Join hosts, Dustin Abrego and Rebecca Allen, as they welcome Bill Krieger into the studio to discuss the Veterans Archives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recording and archiving the histories of veterans. Every veteran has a unique story that deserves to be told, regardless of the nature of their service, and sharing one’s story is not merely an act of remembrance but a vital process of healing for both the storyteller and the audience. Veterans Archives strives to amplify the voice of veterans, as there is profound impact in hearing these stories, stressing the vital importance of how storytelling can bridge the gap between isolation and connection.

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Website: Lansing Community College Center for Veteran and Family Support

Welcome to B2B, Boots 2 Books, the show where we explore the journeys of veterans and military connected students as they navigate their paths from service to the classroom and beyond. I'm Dustin Abrego.

And I'm Rebecca Allen, your hosts. Each week, we will dive into powerful stories of resilience, determination, and success.

Whether you're a veteran yourself, a military family member, or simply inspired by the strength of those who serve, you're in the right place.

Let's turn the page and start this incredible journey together.

Hello and welcome back to B2B. I'm Dustin Abrego.

I'm Rebecca Allen.

And this week we have with us Bill Krieger. Bill, thanks for joining us.

Wouldn't be any other place Today.

Talk to us about what you do. We obviously know you, but we want everyone listening and watching online to hear what you do and why we invited you in.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm retired from the civilian world and from the military, and as I was getting into my retirement, I created Veterans Archives, which is a nonprofit. We're a 501C3, and we record the histories of veterans. We provide them a copy of it, and then we archive a copy of it.

We put them out on a podcast format. We've got a YouTube channel.

And the idea is to get the stories of our nation's heroes out there, not just so you can read it, but so you can actually hear it in their voices and in their words. And it's really not about sitting down, swapping war stories. We really cover the whole veteran. Some of These interviews take two hours.

We actually had one that spanned 12 hours. And so whatever that veteran wants to talk about, we talk about.

I can understand why that's really important. Maybe Rebecca can as well. But what was the motivation, the driving factor, for you to, like, start something like that?

It's like, this sounds great, but then there's more to it than that, clearly.

I left the battlefield on October 13th, and two weeks later, I was coming back to work here in Lansing at Consumers Energy. And I'm driving from Holt to Lansing. I get to work. It's a beautiful fall day, kind of like today, actually. It's a little bit crisp out.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing. Get out of my car. I go to walk towards the building, and I think to myself, man, it's going to be a beautiful day.

And the reason I thought it was going to be a beautiful day was not because of all those things I just said. It was because no one shot at me and nothing blew up. And the very next thought I had was, holy crap, I'm crazy because no one thinks this way.

And so I got into this whole spiral of no one understands me, no one gets me. And to give you the real short version, about six or eight months later, I'm sitting in my room with a gun in my hand, ready to.

To pull the trigger, but for a phone call from a good friend of mine. And if they're listening, they know who they are. Someone called me and just said, hey, how are you doing?

And in all honesty, the phone rang and it startled me so bad, I almost accidentally shot myself, if that makes sense.

And so from there, I got into some therapy for a long time, but I started telling my story, and I hooked up with NPR's Moth Radio Hour and started telling my stories to different audiences. And you go into an audience like that with like four or 500 people, and it's a very eclectic audience.

But at the end of every show, someone would come up and say, hey, I have felt that way before. Not exactly, but I've been kind of where you're at. And thanks for sharing that. It made me feel like I'm not the only person who's ever felt this way.

I did some storytelling with USA Today's Storytellers project. Kind of the same thing there. You don't have to be military to have these feelings. And that's what I was finding out.

But in sharing my story, I was able to kind of unload some of those things, but also it was helping other people. So I really enjoyed that kind of. At the same time, working for Consumers Energy, I started their podcast, the me, you us podcast.

And that's where we talked about, you know, all things health, the five pillars of well being, and all of those things.

And what I found was I had a knack for getting people to tell their stories and finding out that people sharing their stories were helping other people. I interviewed the CEO of Consumers Energy, and he shared that when he graduated college and got married, he and his wife struggled financially.

Now, who would have thought the CEO of a large company like that would struggle financially? But it really spoke volumes to the customers out there and to the people in our work community.

And as I started thinking through this, I also thought, how many times have you sat around the table at a holiday and said, Grandpa so and so had the best stories, right? My grandfather did. He was from Missouri. He was a bootlegger. Like, this guy had stories, but no one could tell him like he told them.

