Season 2025: Episode 7. Roy Emerson: Rowing Across the Pacific to Help Bring Awareness to Veterans' Mental Health

Major (Ret.) Roy E. Emerson, originally from Vacaville, California, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1988 as an Infantryman, beginning his career with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He participated in Operation Just Cause, conducting a combat parachute assault in Panama. Over his career, he served in multiple leadership roles, including with the 18th Airborne Corps Long Range Surveillance Company at Fort Bragg, two tours with the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, and as an instructor at the U.S. Army Ranger School.

After commissioning as an officer in 2005, he served as a platoon leader and executive officer with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, deploying for 15 months to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He later commanded a headquarters company with there 5th US Cavalry Regiment at Fort Hood, leading security operations in Iraq during Operation New Dawn. Emerson also served with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, leading global recovery missions to repatriate fallen U.S. servicemen and the US Army Recruiting Battalion , New York City. He concluded his 31-year career as an ROTC instructor at Princeton University.

In early 2024, Emerson was inspired by Army friends who rowed across the Atlantic in World's Toughest Row’s Atlantic Challenge 2023. Their mission aligned with his own passion for supporting veterans, leading him to establish RangeOars Row Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to using ocean rowing as a platform to raise awareness for veteran mental health and suicide prevention. Through endurance challenges and community engagement, the organization aims to inspire resilience, foster camaraderie, and support initiatives that address the struggles many veterans face after service.

The team has been training monthly in Fernandina Beach, Florida to accumulate hours on their vessel AKESO and will formally launch from Monterey Bay, California on June 7th this year and row unsupported for four to six weeks to finish at Hanaleai Bay, Kauai, Hawaii. There are five other teams entered into this year's Pacific Challenge. 

Monies raised by Team RangeOars Row will go to several charities close to the team’s hearts; Brother Keeper Veteran Foundation, Gary Sinise Foundation, Three Rangers Foundation and Hardrock Charlie Foundation. 

Roy is married to the former Mia Martin of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and they live in Annandale, NJ. Mia is a Chef and together they operate a successful catering company in Frenchtown NJ. Their daughter Rachel is married to Stephen Lee who now lives in Huntsville, AL. Their son, Dagon is a firefighter and EMT with Quakertown Fire Company in Franklin Township. They have one Grandson, Roxas, and one Granddaughter, Clementine.

To learn more about Roy's nonprofit organization RangePars Row and their plans for this year, go to:

https://www.rangeoarsrow.org/

You can also learn more about their partners and purchase merchandise, and make a donation!

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Original music "Saturday Sway" by Brendan Talian (for all interviews before 2025)

