 Welcome to this special show of Celebrate Life. I'm Gary DeCarlis and I'm your host for today. Normally, we would have a speaker here, but this month was actually supposed to be Ken Lieberthof, but life circumstances are such that Ken will not be able to make it. So what we've done in place of having Ken actually in the audience here, is to create this wonderful panel of friends of Ken's who collectively will talk about their dear friend, Ken Lieberthof from different aspects of his life. Ironically, Ken just finished a book called Snapshots of a Life that was published in January. So we have a lot of great stories to share with our audience today and plus. So let me introduce the panel to you. So we have Steve Dale on my far left. We have Chris Lovell, we have Governor Howard Dean, we have Don Osmond, we have Jimmy Fordham, and we have Lee Larson. Thank you all for coming today. So one of the things that we usually start a show with, actually before the show actually goes live, is to have the guests talk about five words that describe them. So instead of having Ken give us those five words, I thought I would throw that out to the audience to you guys, and have you think of words that describe Ken Lieberthof. Anyone wants to jump in, feel free. Funny. Funny. Absolutely. Do you want all five of them now or? No, that's good. You can go. Oh. Yeah. Oh, I think of him as funny, kind, intelligent, supportive, and athletic. Well, I know Ken a little different. He was my boss. So I would think he was a great boss. He's been a father figure to me. He's been a mentor to me, and he's been a wonderful friend to me. And I'm thankful for that. That's great, yeah. I guess I would go with funny as well. I love sharing stories with Ken and laughing with Ken. Kind, certainly generous, not just with his time and working in the state to really help people, but also just in that he's just a wonderful friend. Yeah, Ken's a great guy. Thank you. I got to know him when I was, my first term in the legislature, when we were trying to get a mental health parody bill, which I'm informed today that it was the first of its kind in the country. And so I wrote down smart, dedicated, principled, honest, and relentless. Chris? Yeah, perspicacious. He saw things as they really are. And he saw through a whole lot of flim flam, and he was very smart. Loyal, what a great friend. What a dear and loyal friend. Funny, hilarious. You know I'm funny. An extrovert, the most sociable human being. And he was a relentless foot falter on the tennis court. We'll talk about that later on. I'm telling a story. Steve. I agree with all the adjectives that have been used, but I would add a couple. Fearless, he would say anything to anybody and he could get away with it in ways that most of us couldn't. That's very true. Influential. People deferred to him even when you probably shouldn't. So I'll talk more about that a little later. And in some ways he's larger than life. He was a big personality and very effective personality. Yes, great. Wonderful story, wonderful words to describe him. So we know from reading Ken's book and knowing Ken that he lost his dad at a very young age. And because of that I think spent some time with his grandparents as much as with his mom and his sister. But I thought I'd send it over to Steve to tell a story early in Ken's life that I think is so illustrative of Ken Liebertof. Take it away, Steve. I had the privilege of being one of the first people to buy Ken's book through Bear Pine Books and My Peelier. And so I just greatly enjoyed reading. And some of those stories I didn't know much about, this one included, but I was just gonna share this little story that when Ken was young, he and his grandmother used to go to Ebbott's Field to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers. They lived in Brooklyn as you might guess. And they were both passionate about the Dodgers and he has these childhood memories of the Phillies coming to town and beating the Dodgers. And Robin Roberts was the pitcher who was most deadly at that time, mid-50s. So decades went by and Ken found himself in Vermont. And in the early 2000s, the Mountaineers were created as a baseball team in My Peelier. And he read in the media that, oh, there was going to be a special celebration that this individual who was in the Hall of Fame was coming to My Peelier to throw out the first ball for the Mountaineers. And that individual happened to be Robin Roberts. By the way, I didn't mention that Ken describes that he had this deep hatred for Robin Roberts because he was so deadly on the Dodgers. So he made a point of going to the stadium in the recreation field in My Peelier where they play ball. The reason that Robin Roberts came there is because most people I think in Vermont now know that Robin Roberts played ball there for a couple of summers prior to his major league experience. And so he had deep roots in the Green Mountains. So Ken decided he would go to this event to this ball game and try to have an encounter with Robin Roberts. And I'm going to read this little passage because Ken's voice is so, his approach to the world is so clear. So he, and I'm going to just read this little section. My friend, minding the gate onto the field, saw that I was serious and opened the entrance to the playing area. The Mountaineers dugout was just steps away. I ducked down and entered. Robin Roberts looked up at me. Robin Roberts was sitting in the Mountaineers dugout. And I was immediately taken by his grandfatherly appearance as he politely stood and shook my hand. After all, he was a midwesterner from Illinois. His eyes seemed to twinkle and besides he retained a handsome profile and a sweet looking face. Classic Ken buttering everybody up. He was much shorter than I remembered as I thought back to 1955 and his body no longer radiated vigor or swagger. So now he's, now this is a quote from Ken. I have hated you for 60 years, Mr. Roberts. And it is time to make amends and share good times past. I said with emotion as I introduced myself, if he were thinking, who is this strange guy next to me in