Speaker 1: You know, boys, it's back and reoded all in your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not deep throating. This is for the streets, the reel,
Speaker 1: the railroading, the distant franchise, the truth escape building, and
Speaker 1: they ain't knowing we speak the truth, so they ain't
Speaker 1: quoted because we wrote it. The North South East coat
Speaker 1: g be my twe keeping your head bothering, it ain't
Speaker 1: no stopping and wants to be drops head by. And
Speaker 1: then the system is so corrupt they throw the rock
Speaker 1: out of their heads and then blame it on us.
Speaker 1: Don't get it twisted on code and we danced for
Speaker 1: no frontament biscuits. It's Willie d y'all scar faces not
Speaker 1: in the building, but I got his back. Collectively we
Speaker 1: are the ghetto Boys. Reloaded with another episode of information
Speaker 1: and instructions to help you navigate through this wild, crazy,
Speaker 1: beautiful world. In the studio, Dctor Chandra Richardson that afternoon,
Speaker 1: you got one of those names that the people gotta
Speaker 1: be mindful. It's it's Chandra, not Chandra. Yes, sir, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's correct. How you feel. I'm great. Thank you for
Speaker 1: allowing me to have the opportunity to be here and
Speaker 1: to meet you and to share what may be important
Speaker 1: to some and not so much to others. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: I like how you said that this is this is
Speaker 1: about to be very very interesting. You have a very
Speaker 1: interesting life. Some would say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: you're a Houston native born in the trade. I always
Speaker 1: tell my students Third War to the day I die.
Speaker 1: Raised in Sunnyside. What's so special about the third Ward
Speaker 1: Sunny Side? It's it's home um Home Street, Baptist Church,
Speaker 1: a little kid, the big tree on the corner, my
Speaker 1: my uncle playing dominoes. My grandfather had an auto mechanic
Speaker 1: shop in the neighborhood. My father in law didn't know
Speaker 1: it was going to be my father in law. He
Speaker 1: also had an auto mechanic shop in the neighborhood. They
Speaker 1: were actually best friends. And of course Jackie's high school. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you raised with your mother and father. It was
Speaker 1: my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather your grandfather. Okay,
Speaker 1: now where's your father? Going on to glory that way
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, where was your father? I never knew
Speaker 1: it was growing up. In actuality, I didn't find out
Speaker 1: until right about three years ago who my father was.
Speaker 1: M hmm. He was never in the scene. So did
Speaker 1: you find out before he died? No, I was the
Speaker 1: secret child, and I actually was okay with it as
Speaker 1: an adult, but somewhere in the back of my mind
Speaker 1: there was always that I wonder, I want to know
Speaker 1: who My mother took the identity of my father to
Speaker 1: her grave. She died, it'll be it will actually be
Speaker 1: three years in May, and um, I just wanted to know.
Speaker 1: So I stepped out and did what you see people
Speaker 1: do on TV. I did ANCESTR DNA and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, someone was reaching out to me and it
Speaker 1: was a female and I said, well, she's definitely not
Speaker 1: my dad. But we communicated and we talked, and she said,
Speaker 1: what do you have any family in Beaumont? I said no.
Speaker 1: She said, well what about Louisiana. No. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: I only know my mother's side, so all the people
Speaker 1: in places she was naming meant nothing to me. And
Speaker 1: I said, I'm looking for a male and obviously he's
Speaker 1: going to have to be somewhere close to my mother's
Speaker 1: eight each and my mother's not telling me anything. At
Speaker 1: that particular time, my mother was still alive, but it
Speaker 1: was never a subject that she wanted to discuss. So
Speaker 1: the young lady that I kept talking to, she said, well,
Speaker 1: let me do some more research. Well, she was really
Speaker 1: into ancestry DNA, and she dug deeper and deeper and deeper.
Speaker 1: She said, okay, I got some names. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that means nothing because I I have nothing. My birth
Speaker 1: certificate says I know. So she said, well there's this
Speaker 1: person that again nothing and I said, uh, well, my
Speaker 1: birthday October nineteen fifty nine, and surely they would have
Speaker 1: to be older than me. So the dates that she
Speaker 1: was coming up with were within a year or two
Speaker 1: of me. And I said, well, definitely not my dad. No, no,
Speaker 1: no relationship. So she said, well, let me ask my
Speaker 1: mom to do the DNA test. She actually asked her mother,
Speaker 1: and her mother did the DNA test and it came
Speaker 1: back that we were half siblings, and she asked her aunt.
Speaker 1: Test came back, we were half siblings. She asked her
Speaker 1: other aunt. Test came back, we're half siblings. She said,
Speaker 1: well that means you're my aunt and my grandfather was
Speaker 1: your father. So she actually set everything up. We had
Speaker 1: a meeting right during the Christmas holidays. As I said,
Speaker 1: this was almost three years ago, and my half sisters
Speaker 1: and the half brother all showed up. All of our
Speaker 1: parents were deceased, and I look like them. M I
Speaker 1: looked exactly like them. And then uh, my niece named Michelle,
Speaker 1: she said, what about the little toe? Was like, what
Speaker 1: about the little toe? She said, let's see your little toe.
Speaker 1: These people are must be crazy. Okay, I showed him
Speaker 1: a little too. That's Grandpa's told that's the toe. Yes,
Speaker 1: she is ours, she is ours. So I found out
Speaker 1: I have these half sisters and a half brother and
Speaker 1: lots of nieces and nephews, and uh, everyone was very welcoming.
Speaker 1: But I told him up front, I said, please understand,
Speaker 1: I want nothing from you. I am whole, I am healed,
Speaker 1: I know who I am, but I wanted to find
Speaker 1: out who the unknown was and ancestor. DNA has the
Speaker 1: disclaimer that says, please be prepared because the results that
Speaker 1: you received may not be the ones that you expect.
