 Welcome to another show of celebrate life. My name is Gary D. Carlos, then I'm your host. If you're new to the show, the whole idea behind this is to really celebrate people's lives while they're very much alive and well and kicking. The idea behind the show came from my reading obituaries of some amazing people who I wish I had gotten to know why they were alive. So I put this TV show together so that in fact you can meet some amazing people while they're alive. Everyone has a story to tell, whether you're the CEO of a large company or you're you know maybe you're a barber in some little shop. Everyone has a story to tell and I look forward to being able to air some of these stories so that others can appreciate the lives that we've all lived. If you would like to be interviewed on the show, send me an email at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com or if you know someone who might be interested, please forward that email. If you have a question for the person that I'm interviewing, send me an email, I'll make sure it gets to that guest and we'll get some information back to you. Today I'm honored to have as our special guest Richard Chapman. Hello Richard, welcome. Hi Gary. Great to have you on the show today. Thanks for having me. So let's start talking about this wonderful life you've led and I'm going to just hand it over to you to start wherever you'd like. Well that's a wonderful life. I actually do feel like I have had a very fortunate life you know and as we were talking about before it seems like there are some major chapters and the the link between those chapters may not always be quite clear but I grew up in Neuroshell New York home of the Dick Van Dyke show just around the corner from Bonnie Meadow Lane where it was supposedly filmed but not really and in a suburban New York community that was a very typical post-war war two. My sister, my mother, my father and I very kind of typical family 50s family life and I stayed in Neuroshell until I was 18 and graduated from high school at which point I went to Washington DC and in Washington DC I went to school at George Washington University and I kind of floundered there for quite a while not really knowing what I wanted to do met some great people talented people people that I really enjoy getting to know and still are friends with many and it was only at the end of undergraduate school that I met somebody who thought I would enjoy working with his wife at the MacArthur Bowl of our Child Development Center and I went there and I worked in the preschool there with children with significant disabilities and I just something clicked just felt like something I was I really enjoyed doing I felt I had a talent for but I had no idea what I was doing so this gentleman by the name of Perry Botwin Dr. Botwin who was the Dean of the College of Education at George Washington said you know if you want you know switch your major put in the the proper coursework graduate from undergraduate and I will find a place for you in our graduate school program which we're just beginning in early childhood special education and so I did that and when in graduate school there were 50 women and two men in the program so it was obviously early childhood special ed is not a male dominated field so my father who really wanted me to follow his footsteps into banking or be a doctor or a lawyer when I told him that I had decided to become a preschool teacher you can imagine how proud he was of me a shock to the system anyway I I met a woman there who was my supervisor by name of Dr. Santis Linda Santis and she and I to this day are still in touch you know she's one of those people that you meet and she changes the trajectory of your wife you know I I I worked so hard in part because I was motivated by the material and the subject and wanted to become a skilled professional to help children with disabilities but also because I I didn't want to disappoint her so I I really kind of found my grounding in part because of how she motivated me but also because of my interest in the in the work in the field and felt that it was just a incredibly a perfect way for me to address my values of wanting to give back to the community to others you know as a child of the 60s and and this was a great opportunity for me to do a type of work that was going to meet those those needs based on my values and so I did I I I thought it crystallized a lot of those values that were inside there but it sounds like they just all congealed together around this this major this population of children and the people in the field that you met exactly exactly and it was um you know it's kind of the perfect fit you know it just it felt right and um and it's amazing because I was not a great student my first two three years in college um but from that point on I was a 4-0 student you know it was all about yeah finding what was of interest finding what was meaningful to you and then being motivated to to do well and and it and it felt easy it felt right the fit was right so I um I did that I uh it was a it was a new field early childhood special education and I worked for a while in the dc public system I worked for a while in the fairfax county virginia public system and then I had a deposit down on a house in tyson's corner virginia which is was a small place back then and at the very last minute I decided to withdraw my deposit get in a car and drive to vermont um