And I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could hear my grandfather tell those stories in his voice and in his words? And so that kind of struck this idea in my head. How can we do this for people?

Well, I'm a veteran, and I'm thinking, well, veterans need to have a voice. Not only that, I mean, there's just so many layers there. Veterans can share their stories and offload some of that trauma that they have.

Other people can hear those stories and be helped. And here's the other thing is 100 years from now, these stories are going to still be out there.

Someone can hear the story of their great Uncle Bob in Uncle Bob's words and in his voice. I mean, imagine if you could click a button and hear George Washington talk about his time. Right. How amazing would that be?

Well, there are people that we talk to today that are going to be that George Washington someday, and we're going to have their story recorded. And I also think that there's a layer there that helps when we talk about veteran suicide and 22 a day.

We all know that number is probably a little bit bigger than that.

This year alone, we have 64, and we're looking to do 100 by the end of the year.

Shoot.

Wow.

So you mentioned that being able to share that story and having others being able to share their stories has helped others. So how would you describe that?

Like, seeing other people reacting to those stories and knowing that this could either be influencing them to speak up about what they might have experienced, or to find other ways to just share their stories and realize that, hey, someone does actually want to listen to my story.

Yeah. You know, a lot of it comes through comments on our YouTube channel. People will watch these.

And it's funny because one of the other things we're doing is making connections. Right. Somebody will see a story and go, hey, I served with that guy. I remember when that happened.

But people listen to those stories and they, again, they can relate to what's happening. I mean, no one knows exactly how somebody feels about anything. Because we're the only ones that have ever walked exactly in our shoes.

But we can certainly have some empathy and understand how somebody might be feeling about something. And when, when people tell their stories, sometimes they laugh, sometimes they cry, but the emotion is there.

People see and hear that and they realize it's okay to show emotion. It's not weakness to share what you're going through and to let other people know that maybe you're struggling.

And I can see that over and over again in these stories when people share them.

I spent some time watching some of the stories.

To me, I'm really enjoying it because I know several of these people that you've interviewed and to hear them share their stories, for me, it's been eye opening.

Some of them I've worked with professionally, some of them I've known personally, and being able to hear them actually talk about their stories, it does add that extra layer and help me understand why someone like Michael Scott was always so involved in the veteran community and why he was always so happy to step up and help. And being able to see that was, I mean, for me, I very much enjoyed it.

Yeah. You know what I hear from families too is I never understood why dad acted the way he did, but I get it now. I see what he's gone through.

We just interviewed a hundred year old World War II veteran last week and the family had heard a lot of the stories before, but there are stories that they hadn't heard and it really helps fill in those missing pieces when dad was quiet or I'll share a story with you.

When I got home and I was really struggling, I remember sitting at the dining room table and we were playing a game with my kids, my two daughters, and it was the game Trouble, if anyone's familiar with that. Right. And so my youngest daughter took great joy in sending my oldest daughter back to the home base every single time she could.

And they started bickering like kids will. I don't know what happened, but it just, I got tired of it.

And I remember picking up the game board and throwing it against the wall and telling my children to shut the hell up. They actually laugh about it now and they tell jokes about it, but at the time it really scared them and they didn't understand what was going on.

But through hearing what I was going through at the time, it doesn't excuse my behavior because there is no excuse for that, but at least gives them some insight into what I was going through and understanding that it wasn't them, that it was me. And that I was the one that needed to get the help. And so I hear that from families quite often.

That is really important. I can share from experience as well that we've had similar things happen in our home and having to explain to the kids, you know, it's.

Well, there's been a recent deployment and you know, how dad was gone for this amount of time and understanding that it's not that he's mad at you, it's that there are other things that, you know, we poke to the bear a little too much and having them understand that helps.

He's not mad at you, he's mad at the world.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I was feeling at the time.

Fair enough.

I think your description especially, I don't know how many times you've walked through it of like, the birds were singing and all this stuff. And you were like, two weeks ago I was here.

And like, I know that there's an outro process, again, civilian, never served, and so don't know those things in and out. But thinking about how going from that to the next thing, I'd be like, man, I wouldn't handle a lot of stuff very well. Like, I.

Anything would probably just set me off just because of just the different worlds. Like, again, you're just back in it and you're supposed to just act as though whatever.

Because other people don't necessarily know what's going on, like you said.

