Salute to Service and Community Heroes (Hour 3)

You're listening to Civic Media.

You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.

Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.

Coming to Northeast Wisconsin live from the Civic Media Studios, this is Mino and the Mayor.

Here are your hosts

John Minow and Jim Smith.

Hey, thank you very much.

Welcome back special thanks Vanessa Moran feed my starving children along about 17 other things she's doing for the community at the same time

If I

had that

energy, but you know what they say though you want something done give it to a busy person

I know isn't that true it is and then get her done they do

just

like

Kathy Colbeck Kathy Colbeck

salute to service event I remember it while I came to this last year and I was at one other one, but it was a

It blows me away the great turnout you get for this, Kathy.

Yeah, it's amazing.

We're really happy with that.

Tell us about the event, but I was surprised too because, you know, I've done a lot of events and you...

get some pretty big numbers out of

that.

Yeah, we're very fortunate.

It is a unique fundraiser.

We watch a Packer game, right?

So that's pretty unique

right there.

Any pizza and drink beer.

Yes, and there's a

couple,

you know, we get the veterans a couple drink tickets.

There's no cost for any military to come.

There is a donation for non military, but they get special raffle tickets and everything.

But the big thing, the big draw is the

10.

Well, hopefully we can have more this year, but we have at least 10 veteran support groups that come in and we have tables that they're they're at.

So the veterans, I mean, last year we had over 300 veterans in the room and that's awesome.

We have these support groups there that they can go up to the tables

and throw it out.

There's a lot of our buddies, Cody, Crepline's there, DC, uh, Vets Farms.

Oh, Jake.

Yep.

Yeah.

It's, it's, I'll put it this way.

I bet every person has one of those tables has been in the studio on the show.

Oh, for sure.

For

sure.

Um, but we've

been getting really good feedback from veterans saying, hey, we've, we learned so much from that event.

We've made so many connections and I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it, but just that's the whole purpose of that is to, we have so many veterans.

We had over 300 veterans in our room last year that attended.

At the stadium view in the back.

Yeah.

And the camaraderie in the room is just amazing.

And to see them going up to those tables and learning about benefits and services is amazing.

So you were really, you're doing a lot that day.

Yes.

I mean, I just want to say, we'll talk about the money in just a second.

But boy, one of the biggest struggles that the country has is education, that they don't know some of the benefits are there.

So they can go there, watch a Packer game, have a couple drinks and pizza with a bunch of friends, and go table to table and find out what you do for education, what you do, what's new in the world of health care.

I think that's great.

That's a great event.

And that's coming up in fall because it's during Packer season.

Correct.

October 19th is the date.

We're playing the Cardinals.

It's an away game.

But another thing too is, you know, I think the reason why it's so successful is we have so many volunteers.

We had over 40 volunteers last year.

So

it is so well run for that many people because you almost can't move in the room.

I mean, it's, you know, it's that capacity.

We had a little bit

more room though, because the back bar wasn't open last year.

So we had a little bit more room.

So we're, we're thinking stadium view is going to be good for this year's event.

and we'll see how it grows.

We're hopefully gonna grow that.

Awesome, that's great.

And I'm proud to be a part of it.

Well, thank you very much.

Chassie, I think, what am I doing there?

I know you a

little

bit.

You're gonna be emceeing for us that day.

Woo, put it on your calendar.

All right.

One of the reasons you get so many volunteers is because of you.

I mean, you are all in on us.

Well,

thank

you.

You are, you just do a good job.

You raise money, you get great sponsors.

Tell me the money that you raise there.

What happens to it?

Where does it go?

So we donate that back to veteran nonprofits.

So last year we had raised after expenses and everything, we had $30,000 that

we

were able to donate back and we split it between two veteran organizations.

So Gail and Kim at Veterans First, they received a check for $15,000.

That's

a tiny house program that's going on at St.

Anthony.

Yes, the tiny home village.

Right.

And then $15,000 went to Jake over at DC Farm for

Best.

Good victory gardens with

that.

I love what he does.

Yeah, he's amazing.

That must be tough to pick.

I mean, there's some great things in this community.

It is.