for an interview that I had gotten lined up for another early childhood special ed job and um and just decided to uh to move to vermont you know during the moment um over the course of the summer I decided to change course and I got this position to start from scratch a essential early education program in st albin's and the triple e programs of the special education preschool programs um and they they operate in public schools their public education and they serve the uh the children with the the greatest need um between the ages of birth and five and so I was um I had the uh opportunity to start the franklin county program from scratch and um so here I am four years into my field and I'm I have this incredible opportunity which uh I did and I loved and um and got to travel franklin county um from richford to um st albin's and uh and meet all sorts of wonderful people um from there I went to swanton as a special ed director and I spent 10 years in swanton um and was part of central office as a special ed director where we became the first school district in the united states to integrate all of its kids with disabilities into the same classroom they would have been placed in had they not had a disability and we um we worked in conjunction with um uh with the university of vermont state department and and others to create the model to support that kind of the system uh and it's called project homecoming uh and that that was in our school school district um and that's when I got to work with the likes of john birchard and uh and Wayne fox and all the folks at the center for developmental disabilities and and we we created something which got national momentum and became um really a state of the art uh way of thinking about how to support people with disabilities it was really um it was it was way out of the box at the time director was that from birth to 18 it was from birth to uh birth to 21 actually 21 right that kids would have a right to an education that's right if they had a disability until they were 21 wow um so and our school district had elementary middle and high schools so we had we had the full range um and I was fortunate enough to be able to hire mark susnick to pick up the early ed piece and run that part for us so he he did the same thing I was doing at the school age at the preschool level and created models for preschoolers with disabilities to be integrated into regular preschools and regular daycares and things of that nature and um that that was probably singularly the most important thing I ever did professionally um was to be a part of that and it wouldn't have happened just anywhere I happened to have lucked into a time and place that was ready for it the the teachers the other administrators uh you know the state department of education was being run by mark hall at the time you know you had gene garvin as the uh you know you just had these incredible people that were like-minded very um child-centered and uh and we were able to uh to move the system we were able to move the model to so that we weren't just placing kids in classrooms we were actually giving them a higher quality of education in irregular educations and and we think that by doing so we also enhanced the quality of rigor education exactly really melding the two all the all the kids without disabilities were learning and growing as well having those their classmates in there and and also all the resources that were being pumped in because kids with disabilities were being used for all the kids so everybody benefited um it was it was I'm not sure that it would be as easy to do it today as it was back then because there were people who were willing to think a little bit out of the box the bureaucracy didn't get in the way um I had a superintendent who let me do anything as long as I didn't embarrass him uh and uh all right and um you know we had a central office that was just a team that worked together Jeff Benet, Bill Williams, John Robb we were we're a great team and uh and uh we supported our teachers wow did and the other once you started to do that did other school districts from around the state or even the country come to you to see how you did it? Oh absolutely I mean we had um on a monthly basis we had one or two days that were visitation days and we would entertain people from all over the country who were coming to see how we were doing it and we would do a whole program for them um that laid it out in terms of what we had to do to uh create the supports and then we take them out to the schools and let them see it in action and um we had literally hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the country for years coming to Scotland and Highgate, Sheldon, Franklin, to see what we were doing and then I decided that it was it was time for a change I did that for about 10 years and went to the University of Vermont where I worked with Susan Hosazi who was you know one of the monumental figures in education in our country and had a five-year stint with her working on a study, a national study to look at how special education is implemented across the country and why if we're all operating under the same federal policy are some states so integrated and some states so segregated and so I got to study academically study um that subject which I worked on in at the ground level for 10 years as a special ed director so it was a it was a great opportunity we ended up writing a a