the dugout? And what is he talking about? I would not have been surprised. But he smiled perhaps out of embarrassment or confusion. And we sat side by side as the Mountaineers game unfolded. Within a minute, I found myself in animated conversation and words poured out, gushing like a bubbling stream after a sudden downpour. And then he told him about his grandmother, Liebertof and so on and so forth. And they ended up talking free. Lengthy period of time, but I'm just picturing Ken sitting down and saying, I have hated you all these years. One of many fabulous stories in this book. Absolutely. Thank you, Steve. Great stories. So any other stories anyone wanna share? Wanna jump in? Yeah, go on, Chris. As you all know, was a superb athlete. He played for the University of Connecticut basketball team in the mid-60s. And those were the glory years that I think they were conference champions. And he had all the moves, which he carried with him onto the tennis court. And I first got to know Ken in the mid-70s at the old Wedgwood courts in Montpelier. And he was a solid player. We were all solid players, but that was it, just solid. Ken had some special moves on the tennis court, which he brought from basketball. And one was a lob. It was a disguised lob. And the ball would come at him, he was receiving serve, and the ball would come at him and it looked like he was gonna volley it. But he moved like he was doing a basketball shot like that. And the lob would go into the backhand corner and right over my head, over and over again. The only other person who did that was another Harvard psychologist by the name of Arthur W. Chickering. I don't know if any of you know, Art Chickering is. You would remember him. It was required breeding at UVN. That's right. So that's one tennis story, and I'll save the foot fault one for later. Okay, that's great. That must have been, he was a big, he's like six, five? Yeah, he was tall. Yeah, so playing tennis, that's a lot of body to carry around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was talented. Governor, do you have any stories? I got a few stories. I just do want to tell the crowd if there's anybody under the age of 50 who's never heard of Robin Roberts. He was one of the truly great pitchers in the National League. Probably, I would be shocked if he hadn't won the MVP of the Cybe Young Award and had a number of no-hitters. He was formidable. He was formidable, you're right. So I didn't know. Oh, fame. I didn't know Ken had grown up in Brooklyn, which left me lots and lots of great stories. I didn't know Ken until I was a freshman legislator, and I cared deeply about healthcare, of course, and some of the position. And Ken, of course, cared deeply about mental health care. And so at that time, insurance companies, a lot of them didn't cover mental health. They just didn't cover it. And so we set out, and my freshman Ralph Wright did not think that was a good freshman legislator. He was disapproved of my activism. So we set out to force insurance companies to cover mental health. I think somebody told me it was the first bill of the kind in the country. And I got together with a wonderful guy who was my age, Jack Candon, who just passed away recently. And he was a lawyer and a terrific, smart guy. And we were both freshman legislators under the speaker, Ralph Wright. And Jack was a quick wit, quicker than I. So we used to go into the committees, the healthcare committee and the finance committee. And he would always start by, well, we're a lawyer and a doctor, and he were here to tell you about mental health care. And the irony of the whole thing was a really heavy slog. The insurance company lobbyist fought it like crazy. And I left the legislature and went in to become lieutenant governor. And Ken worked on this thing and worked on it and would never quit. And 14 years afterwards, I signed the bill. I was governor. That's how long it took to get the bill through. But it was a major, major bill. And I admire him so much. He was all the things I said. He was a lot of fun. He was smart. He was a great athlete. I, fortunately, never had the experience of playing basketball. I am not a great athlete. But the thing I admired him the most is he was fun. He was gentle and he never took his eye off the ball. Never, never. It was always one inch at a time or one foot at a time. But he was going to get there and it took him 14 years. Wow. Wow. Good story. He was relentless, wasn't he? Yeah. In a pleasant way. In a pleasant way. That's right. Exactly. I can speak to my experience. So I met Ken for the first time in 1997. I would have been 16 just about going into my 17th birthday but a month away at Camp Daybreak. I was, I had a friend in high school at Twin Field where I went to high school. And she had just volunteered the camp the summer before and knew that I was working with kids at Twin Field with Down syndrome specifically and thought it would be a good fit for me. And I was like, sure, that sounds great. Had no idea really what I was signing up for. And fell in love with the place. The kids experiencing a range of mental health conditions and life struggles, it really spoke to me. And it was a place where I felt at home. And Ken, through the Vermont Association for Mental Health, I would find out later at the end of the summer was responsible for Camp Daybreak. Ken would always come to camp. I spoke to the gratitude before and generosity before. He would always come to camp and at the end of the season, you know, a group of 50 to 60, 15 year olds exhausted from an intense week and he would be funny and uplifting and tell wonderful stories. And I was fortunate then to be at camp for many, many years, 27 years. And yeah, I ended up working for Ken as the director of Camp Daybreak many years later. And Ken always, I always, when I saw him on the phone or in person, his just warmth would come out in those conversations. It would always start with, damn. You know, and it was always his way of greeting me. And it was, it became a joke sort of later on, but it was always just very kind and lovely. And so, you