:20:34
(Speaker 2)
It's a dangerous job.
0:20:36
(Speaker 1)
It is. Electrocuted kid on a railhead, guy crushed by a tank, those kinds of things that you just, you never forget.
0:20:44
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I was very fortunate to see, I mean, I saw plenty of accidents and injuries. Thank God, no fatalities. But as an ammo troop, you know, I used to have a chief master sergeant that was always fond of saying, hey, you know, you're moving around explosives. This isn't pallets of toilet paper. It's dangerous and heavy, even when it's not ready to go.
0:21:06
(Speaker 2)
So the danger in the military exists on a daily basis, just for training purposes. Unfortunate things like that can happen.
0:21:16
(Speaker 1)
And on two of those occasions, I went to the funeral where the family was, and the devastation, and I've lost two brothers myself, so the devastation the family has, you never forget that. And so then coming here and running the Vet Center, even though I'm an older generation,
0:21:34
(Speaker 1)
when someone hears that I was in from 79 to 05, they're like, every day of the 80s, every day of the, I'm like, yep, I was in there every day. And so I meet you, you have anxiety about how do I get paid, I have a family, how does, between the VA and the school and all the stuff that goes on,
0:21:54
(Speaker 1)
being able to have systems with a talented team like Melissa Barber and her team that help make it easier for you, all of that is very rewarding when you can help the next generation. Like, look at what you're doing here.
0:22:08
(Speaker 1)
Here we are at a radio station as you lean into your new career path. You know what I mean? Yeah. Very rewarding.
0:22:15
(Speaker 2)
That's awesome to hear.
0:22:17
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. I secretly hope that you take over the United States and we have all these rebel vets running everything.
0:22:22
(Speaker 8)
And... Yeah.
0:22:24
(Speaker 1)
I would definitely love to. and we have all these rebel vets running everything. And... And... And...
0:22:25
(Speaker 7)
And...
0:22:25
(Speaker 2)
Yeah, I would definitely love to... So my job was so like, it could be stressful. Yeah. And it was very logistics oriented. And so when I got out, I could have easily found a job working for Amazon
0:22:37
(Speaker 2)
or some other logistics planning company. And I was like, I would like to do something else with my life. So I'm really fortunate that I get this opportunity to attend school, to work on journalism and communication studies where I can be like, you know, there's a lot of opportunity out there
0:22:54
(Speaker 2)
for me to speak to the veteran community and make real changes in the things that are going on in our country. Because that's how I see continuing my education where I want to take it.
0:23:08
(Speaker 1)
Well, the other thing I always promote too is all these veterans coming back to start new careers, there's a reason why companies look to hire you because you come here with some intangibles. You've been part of a Super Bowl team. When you say you're gonna be somewhere, your word means something. You have a little bit more of a focus
0:23:31
(Speaker 1)
that if someone gives you a mission task, you're on it. And for employers, they don't have to mentor and coach you to get to that point. You come there pre-ready to be a team player that can help everyone.
0:23:44
(Speaker 1)
Sometimes that can be daunting for a new company to take on a bunch of vets. But then they realize the value afterwards. And I've watched that happen over and over and over. A lot of the graduates from the early 2012, 2013, when I started, a lot of those people, some of them
0:24:01
(Speaker 1)
were directors on this campus. And I watched them grow. And a couple of them, I have breakfast with them. They're former Rebel Vet presidents. You're going to lean into Rebel Vets. And now they're directors and at that director breakfast they can sort of complain and talk
0:24:17
(Speaker 1)
to other directors about challenges they have as a director that they can't share with their staff members and those kinds of things.
0:24:25
(Speaker 2)
It's fun to watch. Trevor Burrus So you've pretty much explained how you enjoy serving the Rebel Vet community. Is there anything you want to plug or talk about?
0:24:32
(Speaker 1)
I know you guys did the Memorial Day Ruck down to the National Cemetery. John Ligato Yeah, let's plug two things. We've had what's called a Student Veteran of America, which is like your generation's VFW. And for the listeners who don't know, the Veterans of Foreign War,
0:24:49
(Speaker 1)
those older guys with hat pins, that's me, they help with legislation. There's a couple legislative battles going on right now. I won't get into that. But those kinds of organizations came together after the Spanish-American War.
0:25:03
(Speaker 1)
There was no VA. Those soldiers came back with challenges and they missed the camaraderie. So what started to be like a camaraderie, different posts across the country, developed into legislative teams in Washington
0:25:18
(Speaker 1)
to put on their hats and look at both parties and say, don't mess with VA benefits, so to speak. American Legion, World War II, or World War I, we lost 10,000 guys a day for 180 days until the war ended and then there was no VA when they came back through the Depression.