research paper called the um policy analysis of research restricted environment and I had it and that was published in in exceptional children the journal of record for special education but I just found that that was I mean I got my doctorate I was kind of in the higher ed mode it just it didn't have the same feeling to me that I had when I worked in a public school I felt I felt a little too far away from it all removed from the the action and the intimacy of the working with the kids and families yes and and the teachers and your and your partners yeah yeah it was it was something just and it wasn't my sweet spot you know it wasn't what I was best at I was better at the ground level and so I applied for the Principalship at Swanton thinking that well if you want to advocate for kids with disabilities the best way to do that is to be in regular education because that's where they're supposed to be and so I became the principal of Swanton Elementary which is the second largest elementary school in the state they're about set when I was there there were about 700 kids and that's just K through six so that was a for a first Principalship that was a big school but it had just this incredibly talented staff very dedicated teachers and it it was it was a as good as school as I have ever been in not because I was the principal believe me it was when I got there and if anything it was less when I left you know but no but it was it was it was just a nurturing caring community of parents and teachers that felt like everybody belonged and this is a community that about 20 25 percent of the school was abnacky so we had you know a interesting cultural mix and yet at the same time you had a school that was really cohesive and and I think the abnacky community came to realize that the school was a very very supportive of their children and didn't really didn't really differentiate in terms of where you came from or who you were or what your heritage was you know Richard I want to just stop you for a second because for the audience's sake so you're doing this fully integrated school work with kids with special needs from zero to 21 you know in nine around 1998 I'm in Mississippi giving a speech to an audience of special educators and mental health folks and the director of special ed for the state of Mississippi was speaking before me she got up and said my greatest achievement in all my years of being the director of special ed was to make sure 94 142 which was the law that created special education that all kids no matter what level of disability deserve free and appropriate education in their home community she got up to say that we have kept that law out of our state and that's my greatest achievement so here you have this swat in Vermont fully integrating all children no matter what level of disability in in Vermont and at the same time you have a state in the southern part of our country that just kept the walls high and thick and no no entry for any kid with special needs I just want the audience to appreciate what you've been able you were able to do up there well and when we did when I worked with the university of Vermont and I got to travel with Susan and others around the country to uh you know visit um every we had six states and in each state we went to a highly integrated school system a highly segregated school system and then we do interviews at the state level and it is we're just trying to figure out why why do you have the Mississippi's and Vermont's because we're all operating under 94 142 you know it just didn't make sense that if you have federal policy how can there be such a broad interpretation and it really came down to leadership um unlike the effective schools research which said you know leadership at the principal building level we found it was really at the central office level you know when you had superintendents and special ed directors and people of that nature that were kind of driving the train um and providing the resources and supporting the staff and and connecting with parents um that uh that you saw a very different outcome you know a much more integrated outcome um so it was very fortunate to sort of like have the opportunity to step back and look at it what we were doing on a micro level to look at it on a macro level at the initial level um and so I I did the um I was a principal in Swanton for 10 years and then I was a principal in Watesfield for my last five years I thought I would just sort of kick back go to a small school that had more resources and um it was interesting because it's it wasn't easier it wasn't more relaxed enough it was and and the idea of a principal the idea of a principal and kicking back doesn't fit yeah it wasn't it wasn't and the whole you know Swanton was a better fit for me I'm a Swanton kind of guy you know uh you know it was a much lower socioeconomic um uh profile to the town but what I found was that uh even though there were a lot more social problems in Swanton from you know domestic abuse child abuse uh drugs violence you know things of that sort um it was a it was a very engaged community with their children um and they worked with the school more closely and they um they appreciated the school uh deeply in swan I felt um so then I retired in 2008 which it's hard to believe that that's now what um or 14 years 14 years ago um and you know it's it's what's what was funny for me was you know I had I've accumulated