Speaker 1: So I got what I did not expect, which was
Speaker 1: a lot of siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews.
Speaker 1: And it's okay, but we're very friendly. Every now and
Speaker 1: then we'll get together. But I was raised as an
Speaker 1: only child. So for me, I'm good. I don't get
Speaker 1: on the phone and call a lot. We make text
Speaker 1: every now and then just to say hi or how
Speaker 1: are you doing? But it's nice to be able to
Speaker 1: fill in the blank and know who unknown was. I mean,
Speaker 1: blens do you have but wherever you my father? The
Speaker 1: four half sisters and one half brother. One half brothers
Speaker 1: deceased and one half sister is deceased, and it's good.
Speaker 1: Now is it fair to call them half brothers and
Speaker 1: half sisters like you know, like biologically? Yes? Well, for example,
Speaker 1: like I have four sisters and brothers and we have three.
Speaker 1: Daddy is between us and we. I've never called them
Speaker 1: my half brother my half sisters. Why do we say
Speaker 1: that if, like if the dad have like we have kids, Like,
Speaker 1: if you have a sibling, that's by where of your
Speaker 1: dad will say half? But if it's mama, we just
Speaker 1: say that's my siblings, right exactly? Is that fair? I
Speaker 1: think all is fair in love and war. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: I could have come up with any number of names
Speaker 1: referred to my father, my biological father, and my story
Speaker 1: was always centered around I don't know who my earthly
Speaker 1: father is, but I know who my heavenly father is.
Speaker 1: So I found out who my earthly father was, and
Speaker 1: I'll still say my father. The best part is I'm
Speaker 1: not angry. I wasn't angry then and I'm still not
Speaker 1: angry now. Um I can't say that for some of
Speaker 1: the members who were upset to find out that I existed,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, I'll just call it what it is.
Speaker 1: I was the bastard child. I was the one who
Speaker 1: was kept the secret. I was the one who was
Speaker 1: literally poor. But I was never made to feel that
Speaker 1: way with my mother and my my grandmother and grandfather.
Speaker 1: How did you feel growing up like not knowing who
Speaker 1: your father was. Do you think that that affected your
Speaker 1: childhood at all? I didn't miss. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to miss what you didn't have because my my grandfather,
Speaker 1: oh my god, she was amazing. He was the best
Speaker 1: grandfather ever. But the flip side of the story is
Speaker 1: I found out through doing ancestor DNA he was not
Speaker 1: my biological grandfather. He was not my mother's father. He
Speaker 1: was someone that married my grandmother when she was fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen years old because my grandmother had had a
Speaker 1: baby and her parents told her she needed someone to
Speaker 1: help take care of her and her baby. And how
Speaker 1: old was he when he married your grandmother in his thirties?
Speaker 1: M but he loved me beyond measure. Your great grandparents
Speaker 1: told your grandmother she needs she got pregnant by your
Speaker 1: biological daddy and grandfather, right, they subsequently had gotten killed.
Speaker 1: They told a fifteen year old girl she needs to
Speaker 1: marry this thirty year old guy so he can take
Speaker 1: care of the baby exactly. You know, that wouldn't fly today,
Speaker 1: But that was a different time, that was a different
Speaker 1: show that that definitely that definitely would not fly today.
Speaker 1: So you are a military woman, you are educator, you
Speaker 1: um an activist. That's fair. Where does all this come from? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I say there's a an inner spirit where being. And
Speaker 1: only many times you don't have anybody to talk for you.
Speaker 1: You don't have anybody to talk up for you. And
Speaker 1: I said that it seems like I just kind of
Speaker 1: stumbled my way into blessings. They weren't just there on
Speaker 1: the table for me to say, oh, let me get
Speaker 1: that or let me pick that one up. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like that. I just knew I was cared for by
Speaker 1: my grandmother and my grandfather, and that if I didn't
Speaker 1: speak up, I wouldn't get anything. Sometimes if I didn't
Speaker 1: open my mouth, going back to the scriptures, a close
Speaker 1: mouth doesn't get fed. So I had to start learning
Speaker 1: because that wasn't at the beginning. But as I got older,
Speaker 1: I had to open up and say I want to,
Speaker 1: I need to, I have to, I must, And more
Speaker 1: times than not, I did and also received whatever it
Speaker 1: was I was asking for. But if I didn't say anything,
Speaker 1: well I got nothing or I didn't get what I
Speaker 1: want or what I expected. Mm hmm. So walked me
Speaker 1: into the moment that you decided that the military was
Speaker 1: your calling. I was a student at Houston Community College.
Speaker 1: I had to actually decided that I wanted to be
Speaker 1: a surgical technologist, and I was going to school for that,
Speaker 1: and I was doing pretty decently. I had one instructor
Speaker 1: who sailf Honey, you'll never make it in this profession.
Speaker 1: You're too slow. You don't know what you're doing. And
Speaker 1: she was not a person of African American descent, I'll
Speaker 1: put it that way. And we just called her the
Speaker 1: dragon Lady because she was. She cut people. I mean,
Speaker 1: she cut you in your mind. She knew how to
Speaker 1: say things to you to be offensive and make you
Speaker 1: want to quit and make you want to drop out,
Speaker 1: and literally used that h worth to hate words. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, this lady. What is wrong with her? Something
Speaker 1: that's wrong world. You don't talk to people like that.
