Dennis Boyd Introduces Veterans Interviews

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome back to the program everyone. I am very excited to have a very special guest with us, former Seahawks legend, Mr. Dennis Boyd, and he is sharing with me some very special initiative that we’re going to be going forward with over the next few months, and that is honoring veterans. Dennis, welcome to the program. Thank you, Suzanne. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to participate. You know, I got to know you as we started doing our program twelve days of goodness over the holidays, and obviously your contribution as a Seahawks legend has been phenomenal. But one of the things I think that we brought out of this is obviously how many stories that you guys get to listen to as legends and and so share with us a little bit about your experience to start of how you got to know the veterans here. Well, a little bit of a crossover. The the Twelve Days of Goodness gave us the opportunity to go out and be part of the senior living community. From there we had an opportunity to just to sit down and talk to some of the residents there. Are What we’re seeing here as a generation that is in assisted independent living and so on, that have gone through experiences, most of them unfortunately marked by either Vietnam, Korea, World War I, etc. So we have a group of people that were a part of our military that have lived and survived and experienced a lot of the things that most of us only read about in books. My dad specifically, was a twenty year Navy vet and so I can appreciate what they went through, knowing what it was like being a Navy Brat, being moved around every year. Yeah, and having gone through that and understand a little bit of the lifestyle, it’s a very unique life and one of service and most certainly their stories deserved to be told. It it is and these are stories that we want people to know about. All the way from having spoken to a woman named Betty who was a wave back into and the World War Two and stationed in Long Beach and she was helping the men ship off to the Pacific theater at that time, not knowing how many, if any, of them were coming back, and so she was getting a chance to talk about those emotions in those feelings that were going on, then to a gentleman in Everett who was stationed at Oak Harbor and and some of the stories of what happened, you know, back then at the Naval Air Station. Yes, so it was. It’s these are things where we all get the the a large you see the documentaries on PBS or something like that that they go through World War 2, but what you don’t hear are the individual stories and what these people on the service that they actually gave and how a lot of times their stories are never get told because they may not have been part of that big battle or that infamous incident. They actually they were ancillary to or they were a tangent to it and have a different viewpoint of what’s going on. So it’s very much of a pleasure to get to know these people and to see the services that they gave our country and then what most of them have gone on to is to continue to serve their community afterwards, and that’s powerful and you know, I have to put a shout out to our corporate sponsor for this segment. Obviously there’s a company here in the northwest that you guys may not be familiar with out there and in Puget Sound, but we have a wonderful company here in western Washington called Careage. Careage is actually owns three properties and they are one of the sponsors of our program one one of the properties is called Patriots Landing. That actually is down in the Dupont area and it’s my understanding that they have about eighty five percent occupancy of veterans. So obviously their stories deserve to be told. Then we’re very excited to hopefully in the next couple weeks, start doing a couple of veteran stories each and every month courtesy of our sponsor Careage, and we definitely want to say thank you to them absolutely. Can farmer has been a big their CEO, excuse me, of Careage, and also is going to help direct me and making sure that we get these stories told well and because coming from him at retired, thirty two year veteran to star General MD, he’s been there, done that and he’s worn the t shirt a few times. He has, and what an amazing human being he is. I know last week he ran the Boston Marathon, so what what an amazing individual that. Yes, he’s probably a lot more athletic than I am at this point. You know, it’s interesting, Dennis, the fact that you’ve been willing to step up and do these stories, because I know how excited our seniors are when it comes to talking to our alumni and our Seahawks alumni. And you know, I know that you know some of us in that around greater Puget Sound right now. We have loved ones out there that were veterans and you know, what advice would you have for people that have a veteran in the family? Um would you have to learn about their stories? The advice I guess I have is take some time and a lot of times, even in at my age, it feels like my memory slips a little bit, and most of us do have that as we age. But take the time to write down the stories, to sit and let them tell their stories. Make it part of your your fabric, of your family, your community and so on. Let them know what was going on, the good and the bad, and otherwise I see a lot of the youth today don’t necessarily have that grounding. The one thing I do appreciate, not to take this tangent a little too far, but what the Seahawks do is they develop a culture that develop a culture of winning. And how do we allow our players to be themselves and yet and yet still work within