Veteran's Affairs Plus W/ David L. Washington

Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:42
You can see what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? Good morning. This is Veterans Affairs plus 190 1.5, jazz and more. I'm Dave Washington, your host. As always, I like to start out with a few announcements. And one for sure is announcing the fact that a good friend of my longtime buddy from way back in Vegas heights in Las Vegas, Mr. Brady Bunch will have is I think it will be 71 or maybe 72, like me on February 14, so happy birthday to you, Eddie. And once again, as I mentioned last week, because his actual services is coming up on February 21. And that is retired Assistant Fire Chief Herschel Clady out of Los Angeles County, a great friend, a mentor, a father, brother, nephew, I mean, just a great individual. And as I mentioned to you guys, last week, any thing that me and Marcia was doing, he would he and his wife would come over to participate with us in the last time. In fact, with his new wife D, they came over and attended our 50th wedding anniversary. And in fact, he even spoke about the things that I've done in the community to include, he mentioned the fact that I now run the Carl Holmes executive development institute, just a wonderful, wonderful brother, who also taught me a lot about the game of golf. In fact, he told me, Look, you are going to learn the game, or you're going to quit. You say you either love golf or you hate it. And he said the other thing, you're going to learn how to play because you're gonna get tired of giving people your money. And sure enough, I play a lot better today than I did when I first started. But I honored this brother honor this man because of the work that he's done. He was such a giving person. And in fact, I last spoke to him a couple of weeks ago prior to going up to another friend's Memorial. And that's Dudley trustee Bynoe out of San Jose Kern was currently living in Monterey, California. In fact, I've mentioned this before on his show, but I think it's important to mention again, with regards to trustee, he in also deceased, the late verjus poured out of Clark County Fire Department, they put together what they call the southwest region retirees program where we come together fellowship and also we will play some golf and the Golf of course was laid by Herschel because he knows the ins and outs of the game. And I spent a lot of time with Herschel golfing in particular because another friend who's transition Mr. James Walker, we used to go down with Herschel wood Herschel and his guys every three months we'd go down, drive down and play golf and, and he marsh and all of us would go out to dinner. Then we play another round of golf, we play two days, and then we'd hit back to Las Vegas. In fact, I asked a call James one morning I said, Man, where are you guys? I mean, we in Barstow Barstow after that I told Marcia we got to get up early and get out a beat all the traffic, but I missed those guys already. Because of the work that they did in community and look forward to attending retired Assistant Chief Herschel platies Memorial, funeral etc. In the coming weeks so to his family, we we express condolences again with that once again this is 91.5 Jazz and more on Dave Washington host of Veterans Affairs plus and first guests who my call just a few moments ago and I you know I'm a very transparent person angle try to set up a like I hit spike all set of businesses Spike Jones. William Spike Jones, retired deputy chief out of St. Louis fire department and He has written a book. And I just want to say that this book that I finished today, it's a pretty short read. It's called The Fire Within, we'll Spike Jones. And he talks about a lot about his fire department that he attended, and some of the different discriminatory practices that occurred there. And it's a good read for anyone, particularly fire service. But I would say this is a good book in terms of leadership, and just how to treat your fellow human humankind or human being. It's a good, good book to read the fire within chief, Spike Jones, how you doing today?

Unknown Speaker 5:39
Thank you, Brenda, for that plug. They're waking up getting up and trying to stay up. Right.

Unknown Speaker 5:45
Oh, right. Oh, so spike got tell us. How did you come about writing this book? And, and that's an intriguing title, The Fire Within talk to us?

Unknown Speaker 6:00
I come about it. Well, somebody say everybody's got a story. And if you don't tell it, somebody might tell somebody might not tell it. So it's, it's my story, you know. And my grandkids, I've thought about that. I would have loved to hear the story. You know, about my grandfather right now. You know, great grandfather's. So basically, I was doing it for the kids, right? You know, my family. They'll know some trials and tribulations that I went through, and title, a blue book within 35 years in the St. Louis party, Florida. And I went through maybe 25 or 30 different acts for what I consider discrimination. To look within me. The first being after being on a job for three months, they sent me service. And I work downtown from St. Louis. And I didn't have a car. And he said, I got to work. And so when he got to go serve him, so I packed my duffel bag, you know, my boots, food, bedding, and our army duffel bag that I got my cousin who would come home from Vietnam. And I'm walking there. So I said, Well, I missed the bus. I don't have a car. It's only a mile and a half to the next fire station. Let me walk took off, walk in. And as I'm walking, I see the fire chief and his driver, you know, give me a lift. And I'm just waving and waving. I'm six foot four. And I got this green duffel bag on my back. January. It's cold in St. Louis. You know, right now it's about, I don't know, 1015 degrees that you don't normally get people were asking to get some powerhouses, you know, it just kept going. In my head feel bad days. When I feel down, I looked down. I thought this class was the auction block where black people were so families were separated, where a lot of other academic my imagination just runs away when it could have happened back then. So people in this back then I stood there and I looked at it for a minute. I shook my head and I saw no. And when I got my house, the teeth pulled off the apron, and he left and firing off but they knew they were going to pick up reports. Right. So that was like the beginning of fueling this fire with me. And I can go back. Before that, when I was first called asked me if I still wanted to jump right back on that. And I told him yeah, I'd like to have a job. And I found out I was 27 on the list. With the class that I was in. I was dealing with people who were in the hundreds 170 on the list. My account has been hacked this past year. So I call the guy on the personnel and asked him I said, Hey, you had it that happened. The guy she tells me says we we didn't have your address. And my address. That's what you got my phone number, my phone number was on the application with my address. I knew the guy was bad. Right? Right. Right. What happened in St. Louis, they had a quota system to where when I came on, it was 40 Black firefighters and they wouldn't have another firefighter this one retired that got injured or got fired. And so one of the guys got out of the academy. Okay, and thus they call me spike. So