Speaker 1: You don't treat people like that. And I wasn't good
Speaker 1: at what I was doing, and it was hard for me,
Speaker 1: but I was determined she was not going to make
Speaker 1: me quit. If I wanted to quit, that was me.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't going to let her, a person, make
Speaker 1: me quit. So I just started working harder. And one
Speaker 1: day she came in she said, oh, y'all, guess what
Speaker 1: I did. And we're like what she said, I signed
Speaker 1: up for the Navy. Oh, and I'm gonna have these
Speaker 1: cute little uniforms and I'm gonna make all this extra
Speaker 1: money and I'm gonna do this a lot extra money.
Speaker 1: That that sounds kind of good to me. So next
Speaker 1: thing you know, I finished the program and I got
Speaker 1: certified and I was actually working in the hospital scrubbing
Speaker 1: as a surgical tech. My favorite was labor and delivery,
Speaker 1: and I could do cardiovascular surgery without blinking an eye
Speaker 1: because I had grown into it. I learned to love it.
Speaker 1: So you got your PhD before you went to No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is the last. This was on the last leg
Speaker 1: of the career. So I actually went to a recruiter
Speaker 1: and said, well, my teacher says she was enlisting and
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out about doing that. And the
Speaker 1: guy said, okay, uh, what do you do? And I
Speaker 1: told him. He said you have certification. I said yes.
Speaker 1: He said you have a degree, and said yeah, I
Speaker 1: have associates degree and my associate's degree was in biology.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have a medical field, so he said, okay,
Speaker 1: sign here, and I said, well, do I have to
Speaker 1: do all the stuff that everybody else has to do.
Speaker 1: He said, well, we'll write that in so you don't
Speaker 1: have to do a lot of the initial things. And
Speaker 1: I said okay, So I signed up. That was all
Speaker 1: she wrote and I was in for a minute. And
Speaker 1: next thing you know, came there as a storm and
Speaker 1: I was supposed to ship out, and at that time
Speaker 1: I had gone to the what we used to have
Speaker 1: facilities on OST. I went to OST to pick up
Speaker 1: my sea bag and I had to do all the
Speaker 1: medical tests to go out. That's the Green Military Duffel
Speaker 1: bag where you put everything, that's the value, your whole
Speaker 1: life is in there, right. I still have mine, So yeah,
Speaker 1: don't have my tags. I don't know where they are.
Speaker 1: But I got my bag. I got my bag. So
Speaker 1: um I went and they called me into another area
Speaker 1: and so, okay, we're doing some tests and we're not
Speaker 1: sure about these tests. We need to do some more
Speaker 1: tests they're talking about. And they said, oh, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna ship out. You need to go over to this
Speaker 1: other room. What the heck? Why? Why? I don't understand
Speaker 1: what's going on. Well, I was pregnant and didn't know
Speaker 1: I was pregnant. My grandmother subsequently, right about that time,
Speaker 1: had passed away. She has to come to breast cancer
Speaker 1: and I've been with her all my life. And I
Speaker 1: started to feel bad, really really bad. Need to send.
Speaker 1: My grandfather passed away when I was about nine or
Speaker 1: ten years old, but my grandmother that was that was
Speaker 1: my rock, and I just I just couldn't shake the funk.
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't stop crying. I was feeling bad,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, it's the it's the death. I
Speaker 1: know it's the death. But when the Navy people said,
Speaker 1: and I say, oh, I know that can't be true.
Speaker 1: So I went to the doctor, who actually was the
Speaker 1: doctor that I was working with on a lot of
Speaker 1: the surgeries, and she said, okay, we're gonna do the
Speaker 1: test and uh, congratulations. No y'all are in the wrong room.
Speaker 1: That's no, no, that's that's not mean, that's and no,
Speaker 1: that is you. And I started crying. She said, what
Speaker 1: are you crying for? You know what you did. What
Speaker 1: you're crying for? I said, well that she was a
Speaker 1: very wonderful woman, needless to say, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this wasn't what I was expecting. She said, well, you
Speaker 1: need to get yourself together and decide what you're going
Speaker 1: to do. If we're going to have a baby, I
Speaker 1: will help you and we will have a help healthy,
Speaker 1: happy baby. If you're not going to have the baby,
Speaker 1: I don't do that, but I will send you somewhere
Speaker 1: where they take care of that. And then I started
Speaker 1: crying even more. She said, Okay, I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: about two more minutes to get it together and stop crying.
Speaker 1: I said, do I have to make up my mind today?
Speaker 1: Because at that time, my daughter's father and I we
Speaker 1: were not together. I had discovered right about the time
Speaker 1: that my grandmother had passed away, that he was a
Speaker 1: kind of person that I don't want to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of my life with. And he was doing things
Speaker 1: that I was not agreeing with, and he was an
Speaker 1: habitual liar. And I started catching him more and more
Speaker 1: and more right about that time, and I said, you
Speaker 1: know it's over. We're done. I can't do this with
Speaker 1: you anymore. And he was like, oh, it's it's just
Speaker 1: your emotions. Your home a little that I know it
Speaker 1: was my emotions, that my hormones was still the veil
Speaker 1: had been pulled away, and I realized, he's a idiot.
Speaker 1: I cannot do this, I cannot knowingly do this, so
Speaker 1: so I'll just be on my own. And his family
Speaker 1: was adamant that if I chose not to with him,
Speaker 1: they would not help me. When I said, okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: I'll be all right because I had a job, and
Speaker 1: I had a career and I had a degree, so
Speaker 1: Navy it was on whole. I went back to working
Speaker 1: in the hospital. I worked all the way up until
Speaker 1: it was time to have my baby. Had my baby
Speaker 1: there in the hospital, my mom was there to support
Speaker 1: me and my baby was ill and I was ill.