Transcript

Unknown: 0:20

Roy, Hello and Welcome to The Storied Human. Today, myguest is major retired Roy E Emerson, originally from Vacaville, California, he enlisted in the US Army in 1988 as an infantry man, beginning his career with 75th Ranger Regiment, after participating in Army operations such as Operation just cause, where he conducted a combat parachute assault in Panama, he served in multiple leadership roles, including with the 18th Airborne Corps, long range surveillance company at Fort Bragg, and two tours with the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and as an instructor at the US Army Ranger School. He commissioned as an officer in 2005 and he served as a platoon leader and executive officer with the 170/3 Airborne Brigade. You can read more about his bio in my in the show notes for this episode. But the reason for the interview was that Emerson was inspired by army friends who rode across the Atlantic in the world's toughest rose Atlantic challenge, 2023 he had watched them closely as they made their way across the Atlantic on a on a boat that had no motor. Their mission aligned with his own passion for supporting veterans, leading him to establish range ores row, Inc, a non profit, dedicated to using ocean rowing as a platform to raise awareness for veteran mental health and suicide prevention through endurance challenges and community engagement, the organization aims to inspire resilience, foster camaraderie and support initiatives that address the struggles many veterans face after service. The team will formally launch from Monterey Bay, California on June 7 of this year, and row unsupported for four to six weeks to finish at hanalea Bay, Kauai, Hawaii. There are five other teams entered into this year's Pacific challenge. Monies raised by Team Rangers row will go to several charities close to the team's hearts, brother keeper, veteran Foundation, Gary Sinise Foundation, three Rangers foundation and hard rock, Charlie foundation. This is such a worthy cause you can you can give directly by going to the website range ORS row.org and it's oars O, A R, S range oars row, to find out more about it, you can follow some of the links on that web page. And you can also buy merchandise, which we didn't mention during the interview, I purchased the T shirts are great. I purchased some of those, and it's just a great way to support this effort, and it's really important. And the cause, you know, we can't we can't overstate how important this is. We're losing too many veterans every day. So, so that's all about Roy, And I want To say, welcome You. Thank you. I'm doing well. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's I've been looking forward to talking to you. You have a great story, or tell or give signs of some, in some way, that are struggling, and those are, those are the times that are really important that, you know, the brothers and sisters, you know, take the time to reach out. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta do better at connecting with those that are struggling. It's so important, because there's way too many suicides. We can't keep going like we're going, yeah, so you know the So, what many you know people across the country hear about is that that that one number that keeps making its way around 22, 222, a day. So recent studies have actually shown that that's it's actually almost double that you could actually 44 plus a day through unreported or other circumstances that just don't make the statistics. You know, that's horrifying. Yeah, that's something to be concerned about. So now explain to us what you started doing. You heard about this group, and you decided that you wanted to form your own nonprofit. So I, I started my career in the army in 1988 with an assignment in a in the Special Operations community with First Ranger Battalion in Savannah, Georgia. Fast Forward 30 plus years, some of those old Ranger friends of mine took took on the Atlantic race with this, this race that's organized by Atlantic campaigns and the world's toughest row in December of 2023 and it was just really fascinating to watch them train up for it. They were rowing for an organization out of Mobile, Alabama, called fight or die and and a lot of times people will play on the word or so, like when you look at our name, it's when you look back at the name range or is row, it goes back to a saying from World War Two, Rangers lead the way, Rangers. So we threw in the Word, or, you know, we're part of rangers, right? I love that arrange, doors lead the way, or Rangers, but that fight or die, or being spelled, O, A, R, Oh, I love that. So a lot of teams play with the word, or when they when they make up their team names. Now, for those of us who aren't super familiar, can you tell me more about the Atlantic race? Yep, so the Atlantic, so organized ocean rowing started more than a couple decades ago over a bet on a bottle of whiskey called Talisker whiskey. It's made in the UK. And so the original, the original organized company that ran these races was called Talisker whiskey. And so they formed the Talisker whiskey Atlantic challenge, T whack. And that race begins on an island in the Canaries