Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes

Send us Fan Mail

A kid from Lansing gets pulled out of a stable home, dropped into foster care, and learns to survive by becoming self-sufficient. Years later, a draft letter and the shadow of Vietnam force a choice that still feels raw: run from service, or step into it. We talk with Calvin Jones, a United States Marine Corps veteran, about what it took to choose the Marine Corps, what Parris Island boot camp did to his mind and body, and the moments that proved teamwork is not a motivational phrase, it is a survival skill.

Calvin shares vivid stories from training and overseas duty in Okinawa, including the fear of getting called into a real mission and the pride that comes with earning rank through discipline. Then we follow the transition every veteran understands: coming home to a country that does not always know what to do with you. Calvin turns that tension into fuel, building a decades-long career at the Lansing Board of Water and Light and helping shape the culture of a public utility from the inside.

We dig into leadership in the energy industry, workforce development, storm response lessons, and how diversity, equity, and inclusion change when you create real pathways to move up. Calvin also explains what lobbying and advocacy look like when you build relationships before you need anything, and why representation matters for young people who are still deciding what’s possible. If you care about resilience, veteran stories, public service, and the kind of leadership that leaves a place better than you found it, hit play, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A bottle of Canadian Club sounds like a punchline until it turns into a lifeline on a late night in Marseille. We talk with Thom Miller, a Michigan native and United States Army veteran, about the real decisions that shape a life when there’s no GPS, no smartphone, and no safety net. His memories move from Flint to Lansing’s east side, where a one-income household, a smart and steady mother, and long friendships created a foundation that still holds. 

Thom walks us through school, sports, and the awkward bravery of early dating, then into college choices and a two-month backpacking trip across Europe powered by youth hostels and a Eurail pass. From there, the story shifts into the Vietnam draft era and Army training, including his attempt at Officer Candidate School and why he refused to accept leadership built on humiliation. He explains what it meant to become a drill sergeant who demands effort while still respecting the people in front of him. 

We also get honest about work and consequences: decades in the wholesale flower business driving through Michigan winters, later jobs in electronics sales, a rough lesson in real estate, and the moment he decided to quit alcohol before it controlled him. The thread that ties it together is simple and hard to fake: self-reliance, faith, and a belief that life happens in your head and heart, not inside a screen. 

If you like veteran stories, personal growth conversations, and grounded life advice about discipline, community, and morals, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us what part of Tom’s story stuck with you most.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

He survived Mosul, but the hardest fight started after he came home. Bill Krieger, a U.S. Navy veteran and Michigan National Guard military police officer, walks us through a life defined by the search for belonging, the weight of leadership, and what PTSD and panic attacks can look like when you don’t yet have words for them.

We trace Bill’s path from a chaotic childhood in Lansing to the Navy, where boot camp, technical training, and destroyer life give him structure and a “tribe.” He shares how recruiting taught him real-world communication, de-escalation, and leadership lessons that followed him into a long civilian career at Consumers Energy. Then the story turns: marriage mistakes, strained family ties, a return to service after 9/11, and the grind of Officer Candidate School while working full time and earning a degree.

Bill’s Iraq deployment in Mosul brings the daily reality of combat, IEDs, casualties, and the moral pressure of sending people out and hoping they come back. When he returns, reintegration hits hard: anger, numbness, fear, and a suicidal moment interrupted by a phone call. From there, we talk about therapy, suicide prevention, and the unexpected lifeline he finds in storytelling through The Moth, plus how that same approach helps him build a workplace wellbeing podcast during COVID.

We close with Veterans Archives, Bill’s nonprofit dedicated to preserving veterans’ oral histories in their own words, and why legacy isn’t about being perfect, it’s about making what you do matter to someone. If this conversation moves you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it and feel less alone.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A HIMARS battalion fires 372 rockets and hits 372 targets. Years later, the same planner is fighting a different battle: drone warfare that gives you 90 seconds to decide if the “lawnmower” overhead is friendly or about to kill someone. That’s the arc of our conversation with Keith Lane, a Michigan Army National Guard veteran whose career moves from college football leadership lessons to military intelligence, civil disturbance readiness, and two deployments that sit right at the edge of how war is changing.