Speaker 1: I stayed in the hospital maybe about a week. When
Speaker 1: we came home, she was very jaundice and my blood
Speaker 1: pressure was through the roof. Never had blood pressure problems,
Speaker 1: and just for whatever reason, things were not going as
Speaker 1: well as we had thought. Next thing, you know, um,
Speaker 1: about a week or two later, baby and I are
Speaker 1: out and we're going to visit the nurse who helped
Speaker 1: deliver my daughter, because till this day that's over thirty years,
Speaker 1: were still very good friends, and someone rear ended me,
Speaker 1: at which point I went back up in the hospital,
Speaker 1: staying there another two weeks, and my baby was home.
Speaker 1: So I was going through it all kinds of ways
Speaker 1: because I couldn't see her, I couldn't be around her.
Speaker 1: I wanted to bond with her, so my friends would
Speaker 1: bring her for me to see her. And obviously I've recovered,
Speaker 1: because here I am, but I was not necessarily in
Speaker 1: the best of physical shape. And I was told because
Speaker 1: of the car accident that I could not go back
Speaker 1: into the career that I've had, which was surgery. And
Speaker 1: if you see the TV shows, people are standing, they're
Speaker 1: not sitting doing surgery. So they said well, no, that
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be good for you. And I thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, what am I supposed to do? I never
Speaker 1: thought about not doing that, and now I've got a
Speaker 1: baby to take care of. So my military connections said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you got a lot of college hours. Have
Speaker 1: you ever thought about teaching? Teaching? Teaching? What? That's not
Speaker 1: what I planned on doing. I don't even know how
Speaker 1: to do that. And they said, well, we got g
Speaker 1: I money, got military benefits. We'll pay for you to
Speaker 1: go to school. And are you still enjoying the benefits
Speaker 1: of military in a roundabout way? Not? Because he was right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's a work in progress. I'm sorry. Where
Speaker 1: how long were you in the military? I got credit
Speaker 1: for eight years honorable discharge. H But I see, well
Speaker 1: that's more than what a few people I know that's
Speaker 1: eating good off off their military benefits. I mean they should.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the that's next. If you need some help
Speaker 1: to I know somebody who's very very good and get you.
Speaker 1: Remember what I said about the clothes mouth doesn't get fed.
Speaker 1: So I'll say it right now. I need some help.
Speaker 1: I got and I'm ready to receive it. Absolutely. We
Speaker 1: shall talk after this agree boys reloaded podcast will be
Speaker 1: right back after the pot Let's go back to the military.
Speaker 1: While serving in the military, did you ever experience any
Speaker 1: type of sexual harassment in the military, Because I know
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. That scares me about women in
Speaker 1: the military, because I have family members who are in
Speaker 1: the military or female, and that always scared the hell
Speaker 1: out of me about that. How pervasive it is. You
Speaker 1: ever experienced something like that, um to the degree of
Speaker 1: where it was flirtatious, only no one ever put their
Speaker 1: hands on me. I was never in an area where
Speaker 1: I was isolated or secluded where I had to concerned
Speaker 1: about my safety. Yeah, so I was blessed in that
Speaker 1: aspect that didn't happen to me. But as far as
Speaker 1: quote unquote hitting on me, oh heck, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: all the time and perverse conversations or just inappropriate language. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Are you familiar with the case of Levina Johnson.
Speaker 1: Vina Johnson, she's a black woman who was found murdered
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five. She was found murdered in
Speaker 1: a tent that was owned by UM was a k
Speaker 1: KBR you know, Ronnie Route who at the time it
Speaker 1: was a it was a time, Yeah, it was at
Speaker 1: the time. It was a subsidiary of had A buried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she her death was rude a suicide. But checked
Speaker 1: this out. The autopsy found that she First of all,
Speaker 1: they said that she committed suicide with the with the
Speaker 1: M sixteen rifle. She's a right handed woman. The bullet
Speaker 1: wound was on the left side of her head. She's
Speaker 1: a right handed woman. The bullet wounds on the left
Speaker 1: side of her head. And they said she killed herself
Speaker 1: for the rifle. They found lacerations on a you know,
Speaker 1: on a private areas. They found on her face, they
Speaker 1: found they somebody put some type of flammable liquid on
Speaker 1: her body. They burned her. Uh, they poured died on
Speaker 1: her vagina. Uh. They did a bad They did a
Speaker 1: real bad and they told the parents. They told the
Speaker 1: family that it was suicide. And as far as I know,
Speaker 1: the families still don't have justice. And uh and then
Speaker 1: recently here uh fort Hood. Uh, they had the case
Speaker 1: of Vanessa Yea who you know, was murdered and they
Speaker 1: tried they she was brutally murdered, decapitated, and they uh
Speaker 1: just totally ignored the evidence. And that was people are
Speaker 1: saying like this, God, right here is a suspect held,
Speaker 1: you should talk to him, and they just totally ignored it.
Speaker 1: It's like and I and and that's just that's just
Speaker 1: uh two cases. But I see it's very very rare.
Speaker 1: But I remember reading something where it said that it
Speaker 1: was like out of the like it was like ninety
Speaker 1: nine six women who was murdered who died like in
Speaker 1: in in in Iraq, uh and Afghanistan. It was like, uh,
Speaker 1: thirty six of those women something around that number, like
Speaker 1: about thirty six of those women were uh, we're murdered. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're murdered outside of combat, so it was unco it
Speaker 1: was non combat related. So and almost all of them
Speaker 1: were raped. There was some type of rape involved. You know, America,
Speaker 1: I'll say America has a major problem with rape. I
Speaker 1: mean day one, we could go all the way back
Speaker 1: to slavery, but even today, people get excited when certain
Speaker 1: people get convicted or accused of rape or whatever. They
Speaker 1: want to bring them down or whatever. But I would
Speaker 1: dare say that this country really don't care about victims
Speaker 1: of rape because, uh, last I check, of all rape
Speaker 1: kits in America are sitting in evidence rooms. Untested. So
Speaker 1: I was just curious about that when I first when
Speaker 1: I found out that, you know, you had that military background.
