Rebuilding Lives and Giving Back at the Indy 500 - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Steven Curry and Luke Murphy from ABC Supply. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Thank you all for being here today. Welcome to Coffee Conversations from Roofers Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here today to talk about something near and dear to the roofing industry and that is rebuilding lives and giving back from our friends at ABC Supply. They do this every year with Home For Our Troops. We love this program. There's so much to talk about on how the industry can support our veterans and really be a part of it.

Before we get started, a few housekeeping, this is being recorded and will be available within 24 hours. We are also going to be able to have this so you can share it out. You'll see it on social media, you'll see it on YouTube, so please enjoy that and share it with all of your roofing professional friends and family. Let's get started.

First of all, again, I want to thank ABC Supply, who is our sponsor today and everything they do, everything they've done this year, which is absolutely amazing with Homes For Our Troops. We're going to talk about that today, and we're going to get going right now. I am so excited to invite two very special guests today who are part of Home For Our Troops, have been recipients, have been involved with the Indy 500, they are just amazing.

They're going to share their experiences, and also share everything they know about what we can do as an industry to try to all be better. Let's start with some introductions. First of all, Steven Curry, thank you so much for being here today.

Steven Curry: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Please introduce yourself. We would like to know a lot, all about you.

Steven Curry: Yeah, sure. I'm a sergeant, retired, Steven Curry. Spent five years in the US Army. I grew up in North Carolina and joined the Army shortly after high school. My dad had served in the Navy. I've got some other family members, a great-grandfather that served in World War I. I really, to be honest, I joined the Army just to kind of get out of town, get out of the life that I was in, tried college after high school. That didn't really work out for me.

I really needed somebody to kick me in the pants and tell me what to do until I matured up enough. Luckily, the Army was a good place for that. They matured me up real fast. I went to basic down in Georgia, and then within a year, I was in Afghanistan on my first deployment. I was in Afghanistan for a year, and then went to Iraq for my second deployment. I was in Iraq for about four months before I got hit by my second IED. That second one ended up taking my left foot off, and became an amputee, a below knee amputee. That was back in November, 2006.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow. Well, I want to say thank you for your service, and thank you for being here today. It means a lot for all of us.

Steven Curry: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I'd also like to welcome to the show, Luke Murphy. Luke, thank you so much for being here today. Please, if you can, introduce yourself and share your story.

Luke Murphy: Well, thank you for having us. My name's [inaudible 00:03:44] retired Luke Murphy. I'm from Florida. I joined the military at 17. My father served in the Marine Corps. My grandma's brothers served in World War II and Patton's unit, and one was even shot down in the Army Air Corps and was a prisoner of war, so military is very important to my family and just felt like it was something that I had to do to earn my freedom.

Within a year of being in the military, September 11th happened. That really solidified why I was there, and I felt like it was up to us to do something about what had happened to our country. I went to Iraq in 2003 with the 101sr Airborne division in the infantry. I led a small team of three guys, and I learned a lot about war that first year. I learned that I really had had enough, and I felt like I did my portion and was trying to get out of the military at the end of my enlistment.

Fortunately, I got stop loss, a month ago on a six years enlistment. I got sent back to Iraq. I was a staff sergeant, I was leading 11 man team this time and a brigade reconnaissance team for about 5,000 men. We would go out and check areas before we moved into them. We tried to exercise aerial denial, and tried to keep the guys from putting the IEDs at the intersections, stop people from getting their legs blown off, like Sergeant Curry and myself. Unfortunately, I found an IED the hard way, leaving Slaughter City probably month eight in the deployment.

When it went off, it was pretty clear. I've been hit by IEDs before. We ran over an anti-tank mine on Christmas Day. This was the third vehicle that had been shot out from under us. This particular blast was different because it knocked the air out of me. It blew my leg off immediately, blew my left leg in half. It was just hanging on by the outside skin. Like Sergeant Curry, I went to Germany for about a week and they stabilized me. I was embarrassed that the enemy got me.

I couldn't understand why God would've done this to me. I felt like we always were on the up and up, trying to do the right things. This just didn't seem like a good situation for somebody who likes to go, go, go. I laid the bed for four or five months as an inpatient. I lost 75 pounds. I had 29 surgeries that first year. I thought my life was pretty much over and I lost my purpose. I stayed positive and kept all my negative feelings to myself. I worked, and I was around a lot of other veterans like Curry and we rooted each other on and eventually, I left the hospital.

You're all alone once you go back to wherever you're from, and there's no one there to help you with the challenges. You just have to keep adapting and keep adapting. That's what I did. To date, I've had 41 surgeries, but after moving into my Homes For Our Troops home, they've been nothing. They've been real easy to deal with, and to recover and use my wheelchair. I went on to write a book about my experiences lasted by adversity.