Last year, we had it a little bit different and we had people nominate veteran organizations

that they

wanted and then our committee voted.

This year, our goal is we really want to help Gail and Kim sponsor a tiny home at the Veterans First Tiny Home Village.

So we're really hoping to raise enough money to get them the money that we need.

$50,000 is the total to sponsor a home.

Awesome.

Yeah, so we're super

excited about that.

I'm gonna bring what we're talking about.

It's right here.

The Spencer Nolan Young hand-painted.

Do you know what he painted that with?

What?

A football and a cleat.

He used no brush.

Can

you believe that?

Really?

We did.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

It's

awesome.

It's a picture of John Hudson and we'll have Spencer autograph it like whoever wins it will can get a personally autograph to him if they'd like or really want to.

We're going to give all the money to you and then obviously you look to distribute it to first houses or tiny houses and everything.

So anyway, we're going to be donating.

Well, thank you.

That's great.

We're expecting a big crowd this year because we have an awesome emcee.

Is that the reason?

Maybe I'll pull it.

rank on you.

What did he call up the day before and said he was sick or something?

Yeah.

That's how you got the gig.

Oh, that's

awesome.

So how do you think the community is doing when it comes to veterans?

We have a lot of veterans in this community and we do.

It's getting

better.

I think that we have really, you know, with the new organizations that I have seen pop up and the support that we're getting, we're doing better, but we still need to work on it.

The biggest thing that

the veterans need is they need to know what their benefits are so we might have you know how many organizations here that help but if they don't know about them it's not doing anything right so it's getting the word out and and telling them and educating them on what's available

and it's changing that's the thing they might have checked two three years ago oh yeah there could be things that are completely different

now

And there's the benefits to their children as well that they should be aware of.

For sure.

And

the one thing we did this

last.

Surviving spouses.

Correct.

And that is surviving spouses also can qualify for VA home loans

too.

Right.

So

there's a lot of different things.

But last week, Thursday, we had a veteran round table, a Brown County veteran round table we got together again.

We had it over at the depot and we had almost 50 people there.

Explaining what they do for veterans.

So what we're doing Carrie Nemechek was there with me and she took some notes and we're getting a bulletin together a veteran roundtable bulletin kind of like Joe's golden ticket.

Yeah Together with different services that each one of those individuals that came to the event what they do for veterans and we're gonna have that together and start spreading that around just like the golden ticket

That's

our goal for that

and you need that though because I put I mean it's horrific that we had these wars and everything but

Um, things were really sliding with the VFWs and American legions in regard that the base was just getting elderly.

Don't quad as much anymore.

Maybe I'm going to go to that fish fry.

Not going to stop after work.

Oh yeah.

No liver and onions.

My dad loves that.

Yeah, I know.

So do we.

But what Johnny's saying is true.

I mean, you get these.

It used to be pretty not easy.

Nothing's easy, but you know, you could go.

They were the happening.

They were.

Everybody goes.

Our little team was sponsored by the VFW so we could go down there and have a root beer after game.

And that place was jammed all the time.

We were just looking at pictures with my dad and they used to go to VFW every New Year's Eve back in the day.

So yeah.

But I

think you're right.

I mean, their members are getting older.

And that's one of the reasons too, the pearly gates, they're having their last event this year, you know, but they need volunteers.

So we're very

lucky that we have for this event, the Salute to Service, we have so many volunteers.

And I heard Vanessa talking about getting kids involved before when you

had her

on.

And that's the same thing we're doing.

So this year, some of the volunteers, their kids or grandkids are going to be helping serve the cheesecake that Jeremy makes and stuff or just help out just getting them involved.

I think that's so important at a young age, because we need that we need to keep that growing.

You know, so we're excited.

Kathy Colbeck, Salute to

of Ed coming up on October 19th.

And I

don't know how young is young, but even students need to...

They're a lot smarter than I

was

when I was their age, but they work hard.

You know, they may have their sports or their extracurricular activities plus the academics.

And to get them to do some charity work, they love it when they show up.

They're like, this is awesome.

Yeah, they do.

They do.

Caitlyn Cavillian's daughter actually does the coloring contest that we have for the kids and she runs the whole thing and she's amazing.