Speaker 1: Uh do you have any uh any any of your
Speaker 1: your friends or your fellow soldiers female soldiers experienced something
Speaker 1: like that. I don't know anyone exees me personally, but
Speaker 1: I belonged to some women veteran programs where I know
Speaker 1: it's there, but it does not get discussed openly. What
Speaker 1: trips me is like, if you can't be protected on
Speaker 1: your base, your home, your home, think about it. This
Speaker 1: is your base, this is ground this is ground zero
Speaker 1: for protection. These the people that you're amongst your co
Speaker 1: workers and all these people, these are the This is
Speaker 1: the US military, and they're supposed to be the first
Speaker 1: line of defense for US as citizens. But to take
Speaker 1: it further, you actually are employed directly by the military,
Speaker 1: being the military from you employed to go out and
Speaker 1: serve the country. And you're supposed to be going out
Speaker 1: here to get justice for other people and free other
Speaker 1: lands and all this stuff, But you can't get justice
Speaker 1: for yourself right here. You know, how do you reconcile that?
Speaker 1: Like when you know knowing that you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm serving I'm serving my country, but my country
Speaker 1: ain't necessarily serving me. It's to her for excuse me,
Speaker 1: it's a hurtful thought to know that. UM. I participate
Speaker 1: with Dress for Success Houston. They also have a veterans portion,
Speaker 1: so tons of women every branch of the military that
Speaker 1: you could think of, and sometimes and now more so
Speaker 1: because of COVID, and we do a lot of things virtually,
Speaker 1: so we don't get to do the relational building that
Speaker 1: we were previously. But when you hear other women saying
Speaker 1: their PTSD, you know, or they're having some kind of
Speaker 1: a psychotic or psychosis that they're having to deal with,
Speaker 1: and just like you say, it's not necessarily military related,
Speaker 1: it's about something else that occurred while they were in
Speaker 1: the military. Yes, people on the base sometimes their personal relationships,
Speaker 1: their spouses who may also be in the military, or
Speaker 1: they're married to a military spouse, and the way they
Speaker 1: have to handle the stress. I have no answers. I
Speaker 1: have no answers. I don't know how to UM excuse it.
Speaker 1: But it's just the idea that they experienced it. And
Speaker 1: as you have said, the help, the help is there,
Speaker 1: but some people are so afraid, just so afraid to
Speaker 1: come up against powers that they feel are bigger than them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was the case definitely with Vanessa gil Yam.
Speaker 1: You know she gil Ya and she uh told her
Speaker 1: family that she had she was going through something. This
Speaker 1: guy had sexually assaulted her and she was scared to debt.
Speaker 1: And then it got out of something happened where dude
Speaker 1: thought that he was going to be found out, so
Speaker 1: he murdered and then like the cowardy he was, he
Speaker 1: killed him. Two boys revoting podcast will be right back
Speaker 1: after the point. M So you take your military uh background,
Speaker 1: and you kind of like, uh you you move on,
Speaker 1: you move forward, and you because you can't do the
Speaker 1: military thing anymore, you get into education. What brought you
Speaker 1: into education? Well, when I was given that offer, my
Speaker 1: first thought, as I says, I don't know how to
Speaker 1: do that? A little did I know? I knew a
Speaker 1: lot more than I had actually given myself credit for.
Speaker 1: So it was easier than your thought. Like actually teaching,
Speaker 1: and I'd had an instructor who was a history teacher.
Speaker 1: Prior to that. I had the medical background and the
Speaker 1: biology because that was the career that I wanted. But
Speaker 1: this one particular history teacher and I went back to
Speaker 1: a c C. And she did something. It was like
Speaker 1: sprinkling fairy dust on a person. And I loved the stories.
Speaker 1: I fell in love with the stories. I want to
Speaker 1: do that. I want to tell stories. She made everything
Speaker 1: that you saw in a book come alive, where if
Speaker 1: you close your eyes you could see yourself there. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my gosh, how did I do that?
Speaker 1: I want to do that. I really want to do that.
Speaker 1: She was amazing. What's her name, would you believe? I
Speaker 1: don't remember Diana. Diana was the first name, but the
Speaker 1: last name I don't remember because it was quite some
Speaker 1: time ago. But she was an awesome teacher, and I
Speaker 1: didn't like her. I didn't like her. I thought she
Speaker 1: had something against me in the beginning, because every paper
Speaker 1: its history class. You're gonna write. Every paper that I
Speaker 1: turned in came back just blooded up. She just read
Speaker 1: all over. And I thought, oh my gosh. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: she hates me because I'm black. That was my first
Speaker 1: thought because of it's like, surely i know I'm doing
Speaker 1: everything right. And she said, oh, I'm gonna give this
Speaker 1: paper back to you, fix it, turn it back in.
Speaker 1: She gave her I said, well, I don't know what's
Speaker 1: wrong with her. It was perfectly paper as far as
Speaker 1: I was concerned. I'm literate, I know how to write.
Speaker 1: I don't know what she's talking about. So I went
Speaker 1: and I changed some things around. Keep in mind I
Speaker 1: had iff at first. I turned it back in and
Speaker 1: I got a d about, Oh what is wrong something
Speaker 1: it's wrong with this woman? And she said, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you one more chance. Take it, fix it,
Speaker 1: turn it back in. She hates me. I know she
Speaker 1: hates me, because now there's nothing wrong with this paper.