called lagomara in San Sebastian Harbor, which ironically is the same place that Christopher Columbus began his journey west to the new they embark every each December, because they they time these ocean races with the lowest threat of ocean storm, whether hurricane or or tropical storms out in the Pacific side. And they the Atlantic race is a 3000 mile ocean row from to the island of Antigua to English harbor in Antigua, and oh my gosh, that sets off somewhere around the the 11th or 12th of December every year. And teams average, the average is probably five to six, seven weeks it takes for a team to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Wow, and you have to, and it's completely these the race is unsupported, meaning everything you need is on the boat with you. I was just going to ask you, are all the provisions on the boat? Everything is on the boat and that that that is calculated by body weight. The right race rules mandate that each rower brings on board 55 days of food and and then it's it's programmed out at 60 calories per kilogram of body weight. So for somebody like me, I I weigh 225 pounds. It's over 6000 calories of food that I would need to consume every day. It's a lot to keep all that rowing, yeah, so can you tell us more about the boat? Because I want people to picture what we're talking about. So the most of the boats are made by a company in England called ran off adventures, R, A, N, N, O, C, H, adventures. And it is a it is these boats are specially designed to take on the challenges of the conditions of the open ocean, so huge swells, big storms. Is, and they're made to accommodate solo rowers and rowing teams up to five people. So it just, it's a matter of how long the boat is. So our boat is made for three to five rowers. It is a rant. Is a ranch or what they call it, R 45 and it is made, it is 28 almost 29 feet long. And then when he, when he the beam, which is the width of a boat, from left to right side, is almost six feet. So it's it, it almost looks like a big torpedo, yeah, yeah, long. And too long in there, not too wide, yeah. And there is a, there's a little cabin in the front, a little cabin say, is there a place? Okay, so you can get out of the elements, yep. And then our boat, they are 45 and designed with three rowing positions in it, so there's three sets of or locks and the little sliding seats and everything. And and they are, they're designed to self, right? So in a capsize, if you were to capsize that boat in about five to 10 seconds, it would just like, like a bobber pop right back up. Wow. But a lot of that depends on, like, if there's somebody in the cabins when it capsizes and it happens, you just have to make sure that their their body weight, is positioned to help itself, right, to help the process, yeah. So trying to imagine rowing that much like when the is there no engine at all. There is no engine. So there are very strict rules about the kinds of things that we you can even have on board that could possibly be used as a sale, because that would be breaking the rules. It's an integrity violation. And so, for example, we we asked the race coordinators if we could bring a bunch of US flags that we could then authenticate. You know, certificate authenticity. This flag rode across the Pacific Ocean. They were like, nope, nope, nope. Because they Oh, wow, not even a flag. Not even a flag. Because in the past, some people with low integrity got caught using similar things as sales to to cheat. So they have to avoid that. Yeah, they have to avoid that. And so everything you know, there is a there's a huge rudder on the back, like a three foot it's almost the three foot rudder that sticks out of the bottom of the back. And that is, there's three ways to steer it. So while you're rowing, you can hand steer it. And the middle row position has a way to hook up the hand steering lines to to their foot bed, and then you take a pin out, and then the foot bed, Oh, I see. And then you could steer the rudder. And then, when the conditions are right, there's an automatic these pneumatic systems called Auto Helms, and it's connected to the rudder in the back of the boat, and you program a waypoint in the chart plotter, and then that will keep you on a course to you know that waypoint, so that you don't have to worry about steering. You just rub that's cool. So the rudder would move automatically. Rudder would move automatically based on your GPS position and your direction of movement, you course overground to a specific, you know, area you know ahead of you, 500,000 miles or whatever. So how do you prepare for something like this? How do you train for something like this? There's a, it's, you know, for our team, it, it is, it has been a challenge to train together because we're so geographically separated. Oh yeah, I have three team members that live in Tennessee. I have one team member that lives in Texas, and I'm here in New Jersey. Oh, wow. We, we, you know, there's there. There is a level of individual responsibility to, you know, we all have rowing machines at home, so get on the rower and row as much as we can at home during the week, you know, or during the times that we're not together, but