four degrees including my doctorate I had worked for 34 years in the field and then all of a sudden it stopped you know and I stepped back and it it turned out I got yanked back in for uh as an interim principal for a principal in Monkton that got sick and wasn't able to continue uh so I helped them out there for uh about a year after but basically I was retired yeah and then when I stopped completely I I switched gears 100 um one of my passions from childhood has always been sailing um I learned how to sail when I was like seven eight years old and when I went to college I pulled a sailboat down to DC on a trailer and parked it behind somebody's barn you know I just have always had a sailboat it might be a dinghy it might be 10 12 13 feet but I always had a sailboat and um and then when I retired I um uh my wife and I decided that she was going to work for a couple more years but that when she retired we would um we would find ourselves a sailboat that we could live on and we would sell our house and and um you know put all of our possessions that we kept in storage and live on a boat and see what happened and so we ended up finding this beautiful boat called Atalanta a 44 foot Little Harbor which is a a Ted Hood designed beautiful sailboat older it was about 25 years old when we bought it and we did some work on it for a couple years got to know it um gave a lot of thought to it and then we moved on board in 2013 started sailing south and my wife who grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota uh not she's not Native American but her father worked for the tribe um the Lakotas and um she spent most of her like third grade to twelfth grade on the reservation um and believe it or not um uh sailing is not a big sport out there I was just gonna say there's no water out there I don't think swimming is a big thing either but he didn't have a swim so um we move on board and she says I'll give you two years of this you know I I can I can do this for two years and uh that was 2013 we came back 2020 um and we we got down and we uh that winter we left the country went into the Bahamas and took what they call the thorny path which is down to the Dominican Republic and across Puerto Rico and through the bvi's and the usvi's and into the Caribbean chain and then landed up for hurricane season in Grenada which is a problem and um spent we we put the anchor down we didn't pick it up for about four months and just became part of a community there that it was it was an incredible experience you know we met all sorts of interesting people from all over the world that had all sorts of incredible experiences and one night we're sitting there with our friends from England Tony and Ann and I think we had way too much to drink and he looks at me and he kind of slurs out you want to go to Suriname and I looked at K and she looked at me and we both said sure you know we didn't even really know where Suriname was I don't think I don't know where Suriname is Suriname is um uh is is uh if you go down to South America around Venezuela past um British Guiana then there's Suriname then there's French Guiana and Brazil so you're about 300 miles from Brazil when you're in Suriname it's the old Dutch Guiana and um we decided that we would do that and so we sailed down to Trinidad and did our preparation made our arrangements and then we sailed seven days to Suriname up the Suriname River into the Amazon and and we we lived up there for two or three months um and just uh you know experience living in the Amazon basin uh and it was this incredible experience just incredible we had a a car that we rented for five dollars a day and um we traveled down to French Guiana and visited the uh the prison that Papillon was in oh my gosh we uh we took uh dug out canoes with giant outboard motors up the Maroney River to a campsite up in maroon territory um just you know saw incredible things the the capital of Paramaribo is a world heritage site it's a a city completely built of wood um the the cathedral and it is wood everything you know and this is the old Dutch Guiana so all the signs are in Dutch um a lot of people speak Dutch there um you know which is not any not a language I I know so but you know we were able to communicate and um uh just had I mean it was a otherworldly experience uh it was it was great what what I mean you've already mentioned a few I what was the most exhilarating thing that you came across in that time there I think you know it was um it was when we we um we got this guy who had a about a 50-foot dugout canoe with a about 100 horsepower Yamaha on it and we hired him to take us up the the Maroney River about four hours and he could take this canoe up the rapids up the rapids and we went to this place where there was a campsite that um belonged to a guy we met in Paramaribo and we stayed there and we visited a maroon school that was up there hiked to these water we hiked to a set of waterfalls where we had to get the permission of the tribal chief before we could go up there um because they they belonged to the they were in his territory um and just experiencing you know the deep jungle with all the wildlife and the uh the natural features of it and the people that we met up there um you know clearly you know a lot of the people we met were were native to that area um but a lot of them were also dutch dutch immigrants um but the maroon indians were the original um they they were