But I think also to the next level of the stories, both for yourself doing this, but then also for the actual veteran and the people that have served and how it can be cathartic healing, I guess you could say to that. But also for the families to be like, wow, that makes a lot more sense. Or I didn't get that.

And it gives them an avenue because the relationship between, like parents and kids will always be parents and kids. But if they see their parent in this different atmosphere, explaining this and explaining their previous experience, it's multi generational healing.

If you wanted to, like, put it to this next level of stuff you go through, you do the interview with people. How do you know who you're going to interview? And it's going to.

I don't want to say it's going to be a good interview, but like, some people love to talk. That's what I get paid to do. So I love that. Right. And other people, it's like you have to like, really pull them to get them to interact.

Do you prep them ahead of time or is it you've Just been lucky so far. How does that work for you?

I would say that this has been, what is it Forrest Gump said, Like a box of chocolates. Right. You never know what you're going to get, ever. I will say of the 126 interviews we've done, there are no bad interviews.

Some were more difficult than others.

And like you said, there are some people where you have to be able to pull the information out of them because they're going to answer questions in the shortest way possible. So it really is making sure that you're asking open ended questions. We don't, I don't select who is going to be interviewed. They contact me.

We set up a time.

Oh, interesting.

And I go see them. I don't send out questions ahead of time. Oh, I send out a sheet that says, hey, here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk.

There's two questions I always ask. The first question always is when and where were you born? Because I want to get a feel for who they are.

The last question I always ask is 100 years from now when someone is listening to this story, what do you want them to take away from it? So I give people a heads up because that's a tough question sometimes and you get all kinds of interesting answers from that.

But yeah, I'm a firm believer in when I do what I do. If you send out questions ahead of time, people tend to rehearse it and then you don't get the true story.

Also, if I start out with when and where you were born, that conversation can go a million different directions from there. Right. And then once we talk about childhood in school now, the conversation can go a hundred different directions.

And then that's what I want from the people that I interview. I'm going to spend two hours with you. I want the authentic you. And some people struggle through that. Others are just amazing.

But there has not been one bad interview in that whole bunch.

When you are getting people applying to tell their story, is there anything in particular that you are hoping that you can get out of them at least? So if you're working say with a Vietnam era veteran, are you hoping that they're going to open up a little bit more about what they experienced?

Because coming home from that was vastly different than what our generation has experienced coming back.

Or when you're working with a guard or reserve veteran, are you hoping that you're going to hear more of what the one weekend a month side looks like? What are you hoping that you're going to get out of those.

Yeah. I mean, this is a really simplistic answer. I'm hoping I get the real story right.

I had the benefit of serving on active duty and in the National Guard, and coming home from deployments from those two different worlds is completely different. When you're on active duty military, you have a community to come home to.

And while I believe you have a community in the National Guard, when you come home from.

From a deployment in the National Guard, all those people that you deployed with go all their separate ways, and many of them are from different states. So really, what I'm hoping to get is what the real story is.

A lot of Vietnam veterans will tell you when they came home, they were told not to wear the uniforms. They were called names, they were spit on, but a lot of them weren't.

What I found is that not every generation has the same story within their generation. But the cool thing is there are common threads throughout the generations, which that's what I really hope to see.

Like when I talk to a Korean War vet or World War II vet, their stories aren't the same as a Gulf War veteran, but there are some common threads in there of service. And you see many people who get out of the military continue service after they get out of the military.

And so the short answer to your question is, really, I hope to get whatever their real story is. And sometimes that takes time for those.

That don't feel like they're veterans, because just because you have served doesn't mean that's an identity you want to continue to hold. Like you talked about people from Vietnam, maybe there's the cultural aspect of it.

People that didn't deploy weren't in combat zone or guarded reserves or as Rebecca has indicated, like being female or vet infantry or they're non infantry, can they share those stories?

Because you said anyone can reach out to you, but if it's I'm not a person they'll make a movie about, is that still a valid thing in your mind for your platform?

Yeah. So one thing is we talk about veterans. It's veterans archives and so on. I always ask people, did you serve? Right.

Because that person who served who never went to combat but worked in logistics, for instance. Right. That was my lifeline when I was in combat. Those are the people I called. They made sure that I was able to bring all of my people home.

Not necessarily one piece, but everybody came home. Everyone who served served a purpose so that everyone else could do their job. Right. So whether you were A combat veteran.