know, Ken really became an influential figure in my life, you know, and sort of paid the way personally and professionally for me. I was with Camp Daybreak until 2018. And now I work at Camp Takumta doing similar work with a different population. I went my wife at Camp Daybreak. We started a family together. So I owe a lot to Ken, quite a bit. That's wonderful. Yeah, and I've always, always thought of him as a good friend. That's great. Nice story. Thank you. I'm not a very good storyteller, but I was a share. This is more of an emotional friendship story. I had just been hired as the office manager for VMH. And so I've been there for a couple of weeks. And what had happened was that previous office managers used to do all the taxes. And I had, and what happened, we got a notice in the mail that the court of taxes weren't paid. And in midst of all that, I was going, I had just lost my dog for nine years. He just passed away. And then my sister was dealing with having her left lung removed lung cancer. And Ken brought this up to me and I just lost it. We sat in the office. I just like kind of bawled my eyes out. And he was like, Jimmy, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. He was just, it made all the difference. I could have been fired from that. And he was just so wonderful. And from that moment on, we just became, he was like a father figure to me and a mentor. And I was just so proud to work for him. And all the legislative work he was doing, I felt my part as an office manager in the background that I was helping him make things happen in my small way. But it's anything that I could do for him and for the organization. And I met his mom through there, Lillian. Yeah. She was a character. You can figure that out. She's definitely a character. You read this. I met her the first time. He had to run to the legislature. So you remember the stairs that used to have to climb up there? She would climb those. And then he came to me and said, Jimmy, my mother's here. You have to watch over her. Can you go get her something to eat? So I went to get her. And that's how I became part of his family. I became all the Jewish religious holidays and a regular Thanksgiving. And he just made me a part of his family. And I met his granddaughter, Fiorella, and Rodrigo, and Jamie. And so, I mean, it's more as business wise, I was just proud to be my small part of what he represented. And he obviously, I remember seeing him on the streets in Montpelier and the wild hair, like Bernie Sanders. And I always saw it, the tall guy. I was like, I always wonder, who the hell is that? I was like, where did he come from? And then I worked for him. And it was just like, oh my gosh, what a small world in Montpelier, you know? It was, and he was a character, and he was honest. And the annual meetings were killer. I mean, he was a great comedian. He had all the politicians there. I mean, yeah, he didn't miss any words with them. Yeah, yeah. He had a great way of bringing people, all the politicians together and pushing them on where they stood on mental health. Plus, and speakers and all the people who worked in mental health, which was huge. I mean, we've had 300 people and we have these different classes and for continued education and everything. It was a wonderful event. Governor, you probably were on that podium many a time. Oh, I was on the board for a while when I was in the legislature. I think I was, and I think I got off that after I became Lieutenant Governor, but yeah, I remember those. He is just in addition to being all the great things, he's also an impresario. And you put him in front of a crowd and he is in his own element. The lights go on. It was hilarious. He was great. The annual meetings were always amazing. People would walk away and just smile and decide a wonderful time. And I remember how I'm pulling money from all the agencies to support that. Can I just respond to that? As somebody who worked in state government at that time, Ken would always be on the phone, especially around the conference time, looking for folks to contribute to this. And you absolutely couldn't say no to Ken. But one of the things that was incredible about him and I have a new appreciation for it, having read the book, incredibly frugal. I mean, those conferences were basic. That rubber chicken was rubber. But he prided himself on that. And the people who were there, and it was both public officials who were paying the bills, but it's also a respect for the use of resources. The whole mental health arena is generally struggles for proper resourcing. And so you don't wanna be holding some kind of a big fancy thing that's costing tens of thousands of dollars. So he turned it into this very funny sort of underpinning for the whole day. And people could feel good about coming and participating and supporting it because it was done with respect for resources. Also in terms of the conferences themselves, you wouldn't dare, if you were an official, you wouldn't dare not go. Because you both enjoyed it. It was fun, it was uplifting, and it was reinforcing, but you also wouldn't dare not be there because he would. Oh yeah. He was taking notes. He was taking notes and it was the place to be about these issues. Oh, it was. And if you recall, there was always the Worm Fund at the annual meetings. And it was the Worm Fund for Camp Daybreak. That's right. Early on when I met Ken, we had very similar playful personalities and he would give me the can. And I would be the one walking around the room, shaking the can for worms for fishing at a camp. I always thought it was a very funny bit to do in that room with so many important people from so many different agencies and walks of life. I just thought it was a very, very funny way to connect people to a wonderful place. And then he would do a awards ceremony. Yeah. I would see him picking up stuff and like, this is for the awards and for this person, I was like, oh my God. But it was great because people loved it. You have to have a sense of humor to be at the annual meeting. Yeah, yeah. And the food was always great. Mr. Beshara, he