Unknown Speaker 9:53
really something I wanted to you know, I know I jumped right into your book, but you are a native of St. Louis.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Yes, yes sir.

Unknown Speaker 10:01
Now you played semi pro basketball, give us a little feeling

Unknown Speaker 10:08
well, I played in France in union, England, back in with a junior college coach of our team was the coach of England's national team at one particular point. And we were played against the caliber basketball players that played pro here in the United States. Or maybe they were cut, or they tried out for pro didn't make it easy in college and they will pay those individuals look small towns or like Belgium, in Belgium, like brooch. In France, Lyon, France, they all had look, basketball team, and it will play against one another. And you know, the caliber of players that speak, you know, players that either play pro ball or the college players that just make the pro with him a lot of money 19 $75,000 A lot of money and give them a car and a place to stay. And so they were over in Europe, you know, playing basketball, right? Look at the NBA. They have a lot of players, therefore we call it Germany is playing basketball in the NBA right now.

Unknown Speaker 11:26
Very good. So, Spike, excuse me, as you as you came up and went to school and grew up there in the city of St. Louis. What made you or what inspired you or whatever the case may be to join the fire department? It was helpful. Okay, hey, this straight straight to the point.

Unknown Speaker 11:55
I thought about beggars. My little baby fingers. You know, what was it was 7000 200,000 a year 7200 out the

Unknown Speaker 12:07
money? Absolutely. Back in the 70s 1972

Unknown Speaker 12:11
to be exact. Right. And I was in shape from playing basketball. You know, we ran six miles before we started practice.

Unknown Speaker 12:21
Right. So how long was your training academy? When you when you actually started?

Unknown Speaker 12:26
Out? I think eight weeks? Eight weeks?

Unknown Speaker 12:30
Yeah, that's about what we did here. It was eight weeks and then is expanding. I'm thinking up 1416 weeks now with the EMT training and other things that have been added to, to our to our profession. I got I got more she's sitting here. She wouldn't want to put on earphones and take a mic to ask you some questions. I just picked her. She's waving.

Unknown Speaker 12:56
Okay, I'm waving at her.

Unknown Speaker 13:00
So spike. There's a lot in your book, particularly about EDI, I share some thoughts with our Linux listing audiences. Each time that that EDS coming forward. You know, I always try to make sure I do some marketing and advertising and talking about it on the show. So give us some give some feedback or some information to our listening audience about because we do have firefighters listening to our show.

Unknown Speaker 13:30
Okay, to begin with, I want to start this off. Well, I'm in Milwaukee, firefighters, black firefighters, convincing and this is a 90 So I think it was the 90 I don't choose me on the dates, but it was in the early 90s. And I do a workshop there. And it was some brothers from Jackson, Mississippi that has a lawsuit in regards to a couple of mobility in the fire service. Right. And they went Hey, Matt, can you come down to Jackson, Mississippi, you and Chairman George who was the past chief and commissioner here in St. Louis, but not at that time. He was just a Catholic. We both read and do a workshop. So we went there. We did a workshop in Jackson, Mississippi. And the results of that workshop 20 blacks were promoted Catholic. Later on, they call this back. Four or five guys made deputy chief and being one in being the chief of doing workshops, right went to Alabama in Birmingham. It was a group of guys called cook and Dave Mary they were having they were on today's show out what was CBS complaining about discrimination in the fire service, right? And they hit that bell icon, the godfather of the law

Unknown Speaker 15:09
yes.com.