So, and she's a teenager.

Right.

Yeah, Texas.

Kathy is so great for our veterans and such a great spokeswoman.

from Veterans First of Northeast Wisconsin.

Wonderful.

How did it start?

I mean, I didn't even know your dad was a veteran, a war veteran.

But how did this start?

Correct me if I'm wrong, because we worked together a little bit in the real estate world and everything.

And then all of a sudden, I see you were doing that one, the first one, I think at the Packer Atrium.

The first one was actually at a duplex through houses down from Lambeau Field.

And we had a tailgate party.

And Ray Horning was there.

We had a Jordy Nelson autographed helmet.

We decided we were gonna do this for veterans like two weeks before their veteran game and we raised $1,000.

It was a November game We were out hustling selling tickets for the for the helmet and it was awesome And then from there were like what if we actually planned this party, right?

What if we actually just

an organization

exactly and then we started having it at the distillery, but Yeah, we basically just wanted to start the party around Veterans Day

to

say thank you

Thank you for your service.

Come and have some pizza, watch a Packer game and we just want to thank you, you know, have a good time.

And no

pressure.

No pressure.

Chill.

Yep.

And it just turned out so good.

And we're actually this year with the game being October 19th.

It's obviously before Veterans Day, but we found doing this event for so many years that there's so many things that our veterans have to do around Veterans Day.

Yeah.

Weeks before, weeks after.

So we're happy that it's a little bit before that because then we can have as many

veterans as we can attend the event.

Learn about their

benefits, right.

Come down, eat pizza, drink some beer, watch Packers, get

some

cardinals, have some

cheesecake.

What are you looking for now?

I mean, it's May.

Is there sponsorships?

Are there auction items you're looking for?

Tell me what people who are listening could maybe even do now.

That's awesome.

Thank you for bringing that up.

So now that we have the date because we had to wait for the Packer schedule

last week, right?

So now that we

have the date, we're going to start rocking and rolling, right?

So we have sponsorships available.

We'll get that out on our website.

So housesofhonor.com, we have a website.

You can go there.

You can actually donate.

You can be a sponsor

right

on there.

There's a button right on there.

There's a salute to service tab up at the top.

So you can do that.

You can contact me if you have any questions.

We can put my information on.

website too

but

we're looking for a sponsor sponsors for sure silent auction items and then raffle basket items

great

okay yeah

awesome

awesome

awesome yeah

a great event and now you've got I know

one thing we're donating right off the top

Dennis's mom made some more of those quilts for

veterans.

Dennis

Peter's mom makes these beautiful quilts for veterans.

I brought them

to a

couple of my guys that were in hospice and they just loved them so much.

That's amazing.

So

she'll be doing some of those for you.

We'll work

on

some other stuff too.

Yeah, we've got time, which is great.

I'm glad you're in here now talking about it because it's going to be a successful event.

And the summer's going to fly by and then it's going to be exactly.

Exactly.

But yeah, a

little over four months.

I like about this.

Hey, I

remember we were talking to draft that way.

Well, the draft is only six months away.

Then all of a sudden.

You wake

up and it's

over.

And you're like,

what?

Exactly.

Eight days.

So I think it's great that the proceeds are going to go for two reasons.

I mean, you're going to sponsor one of these tiny homes for the veterans, but you're also going to house a veteran.

Yes.

I mean, that's.

Yeah, that's the end game there.

So yes,

that's a goal and help them, you know, educate them and rehabilitate them into, you know, the community,

we're

going to get in there.

Um, my team, Kathy K team with movement mortgage is going to get in there.

There's another lender that they have to a couple of us.

We're going to share and get in there and, and educate the veterans, um, with credit about budgeting

and

those kinds of things.

So eventually they can move out of the tiny home village and then qualify for their own VA home loan.

That's the thing we're trying to get across from like Jim works is.

It's not a flop house.

No,

not in there.

There's it's so

unique

because these services are gonna be on site That's the difference of this one.

You know what I mean?

It's not just we're housing them and then you got to go here or there or whatever They're gonna have all these services on site people coming in to educate our veterans.

So it's it's amazing.

We're super excited.

Where does your passion come from?