an organization and be a benefit to the organization. And that’s what you are missing if you don’t pick up these stories. You’re missing that culture, the lessons learned from the past. It’s so that we don’t repeat them again or you know, what is it that went right or what went wrong, and it’s just these are stories that I need to hear, I want to hear, my kids need to hear and it kind of gives them some perspective on what they’re seeing today. I am here talking to Mr. Dennis Boyd. He has a seahawks legend and you played in the Seahawks back in the early days, didn’t you? Very early days. I came in in one thousand nine hundred and seventy six, which is the excuse me, seventy seven, which was the second year for the Seattle Seahawks, just a I mean the town embraced us. It was a very different time. I feel a little bit. You know, the kids today that are playing. Yes, they make a whole lot more money, but at the same time they’re under a whole lot more scrutiny than we ever were. We had a chance at that time. The Nordstroms were generous enough to get involved, bring the team to Seattle and, as as a gift of you will, to the city of Seattle, Elmer Nordstrom blesses hard. He was just an amazing man, and the and the whole Nordstrom family brought this to Seattle and gave us an opportunity to have a professional team. It was at a time that we could actually be part of the community. We were out amongst everybody, weather was having dinner after the ball games or just in the community, going to schools and things like this. The town embraced us and just welcomed us and just kind of absorbed us, and it was that’s why so many of us still remain here. Well, and I think the other thing that is so interesting about this whole connection of you doing the stories is the Seahawks always have been aligned with our military, so supportive. So I’m definitely doing a special events involving honoring our military, salute to service on in November with the NFL, different things like that. So having your stories will be so powerful. Just what aren’t you know when you talked, when you talk to some of them, I mean you talked about the lady. That was a wave. You know, how did that make you feel when you when you’d hear these stories it? It took me some time. It was hard because I had to try to put myself into her position, you know, of actually watching and you try to draw on the experiences in your life where you’ve had somebody leaving or you knew that somebody may be going in harm all these, most of these men and women, were going in harm’s way right and so you know and how they dealt with that. You know, and you see, every one of our veterans at some point or another has to deal with that issue of am I coming home? Am I doing this? I am have a family here in the families. There are stories about the families that are that are behind waiting to hear that their loved ones are safe. And you know, it’s interesting. Back then they didn’t have the technology that we do now. We’re smart bombs. They’ll just go to it, you know, geographic coordinate and there’s no real human involvement any more. We’ve got drones things. So are military today is much more protected than they were back in, you know, the days that they played in the Korean War, World War Two and Vietnam. Yes, and you know, and we see situations where my dad was specifically was a victim, I think, to the the the nuclear testing that was done out at the atolls post World War II, and so there were it was just a lack of understanding of what was happening there. You know, we have veterans that are dealing with age and orange and so on. So it’s you hear these stories and the the best thing that we can do from them, a stories honor them, is to learn from these mistakes never let those types of things happen again. Wow, so, Dennis, you’re going to be doing these stories twice a month. Is that correct? That’s correct. Yes, that’ll be great. Well, you know what now, just before we close, what do you do today? I’m not still playing football anymore. I’m no, no, although just the size of pants I’m wearing it you would think I should. But the unfortunately, I have, like a lot of other players, I’ve been in the insurance brokerage and work for hub international in the northwest. We have our office out in Bothell and doing mostly commercial PNC and working with seven senior living for facilities. That’s amazing. So you have really a good connection to the senior communities through your work as it is, and you work quite a bit with the senior level executives of those communities. We see it on both sides. I see you see get a chance to see the the personalities and the people that are residing there, as well as from the administration side. How do we keep this going? How do we maintain facilities that, especially with the meager level at Medicare is paying for people that are having to use Medicare for their for their residence bay? So we had thirty seconds left. If you had one little piece of advice to the twelves out there about honoring their veterans in their families? I know you talked a little bit about it, but what would be the main message of today? Yeah, take down some walls, take down the the all of the excuses that you have, even if you don’t have a family member there. Talk to facility about coming and visiting people. Talk to them. I have difficulty in the fact that my mother’s six and a half hours away, I can’t go see her. Well, maybe I can return the favor by these meeting some other people. Perfect, Dennis, I know we really appreciate you and again we want to thank carriage for allowing us to bring you these stories. Thank you for being in on the program thank you, Suzanne.