I got married, I've had two children. I co-founded a real estate company and also worked for a prosthetic company called Mid-Florida Prosthetics. We help new amputees. Sorry for the long introduction, but that's what I've been doing the last 18 years.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it. I love both you, so again, thank you for your service and for everything and I'm so happy. This is why Home For Our Troops, these homes are so important. As an industry, we want to support it so much. What I would love is, and Luke, I'm going to start with you, on just what you see as, if you could just tell everybody what Home For Our Troops, most people know, but for those who don't, what is Home For Our Troops and what is the mission and then how you got involved?

Luke Murphy: Well, I heard about Homes For Our Troops when I was at Walter. Reed. They started building homes before anybody else in this space. Unfortunately, in the beginning, they were only building for the double amputees. They didn't have enough funding to do what they do today. It takes tens of millions annually to do what they're doing. I've met a lot of charities, and I even serve on the board of directors for another one. A lot of those charities, they'll take a guy out fishing, hunting, they'll take him on a PTSD retreat or a couples retreat or they'll do this or that.

Amazing, and they absolutely sometimes save lives, but a home, oh, a home is so much bigger. A home is like being shown thank you every single day. A home satisfies the most basic needs. It really asks, it makes somebody like Curry and I ask ourselves, "Well, what else can we do? What else can we accomplish? Who else can we help?" You can never feel bad for yourself again or like it wasn't worth it or nobody cares, because somebody gave you a mortgage-free home. It really changed my life. I've been around a lot of the recipients, they're all amazing.

They're all kind of just Curry and I. They're just positive, the kind of guys people want to be around. A lot of people say, "Thank you for your service," but Homes For Our Troops shows you thank you like no one else.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow, that's so inspiring. Steven, how did you get involved with Home For Our Troops?

Steven Curry: I was at Walter Reed for a year. I didn't have quite as many surgeries as Luke. I got off with what a lot of guys like me and Luke called as a paper cut, nice clean injury, clean recovery. When I left Walter Reed, I was feeling pretty good. I'd been walking, running. The Army made me dislike running a whole lot, though. Once I became an amputee, it was like, "Well, I have to at least prove that I can do it."

I've been doing 5Ks and all kinds of other stuff. We left Walter Reed, we moved into a two-story house and I didn't have any issues with the stairs. Then the first house we bought, me and my wife together, was a two-story house with a finished basement and didn't think twice about it because I was young, I had a good recovery. I knew I could navigate stairs every day. It wasn't an issue.

What I come to find out is stairs take a toll on an amputee over time. We had a young daughter. I was going up and down the stairs every day, just getting ready for work or helping out with my daughter and ended up being about just about every summer when it really started getting hot and as an amputee, you sweat a lot more than a normal person just doing regular daily activities. I was getting a lot of sores on my leg.

It's also hard, maybe not for all of us, but for me, once I got out of that wheelchair and I had the freedom to walk around and move around without a wheelchair, it was really hard for me to take my leg off and get back in a wheelchair. When I started getting those sores on my leg, it was hard for me to take my leg off and take a break. Additionally, our house just wasn't equipped for a wheelchair. I might be able to use a wheelchair on the first floor, but there was a lot of space to navigate that if I needed to go upstairs, I had to hop up the stairs and use crutches when I got up there and hop back down the stairs.

I found myself for about a month or two every summer, I was kind of stuck. I was trapped in my own house. My leg was hurting, I couldn't use a wheelchair. Getting up and down the stairs was a chore, and our house just wasn't suited for somebody like me to live safely. Me and my wife started looking for single story houses in the area, and there really aren't a lot. I'm in Northern Virginia, it's not a lot of single story houses.

Somehow my wife found out about Homes For Our Troops, and she said, "You should apply to them." I was like, "There's no way these people are going to build us a house and give us a house." I looked at their website, and like Luke said, it was a bunch of double amputees, triple amputees, paraplegics. I was like, "They're not building somebody like me a house." She's like, "Well just apply and ask anyway." I sent the application in. I even wrote a long letter that said, "Hey, I'm not like the typical guy guys you build houses for, but I've got my issues. I'm not looking for a handout."

They turned around, came back and invited me up to Boston and said they were going to build us a house, which surprised us. Like Luke said, it's a house, it's like winning the lottery. I ended up getting my house in May 2016, and then shortly after that, I got invited to join Homes For Our Troops. They have a team of veterans volunteer for them that helped them with outreach to the rest of the veterans. I think at this point, they've got close to 400 veterans in homes.

I think by the end of this year they're supposed to have their plan to deliver their 400th home. They have a team at HVOT, the veteran support team that helps reach out to the veterans and deal with any issues they might have. That's a lot of people to take care of for that small team. They utilize, like I said, a small group of veterans that are in HVOT houses to help with that.