And did you know five tours or you served for two years and you were stationed in Fort Knox and you worked on Humvees or whatever it was you did, you served, you signed a blank check up to and including your life. And whether the government took you up on that or not, it doesn't matter. You served. And I want to hear your story.

I actually interviewed a veteran who had joined the Air Force and just out of basic training, suffered a training injury that wrecked his leg. It wrecked his knee. And I actually met him at the Michigan Veterans Home. We got his story.

But his story isn't all just about being in the military, although we talked quite a bit about that. It's all the stuff he did afterwards. A lot of people served between the Korean War and and the Vietnam War.

They saw the draft and people were being drafted for two years at a time. Those people have amazing stories, too. A lot of them will tell me, I don't really have a story. But then you talk to him.

I talked to a guy who invented the machine that wraps plastic around bowling pins, right? You go to a bowling alley, those bowling pins are wrapped in a certain kind of plastic to hold them together. He invented the machine that does that.

And then he got bored.

So then he opened up a company that took Cadillacs and Corvettes and made them right hand drive to be shipped overseas because there was a demand for this in Europe and the car companies weren't doing it. So, yeah, there's some really cool stories. And guess what?

A lot of what he learned on how to do a business, he learned in that two years he was in the military. And so there's all kinds of stories like that. Then there's the guys who served for 40 years.

The other thing is, and I've really been concentrating on women veterans, you know, why?

How many times, Rebecca, have you gone to an event or gone somewhere with your spouse and they immediately assume that he's the veteran and you're the little woman back home. Right? There's a lot of female veterans out there and they've got great stories. And so we need to capture those stories too.

And we need to be careful when we're in public. And we just make assumptions based on gender, Right? Because the husband may be the person who stayed home. I saw both sides of that.

I was the guy who deployed and then my spouse deployed after that. So I got to see what it was like to be back home.

But nine times out of 10, when we go to a function, people automatically assume that I'm the only veteran and that my wife just stayed home and took care of the kids, which by the way is a huge job. I'm just going to tell you right now. I was at home with three kids and it was difficult. But yeah.

So I mean, that's really kind of the whole answer, I think being that.

Female veteran who has been told, no, no, no, it's for veterans only, and then having the satisfaction of pulling out my active duty ID and being the person that has stayed home and being the person who it is automatically assumed, even within the last month being out at a veteran function.

And I'm the reason we're there because I'm the one that has been working in the veteran service field, but just automatically assumed that, Yep, no female, not vet. I do appreciate that you are putting that focus on female veterans because it is an underserved population. So.

Absolutely, absolutely.

What do you think overall that you would want for someone listening to this?

And maybe he's like, I don't know if my stories are enough or I know you've kind of hit on this, but I really think there's probably an unlimited fire hose of people with stories and they self select themselves out just like that we see every day. They self select themselves out of. Yeah, I guess I qualify for that. But like that's not me.

Not because we're looking for pity, because I don't think you've explained pity at all in any of this. Right. It's been like, what was it like for you? We want to be aware of those things. Whether or not other people served because you both have served.

But then hearing the other stories, it's still completely different in those experiences.

What would you say to someone that's like, I'm not sure, or someone that would pass this on to someone else saying, maybe you should actually do this? What would you say to them?

Yeah, it's great because I just went through this. We did radio on the river out in Brighton a couple weekends ago and someone came up to our booth.

I was talking with him like, well, I don't really have a story. I know all these other guys do. I'll pay. Yeah, it's exactly. That's the exact answer is every single person has a story.

And it's usually that person who says, I don't have a story, has this story that they didn't realize was a story because they lived it. Right. You live your life. You don't realize how amazing your life is because you're living it.

And so that's what I try to bring out of people, but there is that. You have to walk that fine line, because there are some people who just don't want to do it. They don't want to share it. Right. So we don't twist arms.

But if you're sitting on the fence and you're like, I don't have a story. Yes, you do. And we would love to share it with people.

And I'll bet there's other people out there who would listen to it and go, oh, my God, it's an amazing story. Right. Even though you don't think it is. You know, I can think of a ton of people who we started out the conversation with, I don't have a story.

And by the time we ended up finishing the whole thing, I was just in awe of the story that they had, because it wasn't necessarily about their military service. It was about them as a person and the things that they. They had done and they had accomplished.

And that's what they're going to pass down to their family is all of those stories, and they're incredible.

If I had to guess, out of all the ones that you've done so far after the fact, Mike's off. You're just talking or being like, this is what the process looks like afterwards. Has anyone said, I shouldn't have done that?