we've been, we've been gathering and taking the boat down to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island in North Florida, outside of Jacksonville, every month for for nine to 10 days and and we've been trying to get out on the open ocean out there, there's a really great rowing community there, from people that have done this before that we've met. And it's just that's good community down there is just so welcoming. And one particular rower in a guy named Paul Laurie who's crossed the ocean twice. He's getting ready to cross the Arctic Ocean. Amazing dude, just the biggest heart in the world as guys like that that they open up their homes to us when we come down, and they help us fundraise. They help us with maintenance on the. Boat, they'll just drop whatever they're doing, you know, if we need something and, and so wonderful, really lucky that we found a place like that. Well, it's just a brotherhood, isn't it? It really is, it is, and it's and, let me tell you, there are some, some kick ass women out there doing this. I love that there, there are some incredible women teams. Some women are like, wait a minute, I can do this too. Oh yeah. I mean, every, every, everything you know, you know, from, from, from four, four or they, you know, in the UK, you call a mother Mom, right? So four moms, that was, I think, the name of their team a couple years ago, four moms from, from the UK, or something like that. But they, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean, just four moms that decided they want to do something, you know, really, and raise money for, you know, whatever their charity was. And they began to train, and they crossed an ocean. You know, it's, I think it's so wonderful, the combination of how hard you have to work. I mean, it's really something that you have to aspire to and work for, yeah, but that you get such visibility for a cause you really care about. It's all worth it, yeah. So how many like, how long does each rower have to row like per day? Yep. So so for and true size will dictate that. So obviously, somebody that's rowing solo, and many people do that across the Atlantic, they Oh yeah, and they'll row for 1015, hours a day, oh my gosh, taking breaks whenever they can. And then, you know, I don't even know how they do it. They throw out the, there's a big para there's drought. We have DRO drugs or parachute anchors that you can throw out, which the big parachute will will inflate and fill up with water, and it'll, it'll slow your drift in the and so, you know, a solo rower would have to throw out the Para anchor every night to get some rest, you know. And it's a really pain in the butt to pull that thing back in. But for a crew of four, which we started as a crew of four, most crews of four row, two hours on, two hours off, two people, 24/7 so you end up rowing 12 hours in a 24 hour period. Wow, that's a lot of rowing, yeah, yeah, every day for, you know, four to six weeks. And so it's, you know, I think the number of strokes each rower on on the average ocean crossing is like a million and a half four strokes, jeez. But it really makes you remember that it's a big ocean, and it takes a long time, you know, like we don't so many people jet across it, but, yeah, to do it that way, it's like, amazing. It is it? Is this the stories that you one can hear from rowers about being in the middle of the ocean and on a where there is no light or pollute light or noise pollution, and you see the world for what it is, in its in its nakedness, you know, with the you know, the sea life that's out there, the stars And the you know, and the other galaxies that are visible, and the beautiful world, the awesomeness of of the planet, you know, that's so what? That's a nice part of it, that you're now, yeah, and most people don't get to see that, right? And have that feeling, and it confirms just how insignificant you are in this world, that you're part of this big, beautiful thing that's amazing to me. So a couple crazy questions come to mind. I'm assuming you have a bathroom on the boat? Well, we do. It's, it's, it's a little archaic. It's actually, so a Gatorade bottle for, you know, urinating, and a Home Depot five gallon bucket, you know, for for for your other business, we're talking rustic. We're talking rustic. So basically, you you fill a five gallon bucket up, third way through, a third way with water, and then you do your business, and you throw it overboard. That's that makes sense, yeah, so it's a different way to live. And what if someone gets sick? Do you have a first aid kit? Or do you have, like, what if something happens? We have a, we have a very basic first aid kit. We do, we will. We do have? We have the means to treat minor injuries with some, you know, basics, stuff, one of one of the team members is an EMT, so we do have that, but we there is no for the for the for the Atlantic race. They have a support yacht that that follows the fleet. Oh, there's like 40, there's like 40 boats in the Atlantic, the Pacific routes. Very new. This is only the third generation. Wow, here they've ever done it, and so, like, less I, I'm gonna say less than 150 people have ever done this on the on the Pacific