Speaker 1: Did you try to get any help from anybody else?
Speaker 1: Did you act? I'll just look at it, look at it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I was the only person in my family
Speaker 1: who had graduated from high school, so I couldn't. And
Speaker 1: I went and did some more stuff, and I turned
Speaker 1: it back in again. But I'm thinking, I'm a genius
Speaker 1: and I know these things. So I turned it in
Speaker 1: and she said, let me talk to you. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what does she want now? Is I can't get away
Speaker 1: from her now? But she told good stories, and that's
Speaker 1: what I liked. And she said, I see in you me,
Speaker 1: I see you making the same mistakes that I used
Speaker 1: to make, and it wasn't until somebody stopped me that
Speaker 1: I was able to fix it. I'm stopping you now
Speaker 1: because I want you to fix it, because you have
Speaker 1: a great opportunity. But if you don't get this writing part,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be all that you wanted to be.
Speaker 1: At that point, my whole outlook about her changed tremendously, respectfully,
Speaker 1: and I was so appreciated because no one had ever
Speaker 1: said that they would just take the works. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you did, you turned in here's a So of course
Speaker 1: I thought I knew what I was doing. I was
Speaker 1: a really good student in high school. I could look
Speaker 1: at something, learned, take the test, make a but I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to study. So when I first graduated
Speaker 1: from high school, I went to the University of Houston
Speaker 1: as a part of my testimony to my students and
Speaker 1: the parents that I had a full scholarship got in
Speaker 1: the University of Houston. Keeping mind, this girl had nobody
Speaker 1: in her background. This she could ask about school. So
Speaker 1: here I am in a place that was far into
Speaker 1: my family, and in my first year of college, I
Speaker 1: ended up with a point seven five g P A. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is an F that is the grandfather of f's.
Speaker 1: And it was so bad that University of Houston said,
Speaker 1: do not enroll here anymore. Like ever, it's so bad.
Speaker 1: And I thought, okay, so I went and got a
Speaker 1: dead in gonna wear a job. The lady on the job,
Speaker 1: wonderful older lady, Mr Do Lories, who said, baby, why
Speaker 1: are you here? And I said, because I have a
Speaker 1: car note and I need a job. She said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that. I mean why are you here
Speaker 1: in this place? Why are you doing this job? I
Speaker 1: was filing papers. That was my job to file papers.
Speaker 1: And um, I said, well, I got bills and I
Speaker 1: failed in college. How do you make a point seven? Easy?
Speaker 1: Come to class, don't go a class on time, don't study.
Speaker 1: And I parted like nobody's business. And I had a
Speaker 1: good time because but I should have got an eight
Speaker 1: for pardon when I said, sister, did that? I did that?
Speaker 1: And I cannot lie. I have to own my truth,
Speaker 1: and that is my truth because that's what makes me
Speaker 1: be who I am now. And then what campus was
Speaker 1: this central campus? The third ward the day downtown? Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I don't even know if they had downtown. Write
Speaker 1: about them. But nevertheless, uh, they said, they put me out.
Speaker 1: And that's how the circle. Literally it was like the
Speaker 1: children in the desert wandering. That's how the circle started.
Speaker 1: You know, I do this, and so that's not working.
Speaker 1: Let me do that. Oh that's not working. That's how
Speaker 1: military peace came up. That's how all of these things
Speaker 1: came up. Because I failed out of high school. I
Speaker 1: graduated wonderful, but at that point eighteen, I lost my mind,
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was doing, didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do it, and had nobody to ask, and didn't have
Speaker 1: sense enough to know I needed to ask. So what
Speaker 1: did that teacher say to you specifically that turned you around?
Speaker 1: She saw me, and so when she said that, that
Speaker 1: was all the motivation you need. You felt like she
Speaker 1: cared about you. She cared right, absolutely. Okay, So, so
Speaker 1: I mean almost freshman high school and I go into
Speaker 1: my homeroom teacher who happens to be my science teacher. Also,
Speaker 1: I go into a room, me and my buddy, and
Speaker 1: we got on trench coach and gangstads and we walk
Speaker 1: in singing, singing slave walking down the street watching ladies. Right,
Speaker 1: We just jamming. So she just sat back and just
Speaker 1: watching the class erupts going crazy. They're loving it, laughing Nick,
Speaker 1: get it. We finished, she said, okay, you come sit
Speaker 1: right here. So she made me sit up in the
Speaker 1: front since she made me sit sit in front of class.
Speaker 1: And then um, she tells me to write the daily
Speaker 1: objective on the board the next day. Now, up until
Speaker 1: that point, I always thought that right in the daily
Speaker 1: objective on the board. Objective on the board was for
Speaker 1: the smart kids. I never I never particularly considered myself
Speaker 1: smart because I didn't make the grades. But when she
Speaker 1: when she delegated authority to me, it gave me a
Speaker 1: sense of pride. And I'm writing the daily objective, I'm heah,
Speaker 1: you know, stipid chest out something right. And then next
Speaker 1: thing she does is she tells me to keep names
Speaker 1: when she leave her room, she tells me to keep
Speaker 1: the name. That's huge. Well, I didn't understand what she
Speaker 1: was doing to me, but she really made me out
Speaker 1: out of a rat. But I didn't have to rat
Speaker 1: on nobody because she understood if I can get him
Speaker 1: under control, I can get my whole class room under control.
Speaker 1: So every time she came back into the room, the
Speaker 1: room was quieter than it was before she exited the room.
Speaker 1: And so again I did not figure out what she
Speaker 1: was had done to me until a few years later.
