Resources:

Jeff Struecker on LinkedIn

JeffStruecker.com

Jeff Struecker’s Unbeatable podcast

Jeff Struecker’s Amazon Author page

The Battle of Mogadishu

Black Hawk Down

Dusty Davis

Fort Benning, Georgia

Columbus, Georgia

The Munga, the toughest race on earth

Three Rangers Foundation

Raising a Modern-day Knight: A Father's Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood, by Robert Lewis

Bar MitzvahSummary: Jeff Struecker’s parents divorced when he was young; he and his mother moved a lot for her work, sometimes two or three times in a school year. He went to four high schools in three states and then joined the Army, spending the next ten years in Fort Benning, Georgia. Jeff has spent the last 30 years between Fort Benning, and Columbus, Georgia, a neighboring community.Jeff’s links are listed in the resources. Jeff’s podcast, Unbeatable, tells stories of guys and gals that have gone through crazily difficult experiences. When they got knocked down, they got back up, determined not to let life beat them. They figured out a way to handle their circumstances. Jeff has published multiple books available on Amazon and other outlets.

 

Jeff is preparing to ride in The Munga, the toughest race on earth, a 1,000K mountain bike race through the South African desert. Jeff is using it to raise funds for and bring awareness to the Three Rangers Foundation, a charity helping veterans transition from the military to civilian life. His goal is to raise $50K for the Three Rangers Foundation. Please donate through Jeff’s website.

 

The Munga takes place in the hottest part of the year in South Africa. Temperatures may run up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s five days with no sleep and no support. You’re on your own across the desert. Everyone in the racing community that Jeff has talked to says there is no question it’s the world’s toughest race. Jeff signed up in January and has been training hard for it. Jeff learned recently that no one else from the U.S. has signed up. The race is a few weeks away at the end of November.

There are eight or nine water stops. Jeff compares this experience to long-distance and extreme-condition events he has done on foot with a heavy backpack. He has never gone this kind of distance on a bike. He has spent years in some of the hottest deserts in the world. Water is his biggest concern. You have to know what you’re doing or you will get yourself in trouble. Jeff has sought advice and he has a plan for enough water to bring him to the finish line. The race is GPS-oriented. If you leave the course, you retrace your steps to the point where you left it. Every rider will have a GPS beacon. When the race kicks off, you will be able to trace Jeff’s progress on the course on his website in real-time, from November 30th to December 5th. Jim asks listeners to donate to this fundraiser for the Three Rangers Foundation on Jeff’s website.

 

Jeff lived most of his childhood much below the poverty line. His father was absent. In Jeff’s senior year of high school, a couple of months before graduation, Jeff realized the Army would be a quick way out of the small midwestern farming town he lived in at the time. What steered him toward the Rangers was his search for a challenge and some discipline. Because of his path in high school, he recognized that if he didn’t turn himself around, he was going to be either in jail or dead. The Army Rangers provided him with all the things he was looking for. As far as the discipline and the challenge go, it gave him a whole lot more than he expected! Jeff says that every teenage boy has to figure out what it means to be a man. He is convinced that in the United States, we do not do a good job of helping boys figure out what it means to b a man. There are many bad definitions of manhood and boys have to figure it out. Jeff entered the military with no idea what it meant to be a man. He found mentors in the military who taught him what manhood is.

 

Jim talks about his organization MenBuildMen.com. Men building boys into men is imperative. Jim asks Jeff how he transitioned from being a boy with no father to a father with a houseful of children. Jeff says he started with a blank slate. When he married his high school sweetheart, he knew he wanted to have children. They’ve been married for almost 32 years and had five children. Three sons came first and then two daughters. Jeff wants the listeners to know he made a lot of mistakes along the way. Jeff continually prayed for God to take the best he could do and make up the difference. Jeff says the most important responsibility a Dad has is to be present, not just being there but interacting with them, being all the way at home so the family knows that they’ve got your full attention. Jeff says to give the same amount of energy to your family that you give to your job. When Jeff’s boys started becoming teens, Jeff realized he had to teach them to turn into men. He remembered a book he had read by Robert Lewis, when the boys were toddlers, Raising a Modern-day Knight: A Father's Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood. The book asks, what does your family expect out of the men in your family? What is the rite of passage that lets a boy know he’s a man? Jeff started studying how fathers in other cultures teach their boys to be men, and he found some countries do it much better than we do in the United States. He notes the Bar Mitzvah of Jewish culture and the aboriginal walkabout of Australia. Native American tribes and African tribes all have a challenge that a boy goes through. When he comes back from the challenge, the whole village recognizes him as a man.

 

Jeff started putting an idea into place for teaching his boys. He laid out a different challenge for each of his sons, according to his personality. He told each one that he would work through this challenge and when he had completed it, everyone in the family would recognize him as a man. He would have a man’s authority and a man’s responsibilities. If he doesn’t act like a man, he will be treated as a man for punishment and he won’t like it. The grace period of boyhood would be over. Jeff told them a man doesn’t have a curfew; but when they went out, they were to say what time they would be home, and Dad would wait up for them. As a man, they were expected not to be late. His sons lived up to that as long as they lived at home. One showed up three minutes late once, and he took responsibility for it. When the rite of passage was done for each son, Jeff gave him a weapon that fit his personality. Jeff asked each son to keep it and when he moved out, to display it on the wall of his home as a symbol that he is a man and a man is responsible to protect his home and everybody God has placed inside it. Jeff says he had sons at 16 and 17 years old that had taken more responsibility and acted more like a man than people in their 30s. They thrived, hearing from their father, “That’s it, you’re a man.”

 

Jim affirms Jeff for being involved in his sons’ lives to know what they individually needed, and how to treat a teenager to lead him to be a man with authority and responsibility. Young men want to handle the responsibility of being a man. Our society allows boys to stretch out too long the process of becoming a man. Our society tolerates a 27-year-old boy who wants a man’s authority without a man’s responsibilities. In Jeff’s house, after their rite of passage, they were treated like a man and all that goes with it, including a man’s responsibilities.

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