I got on the Veterans Action Advisory Team for a little while, ended up getting on the board of directors, got invited to be on the board of directors, which is, I think something else that's special about Homes For Our Troops is the fact that they have this Veteran Action and Advisory Team that's made up of veterans that are in homes that are doing outreach and helping out other veterans in the program, as well as they always have a veteran or two on the board, which I think really helps guide them and make sure that they're on the up and up, not that they need the help.
I was really surprised when I got to see the inner workings of the organization, and how passionate they were about being good stewards of people's donations and making sure they're doing the right thing for veterans. Yeah, that's kind of my involvement with them.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Wow, wow. Really inspirational across the board. You both talked about how it's really changed your life. Steven, as you're going through that, up the stairs, down the stairs and now, in the past, we've had some great podcasts and great discussions about Home For Our Troops or Homes For Our Troops. One of the things that we hear all the time is it changes everything for the veteran, but also for the family, that it is a game changer for the family.
Steven, maybe talk a little bit about what you've seen and since you work with so many other folks through the board and the advisory and stuff, what you're hearing through your own experience and other veterans on how this really makes such a huge impact on the family.

Steven Curry: Yeah, definitely, for me personally, I know my wife always had issues with simple things, like me getting in and out of the shower. I kind of had to slide the shower door open, grab the top rail and swing myself into the shower. I could always hear her cringing watching me do that, just waiting for me to slip and fall. That's one aspect that once we got to the HVOT home, the shower is a roll-in shower, so you can literally just hop in a wheelchair and just roll straight into the shower and there's a big bench in there to transfer onto.

I know that it made things easier on me, but it made things easier on my wife as well. Then not having stairs, so one of the big things that really bothered me and I know it bothered my wife was, like I said, we had a small child and then we had another, before we moved into our first house, we already had a child and then after we moved in, we had another baby. The only way I could get up and down the stairs with her was to sit down on the stairs with her in my lap and slide down the stairs or have her in my arm and crawl up the stairs or hop up the stairs, which is not the safest thing for either one of us, but it's a necessary evil when I'm at home by myself with a six-month-old.

It made it hard for my wife to be able to leave the house and know that me and my daughters were going to be safe. I've heard that from other veterans as well who maybe aren't as mobile as I am. The wives, spouses didn't want to leave the house and leave the veteran alone. They were worried about them getting re-injured and getting set back in their therapy. Once they get into these Homes For Our Troops homes, it's a lot safer for guys like me and Luke just to be in the house by ourselves. That frees our wives and our family up to go out and live their life, and not have to just sit there and pander to us 24/7.

Heidi J Ellsworth: And worry. It takes away a lot of worry.

Steven Curry: Yeah, it gives them... Go ahead, Luke.

Luke Murphy: The only bad thing is, though, is we don't get out of any work. My wife's like, "This is a handicap accessible home, you can do," blah, blah, blah. End up doing a lot of-

Heidi J Ellsworth: I love it.

Luke Murphy: ... Cooking and cleaning and changing the air conditioning. During COVID, my wife's an RN in the ICU at the time and we just had our first child and I stayed home for the first eight months. I couldn't work due to the pandemic. I was able to do everything for our little baby rolling around. Like you said, it allows us to live more normal lives, because we're inconvenienced by uncomfortability, by pain and our wives are burdened with having to do the majority.

To take all that away, it's just most amazing thing. Like Steven said, he was on the Advanced Action team, I was on it with him. So many of our guys after this has happened to them, go on to serve in other ways, whether it's for Homes For Our Troops or they start their own philanthropies. The minute you can help someone else, now you're really experiencing one of the greatest joys in life. You never forget people you help, and them helping us has allowed us to help ourselves and to help others.

Just like him, I felt like I won the lottery. My friends were like, "Well, how much did you win?" I'm like, "Well, I didn't really win the lottery, but..." The other thing is I've never met a vet that felt like they truly deserved it. They always wanted somebody else to get it that's in more of a need. Every single guy of our 400 guys and girls, they say the same thing. "Are you sure someone else isn't more deserving right now?" They're just selfless, humble giants in wheelchairs, really.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah. Oh, man. Wow. Wow. That's so sorry, I'm getting a little choked up here listening to you. Okay, so speaking of coming together with some different folks, recently, ABC Supply and the AJ Foyt Racing invited you and a guest to this year's Indy 500, which sounds so awesome.

I would just love to hear your experience, what that meant to you, to be together with other veterans and I'm guessing your wives, maybe you took somebody else as a guess and really what that meant too, to be able to have that experience. Luke, let's start with you. Tell us just a little bit about the event overall. What was all happening?

Luke Murphy: Well, I was warned beforehand not to turn down this invitation, because my wife and I have little babies. We don't have any family in our area. Both of us have careers and volunteer stuff. Normally, we say no to wonderful opportunities like this, but I was warned, "Don't say no," but I had no idea what I was in school for. We showed up at the Bottle Works Hotel, and the guys parking the cars were wearing our hats, Homes For Our Troops with the racing number on there. I thought that was odd.