We trace Keith’s story from being born on an Army base in Germany to growing up in Lansing with a single mom, strong coaches, and a deep belief in service. He breaks down National Guard OCS choices, the reality of accelerated OCS, and what it takes to earn trust from peers. We also dig into what most people never see: quick reaction force validation, Latvia partnership work after Crimea, and the Joint Operations Center grind when chaos hits fast and leaders need clean information.

Then the hard parts land. Keith talks about Iraq and Syria planning, Iranian proxy threats, counter-UAS defense, and why time-based withdrawals can hand the enemy a clock. We also talk about the cost of war after you come home: VA care, injuries, grief, and veteran suicide. When a med board ends his uniformed service, Keith finds a new mission helping veterans through a congressional office, proving that purpose can survive the transition.

If you care about modern military leadership, the Michigan National Guard, veteran transition, and what service really costs, listen through to the end. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest lesson you took from Keith’s story.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

Getting fired after a bar fight is not most people’s origin story for military service, but for Dave Lewis it lands just days before 9/11 and everything changes. Dave grew up in the Flint and Fenton, Michigan area, raised by a mom who never stopped showing up while his dad survived a devastating crash and later a brain tumor. That mix of community, hardship, and loyalty sets the stage for why the structure of the Michigan Army National Guard felt like a pull he could not ignore.

Dave walks us through enlisting, the shock of day one at Fort Leonard Wood, and the moment basic training flips from regret to pride. Then the timeline accelerates: a fast mobilization order, a courthouse wedding so the Army will recognize his spouse, and a long overseas deployment that runs through Kuwait and into Iraq convoy security. He shares what it feels like to be told you are extended when you are already packing to go home, and he speaks candidly about loss, survivor’s guilt, and why reintegration can be harder than the deployment itself.

From there, we trace the rest of the arc: recruiting life, staff and leadership roles, culture change, and the mindset he leans on when life gets chaotic, “Event plus Response equals Outcome.” Dave closes with a lesson he wants to leave behind for future leaders: empathy without abandoning accountability. If you care about leadership, veteran transition, National Guard careers, Iraq War stories, or navigating VA benefits, this conversation stays with you. Subscribe, share this with a veteran or leader you trust, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A lot of veteran stories get flattened into headlines. Jessica Linna’s doesn’t. She enlisted in the Michigan Army National Guard in 2001, just three months before 9/11, not because she had a perfect plan but because she didn’t. After losing her sister days before graduation, she’s honest about feeling aimless, trying college, working a solid job, and still wanting a direction that actually meant something.

We talk through what it’s like to become a combat medic (68W), from Fort Leonard Wood basics to Fort Sam Houston training, and the moments you never forget, like reception halls replaying the towers falling, CS gas, field exercises, and the quiet strategy of staying “under the radar.” Jessica shares how the military can build discipline and teamwork while also leaving lasting traces, including how a startle response can follow you years after a war zone.

Then the conversation moves to her 2006 to 2007 Iraq War deployment to Baghdad, including working in and around Saddam’s former sites, operating in western then central Baghdad, and the nerve racking limbo of trying to leave through BIAP while rockets and mortars still hit nearby. We also dig into what coming home really looks like: unexpected community support in Bangor, Maine, the demobilization grind, and the emotional whiplash of switching from survival mode back to normal life.

Finally, Jessica connects service to the next chapter: finishing a nursing degree, building a civilian nursing career, and finding her lane at the VA as a float nurse. Along the way we touch on marriage strain among veterans, single parenting, family loss during COVID, and the simple standard she wants to be remembered by: do your best and care about other people. If you value honest military-to-civilian transition stories, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What line from the conversation hit you the hardest?