Ocean, wow. And they'll, they'll say, with ocean rowing in general, more people have been in space than have done what we're doing. Oh, my goodness. Isn't the Pacific ocean a lot wider? Isn't it bigger? It is. It is bigger and it is. It is more unforgiving than the Atlantic. It's colder. It's rougher in the first 700 miles coming off the continental shelf from California, it is extremely rough. Like everybody keeps teasing us, like your first 10 days are going to be brutal. Get ready. You're just going to be cold, wet and miserable for the first 10 days. And wondering why you you're doing this. What were we thinking? Yeah. Now that sounds really challenging, yeah. And so, and then all of a sudden, you know, 10, you know, you get you break you because the the winds come down, the winds and currents are coming down the coast of California from the north, and so you're getting bashed from the starboard side, which is the right side of the boat, yes, constantly for the first 700 miles. And then the winds will actually change direction, coming like change direction, and then start flowing west towards the Hawaiian Islands. So once you break through that, that thick band of weather that's coming south, north to south, and then you got the windier back after that first week or 10 days. Then they say it's like, you know that the sky opens up, and then it's like night and day, yeah, it's like night and day. It's like the sky opens up, the winds at your back, your surf, you're, you're, sometimes you're you're able to surf waves with the boat that you don't even need to put your oars in the water. You're doing so amazing. And so your goal, your your end point, is Hawaii, right? Is Hawaii, the Hanalei Bay on the island of Kauai. Yeah, yeah. And how long will that take? You guys? Is it about the same as the things about the same? It's, it's actually 200 miles shorter, okay, 800 miles, but because of the the rough conditions of that first 700 miles, yeah, it takes just as long as it does the Atlantic. And so that that that it's kind of like in the 35 to 40 day mark is kind of average, yeah. And so that's what we're kind of pushing for. The world records 29 days, my goodness. So you're doing this in June. You're doing this this year, right? This, this June. So night we're, I think we're 92 days out now from launch seven June. Yeah. So what was the first impulse that made you want to do this, yeah, getting back to that. So the my Ranger friends that did this two years ago kind of inspired me, you know, the just, just, it was like watching, you know, the old saying, you're watching a train wreck, right? You just can't take your eyes off. I was consumed with watching these guys. There's an app you can download that you can watch the fleet across the ocean. You know. It'll tell you they're just like a little boat. You can see on the ocean along with all the others, and you can see position, you know, their latitude, longitude, position, their speed. Little bit more information about the crew. And so I followed them every day and then, and then, you know, if you have a good social media manager, because we can't directly, we can't directly update social media out there. We have to upload all of our content that we take. So we'll have a bunch of GoPros all over the boat. We'll take pictures and make videos and stuff like that, of us living on the boat, cooking and other things. And we have to, we have a satellite, a small satellite package, like a suitcase kind of thing we shoot. It's called a began, and we, you know, whenever we can, we'll, we'll, we'll shoot back all of our content to world's toughest row, and then they will put that into a folder. So they'll screen it first, because they don't want us, you know, uploading any anything that would embarrass their organization, right, or us. So they screen it, kind of like a public affairs officer would, you know, or something. They'll, they'll, they'll screen all the content, and then they will approve the content that they approve for release. They'll put into a folder on their hub that our social media manager has access to, and that's how the daily updates will will come. So cool. I was going to ask you if you have any contact with the mainland, yep, so you could always reach out, right? Yeah, if you needed to, yep. So we'll have a number of satellite phones too. So Iridium satellite phones that we have, one that we that we have direct communication with the race safety team. And then we have one phone that we can put, that we can use to talk to our families in France or whatever. And then there's one phone in what we call the go bag. So if we have to abandon ship in the life raft, and we will take that go bag, which has a bunch of other stuff in it that would be, you know, needed for survival, oh my gosh, a lot to think about. Now this is an unusual interview in that I already know your wife, and I adore her, and I love the food that you guys put out. I I should mention, you know that full disclosure, I go to everything that Mia and Roy have, and I I love the food, and love Mia. She's got, she's got a great personality. What does Mia think of all this? Mia is the I'm going to go back to last, probably May, April or May, when I decide they go like the Pacific race was done. My friends had come in. You know, it took them 42 they did it. I think they did the Atlantic crossing in 42 days. And then I was just like, gosh, I something inside me said, I need to, you know, right? You know, you know the, let's, let's double up the effort on, on mental health awareness, you know, something got to you, yeah, you know, so to speak, vessel, you know, so wonderful. And, and I will say this, I didn't expect it, but I think Mia was the one that, like, kind of pushed me in to say, you need to do this. Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. And so I bet that 100% on board, you know, with, you know, she's like, right now, she's even, she even just launched outside of, like, the multitude of hours she spends with her catering company and talking to clients and building menus. She just, we're doing a fundraiser on March 23 at the at the Quakertown firehouse with her fried chicken. Everybody loves her fried chicken. Oh, they do. And so we're going to do a fundraiser. So she just launched that on social media. So she's been working her butt off all day on that and yesterday, on on, on the graphics and the menu and all kinds of stuff. So, you know, it is, it is quite it's incredible to have the support, you know, of those that are closed and then endeavored like this, because so much of our time is taken away with me being gone a lot. So you know this. So she, she helped stand up the nonprofit back, you know, a year ago, and and has been, you know, 100% on board, you know, ever since, and, and it takes a village to do this, because the running I, for anybody out there that runs a nonprofit, there is no joke. It is. It is life consuming. It looks hard. I've talked to, you know, friends who, who do this kind of work. It's not easy. Yeah, and, and it's it, you know, I you know, we chose a, we chose a route that, that you know isn't, you know, for, for on the fundraising side. It isn't like we went out and we, we were pulling all this money and it's, it's, and then right off the bat, it's going to our charities. This crossing this ocean is going to cost a lot of money, yeah, oh yeah, $180,000 it's going to cost us just to get bunch of money. Yeah. So do you get pledges? I mean, how are you going to so we, we work through, you know, we've been blessed with, with with, with a number of really large donations to get us to where we are today. Some local companies, EVco, mechanical, Wounded Warrior Project, greifeld family foundation and a number of others, given generously that allowed us to buy the boat, to buy a bunch of good equipment that we needed to to pay the, you know, it, it's 20, it was 26,000 euros just to enter the race. And so what we kind of started off with an aggressive goal in mind that we want at the end of the day. You know, we want to raise a total of a million dollars for how and so, you know, when you. Take out the 180,000 out of that, you know, we're possibly looking at, you know, potentially, you know,$820,000 going to these, these charities that we've chosen. And so we're, you know, it's developing an aggressive goal like that, we thought, you know, based off of some of the, some of the names that we got involved with, you know, some of our charities, we thought, you know, it would be a no brainer, but it's looking in reality, it's a it's a heck of a lot more work than sticking some, you know, big name on the side of the boat and thinking money is going to just start like dropping our feet, which is more working. Imagine, yeah, we got to do a lot of hustling and and, and courting corporations and, and then really figuring out the grass, kind of like that. You know, the grassroots right to, you know, the individual donations, you know, from people. So, you know, $5 here,$10 here, $300 here. All that, you know, if we word out where could, where can people give? I mean, can I put it in the show notes? But I like to have people say it, because some people don't read the whole show notes, sure our website is range ORS row.org, and that's R, A N, G, E, R O, A R, S, R O, w.so, it's rain, georgerow.org, And there are links in there to to donate and and then, you know, you can also find, so Rangers row, the same word, but all together, is like, that's our Instagram. Okay, good name and Facebook profile name. So Rangers row on Instagram, there's like links in the bio, you know, to get to our website where folks can can contribute. Good, yeah, I just, I can't imagine somebody who wouldn't want to. I mean, we're all worried about this issue, and if we can hear that, there's a way to directly help people. It's a no brainer. It's a wonderful thing you're doing. And and sometimes I think, you know, in some of the groups I'm in, you know, some of the military groups I'm in, you know where I'll go in, and it's, I think a lot of people are, are the the attention span of people on social media is very short. You have to grab somebody in about seven or eight seconds, yeah, or you lose them. And so, I mean, it's, it's, it's really challenging. And I wish there was, I wish I can crack the code. But in some of my military groups where I'll go in and kind