Unknown Speaker 15:15
And as called, he could come down and do a workshop, the federal government, that the best type of testing with testing should deal with what they call an assessment center, right? And assessment, basically measure your skills and abilities. And what I mean by skills and abilities, like if you get your driver's license to give you a multiple choice test, and then we'll, we'll see if you can apply those, that knowledge will be your skills, but they call it K. FSA. And it's pretty hard to measure your skills and ability with just a multiple choice test. True, but this was our piece and dealing with with testing in the service. And after we finished Jackson, Mississippi, Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, first, right. And in Birmingham, Dwayne, I called him base, right. wing mirror, he's in the back. She's in Birmingham, Alabama, right. And he's also fire chief in the corner. Daytona, Florida. With anyway, I guess we'll call save. We're out here in Samara, come on down and do this. I'd like to have you all instructors at Florida a&m, we have this program called executive development. And he said yeah, okay. All right. So we wrote a program. And we got down and ran into people from across the country that all of them had experiences about how to train people. You mentioned Herschel Clayton, he was involved with riots on the West Coast. Right. And he was actually there, you know, saying you could talk about the classes of firefighters, which was a question the firefighters from across the United States UAE and the Caribbean, you know, primarily black, right there. And also that attended. That's right. And so it's beautiful program. It was so great. That is what I want to say this team have tried to take the program. They wanted the program. Yes. We're getting more about it. And I'm talking about instructors of the caliber of myself. And you in Eugene and Burt? That's right, all of you. You understand. I'm talking about 60 of us and everybody telling their stories. nationalized budget plan, you understand how to deal with what are you? What's the strengths, weaknesses? What do they call it?

Unknown Speaker 17:59
Yes. Yes. SWOT analysis, strengths and opportunities. Threats. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 18:10
Oh, Oh, fantastic. In fact, I think three of the we had a nice session, you go to class all day. After you ate in an evening, from seven o'clock to nine o'clock, you had to listen to people that were brought in by Dr. Holmes, such as we had two general that told me to put those guns down in Illinois when he got off that helicopter who was a damn gun. Big, you know, and the students could ask questions that, you know, they didn't see on TV. That's

Unknown Speaker 18:44
right. You know, it was he was a heck of a speaker and a general spike. As we wind up on time, I want to, again, encourage people to get his book, tell us how they can get the book spike, because I think it's a good read. Yeah. The Fire Within?

Unknown Speaker 19:03
Well, the publisher has the link out, okay, where a and, you know, I don't have that link in front of me. But there is they can google my name, the fire within and if you Google, we'll Spike Jones. Right should pop up. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 19:21
What I'll do is I'll get additional information, because we'll have for the shows, and I'll make sure that we get this information out. And this is a wonderful, wonderful way to start off Black History Month. In fact, I appreciate your time, particularly spike on short notice. So thank you, my friend and I will be in touch and I will let you know how you can listen to this show, even in St. Louis and around the world. This is Veterans Affairs plus on 91.5 Jazz and more. Just had to guess. Retired Deputy Chief William Spike Jones. Thanks bye

Unknown Speaker 20:08
Good morning once again, this is Dave Washington. This is 91.5 Jazz and more. This is Veterans Affairs plus on on this good radio station that really helps us out and I have a surprise guest. His name is Mr. arky with the black achievement fund are key how're you doing? Yeah, man.

Unknown Speaker 20:28
I'm doing great yourself.

Unknown Speaker 20:29
Wonderful. Wonderful. I want to very quickly let the the listening audience know that for the Springs Preserve has a black history Festival. It's going to be Saturday February 18. From 10am to 4pm. Tickets are limited so you need to check it out online. archy how're you doing?

Unknown Speaker 20:50
I'm doing great man can't be doing better to give

Unknown Speaker 20:54
us an update. You haven't been on the show in a while and I'm glad you were able to make it today for me.

Aki 21:00
Yes, yes. Well, we have a great, great update. We have opened our very first Kemet club which is our members only, I would say like our own cafe lounge type of area here in Atlanta, Georgia. And tonight, we have some of our members who are young guys who just want the band and they just had their very first performance as a band and our Kemet club on Friday, which was a great, great, great success, we have standing room only. So it's just one example of what we can accomplish with just $9 a month from a small group of people. Everything that we have there at the Kemet club is funded by model, 2 million black people $9 A month equals 90 million a month and over a billion dollars a year. You've heard me say it a billion times. Oh, yeah. But that's the model. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:59
And we got it, we got to continue working in every opportunity, as I'm doing my little part time job for the Wellness Center. When I have an audience, I always tell people, check this out, the black achieving but just Google. And it'll tell you all the things that they're doing things that we got to do collectively as a people to ensure that we have things that's going to help us to grow. And we have the money. It's just a matter of us, pooling the money. So your model is a great one, you and your team and continue to do that good work. So what else is going on with you my friend.