escaped slaves from um from the uh the slave trade days wow and they went up into the jungle and they began a uh a very separate community up there wow and they was there was was their language um african or was it only dutch or what no um the people we met they they had their own language um uh i'm sure it was based on their their african um roots but um i couldn't tell you uh i don't remember where what part of africa they were from but i don't think it was the same as the language of their area i think it had kind of over the years um uh more into its own unique um language which was a combination of dutch and that um african language but the uh communication with the native people there was a little bit um difficult just in that we were only the second american boat to ever go up the uh the uh sirin on river um it's it's not a tourist area uh you know there's no infrastructure for you know for tourism um you know we had to uh we had to travel to get fuel and cans and stuff like that um but um it was it was a very very uh it was a fascinating place and we we really enjoyed our time there and then we sailed at a certain point my wife k said um i think if we don't turn around now and start heading back toward the north um we're never going to go back and we were kind of committed on the the coast of south america and didn't really want to um go around the horn or anything like that um that would be a much bigger adventure than either of us were up for yeah and so we turned around and we went back and then we went and explored the western caribbean and we ended up spending quite a bit of time in in guatemala um and we've done the boat guatemala for probably a year and a half um and we we loved guatemala it was uh it was it was beautiful um the only problem there was you had to be very careful because it's a it's not a safe country so you had to pick and choose where you went and where you didn't go um flying in and out of the country was difficult but we uh we did a lot of exploration in the mountains um we lived up in a town called um well what's the name san paedro at atlan and um and uh it was it was it's a beautiful beautiful country rector how did you support financially support yourself through all this was is that your retirement um uh work yeah it it basically my goal was to you know i mean we had saved money and invested it and then because i was an educator fortunately i'm in one of those very few professions where there was a pension right um and then social security so those resources of money generated enough income on a monthly basis to cover our expenses so my goal was that when we get back from this whole adventure that we will not have more money than we had when we left but we won't have less and it worked out it worked out because the biggest expense is maintaining the boat you know keeping the boat up um but the actual day-to-day living expenses are pretty low in these places um when we were in guatemala we were buying our food off of vendors that had their goods on a tarp on the sidewalk you know i mean it was it was it was definitely more of a i don't want to say third world but it was kind of a third world economy yeah so you know the whole the whole economics of it were different um but then we went up we went up and we fell in love with mexico and we lived in mexico for quite a while on an island called islam harris off the cancun and we did a lot of exploration of the yucatan peninsula and the the the mayan ruins and things of that sort and we we loved it there um we and we you know i like to dive um i like to fish um it's you know it was just and mexico is maybe one of the friendliest places i've ever been um you know it felt safe it felt welcoming um and it's uh you know in my opinion the food is just mexican food is just incredible good mexican food is probably one of my favorite cuisines and food in the carribean is not good you know it's it's just there isn't there isn't a lot of good food to be had in most of the places we went so when we got to mexico and all of a sudden you know you've got this really evolved cuisine it's quite quite nice but um yeah we uh we lived in mexico then for um on and off for quite a while and then uh found our way back to uh the united states sailed from islam harris back to uh the dry tortugas off of key west spent a little time there uh visiting uh fort jefferson and and then found our way back up the coast wow wow and ended it all in 2020 wow on that same boat we were on the same boat the whole time yeah the whole time wow wow and then uh but about 2018 or so k had said to me um i need a house so so we bought this house between you and me it's kind of like a noose around my neck but after wandering through the world here so so we uh you know now we're uh we're snow birds so we we love vermont still we uh we live here in the summers in the spring and the fall and uh we got a different boat went over to the dark side got a motorboat and uh in about a week and a half or so we'll leave here and go to uh live in charleston for the winter where we have family and we'll get to visit with a grandchild in one of our sons and nice and uh and uh live down there and then we'll bring the boat back up and we'll be in vermont for the summer so we use our boats in the winter not in the summers yeah yeah right a little bit opposite what most people do and you're doing but you're also boating in the summer here too well i'm a i'm a