Speaker 1: But I made straight a's in her class when I started.
Speaker 1: When I made an A in science, I thought I
Speaker 1: could make an A in anything, because you know, blowing
Speaker 1: up you think you think of science is something difficult
Speaker 1: to do because people tell you it's difficult, right, so
Speaker 1: you're think in your mind it's difficult. But she worked
Speaker 1: with me. She showed me, you know, the science, you know,
Speaker 1: of of of studying and learning. And I aced her classroom.
Speaker 1: So I was like, well, I'm gonna try to with
Speaker 1: the other classes. So I ace math, I aced history, everything.
Speaker 1: I just as everything. So out of nowhere, I go
Speaker 1: from you know, bees and seeds and d's two straight a's.
Speaker 1: And back then, they used to announce your name on
Speaker 1: the on the intercom if you made the honor roll.
Speaker 1: So when they announced my name, everybody started looking around it.
Speaker 1: I mean, what you do is threatened to teach you
Speaker 1: what you beat up to teaching something and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and and so I had to deal with that every
Speaker 1: time after I would make the honor roll, you know,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, after I would make the honor roll. I
Speaker 1: have to deal with that all the time. But I said,
Speaker 1: I just say, you know, you get the right teacher
Speaker 1: in your life. They could change life. And this is
Speaker 1: why I respect teachers so much. I respect educators. You
Speaker 1: get the right one and they can change your life.
Speaker 1: If it was not for Mrs Oliver at Forest Brook
Speaker 1: High School, I probably would be a different man. I
Speaker 1: think she saved my life, you know, because I mean
Speaker 1: she she sold it to me. She took the time.
Speaker 1: She could have easily said, get out of my room,
Speaker 1: you know, go to the principal's office like everybody else did.
Speaker 1: But she understood. She's like, okay, we got us right here.
Speaker 1: We got a class clown basically, uh yeah, class ground.
Speaker 1: But you know, hey, you know I can work with him.
Speaker 1: You know he you know, I'm gonna work with this kid.
Speaker 1: And it was because she took a chance on me.
Speaker 1: I took I take chances on people all the time
Speaker 1: because I see I can see me in a lot
Speaker 1: of these youngsters. And you know, I think all of us,
Speaker 1: whether we want admit it or not, everybody likes to
Speaker 1: be acknowledged. And you're going to either get some attention
Speaker 1: to good way or the bad way, good or bad.
Speaker 1: People like to be acknowledged. People likes to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: So at that time I was doing getting it a
Speaker 1: bad way by being a class clown. But she's taught
Speaker 1: me how to get it a good way. And so
Speaker 1: uh again, shots, ms, I gotta not. This ain't no
Speaker 1: shot at right now. That's salute to Miss Oliver, Mrs Oliver, salute, salute, salute, shot,
Speaker 1: Shout out to the first one. My first grade teacher,
Speaker 1: Mrs Eppel Route Wilson Reynolds Elementary School. You know she
Speaker 1: owed school ethel my first great teacher who I know
Speaker 1: all day long, I was teacher's pet, and she would
Speaker 1: take me home in the car. I wrote in the
Speaker 1: teacher's car on the front seat. She would give me
Speaker 1: books and tell me, now you take this book home
Speaker 1: when you better learn how to read it. In kindergarten,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to spell my name. And again
Speaker 1: I tell that because that's a part of my journey.
Speaker 1: She would always tell me you're gonna be my sister
Speaker 1: one day? Can I be her sister? She I don't
Speaker 1: know how that's gonna happen. Till this day, I am
Speaker 1: her sister. We're in the same sorority. She made sure
Speaker 1: I didn't get to look in any other direction. Was
Speaker 1: Zeta far Beta Sorority Incorporated? And I'm in Lamba Zeta chapter.
Speaker 1: I've been her sister since that little boy that you've
Speaker 1: got to meet at the time, he was right about
Speaker 1: six months old. No regrets, Taylor. At some point in
Speaker 1: your educational career, you became the dean of discipline at
Speaker 1: Milby High School. What exactly is a dean of discipline?
Speaker 1: What are your task? What are you task to do? Well,
Speaker 1: as the title says discipline, I dealt with everything that
Speaker 1: students did that were violations or infractions according to the
Speaker 1: Student Code of Conduct, and more times than not, anything
Speaker 1: that involves sending students to j j a P, which
Speaker 1: is the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education program the county, sending
Speaker 1: them to ABC East or West, which is for students
Speaker 1: who commit violations but they also have some sort of
Speaker 1: a mental disorder that may cause them to do these
Speaker 1: quote unquote violent acts. It seemed like a bad guy
Speaker 1: type job, like you know, like you know, it's like
Speaker 1: the guess the dr Doom, you know, like you come
Speaker 1: and see me bad things happening. You know, you only
Speaker 1: come to see me still hand out the punishment at
Speaker 1: the same time. Yeah, I had a student once who
Speaker 1: had a traumatic brain brain injury. He had been hit
Speaker 1: by a car. Young, Hispanic male, but because of the
Speaker 1: brain injury, it caused him to have a very dangerous
Speaker 1: side to him. That was a part of his effect.
Speaker 1: He literally took a baseball bat and beat his grandfather.
Speaker 1: He didn't kill him, but he beat his grandfather. And
Speaker 1: he would come to school and he was very intimidating,
Speaker 1: very frightening. And students like that. You can't just send
Speaker 1: them away or send them to an alternative setting. You
Speaker 1: have to go through a process which is with special
Speaker 1: education and make sure that you're not violating their rights.