0:25:34
(Speaker 1)
So this generation has Student Veterans of America that was started by three students on GI Bill and one was a guy named Michael Dacduck from here. And one was from Syracuse and one was a guy named Michael Dackduck from here. Okay. And one was from Syracuse and one was from Chicago. The three of them started a national SVA that is around to this day with 1,600 chapters.
0:25:54
(Speaker 1)
Now our Rebel Vets that were started by Michael Dackduck who also, his group funded a $20,000 veteran memorial on our campus. Now think of this, when I had ROTC it was a battle to get ROTC on campus. Another generation before 9-11 and then to have us be top three in the nation, veteran friendly, military friendly and have a memorial on our campus with the helmet, rifle, and boots is very moving. And so we've had going on our 13th iteration of Rebel Vets.
0:26:30
(Speaker 1)
We have elections going on for the fall. And those are all community project-based, putting wreaths at the cemetery at Christmas time, flags at Memorial Day. And many years ago, we started what was called Operation Battle Born
0:26:45
(Speaker 1)
from the Rebel Vets, not me. We're part of it because we have to have the insurance, the rental cars with faculty and all that, but we do a 60 mile march every Memorial. We've done it for five times. The first march, though, was from here to Carson City.
0:27:02
(Speaker 6)
Oh my goodness.
0:27:03
(Speaker 1)
And we were on the road five days, 40 miles a day from here to Tonopah. That was way too much. Yeah. And then we decided, how about we do a 60 mile march up north, a 60 mile march down south,
0:27:17
(Speaker 1)
concurrently, or simultaneously, and that would represent the 59 fallen. So everyone who signed up, we had over a hundred and twenty participants, you would sign up with you and your family maybe and come and walk ten miles carrying 40, four 40-pound backpacks of 7,000 dog tags of all the fallen. Wow. But there's a brick of 59 wrapped in a
0:27:43
(Speaker 1)
Nevada flag that get delivered to the governor at the cemetery on Memorial Day. And on the back of the shirt has all the fallen listed including Colonel Wagner who was killed in the Pentagon when the plane hit. She was a UNLV graduate of ROTC long before my time. Those Gold Star moms who get to see their son or daughter or husband's name on Right, which in a blink of an eye is 2025. Yeah, and so those things are very moving for everyone who lost anybody
0:28:20
(Speaker 5)
We had an admin Colleague of mine who died of a heart attack
0:28:25
(Speaker 1)
Served with me for 13 years. We walked for her, and she helped all these vets on campus with customer service. So it's very moving. And all those things for the entire community, all these different organizations like Merging Vets and Players, Team Red, White, and Blue
0:28:39
(Speaker 1)
are all veteran-focused workout groups. They all join us to walk. And it's a lot of work, a lot of logistics to pull off. You had to have an EMT, you had to have a GPS if you had to call a helicopter, you have all these things. But after you pull off the event,
0:28:57
(Speaker 1)
like this last time we had an Air Force vet. She was a vet, her husband was a vet, had passed away recently. And I don't know what the reason was, but she was very private. She came out and walked with us,
0:29:10
(Speaker 1)
and during the walk, very quietly, she spread his ashes on the walk. So for people individually, having their own loss and having a vehicle to sort of have a little pain and remember them is very moving. We're hoping to keep doing it. It's all predicated on Rebel Vets, you know,
0:29:28
(Speaker 1)
continuing to grow. Now the Rebel Vets have had peaks and valleys as great Rebel Vets who are Veteran of the Year for the nation graduate. Then they rebuild twice out of 14 years. We had the Veteran of the Year for the nation out of 1,600 schools. Wow, that's incredible. And I was a chapter advisor for the nation in 2017. So we have that legacy, but it's a legacy where you graduate and now we have to rebuild. And now the dynamic has changed and it's open to family members now because 50%
0:30:00
(Speaker 1)
of my population is family members now. And if it's community service service based and you can serve in honor of your mother or your father Who's 100% disabled or whatever you would like to do trying to have those events that family members would be interested in too, okay?
0:30:17
(Speaker 2)
Well awesome. Thank you for us for talking to me. It's been a pleasure If you want to know more about rebel Vets, you can always type it into Google and it'll pull up your webpage, all the information's there. So thank you for doing this podcast.
0:30:30
(Speaker 1)
Thank you, sir.
0:30:31
(Speaker 2)
And thank you for your service.
0:30:32
(Speaker 4)
Thank you, bye bye.
0:30:33
(Speaker 2)
Thank you everyone for listening to this podcast. If you want more information about the show or the guest interview, please send an email to rebelvets at gmail.com. And to my veterans out there, thank you for your service and your sacrifice. please send an email to rebelvets at gmail.com. And to my veterans out there, thank you for your service and your sacrifice.
0:30:47
(Speaker 3)
Until Valhalla.