would badger him for the best meals at the lowest price. Mr. Beshara would always thought the world of Ken. But frugal, I didn't ever thought the word frugal was about, yeah, he'll hear this, he'll hear this, because I, and just go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, it's your turn. Well, my turn. I first met Ken after my boss. I worked for the Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs at the time. It's something totally different now. But Tom Parris was my boss and he said, Lee, I want you to go to a meeting. He talked about Ken having worked with bus loads of people from mental health and taking them over to the state legislature and advocating for what they needed as mental health clients. But boots on the ground, regular mental health people got to go to the state legislature and he said, we wanna do this with people in recovery from substance use. And it was interesting because for years, I worked at ADAP and it was not fashionable to suggest that you had had a prior problem with substances and you were in recovery. People didn't wanna hear about it until Tom Parris came along. And we, so he got a number of people from our office, Michael Herrera and Mark Ames and me and we met at Bethany Church and Ken Libertov came in. And so he was there to drum up support for his group that he was gonna put together and we called ourselves Friends of Recovery, Vermont. And he trained us to advocate for what people in recovery from substance use needed. And at that time, I think Mark Heligus had started to go testify about his Turning Point Club in White River Junction. And we wanted to create a whole array of Turning Point Clubs around the state. And like the parody bill, it took a lot of years to get there but I think we started off looking for a dozen but one at a time and some years too at a time we started getting these recovery clubs instituted. And he wrote a little pamphlet called the Citizens' Guide for Advocacy that he shared with us and he'd bring us all together and do little mini trainings. And I recall that what he did is he really gave people in recovery a voice. And it wasn't all the spit and polished people in recovery, we had some individuals that were very rough around the edges. And I think fondly of one woman who was recovering heroin addicts from St. Johnsbury, who ultimately when Governor Douglas was in office had an incredible relationship with him and her daughter would go running up to the governor and like tackle him around the knees and hug him. And I just thought that Ken had this ability to bring people from really diverse backgrounds together and give them a voice with one another. You know, I certainly recognize everybody. Well, all of the officials at this table is people that were in the rooms. But what I really appreciated was that ability of Ken's in one of those Vermont Association of Mental Health annual meetings to pick out a politician and come up with some anecdote that was hilariously funny. And I think someone here said, Ken could say to people what no one else could ever say to them. And he would get away with it and people would be laughing. And, you know, he was really, he was kind. He was never mean about anything. I think what I most appreciate was his ability to give me a voice and some stature and Simone pride in my own personal recovery. He also, we had a number of people that then directed Friends of Recovery Vermont for years and worked with Ken. And a lot of things happened in terms of getting the recovery centers established. And they continued to happen now. And if it weren't for Ken, I don't think any of this would have happened or not as easily as it has. Thanks, Lee. The story I wanna tell is actually in the book and it's pure Ken. So once that parody bill passed in Vermont, of course that put Ken on the national and international circuit to talk about the bill. And he talks in the book about going to Washington to talk about Vermont's parody bill as it related to a watered down version what he thought at the federal level. But anyhow, so the ultimate consulting gig that he got was to go to South Africa. And so he flies, long flight to get there. And the woman that picked him up was the advocate that he met in Washington that wanted him to come out and talk to the South African political leadership. And she says, please be down in the lobby at eight. The conference is right in your hotel and I'll introduce you in a way you go. So he says, great. He was exhausted, beat, but he had his new tie and shirt and jacket and dressing up is not his forte. So he goes, it's about 755 and he hits the elevator button to go downstairs and he hops in and all of a sudden he sees the elevator stuck. He says, holy crap. So he said, oh, well, it'll work out in another minute or two. Well, it's now 810 and he's still in the elevator and the conference has already started. So all of a sudden he hears a couple of voices and they're saying things like, he's down there, he's down there. And so apparently they had to open a shaft up on the top of the elevator. He had a crawl out and then they had a pry, the doors open and out he went. So he gets down, it's around quarter after eight now and she's talking away, waiting for him to come through the door. He comes through the door, soot all over his face. White shirt was black, his tie was ripped and there's my guest speaker, Ken Liebertov. It's in the United States of America. He's thinking, oh my God. But he got up in all Ken's style. He was able to pull it off, but what a great story. Oh, his liner was something about the first impression being the lasting one or something. Right, that's right. Just the perfect line to introduce himself to these people. What a riot. What a riot. Other stories. I have another story. So Ken clearly had a big impact on legislation, on system issues, on building an advocacy community in Vermont, incredibly effective. He also, my involvement with him was largely around children in that that was the world that I worked in. And there was one instance, and I find at my age and Ken's age that things are getting