Then we went inside, and the ladies behind the desk had all our stuff on and it's like we had the whole building to ourselves. Everybody was just from the get-go so nice. Then I saw Curry and some of my other brothers from the war, and it's good to be around them. We got to meet the ABC folks, and I'm talking for hours and entire days, we got to interact with them. It was kind of like going back in time because they just seemed like a company that doesn't apologize for being patriotic, and they were just so real and so appreciative and so were we.

Just first class the whole way. My wife has never been to any kind of a race, and you can ask Curry, she never sat down. She screamed the whole time. The cars didn't bother my ear, but my wife's pitch really was getting [inaudible 00:22:30]. It was amazing. I've been to NASCAR races, so I've experienced the patriotism. I didn't think it would be that way at Indy because it's more of an international community of racers, but I was wrong. From the flyover to the crowd, it was unbelievable. If anybody's hearing this that gets invited in the future to do anything with ABC, they should definitely go, because they are first class.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Well, Steven, I would love to hear your experience. Let's go there, what you thought of all the events?

Steven Curry: Yeah, so I got invited last year, but it happened at, the dates overlapped with my daughter's high school graduation, so I was tempted to go, but my wife convinced me otherwise. When we got invited this year, I was like, "We definitely have to do this." Again, it overlapped with the last week of school for my wife. She's a teacher, so she was bummed that she wasn't going to make it and I was like, "Well, I guess I'll just go by myself, I'll have a good time."

Then I realized, "Oh, I can still bring somebody else." I grew up with my dad watching NASCAR, NHRA, drag racing. He's still a huge NASCAR race fan. He actually worked at Charlotte Motor Speedway when I was little. He used to camp out at the Speedway, because he had to be there the night before, the morning of, all day for the race. I was like, "You know what? If I can convince him to come up here, he'll get an absolute kick out of this." I invited my dad to come up to Indy to go to the race.

At first, he said, "Yeah, I've been there, done that, blah blah." I was like, "I don't think you've done it like this. I've heard ABC's Supply puts on a good show. I think you're going to want to come up there for this." I had a great time. Like Luke said, just being there in the event and seeing it all was great. Two highlights for me is, one, HVOD doesn't spend a lot of money on advertising, if any.

If you see HVOD advertisements in a paper or on a billboard, 100% rest assured, those were donated by somebody. HVOD wasn't spending money. They're spending money to build houses, not on stuff like that. To see that car plastered with HVOD's logo, and other little parts of the car had HVOD on it or the website and then the driver's suit, Santino's suit had HVOD on it, all the pit crews, all HVOD, everything's HVOD. To me, it was just amazing.

I'm sure, I forgot how many people they said were at the race, who knows how many people were watching it on TV, but I assume the vast majority of them have never heard HVOD until they watched Indy and saw the only red, white and blue car on Memorial Day at the Indy 500 was the HVOD car. To me, that was really cool and that was special, but it was great getting to share that with my dad and then seeing him kind of turn into a child in that environment. He was so amped up about, "Oh, this is that driver and this is that guy from some sports show." For me, that was really, really special.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I was going to say, your dad, that had to be so special to be able to do that. Like you said, he grew up or he worked there, he knew, but what was his experience meeting the ABC Supply people? That's something totally, totally different.

Steven Curry: Yeah, absolutely over the top. Like I said, I invited him and he said, "Eh, I don't know." I said, "No, no, you're going to want to experience this.: Yeah, he was absolutely blown away. Like Luke said, we got to hang out with them for a couple of days and one of the nights, we all went out. I don't know what you call it, this place next to the hotel, they had duck pin bowling and arcade machines and-

Heidi J Ellsworth: Oh, fun.

Steven Curry: ... Everybody's hanging out, having a good time. He said, so funny, he said, "We don't have to pay for any of this?" I said, "No, you're good. Just have a good time." Then we get to the racetrack, and he's trying to figure out where we're sitting and I was like, "It's those suites up there." He said, "We're sitting up there in those suites?" I said, "Yeah."
He said, "Who's paying for this?" I said, "ABC." I said, "I told you." I was like, "They're putting on a good show for us." He was absolutely blown away by the generosity that ABC would do all that for Homes For Our Troops, and then bring us all along to experience that weekend.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah.

Steven Curry: That was great.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is. I want to remind everybody, please ask questions. I'm seeing a few chats, just Megan's putting some links in here just on what's so incredible. Please, if you have comments, thoughts, thank yous, questions, be sure to get those in the chat as we go along. I'll be pulling those in. Let's talk just a little bit about ABC Supply, and really what this has meant. They did a huge fundraising campaign through May, and they raised over $5.2 million.