Um, well, I know you said my dad was my dad.

It was my both my grandpa's

got

my uncle's a marine veteran So my father-in-law, so we have a lot of veterans in our family, but really how much time do I have?

30

seconds

to the break and then you got about eight minutes.

We'll take it up.

Yeah, because

it's a cool

story.

All right.

Love Stan.

Kathy Colbeck salute to service event coming up in October

for the Houses of Honor and a lot of other veteran entities that they've taken care of, and we want to help her out as much as humanly possible.

Then coming up after that, Don Carper from Veterans Village, you know Don.

Yeah, awesome.

He's

coming in to talk about Rocky Blier coming to town.

Oh, cool.

Stay with

us.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get

started.

WISS coming your way in Appleton and Oshkosh and points beyond with a civic media app along with the 1100 a.m.

And 1590 a.m.

WISS in Milwaukee in Appleton and Oshkosh is where you will hear the Milwaukee Brewers game tonight taken on the Baltimore Orioles Orioles fired their manager the other day see that mm-hmm.

Yeah That's coming on at

6.5.

Well not doing very well

Time

for a change.

I know you like but you know, this is Jim.

This is a typical joke.

Yeah, here's what he would say and I say Orioles for the manager.

Why that's a beautiful city It's right in the water.

Why would

they find it's a beautiful city?

But they have a great stadium there.

Uh-huh, but okay The

mayor is beautiful though Kathy Colbex salute to service event once again.

I want to get back to the passion.

Yes, so

I've always had passion to help and give back.

I've always had that.

But when I worked for a company, Jackie Georgia, do you remember Jackie?

Jackie

who?

Jackie Georgia.

Yeah!

Okay, she was my manager when I worked at a company years back.

This is like 12, 15

years ago.

Jim and I hosted an event for her one time.

Yeah, she's amazing.

Go get her.

So we actually...

Sunday afternoon.

Upstairs the KI Center here.

Oh, like say to Wisconsin teenage girls beauty.

Oh, the beauty page because her daughter, she was in a beauty page and she was in her daughter.

Yeah.

She's

amazing, but she, she was,

you and Donna were there getting pictures taken.

Yeah.

Good energy.

Now you remember.

Yes.

She, she's very good energy.

So she was my manager at the time and she was involved with the vets for vets at UWGB.

Yeah.

So we would just go there and because we had a lot of business and a lot of connections in the community, um, we would go there just to help.

Hey, what do, what do you need help with?

You need gas cards, you need whatever.

will help raise the, get those for you, right?

Well, we were at one of the meetings and they were trying to get the veteran lounge together there, cause they didn't have a veteran lounge at the college.

And that's a problem with the veterans coming back from being deployed and a lot of them go to school and then they can't, they're sitting in the room and people are talking on their phone and they're getting all mad

and they

don't have anywhere to go to talk to fellow veterans and all that.

So, so we were there and listening to that.

And one of the girls that was just got back from Afghanistan, probably within the year.

was having such a hard time acclimating back into civilian life.

She had a little girl that was nine months when she left.

When she came back, she was two.

She was sitting in the parking lot at the vet center on the phone because she was suicidal because she couldn't.

she couldn't handle it.

She would tell her little girl like, okay, let's go grab your backpack, grab your shoes.

And then she turned around and she wouldn't have done, you know, she gave her an order and she didn't follow.

And it just broke my heart because she was trying to get help because she was struggling and she couldn't get any help.

And at the time my kids were three and four.

So it just, it really touched my heart.

And I just thought, I need, I need to do something.

I need to help.

as much as I can.

Whatever it be, get involved with veterans, get involved in organizations, help volunteer, whatever.

So that is what really put a fire inside

of

me.

Because that story was just like, people don't understand what our veterans go through and what they go through when they come back home.

We're building soldiers and they're coming back home and being moms.

You know what I mean?

Or whatever.

That's just an example.

So that really touched my heart.

And that put the fire inside of me to like, hey, I gotta do something.

And that's when I started.

looking at the Houses of Honor program.

So the program is actually, we have about over 50 different businesses that provide their services at a discount to community heroes.

So all community heroes, police officers, firefighters, teachers, medical professionals, and our military.