of, you know, kind of plug what we're doing, there might be 3000 members of that group, and after a couple weeks, maybe three or four will follow us. You know, it's like, how do I get to those and again, grab their interest, not just to grab their interest to follow us on Instagram, because we want to grow our followers, because the bigger our followers are. But how do I get, you know, I mean, I sometimes I imagine 3000 people donate. It's amazing. You should remind them, and sometimes I have to be reminded to follow. I'll be reading something, I'll be like, This is great, and I'll like it, but I forget to follow like, following like. And it's like, good if somebody says that, right? And then you gotta get over the so we gotta get over the, I guess the I, you know, these are all army buddies, you know, why should I ask them for money? No, let's like, let's ask him for money, you know, because at the end of the day, the money we, you know, after we've paid for the race. You know, the the organizations that were that were raising money for one Brother's Keeper veteran Foundation, the guy, Chris cathers, that founded that a Special Forces veteran who almost had lost everything, you know, has had the gun in his in his mouth a dozen times over, you know, over the last couple years, is really doing some very special stuff with veterans, trying to crack the stigma, you know, on on mental Health. And then another organization we're raising money for is a very well known guys, Gary Sinise, I saw that, yeah, that's great. And he does a bunch of, he does some really cool stuff, you know, amazing. No, at the beginning, when we still, when we, when I, when I recruited the guys on the team, we all had. Meeting and said, Hey, who are, who are charities going to be? Because the one thing about this race, which I really like, there's no cash prize. You don't win anything for for winning, right, right? You know, the only winners are your charities. And so you have to raise money for a charity to even enter this race. Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. But there, there's something that occurs. To me that must come up all the time, is that when you're a soldier, and you've been through what soldiers go through, you're a tough guy, right? Or a woman, you're tough or tough guy, there's a lot of pride, and you're not supposed to have these problems, right? You're not that's a weakness, and I would imagine that that's that gets in their way. And so if we can help people realize that we're all human, we're all going to have these things happen. We can still be tough guys and women, and it starts very early on in somebody's career, especially in Combat Arms. You know, in combat engineers, the infantry, Special Forces, special operations. When we were growing up as young soldiers in special operations, it was, you know, you can't show weakness if you, if you, if you have to go to sick call and go see the PA. You know, you're, you're looked at as weak, and so, so a lot of, a lot of soldiers get into the habit of the old, we're just going to suck it up and drive on. I understand that. I mean, you don't want to show that weak, especially the the more elite forces, right, like you, there's a lot more at stake. I mean, you made it into this. The Army spent a lot of money on you, yeah, doing, you know, the, yeah, you know, and it's in the, you know, the Special Forces pipeline, you know, the army spending millions of dollars on your training, wow, on one person, you carry that weight. You know, it's not the same thing. But I do remember my father talking about he was a commercial pilot, and he talked about how nobody wanted to admit that anything was wrong with them, because then, then they might, you know, you know, might be grounded. You know, it's like you forced to go to train counseling. A lot of it's tough. It's tough. So, so you we get very good at compartmentalizing our field, yeah, yeah, and holding things in and when, in reality we it should be the opposite, yeah. Should be about what's going on alive. None of us want to lose any more veterans. So I'm so proud of you and what you do, and I'm so ready to spread the word, and I'm so glad you came on today. Now is my pleasure. Lynne, I had fun, and it's, you know, I love every opportunity I get to to share it and and to tell the story. And, you know the why? You know, it's so important, a blessing. So there is a website that I belong to, like a group, that matches podcast guests with with podcast hosts. And you might want to try that. I'll, I'll share that with you when I sure, when I when I stop the interview, but yeah, you want to get the word out and maybe be speaking to a few more podcasts. Yeah, I've got, I've actually got DVR radio lined up when we get back. That's great, our local radio station. Yeah, the more we can get the word out, the better. So thank you, Roy. Anything else that we need to know before we go? Hit that website now, www, dot range ORS row.org, and give $5$100 a million dollars. You know what they will it's going to help some better. I know people will. People just need a way to help. They need to know what to do. Need to Know All right, thank you so much. No thank you. Lynne.