They walk the talk, as you both know, they hire veterans, Home For Our Troops and love the red, white and blue car, everything on that. How important is it to both of you to see these kind of companies that really walk the talk, who really follow through and say all these things? Steven, let's start with you.

Steven Curry: Yeah, that's number one in my book, because Homes For Our Troops is purely run off donations, whether it's donations from people like us just donate a couple dollars every month or donate to a fundraiser and then the rest are these companies that are either donating time and materials or money or both. To see the level that ABC Supply has gone to is amazing. Everybody at that company is so invested in Homes For Our Troops. We got to hang out with a lot of the employees that weekend too. The employees, the spouses, all the way up to Diane Hendrix was there with us all weekend.

Just to see how pumped that they were about being there and supporting Homes For Our Troops, they helped raise the money and donated the money, but then like I said, they could have put their logo on that car first and foremost and got their name out there, but they didn't do that. You really had to scour that car to try to find a ABC Supply logo. That whole weekend was all about Homes For Our Troops. ABC Supply was just there to support it. It's hard to get companies to do stuff like that nowadays, to take a step back and put somebody else at the forefront.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Right. Really thinking about that, when you think about marketing and branding, for them to take that space, that national, international view of this car and have that space for Home For Our Troops shows so much commitment. I think the branding of it, when we were on a podcast earlier before the race, talking about this, that was just the branding and the opportunity for Home For Our Troops has just been amplified through this experience, then to have you all there. Luke, how was it meeting with Diane and all the ABC employees?

Luke Murphy: Well, it was awesome. That first night in the arcade, hanging out with the open bar for hours, I was definitely taking advantage of that. Like I was saying, they couldn't fake it. They were so real and so into it. I met one guy who used to run the local ABC Supply for my area in Tallahassee 10 years ago, and we talked about how good our football team was at Florida State and we both went to the national championship and saw us win. It was just so real. I probably spent an hour talking to Diane on race day during a rain delay.

It was like talking to your average super patriotic American. Looks you right in the eye, not looking past you for somebody more important, just unbelievable. We're both big hunters and have a lot of things in common. She told me about the turkey she got this spring, and I told her I struck out, she told me about some bears. It was just unbelievable. Her daughter and my wife became buddies, and they've been texting ever since. As soon as I got back to my home in Tallahassee, I saw an ABC semi right off the bat.

I never even saw one of those in my whole life. Now, I see them everywhere. I wave at them, because I know if they work for Diane, they got to be some of the best people. Like Steven says, we don't spend a lot of money on advertising, I mean, none. There are people who look at how you spend their dollar, and if you're not spending 90% of it on the mission, they won't give to you. We think it's very important to, if we take a dollar from you, it's going to go to the project, not to go find somebody else's dollar.

It's tough to build homes across all the states, from Massachusetts and sometimes we can't figure out a good plumber in Omaha Nebraska and we'll call ABC and they'll say, "Give us five minutes." They'll have their connection there call their connections and boom, we are rolling. I don't want to put down any of our other partners, but they are got to be the most amazing partner that we ever came across and we are so grateful for them and everything they do and every community in this country, they're the real deal. We're just proud to know them and have them on our side.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's so awesome. That's so inspirational. If anyone out there has questions or comments, please share them in the chat. I just love it. I'm full of questions here. One of the things, just since you both have been involved on the board, the advisory, so active in everything you're doing with all the homes, what are some of the ways that roofing professionals can get involved with Home For Our Troops?

What are some of the things that they can do to really, whether it's volunteering or donating, obviously at 5.2 million, we had a lot of them donating in May, but Steven, what are some of the things that you really, tips to help people get involved?

Steven Curry: One of the biggest things that anybody can do to get involved is just spread the word. Follow Homes For Our Troops on all the social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and then just share all those posts, just get the word out. One of the things, I've done a lot of speaking engagements for Homes For Our Troops and one of the things I heard early on and I kept going was if everybody that was at some event that I spoke at, if everybody would just leave and go tell five other people about Homes For Our Troops and what they heard, because it's a grassroots, like I said, me and Luke both said they don't spend a lot of money on advertising.

It's all grassroots, it's all word of mouth, it's all social media sharing, stuff like that. That's the number one thing people can do without having to give any time or money. Obviously, donations, never going to turn down donations. Homes For Our Troops, they're building all over the country and I know they have their own way. The construction department over there has their own way of finding general contractors and subs in all these different areas.

If there's some roofing company out there that is interested in helping out, it couldn't hurt to call up Homes For Our Troops and say, "Hey, we're a roofing company. This is where we're at. We'd love to help out and maybe somehow get connected with a project down in that area." Again, I don't know how all the stuff works on the back end like that, but it never hurts to call and ask.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, I know when we had talked about this before that there's a large commitment for Home From Our Troops to hire local, a general contractor who then works with the subs and like you said, looking for plumbers, doing all those kinds of things. Getting in front of them, and Luke, I didn't mean to, it looked like you were going to say something, but getting in front of the community is really important for these new homes, right?