So that's the program that we have.

And that's all year long.

If a veteran needs electric work, we're going to get them set up with someone that's going to do great work for them, someone reputable that they can trust, right?

We have the cheesecake guy.

We have, I'm the mortgage person.

We have insurance.

We have a rake a massage person.

I mean, we're getting diversified as possible, but growing slow.

So we have trustworthy businesses in our, in our program.

Then last year we became our nonprofit.

So before that we were raising funds because we've had the salute to service party since 2017, right?

But we kind of took that little little break during COVID but we were raising funds for the organizations that

we

now this since last year We can actually raise funds throughout the year to donate to different organizations.

We just did some stuff for the Appleton fire department You know last year we did some nursing may was nursing nurses month.

Yeah, and we we did some stuff for them, you know

So we're able to, you know, volunteer and give back to those other community heroes throughout the year now with our nonprofit status.

But obviously the salute to services are biggest, biggest events.

And, and we all have a lot of passion for that event.

As, as we said, there's over 40 different volunteers that help make it such a success.

You know,

so.

Just thanks for doing that.

You know, I mean, it's just it takes people look.

I mean, I know that and I think a lot of people know it, but it really takes.

One common denominator between her and Vanessa.

Yeah, energy.

It is energy and energy.

You got the energy and then my husband keeps me in line, right?

He's the one who helps organize all this stuff.

There's always someone else.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You can.

So-and-so, they're great.

Yeah, those are spouse.

That was really making it great.

Yeah, he puts up

with all

that energy.

All the pillow talk, is you worry?

Yeah, oh, yeah.

The stress and anxiety of the party, you know, getting it all together.

And it always turns out great,

you

know, but you're always a little nervous.

Anybody

that has put on an event can share war stories.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean?

It's just, like, all

of a sudden,

we

don't have an MC.

Okay.

We made it work.

Yeah.

I mean, that's one of those things.

You just got to just go in with your just expecting, you know, ambushes and whatever, whatever, whatever.

But a good leader and what you are, but I would say to people, look, I'm sure you say to people and they say, oh, I'm really worried about this.

I'm like, give the worry to me.

I'll do that.

Like, we only need one person worrying here.

That's going to be me.

You do your job.

Yes.

Then people are like, okay, I don't have to worry anymore.

Don't

worry.

We'll tell you what to do.

But you have it.

But you have it.

Even when I say, don't you do it?

So I think it's great what you're doing.

I'm really excited about this, this, the fact that you're going to have something in your honor too.

You deserve that.

But to have one of these tiny homes, putting your organization's honor.

We want to do the museum.

Yeah, but again said somebody else is interested.

Yeah, but we got more money.

Oh, yeah.

We got no money.

Well, if you have

some,

you can

give it to us.

Forget the starving children.

We're keeping the kids.

Kathy Colvex, so great having you here.

Thank

you so much.

Give a contact information if somebody wants to help.

920-606-0592.

And then go to thehousesofhonor.com.

Great.

Housesofhonor.com.

To donate, help volunteer, all the different things.

things, drop

off

money, baskets.

Yeah, if you

need services, just put an inquiry in.

We'll get you set up with a reputable business.

Awesome.

You're the best, Cassie.

Thank

you.

We come back.

Don Carver, Veterans Rollings, talking about Rocky Buyer.

Back up

first.

Take Mino and the Mayor on the go with the Civic Media app.

Live, local and always streaming.

Download the app, choose WISS or WGBW and tune in anywhere, anytime.

Now, back to Mino and the Mayor.

Here's John Mino and Jim Schmidt.

What a great event.

She puts together once again.

Salute to service event that's coming up on October 19th.

Portion of proceeds going to houses of honor.

That's going to be at the stadium view.

It's a great event.

It's totally free to veterans.

It's during the Packer game.

It's Arizona Cardinals, free pizza, beer, everything.

And she raises a lot of money for different veterans causes.

Special thanks to Vanessa Moran.

Feed My Starving Children.

She is just amazing what she does and how many kids she feeds.

Brett Janssen and Beckett Kaye pick a ball for a purpose.

We got get Donald Driver on talking about that right

event.