a little fuzzy. So I think I have this story correct, but it's a good story, regardless. So at the time, I was the commissioner of DCF and I got a call from Mike Smith who was the secretary of human services at that moment. He was there for about a year. And he said he'd just gotten a call from Ken, Libertov, that there was an outrageous situation in Vermont and he wanted to know if it's possible that it could be true. And the situation was that a family was having a lot of difficulty. There was an adolescent child who was really struggling and they had ended up calling emergency services. Ended up calling law enforcement. And eventually the child was taken to the Brailleborough Retreat, the residential unit. But the child could not be transported to the Brailleborough Retreat unless the child was shackled, hands and feet. Literally as they might do with a prisoner who's going to high security situation. And which then, of course, the child was incredibly upset. The family was incredibly upset that they had called for help at all because this is the end result. So he wanted to know from me, is it true that this could be what's happening? And I told him, yes, it was true because the sheriffs had taken the position that they would not transport anybody, adult or child, without all of those provisions because their insurance required it. And if we wanted to drive everybody ourselves as the children's system, we could do that, but they weren't going to transport. And at which point Ken had called Mike. And one of Ken's gifts is to know the pressure points, to know, and Mike was the most powerful man in government. And he basically was so outraged, he got on the phone at that moment with the Sheriff's Association and said, you're going to change that policy like now or we're going to take all of the state contracts that basically keep the sheriff's departments afloat. And you're going to have nothing. So that needs to change immediately. He then assigned me and Ken to figure it out, sort of figure out what are the protocols and how's it going to work and how we'll be. But that's one of those quiet stories where Ken presents because the family had known to call him or the advocacy system that was trying to figure this out and knew to call Ken, it prompted a system change that has had impact to this day. But it's one of those things that systems don't change by themselves. They require that. Very focused. I think he had an amazing ability to figure out what the systems were. He really understood personal relationships and how they worked together and he understood bureaucracy. He was one of the very few people including most of the people who served in Montpelier who actually understood how all this stuff went. And he knew exactly what pressure points both officially and unofficially which is some ways more important. So he could reach into bureaucracy and talk to an individual and get them to respond as an individual rather than a bureaucrat. That is something that there are not many people who I know can do that. Good point, yes. Yeah. How did he get to be this man? He was ridiculously smart. He really was. I think people, I mean, obviously he was smart but I think people underestimated his ability. I think he had a part of his brain that was working on this stuff 100% of the time even when he was on the tennis courts. I really do. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle and he had an incredible gift to put the jigsaw puzzle together and I really do think some of it was just unconscious. He had, you know, almost everything in government is divided into two phases. One is the title and the job description and the other is the interpersonal relationships. He had a knack, like very few people I've ever seen for being able to meld the two of them and figure out where the points were that he could get something done in a hurry if something like that happened. Yes. You know, it's interesting. You're talking about his knack at those critical points in time to, he talks in the book about his mom was very suicidal quite a bit. And he had just lost his dad and his mother was in tough shape and she was locked in the bathroom. She was gonna kill herself. And so, you know, I could just see his mind go, okay, and he said at one point he says to her, his mom, as she's screaming and yelling about wanting to take her life, he says, mom, who's gonna make dinner for me tonight? Two seconds later, the door is open. Mom comes out, makes some dinner. It was over. So what do you want? What do you want for dinner? That was genius. It was genius. The tagline Gary was, mom, please make me dinner. And you can kill yourself later. Yeah, exactly. That I somehow suspect wasn't exactly the way he said it, but it was still very impressive. Yeah, that is part of that interpersonal wisdom. And back to the tennis foot fault. And you know, when you're serving the ball, you can't step over the baseline because that gives you a tremendous advantage. And Ken at 6'3", or whatever he was, would step in 18 inches and have double the advantage. And we all would call him on it constantly and finally in exasperation, I yelled across to him and I said, Ken, stop foot faulting. He said, I will, I will, I'm working on it. And that sort of process orientation, right? And he may have gotten that from Harvard that dicked him there and the ed school was and the psychology department was, don't let your urge for perfection get in the way of doing good. That's really his attitude. Great line, yeah, perfect. Any other stories? I'll just comment on that ability to connect with people. You know, whenever Ken would come to camp, it was sort of fleeting, right? He would come on the first day, he'd come on the last day, right? Or he'd come in between with a guest or someone. But whenever he was there, he would make an effort to connect with leadership, certainly. But even just random volunteers who were there, who were 15, 16 college-aged kids who weren't involved in systems of care, they weren't mental health professionals, they were just people who cared about their neighbors and the