Steven Curry: That's a big one, yeah. I know, so Homes For Our Troops, they do a couple events for every build. They do a big community kickoff event sometime shortly after the veteran's chosen where they want to live, and they've acquired some land in that community. They have a big event, just to get the community involved and say, "Hey, Homes For Our Troops is coming in. We're going to build this specially adapted house in your community for this veteran," and try to get those folks pumped up and accepting of that veteran coming in.

Then there's a volunteer day usually shortly before the key ceremony where they get the community out, a bunch of volunteers come out and lay sod and do a bunch of landscaping. Then they have the actual key ceremony, where everybody comes out, the veteran and their family show up and they actually get the keys to the house turned over to them. Again, there's a lot of different ways that people can get involved. I think number one, it's getting the word out. That's the biggest thing anybody can do is just help get the word out about Homes For Our Troops.

Luke Murphy: Absolutely. The other thing, there's a lot of people who want to get involved and help, but you may not have a veteran in your area. Like Curry said, donations are huge and spreading the word, but go on Homes For Our Troops website and watch a couple of the two minute videos. I've been in combat, I've seen plenty of action, but just, I watched Curry's video before this interview, just because I couldn't remember what unit he was in in the Army and I can't help but tearing up hearing this stuff.

I saw one of our buddies who volunteered with us, Joe Beinfor, in his video. Joe passed, he was a double amputee, he got a rare cancer. He left a wife and a child. I don't want any of these guys to be forgotten. You start watching these videos, they're real short, but they'll touch you and maybe 15, $20 a month. Maybe if we're building something within an hour of you, come to the event, throw some sod, volunteer, it'll change your life. That's what I would say. Go on our website, check us out.

Heidi J Ellsworth: It's changing the lives of families and veterans. You get to be part of that.

Luke Murphy: The entire community, entire community. I'll be walking in Tallahassee and someone will be like, "Hi, Luke." My wife will look at me, and I don't know them, but they were obviously at our ceremony. They turn us into little celebrities and we make friends with the people who help with the house. People know who you are and just want to know you and want to help if there's anything they can do going forward.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That is great. That is great. What are some of the future goals for Home For Our Troops, something that, I know you just said 400 homes, right? They just hit that number?

Steven Curry: I think they're expecting to, by the end of this year, they're going to turn over the 400th home. I just saw, I tried to find it again, I just saw a post. I think they have a tentative date for when that key ceremony is. I tried to find it. I couldn't find it before we got on here. Yeah, so by the end of this year, they're supposed to donate their 400th home, which is huge.

Like Luke said before, there's other organizations out there that are building homes for veterans, but they're not doing it to the quality that Homes For Our Troops is doing it because they've been doing it for so long and they're not doing it on the scale that Homes For Our Troops is doing it. 25, 30 homes a year I think is generally the target. That's absolutely unheard of for an organization. I think that's probably their biggest goal this year is hit that 400th home

Heidi J Ellsworth: Then it's onto 500.

Steven Curry: Yeah. Yeah, 500's got to be the next one.

Luke Murphy: I remember when it was like 200, and then they had a campaign, "100 more." Well, the truth is, we got to do about a thousand more. You got to be really hurt bad to qualify for Homes For Our Troops. It's usually amputees, arms and legs, blind folks, people who are burned and amputees, traumatic brain injuries, paralyzed, paraplegic, quadriplegics. It's the worst of the worst. If you know a veteran that qualifies, encourage them. I know guys right now that will not accept a home.

Maybe it's pride, maybe they think others deserve it more than them, but we need to do a thousand more and we just can't ever stop, not until every single guy and girl that deserves one can have one. I bet you before we get to a thousand, we'll have more recipients from future wars, because things aren't looking really good worldwide right now. We haven't even taken care of all the Sergeant Currys of the world and there's going to be future guys that are going to need support. We got to keep going.

Steven Curry: Yeah, I believe there's probably about a hundred veterans in the Homes For Our Troops pipeline right now. They're either going through the application process or they're just waiting to find land or their build is ongoing somewhere in that process. Then Homes For Our Troops works with the VA. I think they've identified, like Luke said, there's at least a thousand or 1200 other veterans out there from Iraq and Afghanistan that would qualify for these homes that just aren't applying.

Either they don't know, or like Luke said, a lot of us think, "I'm not..." It's kind of like me. I use this more for a positive outlook, but I got to Walter Reed and I was missing one leg below the knee. Then I see guys like Luke that are missing a leg above the knee and then their good leg might actually be worse off than their amputated leg. I was in physical therapy one day and they rolled in one of the first quadruple amputees and I thought, "Well, I've actually got it pretty good. I'm only missing one leg below the knee. I'm doing pretty good."