He's gonna come up and of course

Brittney Merleau.

with everything you want to know.

And now we're Don Carper from Veterans' Village of Appleton, the Navigator, and we're talking about Rocky Blire.

What a huge thing that was when we found out that Rocky would come to town.

Hey, Don.

Oh, yeah, that was

great.

And hasn't he jumped into it?

I mean, I was assuming, OK, he'll come.

He'll shake a couple of hands before the golf tournament, and he'll go back home.

He has embraced coming back to his hometown, and the people have embraced him.

Haven't they?

How cool

is it

with Rocky Blire, part of

the Rocky

Blire golf tournament?

Yeah, he's he's great.

You would never even know that.

Never.

Yeah, he's just a great guy.

Oh yeah, very much so.

He spends time with every single golfer.

Sometimes we have to kind of speed him along because he'll try to defend.

Somebody will tell him stories.

Rocky, I played against you and it was the game and he'll listen to the entire story and he will, he might not have a clue what the guys talked about, but that guy walks away thinking, wow, Rocky remembered that.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, he's very good and takes pictures with every single one of them, autographs every single one.

I mean, yeah, he gets very involved in it.

He'd be the opposite of

YouTube, because you

would be, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah,

yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Well,

my role there is I was hired on as a navigator.

I've been there a little over three years now.

Honestly, when they brought me into the role, they said navigator.

I was like, okay, you know, I'm just gonna

direct people to what they gotta do, what they gotta have.

But it's turned into a lot more than that.

I even say at times now that I come in every day, I have no idea what I'm gonna be doing.

It's just whatever veteran comes through the door, I deal with whatever their situation is.

I'm gonna say it kind of like radio.

Well, it is good,

but I'll

tell you what,

how many

residents?

Right now we have the 48 apartments, we have 48 veterans that are living there now.

It's all been remodeled.

We just finished up the last few in January and February this year.

So now we have 48 apartments at how was veterans in every single one of them and do they

every one of those veterans could walk into his office with an issue.

Okay.

I bet

and

Do they stay, is there a time limit on that?

Oh no, they got as much time as they want there.

And it's independent living, which is a lot of veterans like that, because they don't want people watching over them.

They don't really like the care for living on their own and not having to assist in living and stuff.

So it's a really great option for a lot of them to come in there.

Yeah, we're there to help them out if they need things, but most of them.

Yeah, they just want to be left on their own.

We try to do things around there to kind of get them out.

We do little gatherings like Tuesdays we have from 10 to noon.

We always do coffee and donuts right there in the community center.

It brings a lot of them in, which makes it fun because it's open to the community.

So we get a lot of veterans that don't live there to come in too to share their stories.

And

we had so many people.

that would be I mean we did a Christmas party there a few years ago that was extraordinary in the amount of gifts that were given to everybody

oh yeah yeah and they even made sure that they targeted the children that were there too so we had a lot of presents for all the kids really good backers for that

um you have a waiting list then you must

oh yeah yeah yeah we have uh right now there's probably about 15 names on the one bedroom list and the two bedroom list

So we try to get the people in there as quick as we can once we have one that's open.

And one of the keys is you got to make sure there'd be a good neighbor.

Yes, because it is a community.

We call it the Veterans Village and we really promote that community atmosphere.

We try to get them.

to share their skills.

Like I was sharing before we came on about one of our veterans.

He came in, retired guy that worked in media and marketing and he just wanted to help out.

Now he runs our Facebook page, our website.

He helps with a lot of the fundraisers helping a lot with this Rocky Blier golf classic.

Oh,

they wanted to do things.

Don and I cleaned, we were joking about something.

It used to be student housing for Fox Valley Tech.

And there's this one, just a ditch that was just

Just a ditch and I overgrown invasive buckthor, you know what

I

mean?

So we come up the idea to tear it all down.

So basically Don and I were gonna do all the work ourselves and one of our residents came out.

And I'll tell you what, that guy would just walk around, wouldn't hardly say anything to anybody.

He was out there every morning till sun up, till sundown, working so hard on that thing.

Wasn't he Don?

Oh yeah.

And he

loved doing it.

Oh yeah.

He kept busy on that.