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A sleigh rescue from a blizzard. Kerosene lamps in a farmhouse without electricity. A young man drafted during Korea who ends up rebuilding Europe’s engines and then, decades later, rebuilding how young Americans learn to drive. Jerry Ockert's 95-year journey is the kind of story you can feel in your bones—practical, principled, and full of turns that make perfect sense in hindsight.

We sit with Jerry as he traces a line from horse-drawn fields and Catholic classrooms to factory shifts stamping jerry cans, grueling nights in a state hospital, and a draft notice that rerouted him to Germany and France. He explains how typing got him from the motor pool to an office, how coal stoves kept tents warm, and how a rocking troop ship taught him to grip a tray and his stomach. Back home on the GI Bill, setbacks piled up before clarity clicked: marry Kathy, study physics and math, and teach with purpose. In Portland, Michigan, he built a driver education program that blended the physics of motion with the psychology of attention, led bargaining tables with a steady hand, and adopted four children through persistence and faith.

When policy winds shifted, Jerry moved his family to New Mexico in a Ryder truck and a camper, facing cultural barriers that humbled and taught him: you can’t motivate someone else, only craft the space where motivation can take root. Texas A&M opened a new chapter—adult learners, research grants on seat belt effectiveness, partnerships, and a dissertation turning fieldwork into evidence. Michigan called him back to write the rules, modernize driver education, and navigate the politics that ultimately shifted instruction from schools to commercial providers. His lens on teen driving, distractions, and competency-based learning is frank and earned.

Jerry doesn’t coast in retirement. He teaches summers, mentors instructors, helps a colleague complete graduate research, and builds a side business that rewards patience and ethics. Through it all, he reads daily, takes care of his health, and returns to a simple creed: learn for life and do the right thing, not the popular thing. If you care about education, road safety, adoption, veterans’ stories, or just what it takes to keep moving forward with grace, you’ll find something here to carry with you.

If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your favorite takeaway so others can find it too.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

The bus doors swung open at Fort Dix and five drill sergeants stared him down—by 0400, bunks were tipping, cans were banging, and Cedric Davis wondered if he’d made the worst mistake of his life. What followed is a clear-eyed story of fear met head-on, pride earned the hard way, and a life held together by family, friendship, and duty.

We walk through Cedric’s Jersey roots and the steady example of parents married for 53 years, then into ROTC, a delayed-entry leap, and the shock of basic training. He shares the infamous gas chamber set-up after a quiet breakfast, the strict diet that kept him from desserts while letters from home kept arriving with cookies he couldn’t eat, and the phone call to his father during the Gulf War buildup that ended with four words that changed his mindset: keep your oath. From there, momentum builds—AIT for Stinger missiles, clearance-driven training, and a vivid, fear-soaked entry into airborne school at Fort Benning where wings only came by stepping out the door.

At Fort Carson, Cedric finds altitude headaches and long runs before settling into the rhythm of air defense. He explains supporting armor and artillery, painting vehicles tan for the desert pivot, living through the 100-hour war’s abrupt end, and firing both Redeye and Stinger. The highlight arrives as a team chief attached to 1-12 Infantry—rucking in, learning breaches, cross-training soldiers on what they could know, and becoming the “requested” team for field problems. It’s a portrait of quiet professionalism: do the job, protect the formation, keep moving.

Transition hits hard. The reserves feel hollow. Civilian doors close—“overqualified”—until FedEx recognizes his military backbone. Newark Airport becomes a new proving ground; Manhattan routes become a map of seasons and crisis. He takes us to 9/11, where streets and skies turned to chaos. Over time, corporate shifts push him toward the Newark Housing Authority, where he also finds the love he’d almost given up on. Marriage steadies finances and softens edges; three sons keep him honest. He works two jobs, tells his boys to build first and start families later, and credits a village of kin and friends for the man he is.