Some guys, they think that and they're like, "Well, I'm only missing one leg. Give a house to a guy that's missing two legs or two legs and an arm. I don't deserve it. They deserve it." Well, if we get to the point where nobody's applying, then nobody's getting that home. Yeah, again, it all goes back to outreach and building up Homes For Our Troops so they can get more houses out every year, getting all these guys taken care of, guys and girls.

Heidi J Ellsworth: That's incredible. We have a question, it's a great question from Alex. Thank you so much, Alex. "What was one of the most transformative moments for you when you got your house?" She says, "Thank you for sharing these amazing stories." Luke, what was the most transformative moments for you when you got into your house?

Luke Murphy: It just really kind of made me feel positive about the future. Felt like everything was going to be okay. For whatever reason, I had some, I guess, skeletons in the closet with relationships and I was with the same girl when I was wounded for many years and it didn't work out. I just never thought I'd get married, didn't think I had a lot to offer, didn't want to be a burden.

My opinion on that changed, and the girl I was dating when I got my home, we became engaged and we've been married now, been together over a decade. That was pretty damn transformative. Children, my purpose is so much more defined and my future is so much more bright, so I can't really pinpoint one thing, but all those things, for sure, on day one, I felt that way.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Luke, you help through your business, and through yourselves and what you're doing, you help other amputees, not just getting the right prosthetics, sorry, I'm going to say that wrong, but also helping them just through the journey and what to do, how to do it. Talk just a little, because when I think about that transformative, where you were and how you felt and now where you're at today, just talk a little bit about what you're doing out there.

Luke Murphy: Yeah. My favorite drug is helping people. It makes me feel so good. I meet these new amputees, brand new, sometimes before they make the decision to have the limb removed, nothing else the doctors can do. I come walking in, and I always wear shorts, let them check out my leg. I try to encourage them. I have tremendous empathy, because I've been in that bed like Sergeant Curry, looking up at the ceiling, going through those long nights of painful surgeries, just not knowing and all the waiting.

Even though I can't speak clinically as a practitioner who builds the legs, I've worn one for 18 years and I can map out how this is going to go. I got to tell them, "It's going to be tough. It's not going to be easy. There's going to be some pain, there's going to be setbacks, there's going to be blisters, there's going to be infection," all the things that could happen, but then tell them all those great things that also could happen. Life's not over.

Curry and I hear people all the time complaining about a paper cut or whatever, a bad day on the job. Most people don't realize how hard it could be. To go in there and be a positive example for others, the truth is, there's a lot of things I cannot do. I can't climb a ladder and pound all day on a roof. My leg will fall off and I'll be worthless with sweat. To find something that I still can do and do well, encourage others, help people, it just really makes me happy and proud to be able to do whatever I can.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Excellent. That's awesome. Steven, what was one of the most transformative moments for you when you got your house?

Steven Curry: I think it's probably two things. One thing we haven't really touched on, we've touched on a lot of the physical changes from going from a house with stairs and you can't navigate with a wheelchair and crutches, to a Homes For Our Troops house, which is purpose built just for somebody like me and Luke to navigate around in a wheelchair and stay safe. The other aspect that we haven't really touched on is the financial aspect.

A mortgage is a huge burden, and these houses, Homes For Our Troops is building and donating these houses, mortgage free, no strings attached. I know that's really hard to believe, it's a hard concept to wrap your head around, but they're literally coming in and saying, "Hey, where do you want to live?" It's like, "Oh, I want to live here." "Okay, we'll find the land. We'll buy the land, we'll build the house. Here's the keys," and absolutely no strings attached.

One of the huge burdens I felt was lifted off me when we moved in the house was being able to sell our old house and not have that mortgage anymore, which opened up a lot of opportunities for my wife. She was able to step back from working a little bit, go finish school, get her degree and start teaching. We were able to put our daughters in a private school, so we kind of had some control over their education to make sure they were getting the best education possible. There's the financial aspect, which was huge.

Then because of the issues I'd had, physical issues I'd had living in the previous houses, I was always kind of worried about, "Well, I don't know if I can go do this activity. If I overdo it, I'm going to be stuck in my wheelchair. I'm not going to be able to wear my leg. Again, I'll become a prisoner in my own home," versus now, I don't really worry about stuff like that. I don't want to overdo it and injure myself, but I know if I do it, I need to take a break from wearing my leg. I can come home, hop in my wheelchair and I can still navigate around the house and do stuff.