And even after it was all cut down and it had to be cleaned up, he was out there cleaning it up, keeping it.

Um, so that the brush wouldn't be growing back and then all the garbage that would always blow in there, he was always picking it all up.

So they just take a little ownership in it, you know, even though they just rent there.

And another

one of our good buddies here, Cody Crepline, he brought all the big planter boxes and then the, the soil.

I mean, Oh yeah.

You know, it's, it was a really great thing with the people that would help out.

They made it.

You know, Don and I could only do so much and whatever, but we get these other people.

Man, can they make it just like with you guys at the homeless?

Certain people have no idea how much of an impact they can make.

Yeah, we had an organization that came right from Plexus just last week.

Yep.

And they they had veterans at work there and they all came out and they cleaned up because we had a lot of landscaping done around around the property.

And they spent a couple hours there picking up everything.

And they just loved it that it was veterans helping veterans, you know, so they just want to get involved.

And you're good

buddy.

His good buddy is Steve Schneider, who donated the money for the lounge.

Oh,

yeah.

The hooch.

The hooch out there.

Oh, yeah.

Went back to the ditch.

No.

Oh, different.

OK.

No,

you're thinking of what I told you during the break, Don.

And I think we found a highly sophisticated marijuana growing thing with irrigation and everything.

It was hidden in a brush.

It was hidden in a brush.

The student, the student, he's doing an experiment.

Give the kid a break.

No,

yeah,

Schneider's

dad

was.

veteran and

very involved.

Yeah, the hooch was all built there and that kind of ties in with Rocky on that.

Remember how that all went down.

Go ahead and talk about it.

Well, so we had this family that wanted us to build this hooch and we were kind of pricing it out.

We were looking at different hooches and we came up with one at Home Depot and we were kind of like, oh, let's figure this out.

Because of course, with us being a nonprofit, you got to raise all the funds to do these things.

And as we were talking to Rocky for the first golf outing, he just kind of nonchalantly asked, well, do you guys ever do anything at Home Depot?

Well, yes, we have a pro counter.

Yeah, we

got Chuck over there in the grand chute.

Good guy.

Chuck's a good guy.

He's gonna be retiring, but a good guy.

Yeah.

Partially.

And all he said was, oh, well, I'm neighbors with the president.

No, he goes, well, okay, if you got someone, then you don't need my guy.

I go, oh, you got a guy up here?

He goes, no, no, not up here.

It's actually in Pittsburgh.

He's in Pittsburgh and he works for Home Depot.

He goes, well, he's the owner.

Yeah, we'll take, we'll use your guy.

We'll go to your guy.

Wasn't it like the very next day we get a call from the manager at the Grand Shoot Home Depot?

Hey, we hear you guys have a project.

We're donating it.

That's,

yeah.

That's the Rocky Blire effect.

And it takes that.

I mean, you.

Nothing wrong with a little bit of luck.

Somebody said,

wait a minute, I know somebody.

That's awesome.

So that worked out

pretty well for

you.

Yeah, it worked out great.

They even sent a crew over to put it together and everything.

We got the cement slab poured.

They basically brought all the stuff over for the hooch.

They put it all together.

A crew of their volunteers at Home Depot.

I

got to say, I learned more in a frustrating manner dealing with city government.

in trying to get a cement slab put

in.

Is that true, Doug?

There's so much green space.

It was

unbelievable, wasn't

it?

It

can

be.

That was a project.

It's funny because I worked in that world for 16 years.

We're doing a project at the homeless shelter.

And I'm going to these meetings saying, come

on, move this

along.

So yeah, it's a different perspective.

It really comes down to who you know, because right now, the guy that's doing all our landscaping is Wolfras.

And when I'm sure John remembers too, that there were projects around her to kept telling us, you can't touch this.

It's wetlands, yada, yada, yada.

And you get a guy in there that deals with it all the time, man.

He got things done there and I give him credit Chad.

He's a go-getter.

He got a lot of that stuff done and it all looks great around there.

And it was like, yes, this is how this is going to get done.

Well, tell us some more about Rocky

and

what's coming up here.

Well, all right.

Well, it's our fourth annual Rocky Blyre Golf Classic.