Aki 22:32
I just wanted to also shout out our international members. We continue to get members from out of the country. Also I want to shout out a black achiever fund family. We have one of our members, Sister Wendy, she is doing absolute free training for medical billing and coding certification and internet you fiber certification. And this is like a $3,000 course. And here a member is willing to give three black achievement fund members each six months an opportunity to do that. And once they get their certification. She starts them off with $25 an hour.

Unknown Speaker 23:15
Wow. That is excellent. Oh, these

Aki 23:19
are the things that our members are doing. It's not just the 10 million people. The $90 million is the community that we're building together and the ways in which we are supporting each other through the black achievement fund network. And the connections are just going on and on and on. If you look at our Kemet clusters and if you guys go to B A F dot solutions, backslash chemic club and have K EMET Club, you'll see images of the chemists club, but we had a art show to kick off the Kemet club. And this is a part of how the black achievement fund works with our businesses to promote their businesses and to utilize our platform as a resource for our business members to get new clients. All the artwork in the Cayman club right now comes from one of our business partners who owns an art gallery here in Atlanta, and they've been only one for over 40 years. So by us having the Kemet club now they get to have another outpost to sell their artwork to another market without having to pay overhead for another store. And in exchange, we get 20% Commission for whatever we sell. So this is just, you know, another way that it just makes sense all across the board.

Unknown Speaker 24:37
Sure, absolutely. In fact, you're doing a great job, Mr. President, so keep doing what you're doing. And we're gonna always be looking for an opportunity to give you an opportunity to come on Veterans Affairs plus to talk about what's going on. Now I know that we were still in the process of purchasing some land. How was that particular

Aki 25:01
We're still fundraising. And we're about to get together a private investment group under the black achievement fund for our members who want to invest privately as well as donating to our real estate development fund. So that's another opportunity that we're about to open up. And again, this is a bunch of people pulling money together, and we're going to be buying single, I'm sorry, multifamily residential properties to start off with in between the 1.5 and $4 million range. So those are the things that we have, in terms of real estate, we also just got the space next door to the chemical, as well. So by the time you come here for June teen, the chemical that will be doubled the size.

Unknown Speaker 25:54
Oh, wow. Excellent, excellent work. Now, I know that you're going to do some other things to include, I definitely want to continue to talk to you about my daughter's teacakes. And I know that you're going to be doing a thing where people can put their products there. Because Because people order her tea cakes from all over the world. So definitely want to get her on the shelf there. So I can continue to help her to grow her business soon

Aki 26:20
as possible as soon as possible. So you know, whenever if you want to call me sometime this week and have her set it up. But we really, really want to showcase what the black achievement fund is all about. And having these types of collaborations and partnerships with our business members to help market and promote them, you know, I can't think of a better way to show how unity works above all better than being a part of no community,

Unknown Speaker 26:50
right. And one thing I have to say on the air to our listening audience, and this can be heard anywhere in the world, you just go to, to the what is it called the App Store, and you'll see UNLV platform there where you can listen to this anywhere in the world. And I say that because I think that what we got to do is continue to grow things. And I can tell you that from from my being down and seeing the work that has been done with the black achievement fund and and the reach the far reached into continuing reach as long as we continue to work or start to work even closer together as a group of people will do fine. So I want to thank you for this short notice. Come on. But you did. You're doing well. And we appreciate you and for Black History Month. Let's let's do let's do the workout. Because things are there

Aki 27:46
for a Black History Month segment too. So let me know if you need me in the future this month. All right.

Unknown Speaker 27:53
Appreciate you brother iKey. Take care until everybody I said hello. And I gotta get back into the Saturday. Meditation. I gotta get back on the air. So thank you, sir. Yeah, we

Unknown Speaker 28:05
were talking about you. We miss you. All right.

Unknown Speaker 28:07
I'll get back in.

Unknown Speaker 28:10
Okay, talk to you. So all right,

Unknown Speaker 28:11
great. Once again, this Veterans Affairs plus on any 1.5 Jazz and more I want to encourage you guys to check out the National Coalition of 100 black women their fifth annual African fashion show February 26. At 1pm guest speaker clay T white at the Paris Hotel tickets call 702-350-1264. And again to our veterans out there who may need some help. Don't forget to call our service officer Mr. Tony Marshall 301-537-9465 This Veterans Affairs plus on any 1.5 Jazz and more and again the Washington's will be celebrating the seventh birthday of Miss Marsha Lynn Marsha Lynn Washington. I love my wife. And I appreciate and love my director. He he's produced the show he keeps me on track. Thank you Wes 91.5 Jazz and more. Talk to you soon. This is Dave Washington.

Unknown Speaker 29:41
All the smoke all the weed are

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