community. And to speak to the awards that you talk about more, Ken would always find fun ways to bring people in to that conversation and feel like they were a part of something larger than themselves. You know, with some sort of funny knick-knack, I'll never forget, when I transitioned into the leadership role of director at Camp Daybreak, he literally came with a light-up torch that he made my predecessor pass to me in front of everyone, which was a very funny bit. But it was also a very kind gesture showing that transfer of leadership. He actually even, he talks in the book about his proficiency for being in the circus and desire to wanna join the circus. One of the funny things I noticed when he first posted the cover online was that if you look at the book, may I borrow your book? Oh, you please do. If you look at the book, in the bottom corner, this little blue symbol is actually, oh, right here, this little blue symbol is actually from the two-penny circus, which is a circus that my parents had in the 70s. And so he was connected to my parents even before I knew him 20 years before I knew him. So just a really funny, he was able to connect with all sorts of different people in different ways. Are you Donny's son? I am. Yeah, yeah. We were wondering about that. I am Donny's son. Yes, yes indeed. What a wonderful legacy you've got there. I love my parents very much, they're amazing. So I saw that picture and I was like, I know that blue bus anywhere. It was before my time, before I was born, but certainly I've seen pictures of it around. And it was just a very lovely reminder of how Ken connected with different people in very different ways. But they always felt like they were brought in to his inner circle, which is a lovely thing about Canada, I will always love. Anyone ever go up to his house? Yeah, sure. He lived in one house. Yeah, he lived on Spiral Farm long. I know I was supposed to give that out. Yeah, it's too gross. Yeah, he's lived there for a long time and I was just up there the other day and yeah. It's an old farmhouse and he's loved every second of it. And he's a happy man that, you know, I remember when he had his hernia operation, he told me a story about the doctor going to his house, that stuffy, going to his house and it was in the middle of the night and he was up in his bedroom and the shade was down. But he said if anybody had gone past the house with cause stuffy was in the outline of the shade would have thought something weird was going on. Yeah. That was the funny thing. Then I would have to, then I brought up food for him and office stuff because he was laid up for a while. But that's what changed, doing that for him and just seeing what a magnificent person he really is. I mean, so kind. I mean, I feel really blessed that he's come into my life, our paths across because what he's done has made me a much better person with the knowledge of mental health and things like that that I never involved in, you know? So I really learned a lot and all the politics and being at the legislature but previously with the NRC, with the legislature too, checking and chasing after all the staff there. But it was always interesting to go there and the people that he would talk to and they would listen to him. They would like, they knew what he was talking about and they would never give him any crap. I mean, them static or anything. I think you were allowed to say that on CCTV. I think you're okay. I've heard much worse on CCTV. Yeah, right, you're okay. After he retired, he once invited me up for lunch and the summer after camp had ended. And it was August and every August there was this magical week in between when my wife's summer ends and she goes back to school for all her trainings and stuff for the school year. But my daughter Emma is still home with me. So we call it Daddy Daughter Week. And so I said to Tana, I said, you know, it's Daddy Daughter Week. Are you okay with Emma coming into the house as well for lunch? And he was like, of course. And she couldn't have been more than four at the time. She's 12 now. And he was so wonderful with her. She didn't know him from Adam, you know, and he's 20 feet tall and she was three feet tall at the time. But he showed her around the house and gave her a huge tour and they have apple trees in the backyard and he showed Emma the trees and how to pick the apples. And it was just a very, very sweet moment. Yeah. And Emma, I mean, Emma sort of knows him now but not nearly as much as then but was just always felt connected to him in that way. That's another, that story that but the apple trees reminds me of something else that got by a lot of people. He would seem like he was wasting time and he was working every second of that. There was, I mean, not that he was manipulating Emma but I mean, you know, you'd think he was not getting around to it. He was about 18 steps ahead of everybody else when he was plotting and planning for how things were gonna go. And it was great. Before you knew it, you'd agreed to something. You had no intention of agreeing to it. Exactly, true. Exactly. Well, he was absolutely wonderful at working with our group of people in recovery making us into a really cohesive unit. And we were planning like recovery day at the state house in room 11 and he was always slipping us ideas like cake, you need a cake. And he had us cutting up cake and then delivering it in person to legislators and sitting down at tables and talking to legislators. And it really helped me develop my relationship with Tom Koch who was my state legislator and who worked on the elephant in the living room which was about the substance abuse status of individuals in Vermont at the time. And, you know, it was just amazing that, you know, this rag tab group of people that came well, initially from probably central Vermont but we try and haul in a few people from the far reaches of the state on the Board of Friends of Recovery we had Diane Harrington who worked for Jim Jeffords office and Michael Hara from the Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs who was a big time AA guy and