ferry captain and um one of the things i did before we went on the trip in 2013 was i got my captain's license and uh i have done uh picked up jobs here and there as a delivery captain and a ferry captain i've driven the ticonderoga ferry for a while um but mostly i drive the uh the local motion bike ferry at the cut at um in colchester and colchester south hero and i've been doing that for about five or six years now that's on and off when i was up here in the summers and uh the um the the bike ferry is is a great retirement gig you know the uh local motion is this organization which promotes bicycle tourism in vermont and is involved in bicycle safety for with schools um they rent bicycles they run the ferry they do a lot of political work to try and get um you know rail trails built and to advocate for bicycle um tourism so they bring a lot of tour groups into the state and the bike ferry um two years ago i think it was what was the last time we counted before covid we counted how many people would transport like 35 000 people in a year really yeah it's hugely popular and um it's a great gig you know you you go out there you meet all these happy people in a beautiful place doing something that's recreational and fun and um i i really enjoy that wow um double back to that father who would like to have had you become a doctor or a lawyer how did he resolve this with this son that not only uh committed himself to special education but also voting well the thing was my dad had two recreational passions one was sailing and one was skiing well there you go and he was one of these guys who worked he commuted into new york city every day for 40-some odd years and went to work in a big building doing his banking thing yep you know he was very successful at it but i don't know that he was particularly thrilled with that type of work and um his idea was to make enough money to be able to retire so that he could ski in vermont and boat on lake champlain and at the age of 26 or so he looks at me and he says now wait a minute you're 26 you've got a full-time job you're skiing all the time and you're sailing on lake champlain what what am i doing wrong here so i said well i just i didn't i didn't think it made sense to wait my whole life to do that which brings me pleasure there you go so um i was able to find a balance in my life that um that he became he grew to admire yeah and and he grew to admire the work that i did you know he realized that what i was doing was important and in fact at the age of 70 he became a ski instructor for people with disabilities wow so you know that was his nod to of acceptance to what i had dedicated my work life to wow amazing that's what a tribute to you and your dad yeah but i definitely feel as i look at his life and i look at my life then i i figured it out yeah you figured it out i didn't spend 40 years doing something i didn't really want to do so that i could do something else how about your sister what did she end up doing my sister is a interesting character she um she was a mother of three and you know spent most of her life raising her kids she worked as a in the advertising business for a while as the executive secretary and then she worked for some real estate firms again administrative kinds of jobs but i don't know that she ever found her work to be you know more than a way to make a living support her family and uh yeah and and uh you know put a roof over the head for the kids so you know and now um you know she's she's a little bit older than me so she's she's you know about a pretty quiet life and uh and uh you know we see each other periodically not that often but uh we um because we we live a fair distance away from each other but uh you know there's still a closeness there and we love each other but you know we're not uh we're not we don't have a daily life together yeah yeah and your mother um we talked earlier and you're she's reaching a hundred years old but where did she fit into the kaleidoscope of Richard Shatman well it's that's a good question um she she's not reaching 100 she is 100 she is she she she she passed that mark uh in july wow i keep trying to tell her you know you're really 101 because your birthday is celebrating the end of your hundred you're really in your 101st year um she hates it when i do that um but um she um she she she was a very quintessentially typical 50s stay-at-home mom raising the kids um and then when we grew up and moved out um she really didn't uh she was of an age where she didn't really have a profession or a work life so she ended up doing things that were more typically you know social with other friends her age um belonged to a few organizations that did charitable work things of that sort but you know all in all she's had again a pretty quiet life and now that she is over a hundred she feels very uh she still lives in the same house that i grew up in okay yeah so when i go to visit her which i will in a few days um i'm going back to the house i grew up in when wow two-year-old it's a little creepy amazing that's a that's a lot of continuity that's a lot of continuity so we um but you know her life has become very small because you know she she can walk with a walker but you know she's not that steady um so she has to be careful um most of her friends are are gone you know very few of them if any are are still around so she you know remarkably there are the children of what uh next door of