Speaker 1: And it's called an m DR Manifestation determination review, which
Speaker 1: shows that what the student did is or is not
Speaker 1: related to their illness for their disorder. I was so
Speaker 1: engaged into that that I just recently got another credential
Speaker 1: or certification as an educational diagnostician because I wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to ensure that students who were having mental
Speaker 1: or psychological disorders were being diagnosed properly. But how do
Speaker 1: you not violate their rights and keep the greater student
Speaker 1: body safe. Sometimes the students have to be in a
Speaker 1: contained area where they're not mixing with the general population.
Speaker 1: And then there are other times that is a part
Speaker 1: of their UM i e P. Their educational plan, their
Speaker 1: individual educational plan that they do mix, but they may
Speaker 1: have to have a co teacher with them. Um they
Speaker 1: may only have two or three courses out in the
Speaker 1: general population, and then others they have to be in
Speaker 1: a more contained area. It just depends on the situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you share that story that you were telling me
Speaker 1: about where the kid came up to you one day,
Speaker 1: I think it was after school or something that he
Speaker 1: wanted you to leave the school stop staying so late,
Speaker 1: and share that story. UM. I was at an alternative
Speaker 1: school on the West Side and I was the principle
Speaker 1: over this particular section. We had elementary, middle, and high
Speaker 1: school all under the same roof. And this particular student
Speaker 1: he was tatted up, he had his gang signs on him,
Speaker 1: he had a little tear drop by his eye and everything.
Speaker 1: And one day he came to he say, miss uh,
Speaker 1: you need to stop staying late. I said, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? He said, I know you're here. I
Speaker 1: know you he at the school. It gets late. Stop
Speaker 1: staying here. I need you to go home. I said,
Speaker 1: how do you know that I'm here? He said, I know.
Speaker 1: I got people watching. But I told him she's okay,
Speaker 1: don't bother her. Let's stop staying because one time I
Speaker 1: might not be able to stop somebody. M hmm. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That let me know that he liked me because he
Speaker 1: didn't have to warn me and I stopped staying. How
Speaker 1: come YEA, I don't have security after iurs when teachers
Speaker 1: are standing putting in over time. Well, UM, as far
Speaker 1: as H I. S D Is concerned, we do have
Speaker 1: security now. Even our security guards. They generally clock out
Speaker 1: at five o'clock. So if you're staying after that, then
Speaker 1: more times than not, that's your choice. Is not something
Speaker 1: that you have to do. And if it's not an event,
Speaker 1: then you may not have security there for that event,
Speaker 1: which is I I do not um advice for myself
Speaker 1: or even the individuals who work under me, that they
Speaker 1: stay late, especially when it starts getting dark, leave at
Speaker 1: a decent amount of time and don't stay by yourself
Speaker 1: or don't walk out alone in regards to respect. You know,
Speaker 1: I cover a lot of stories where kids challenge teachers. Today,
Speaker 1: they will swing on teachers, call them all kinds of names,
Speaker 1: everything but a child of God. Sir, what are some
Speaker 1: particular challenges that you have faced when trying to rank
Speaker 1: order and in the schools that you have worked there? Well,
Speaker 1: my first school, and I'll never forget, I was a
Speaker 1: green teacher like the curtains on the wall, and I
Speaker 1: had a student who was kind of acting up. Nothing
Speaker 1: two unusual. Generally my classes were pretty decent, but this
Speaker 1: one particular day, a young man was very agitated and
Speaker 1: he said he was leaving. And I'm four ft ten
Speaker 1: and I stood in front of the door like wonder woman.
Speaker 1: I said, you are not boy, said that you're not leaving.
Speaker 1: You're gonna stay. And he said, Miss, you need to
Speaker 1: move and I said, no, I need you to sit down.
Speaker 1: You're you're not leaving today. I need you here in
Speaker 1: this room with me. I need you to stay. And
Speaker 1: he said, Miss, I'm telling you I don't want to
Speaker 1: hurt you. And that was the first time I've ever
Speaker 1: had a student to say something like that to me.
Speaker 1: And I thought, Okay, this is not a drill, this
Speaker 1: is real. And I refused to move. I was going
Speaker 1: to be stoic and stand there, and I say, no,
Speaker 1: I need you to stay in the room. He politely
Speaker 1: came up. He grabbed me by my elbows and moved
Speaker 1: me over to the side and said, I told you
Speaker 1: I don't want to hurt you. And he walked out
Speaker 1: the room. Needles to say, I was traumatized, and the
Speaker 1: kids in the room they were like, miss are you okay?
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, I gotta hold it together
Speaker 1: because they're watching me. And I said, uh, somebody pushed
Speaker 1: the button. Just somebody just pushed the button, the emergency button,
Speaker 1: and nobody came. And I said, okay, y'all sit down.
Speaker 1: Don't you move. I cannot protect you if you leave
Speaker 1: the room. You stay in the room. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get help. So I went to get my own help.
Speaker 1: And at that time, when I share what had happened,
Speaker 1: they said, well, that's the straw. I said, what do
Speaker 1: you mean that's the straw? We needed one more thing
Speaker 1: for that student to move him out of the school.
Speaker 1: He touched you. I was like, wow. I felt sorry
Speaker 1: for him, but I was so scared. I was more
Speaker 1: afraid than I was sorry for him at that moment,
Speaker 1: and then that's when they told me that he had
Speaker 1: a psychological imbalance and he has seen his mother's boyfriend
Speaker 1: blow her brains out and it affected him and there
Speaker 1: were psychotic disorders in his family. Steve tuned for part
Speaker 1: two of the Sharne Richardson episode of the Gettle Boys
Speaker 1: We Vote Podcast. This episode was produced by A King
Speaker 1: and brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network
Speaker 1: at i Heart Radio