Mark Ames who was also in recovery. You know, it was just everybody that was in recovery that suddenly had a voice and could work together to figure out how to put our best foot forward and to identify and ask for what we needed. And Ken worked quietly behind the scenes but he always made us feel comfortable and supported us and really worked to train us to be able to speak for ourselves. That was another interesting thing about how he worked Tom Koch was a conservative past in those days for a conservative Republican. He wasn't a lunatic like today that means something different but he was conservative about money and careful. So when he got up and advocated for the Vermont Association for Mental Health or for mental health or substance abuse people listened because they're going, what? This is a guy who doesn't like to spend money. And Ken knew that and he was so smart about putting together coalitions when he was working in the legislature and he would never do it the old fashioned way meet with people, you know, hope he would always do it through the people who would move people like Tom Koch. Oh, and Jim Letty from, you got Tom from Central Vermont Jim Letty from up in Burlington and they just did powerful things. Yep. Well, Jim was, you know, the head of mental health for a year. So he was sort of, you know, already in the stable but there were some people there who ended up on the team who looking from the outside you would never have expected that and that was his gift. And he was patient and he knew how to push the buttons and there's no better button than having somebody who is a human being who is suffering because of substance abuse or mental health connect with another of the legislature. That was very, very powerful. Most lobbies can't do that because you're usually advocating for things we don't approve of but he was advocating that for something that, you know, there are a lot of people who have mental health issues in their family or substance abuse, but he knew who they were and he knew how to touch them. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. He worked well with us. Yeah. Governor, how did the relationship between you and Ken change, if at all, when you became governor? I became more business-like because my schedule was insane and his was always insane. He always seemed to be very relaxing but he had 50,000 things he had to do on his list and they all had to get done by the night and how he's got through all that you guys can tell me because he really did every day he could have worked a hundred hours a day but he somehow managed to get it all done with looking effortless the whole time. So I didn't see a lot of them because when I was governor because I was pretty careful about healthcare and wanted to do the right thing, most of the things we were able to do, we got done, I think. I mean, most of the things on his list, the bigger problems that we had were the bureaucratic problems, what wasn't working in the government, and issues like substance abuse and we talked about that a little bit. But I didn't see a lot of them after that. As I said, I was on the board of VA and H for a while and then as I got more and more crazy dizzy, I had to get off. Did you team up? I know there was one thing that he was focused on for a while and got accomplished which was doctors receiving gifts from pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies, I don't know if you remember that. Pharma, big pharma. Pharma, he talked about this woman, Marge, from big pharma would come and he would have conversations. They sit at the same table and he wouldn't put up with it. I don't remember that. It was huge. Oh, it was a huge issue for me. I don't know what year that was. It was probably the mid to late 90s. I think because... Oh, no, no, no, no. I didn't work there until 2010 to 2014 and that's when big pharma had come in and with all the drugs and he was all against, all the stuff came out, all these doctors. Pharmaceuticals were given all these free stuff to doctors, the oxy-cotton and all that other stuff. That was long after I had left. Yeah, and the doctors had just passed. I was gone in 2003 was my last. Yeah, that was back when we were working there. There was a time, I'm from a year apparently, maybe it was in the early 2000s where we would get an annual donation for Camp Daybreak from Pfizer. That they were funding Camp Daybreak for a little bit of time. I think you can. And Ken finally was just like, no, we can't do this anymore. I remember that. I remember that, too. Yeah, yeah. And to his credit, I mean, that was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do, for sure. Well, it's a classic lobbying technique. You make somebody dependent on your money and then you have to shut up a little bit. In fact, the National Mental Health Association was taking a lot of money from pharma. And the Vermont chapter, which Ken wouldn't accept any, and he was after the national organization for, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. I remember that, yeah. Small bits and pieces coming back as you bring stories up like that. That was interesting, because the other thing I always thought was that most of those national organizations are big bureaucracies. And I don't think the National Association of Mental Health was an exception to that. Ken would not put up with that. No, right. Because there was always a reason you couldn't do something. That's right. And he was not gonna have any of that. Yes. In fact, like you said, that big money kept the National Mental Health Association quiet at the most opportune time to say something to help parody or to move something forward. All of a sudden they were silent and he would speak up from Vermont because they were steeped in money. They couldn't say anything. And an observation as I'm listening to everybody here. As I think about Ken and his contributions and his role, he may be the most perfect example that I know of a person finding their calling and living it out. For sure. He was masterful in what he did, but it was uniquely him. That's true. So his skill