The Prepper Broadcasting Network - DAC - Veterans Day Speech

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

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Hello everyone out there in Internet Radioland. This is Dave Jonesy, NBC guy. And yes, no intro, no nothing, because Spreaker is trolling me. Yes, Spreaker. Yeah, our podcast app didn't like the theme music that I bought and paid for probably 12 years ago. Yeah. So I'm not going to play any music.

I wanted to do this for Veterans Day. Actually, I wanted to do it Sunday, but Spreeker took my daily audio cash down. And I gave this speech yesterday. At the school, we hosted a veterans breakfast. And it was very nice, very nice affair. We had over 100 people in attendance. Probably about 30% of them were veterans. We had a posting of the colors by a reenactment group.

They were fabulous. The second graders sang Proud to Be an American. And they also sang all the service songs. It was a really, really nice affair. Anyway, I was asked to be the keynote speaker. And this was my speech. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first annual Veterans Day breakfast from Legacy Christian Academy. I'm Dave Jones, Mr. Jones, the Legacy's high school history teacher, and I have a confession to make.

Some of you probably won't believe this because I have a reputation for being the guy that's been everywhere and done everything. but I have never been asked to be a keynote speaker before. So this is my first time, and I'm kind of nervous. So to help me with my nerves, I'm going to talk to just the veterans, just the military members, because I have talked to military members before many, many times. And I wanted you to know that when Mr. Allison came, to me and told me he would like me to speak at the breakfast. I said to him, gosh, what do I talk about? And he said, well, you got lots of experience? Go with that. I said, yeah, I got lots

of experience. All bad. But I'm going to tell you a war story. And as all veterans can tell you right now. The difference between a war story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale starts once upon a time and a war story starts, no kidding, there I was.

Yeah, I did clean that up a little bit for the PG-13 crowd, so please interpret as you see fit. I thought about what I wanted to speak about today and pray about it for a long time and something just popped into my head and I'd like to share some

statistics with you first did you know that veterans make up 7.6% of the U.S. population but they account for 14% of all adult suicides. The suicide rate among veterans is one and a half times greater than other adults. In 2022, we had over 6,400 suicides by veterans. That's 17.6 deaths a day. Or every 90 minutes, a veteran dies by their own hand. So with that in mind, I want you to listen to a story

so around 2000 my mom got sick very sick she could no longer stay by herself she had to be on oxygen 24 7 and we talked

my two brothers and I talked about who would take her in who would care for her and since I didn't have any children it was pretty obvious that I was going to be the one and I thought it was

a no-brainer. Now, we set her up in the master bedroom, she had our own refrigerator, our own microwave, and we took care of her, which I thought was the thing you do. You take care of your parents when they can no longer take care of themselves. So a few months after that, I retired from the military. And as you could tell from my body, I did the Army very well. It was the only job I knew pretty much my whole adult life. I had been doing it over 20 years, and now that was over.

I couldn't do it anymore. It was a big shock to me. I wasn't even allowed to wear the uniform. I mean only on special occasions, and then it had to be the dress uniform, you know, like weddings, funerals, things like that. I was part of a worldwide, recognizable unit, the most powerful fighting force in the world. Not anymore. It was almost like a part of me had died. That's how retiring from the military affected me.

And then a few months after that, my marriage of 27 years ended in divorce. My high school sweetheart wanted to have nothing to do with me anymore. And, of course, I had to keep the house to take care of mom. She got everything else. and I mean everything. I remember sitting on my living room floor with a couple dust bunnies and the only furniture I had was a card table with two chairs.

I went from driving a BMW Z3 to driving a 1984 VW Rabbit. But they were both convertibles. And then I was offered a job with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency as a watch officer. And people would always ask me, well, what do you watch? I said, well, mostly CNN and the Weather Channel. Because we did. We watched on a big screen TV, my eighth day on the job, my eighth day, I was still in training.

We watched the events of 9-11 unfold. on that big screen TV. And when that second plane hit the World Trade Center Tower, there was a moment of silence where you could hurt a pin drop. It seemed like it took forever, but it was only a moment.

And then it was chaos. Get me to governor. Get me to lieutenant governor. We're activating. And we activated 12 hours on, 12 hours off for three weeks straight. And that was my introduction. to emergency management.

At my console came the call from Somerset County Dispatch and the lady on the other end said I'm the dispatch supervisor we got a guy on a cell phone says these planes being hijacked what do we tell him? And of course

the day we know that was Flight 93 Now this was in September And in December, December 9th, my mom got very sick with a cold. And I called an ambulance, and we went to the hospital. And I stayed with her all night. And I watched her labor with every breath she took all night long. And in the morning around 9 a.m., as I held her hand, She slipped away into eternity.

I was devastated. I was all alone. I realized then I was an orphan. And after the funeral, which my mom planned and paid for, my two brothers came up to me and said, they never wanted to speak to me again. They told me that I had stolen all of mom's money. And what they didn't know was mom didn't have any money.

When she sold her house and paid off all her debts and then paid for the funeral, she was broke. As a matter of fact, when she sold her house, the people that bought it sued me for $10,000. actually they won a 20 we settled for 10 it was because she was too sick to come into the real estate office and sign the papers so I signed them for her and I was the one sued

and then in March something very strange happened I was FedExed an envelope and in the envelope was one piece of paper and I looked at this paper and said who would send me one piece of paper and then I looked at the return and it's a department of the army and I'm like what is this and I read

through it and it was orders orders recalling me to active duty and and I was supposed to pack everything I needed for an entire year and and travel from Pennsylvania to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri in 15 days. And there was an 800 number on there, so I went in and I called that 800 number. And a nice young lady answered the phone, and she says, what's the matter? And I said, well, I got these orders in the mail.

It says, pack everything you need for an entire year. I traveled from Pennsylvania to Missouri. with probably further travel to all these 22 other countries in the Middle East. And she said, okay. And I said, well, it only gives me 15 days to do it. And she said, well, we're only supposed to give you 10. And I said, well, I didn't call you to thank you for the other five. And she says, well, are you asking for a deferment?

and I think I actually thought out loud on the phone with this lady and I said well my mom passed away my brothers don't want to see me anymore my wife left me I don't have any kids I'm all alone if there's anybody that can go it would be me

And then I said to her, no, I'll be there. You tell them I'll be there. And she said, okay. Well, to make it a long story, even shorter, I traveled the next, the next 22 months to 16 different countries throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. And on my second trip to Jordan, which was my last trip, I met my wife Maria in the capital, Amman,

and she was from Romania. We fell in love, got married, and at the age of 50, I had my first child. child, a little girl. And at the age of 55, I had my second child, a boy. I think what I'm trying to say is you never know where that twisted road called life

will take you. I think that the most powerful AI in the world, couldn't have dreamt this story up because I was picked up from the depths of despair and thrown into a situation that I couldn't even imagine only to meet my future wife and have these children

it to me was a miracle so around that next corner right up ahead could be a miracle in your own life you don't know God's plan is amazing and his plan is for you to live out your life

the best way you can no matter what happens if any one of those terrible things had not happened in my life I would have never ended up in Amon Jordan at the exact spot I did. I hope everybody got something out of my story

and what I said. And I think the answer is never give up. You don't know what's coming next. So take care, PBM family. Happy Veterans Day. And remember, always pre-perate. on.