are the same as when i grew up they've taken the parents house um but pretty much my mother lives a very uh isolated and quiet life she has a companion that helps her and um you know it's uh i think she's doing very well for a woman her age but she is a hundred yep wow so you've had a part of the problem is also you know you end up with uh losing your hearing your eyesight starts to go you know she can't watch television she can't read you know um that's not audio books are hard for her now and you know so it's it's uh you know it gets very small yeah i'm sure she'll be happy to see you in a couple days oh yeah she's looking forward to it yes so richard we're coming to the end of our time together but is there when you think about the the length and richness of your life to anything that stands out recognitions uh personal achievements um how would you how would you summarize this wonderful life of yours well i think you know we touched on it a little bit when i talked to you earlier but um i think part of it's just a willingness to takes chances um you know to do things which are not familiar um and you know sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't sometimes you have a great experience and sometimes you go well i won't be doing that again um but uh you know i think that uh you know just sort of recognizing that time changes us and time changes everything around us and you've got to sort of you know not hold on to you know oh the good old days you know i mean the old days for me were pretty good um but i but they're over and i'm looking forward to some different things in the future i don't know what they are i'm not much of a planner um you know i well i do plan but not that far in advance and and uh you know my uh my thought is that things will become evident um things will open up if you if you if you're open to them so i'm looking forward to the next 10 years or so but i also expect you know that i won't be doing the same kinds of things i mean i had a revelation the this past winter this past winter was the first winter i didn't have a boat um and so i was up here for the winter and um i was in between boats and so i got a ski pass and i used to be like a a really good advanced double black diamond bumpski or type guy because my knees feel so good today but uh i got back out there and i realized that like i can't do that anymore you know i can't i can't go down the same trails anymore i have to take it easy i enjoyed it but yeah i'm gonna do it differently um so i mean there's a certain i think part of how the next 10 15 years if i'm lucky enough to have them though is going to be dependent on my willingness to accept the fact that you know there are new adventures out there and there are new experiences to be had but i'm not the same person i was 10 15 20 years ago yeah i can't do the same kinds of things and so i don't want to dwell on that because i'm sure there are things that i can do that i couldn't do back then that's right and that's what i'm looking forward to yes you've had you know listening to you this last hour so you have had that almost an uncanny ability to say to let go of even things you love doing to try something else when you left swat and to go to waitfield to be the principal there other people might have just held on to that swat and job and followed a day or laid it out even beyond when they probably should have but you have the ability to just keep moving on to the next adventure um and then learn from that to inform the next place yeah and and one of the things that we haven't talked about um is you know just my whole relationship with my children um and uh you know my biology my the children that i had when you know the brought to the this brady bunch group that we have now um rachel is 40 years old this year and kaitlyn is 34 and they're both uh they both have their own successful interesting lives and are doing very well but you know they're my relationship to them also has changed dramatically over the years when they were little they needed something different than what they know and uh while we were we all love each other and we're all very close to each other um the relationships are different and you know i struggle sometimes more with that than i do with something you know what i'm doing with my own life uh in terms of activity um this you know you you just cherish those uh the intimacy of raising a child you know it's just so you're so entwined with each other and now you know it's independent that's the ultimate letting go isn't it our children it is it is and and letting go but not losing touch right exactly yeah exactly so i feel i feel fortunate but any any last words you'd like to share with the audience about your life um words of advice well you know you had you had one question down here it said do you have any favorite quotes i think this would be a good way to end that'd be one one of my favorite um movies or play actually was a play um by herb gardener 1964 play called uh a thousand clowns and uh in the movie it was played by jason robarts and he had this one line that stuck with me and it was uh if life isn't fun and it's just one long dental appointment i try to remember that all the time that's a good line great line richard thank you for being on the show and sharing your life with us and um it's a good life thank you i'm to celebrate with you yeah it's fun to reminisce and great to see you again same year