Cedric leaves us with a nudge to speak up, help neighbors, and carry responsibility forward. It’s a grounded, human story—basic training grit, airborne fear, Stinger teams in the field, 9/11 on the route, and a home built on loyalty. If this journey resonates, subscribe, share with a veteran or a parent who needs it, and leave a review telling us the moment that stayed with you most.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A draft notice rerouted Andrew Glenn from German beer halls to a rain-soaked tarmac at Fort Campbell, where a drill sergeant’s bark split his life into before and after. What followed reads like a map drawn in pencil and sweat: infantry training, a near-miss with OCS, boredom punctured by juggling rocks, and an arrival in Korea under red alert that replaced comfort with diesel stoves and steel seats in eighteen-below cold. On a base with little to do, he found a doorway: a Korean lieutenant with mirrored shades inviting him into Mudokwan Taekwondo. Dawn runs, barefoot streets, cigarettes pressed into palms, and a black belt test that measured presence, not violence, turned fear into discipline and discipline into identity.

We follow Andrew from hilltop outposts, where he read by the strobe of a dripping fuel stove and completed coursework between patrols, to the hard exit of service and the harder return home. The applause he craved wasn’t there; protests were. He threw his voice into student strikes, then into dance studios, mime stages, and finally opera halls. Seattle’s gentle winters helped him heal; Philadelphia’s grit sharpened him. Along the way, he co-built a coffeehouse before coffeehouses were everywhere, a convivial room where cantors, violinists, and neighbors met, and helped produce a film spotlighting “design outlaws” who treated ecology as invention rather than doom.

The story refuses straight lines. There are vans crossing mountains at 55, Juilliard sessions won on perseverance, retirement communities where stoic faces hold back floods, and small miracles—a Nigerian traveler who buys him time with a hundred-dollar bill; a teacher who says seven years, not seven weeks; a black belt awarded after two shadows vanish through opposite doors. Through it all, one principle holds: risk is a compass. Andrew argues that most regret grows where risk dies, that shooting higher than your fear—into languages, arts, and disciplines you haven’t earned yet—is how identity expands.

Come for the soldier-to-black-belt arc; stay for the reinvention that follows: dance, poetry, activism, coffeehouse culture, and song stitched by grit. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to pivot, or whether discipline can coexist with rebellion, this conversation offers both a blueprint and a dare. Listen, share with someone wrestling a crossroads, and if it moved you, subscribe and leave a review so more people find these stories. Which risk is calling you next?

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org

Send us Fan Mail

A Detroit childhood two blocks from his parents. Spanish-immersion school, homestays in Senegal and Venezuela, and a front-row seat to how neighborhoods rise or stall. Adam threads those early lessons into a life of service that moves from student government to City Hall, through Detroit’s bankruptcy, and into the dirt—mowing lots, demolishing hazards, and planting 15,000 trees to stabilize a community one block at a time.

Then comes the late leap at 30: Army Basic, OCS, airborne school, and civil affairs. He calls some of it “manufactured angst,” but the grit is real—acing PT, navigating injuries, and learning the quiet truth that logistics win wars. Reserve service reshapes weekends and priorities, especially when his daughter arrives seven weeks early on a drill day and his son is born as Detroit tallies votes during a tense 2020 count. Training stops being abstract when NICU nights and a newborn CPR save make readiness deeply personal.

As head of Michigan’s Veterans Affairs Agency, Adam meets the people policy often misses: a Black World War II sailor who waited 70 years to file a claim, women who served a decade yet won’t call themselves veterans, Vietnam-era troops who saw combat outside Vietnam and feel they don’t “qualify.” Adam argues for a simple standard—did you serve?—and backs it with action: veteran-friendly employers and schools, licensure fixes for military spouses, and forms that ask the right question. The throughline is clear: invest in people, not just hardware. Fund training that saves lives, cut gatekeeping that withholds benefits, and build systems that make it easier to raise a hand—and surer that we’ll keep our promise when they come home.

Join us for a candid, fast-moving story about family, service, Detroit grit, and the policies that turn intent into impact. If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review with the moment that stuck with you most.

Support the show

www.veteransarchives.org