set, his experiences, and when you read the book, it's like, I know this guy. And it all makes sense. It all makes perfect sense. But so many of us in our careers are trying to find the right fit between our personality and our skill set and our duties. His was absolutely aligned to that role. Yeah, exactly right. Well, did you know that he was executive director of the Washington County Youth Service Bureau way back? He was hired when the first guy left and then Tom Howard took it over. But Ken was there for like three years. And I've done some part-time work. I worked for them for a while. Now they're called Elevate Youth Services. They're up in the old Wedgwood place. But yeah, he was, yeah. But I always used to wonder, how does this guy get to, what a great job. I mean, he's sort of above the fray. He's not accountable for delivery of, he was accountable for the specific things in his organization. But in yet, he's like unbelievably effective in that role with his personality, with his, and it was a winning comedy. It's always great to watch him. I mean, I was, I keep saying blessed working with him and seeing how he managed everything and how he made it work. He really made it work, the hard work. I mean, hours. I mean, I know he would spend hours in his office, at night after I left that he would be doing making phone calls and things like that. It was incredible, hard worker, very inspirational. He inspired me to be a better person. Gary, I told you a little bit about this. Ellen and I went over to see him Sunday night, just past and we brought Ken and Sarah a hot dish, which she was wildly enthusiastic about. And we sat with him for about a half an hour. He was in bed. He was tired, quite lucid. And I said, Ken, I'm gonna be doing this thing with Gary Carlson. What would you want me to say? And I said, I don't know. Talk about Ken, as you can talk about breakfasts at the wayside, talk about our friends. And I said, well, you know, I remember that I might have been the first person to read your first short story. Your anecdote came out of your writer's class with Maggie Thompson. And I think it was Bojano's Bar and Grill. I think you're right. And I said, I was blown away. I said, Ken, you've got to keep on this and keep working on it. And I said, you know, but the one story that doesn't appear, well, many stories don't appear, but you should write it up. It's the story of how you learned about Montpelier. I said, you told me this, Annick. Don't you, Conn was playing UVM. And the team traveled up to Burlington and you guys won. And you said you went to a fraternity house and you didn't know anything about fraternity houses, you said, but there was beer and there were a lot of girls. And you wound up with a basketball playing girl sitting on your lap. And he said, well, where are you from? And she said, from Montpelier. And I said to her, Montpelier, where's that? Canada. And then I said, well, I guess I'll share that story. And he said, just make sure that you say that that girl was the captain of the UVM girls basketball team. I hate to say this, but I think she's also my dentist now. That's amazing. That's a good match. That's hilarious. That's funny. We're not going to say any names here. That's hilarious. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Any other stories, any last thoughts you want to share? I'll just sort of double down on how gracious Ken is. You know, one of the things that I always loved about him was that, you know, whether he was sending you just some sort of random file through the mail or whatever. He always wrote a nice note, you know, that always made you feel special and important. And he I came to realize later that I was not the only person who received these notes that many people who were in part of our camp daybreak bubble would often get very nice notes from Ken. And it just so happens. The other day I was reading the book and was looking for a bookmark. And I when I reached into a drawer and I found this note that Ken wrote to my wife in 2008. We had just finished camp and it's on the old VMA. Yep, you know, there and we had just finished camp. We were, I'm going to say, 10 days from getting married. It was my first full year as director of Camp Daybreak. But he wrote this lovely, this lovely note to her postcard. And she was like, oh, my gosh, that's I remember getting that. What did she say? He said, hi, Audrey, my wife, thanks for your great leadership at Camp Daybreak with appreciation, Ken, that's beautiful. Yeah. And just it just speaks to how sweet and how giving he is in any moment, big or small. Yes, that's a big or small. That's absolutely right. Very good. One other quick story, because I know he will. He always tells that to me anytime we're friends. When I first started for him, I had worked in other offices with Microsoft Outlook and all that stuff. I got to his office and he had AOL email. I was like, you have to get rid of this. This is not for the office. This is AOL. He still has his AOL email after all this. But he was so he couldn't believe I would like, what's wrong with AOL? And I was just like, it's AOL. You know, this is a business office. We need, you know, Microsoft Office and all this stuff. And we finally got it. But boy, it was he was like, yeah, he was. I was like, he felt offended. He felt offended that I said, you can't get rid of AOL is crap. You know, you got to get rid of it. It's not for a business, but he still has it. Can you tell him? Yes, he does. I'll never forget that his face. It was and this is a story he always shares a story with anybody knew that Jimmy. When Jimmy came here, he told me how to get rid of AOL. So that was a great. Yeah, that was a funny thing. He always shares that. Yeah. Yeah, it's so funny. Well, have we done him justice? I don't know. I think we could be here for hours. Yeah, I'm always in awe of him. Yeah, he's my hero. So, OK, so. To Ken, we all love you dearly. I hope we shared some appropriate stories for the audience to get a sense of this wonderful man called Ken Liebertof. And we'll see you around the corner. Well, thank you.