No. No one has ever said that.

Maybe they're all hot and bothered afterwards, but then they can calm down because there's a lot of emotional stuff, a lot of really intense things that have happened, and they can be like. They can be upset about it. Which is totally fair and valid. But where they. I shouldn't have done this.

No. Well, I'll give you two examples of where we did some editing at the request.

When I say we edit these videos, I don't edit anything for content because their story is their story. I really edit. Like, if they sneezed or they had to go to the bathroom or something like that gets cut out.

But I did have one person call me and say, hey, you know that thing I shared with you?

My spouse doesn't even know that, and I'd really hate for them to find out about it through a recording, you know, and it wasn't a huge part of their story. It was a part of it. I said, yep, I got it. So they had a little bit of buyer's remorse just on one section of their story. Same thing.

I interviewed a World War II veteran, and he tells this story, which I won't tell on the air because I Don't know who's listening, but it was something you probably wouldn't want your grandkids to hear.

Sure.

And so the family called afterwards and said, hey, can we just take that out of the public airing of this story? But honestly, I've never had someone go, God, I wish I hadn't done that. Yeah, not one person. Most of the time, they're super happy they did it.

And then the conversation after conversation, you hear these other stories. You're like, oh, I wish we'd have gotten those.

Right.

But we could spend a whole day doing that.

Right. So people have their. It doesn't go live immediately. Right.

So anyone that's like, I'm not sure if I say something bad and it's like, for one, it's not live. Right. Then two, you allow people to be like, hey, could you actually. This. You're not saying no to that is what I'm hearing.

Yeah. So the number one goal that we have is to get the stories to the veterans.

So every veteran gets their story on a memory card, a nice little box with our logo on it. They get one of our challenge coins. That's theirs to keep them, whatever they want with it. Now, these do go live pretty quickly.

The flash to bangs pretty fast on these. But if someone calls and says, hey, we'd prefer that didn't go public, it's very easy to just pull it down. I'll share a quick story.

Someone that I interviewed, someone heard his story and it was someone from his past who he had dated. And this person was apparently obsessed with this guy. And they were contacting me to get this person's phone number and all this, leaving comments.

So the guy called me because he gets my newsletter every month. He's a really good guy. He called me, he goes, hey, dude, can you just. Can you just take that down? Because I'm married and I don't need this.

I was like, absolutely. I mean, you have your story, we have it archived. We'll just take it out of the life. And we did that.

The other thing that we do, too, and this is kind of off topic of your question, but we're partnered with Reads Across America Radio. And so every Thursday at 5 o', clock, you can hear the stories there and coming home. Well, radio as well, we are connected with them.

So our stories don't just go out on our channels, they go out all over the place. So when someone has that request, we honor it. We take it down everywhere. I've only had one person ask me to do that. Yeah.

That's awesome. Where can people find out more about veterans archives?

Where do they go if they just want to listen or if they are like, hey, I have a story, or I know someone that has a story.

Oh, yeah. So I always direct people to the website because everything is linked from there.

So veteransarchives.org it's veterans with an S. Archives with an S.org is where you can go. There's an application right online. You fill that out, it gets emailed right to me, and then I call you, and we set that up.

We are on YouTube, eteransarchives. We're on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, all the platforms, whether they're popular or not, we're out there. We post twice a day.

You can see really nice little snippets of the stories that we do. But really, if you go to our website, you can listen to them right on the website. We have a player embedded there.

But you can also link to our podcast if you want to hear the podcast. It's veterans archives, and it's anywhere you get your podcast.

Any platform out there that you are listening to podcasts on, you can find us out there. So all the stories are there as well. And then I can throw my phone number out there, if that's all right.

That's a you question.

Sure, yeah. Yeah. Well, I have a work phone, so.

I can turn it up.

You can see all the things that we do. Can kind of see a little bit about our history as well. And you can see the pictures from our recent golf outing. So a lot of fun out there. Awesome.

Cool.

And you're looking for 36 more stories this year, is that correct?

Yes, we are.

So if we have any veterans that are interested that want to share their stories, they should for sure reach out to you.

Yes, they should. Time is running short, so we need to get those folks in. So please call, send a carrier pigeon however you want to do it. We'll respond.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Bill. This has been great. We really appreciate you stopping by. All right, all right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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Thank you for joining us on this journey through the inspiring stories of veterans and military connected students.

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Until next time, stay strong and keep moving forward.