Sometimes, like Luke said, more stuff than I want to do. I used to have an excuse in the old house if I wasn't wearing my leg, I didn't have to do laundry or cook or dishes. It was, I think, maybe a week after we moved in, my wife said something about helping with laundry and I was like, "Well, I'm in my wheelchair." She said, "Well, great. The house was made for that. Get in there and do the laundry." I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I got to call HVOT and complain about this."

Yeah, now I don't really have to worry about that. If I need to take a break, and come home and get in my wheelchair or even if I just need to hang out in my wheelchair for a couple days, I can do that in this house. I've been able to do a lot of things physically that I wouldn't have done before moving into a Homes For Our Troops home.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, all the difference. Go ahead.

Luke Murphy: One more thing. A lot of the guys, we're just normal guys from normal places all over the country, patriots, but my family doesn't have a lot of means and the stress that my injury caused my brothers and my mom and dad, they aged so much just from worry. The first time they come to see you at the hospital and they see all these other men that are butchered. I remember my mom looking at me and I could tell, that's not how you look when I gave birth to you and raised you.

When Homes For Our Troops built me my home, because of people like ABC and all of our folks that donate, it lifted so much stress off of them. They didn't have to worry about me anymore. In fact, when big hurricanes come to Florida, all my family comes to our house. We've survived like four of them, it's built so well. Thanksgiving, everybody comes to my house, because it's the biggest one in the whole family and it could fit everybody. It's done so much that we could never cover it all on this podcast, but I'm very appreciative of the stress it took off my mom and dad.

Heidi J Ellsworth: I know. That just hits my heart, because you realize for your immediate family, how transformative that is, but when you talk about your extended family and friends and like you said earlier, the community around you who now is like, "Hi, Luke," that just speaks so much for what Home For Our Troops is doing. I loved earlier, when you said too, that now you see the ABC trucks everywhere you drive around and you're like, "Oh, yeah," we do that all the time in roofing, "Oh, there's an ABC, there's their location."

What are some of the really just, and we're actually, this has just been so amazing, we're getting right to the top of the, probably one of our last questions, but when you look at the roofing community and you really look at the builders who built, everyone's there and then everything with ABC, did you ever even think that the roofing industry or someone such, our top distributor, ABC Supply, would be this involved? What's kind of some of your impressions of that, of our community, I guess, for everybody? Steven, let's start with you.

Steven Curry: Yeah, again, I'm just blown away by people's patriotism, generosity, willingness to step back and make it not about them. It's real easy for people with the means just to cut a check and say, "Hey, here's some money. I want to help you guys out," but it's another thing to come forward with your time, your energy and do something physical to help somebody out.

I could go out and start up an organization that builds houses and have a bunch of volunteers come in and build houses, but to have professionals from these different industries come in and do things the right way, that's a whole other story. I think Homes For Our Troops kind of learned from that early, early on in the process. The volunteers day was kind of like a Habitat for Humanity type thing. They had all these volunteers come in and help frame the houses and then they learned that the general contractors were spending more time afterwards, fixing the stuff that guys like me were doing who have no business building the house, just going in there and wanting to help and hammer nails in.
Now, they got the professionals out there. They got the professional framers, they got the professional roofers. The professionals are out there building these houses to make sure that they last, these veterans are safe and it really is, it can be the home that they're going to spend the rest of their lives in.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Yeah, the place for the family to meet and to be together. I love that. That is so great. I think, Luke, are you still there? We may have lost Luke.

Steven Curry: Technical difficulties.

Heidi J Ellsworth: Technical difficulties, but I have to tell you, so I'm going to say, Luke, if you can still hear us and Steven, thank you so much. This has been absolutely amazing, so heartwarming. I encourage everyone in the industry, if you didn't donate in May or if you can donate some more, go follow Home For Our Troops, help with donations, help with brand awareness, help getting it out over your social media.
Just share this message, because what a great podcast. We're going into the 4th of July. This is the perfect traveling podcast for everybody to listen to. Steven, thank you so much.

Steven Curry: Thanks for having us, Heidi. I really appreciate it. Again, I know the number one thing, get the word out and that's exactly what you guys are doing here is helping them, helping HVOD get the word out.

Outro: Yeah, let's get the word out. That's what we're going to be doing. Thank you so much, and thank you, ABC Supply. Wow, 5.2 million. Keep doing it. The industry is behind you. Thank you so much. Thank you for sponsoring this Coffee Conversations. Wow, absolutely amazing. We are blessed. We are blessed here at Roofers Coffee Shop, thank you so much. I want to invite everyone to our next Coffee Conversations in two weeks on July 11th. That's going to be about unlocking efficiencies with labor saving innovations.
We have some innovations, some new products, some new equipment. You won't believe it, the things that are coming out there. You need to be there for your business. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for being on the show today, Steven, once again, thank you. This will be available within 24 hours, so be sure to share it with all your friends and help support Homes For Our Troops. Have a great day. We'll see you on the next Coffee Conversations.