 God we can't thank you enough for being here today. It's a pleasure and what a wonderful break in the weather to be here at the winter meeting for Purdue. Absolutely. Great time. So tell us about your journey at Purdue. You're from Vanward, Ohio. Yes. How did you find out about Purdue? What was your first number? Farboy from Vanward. At the time, well I knew from the time I was a little kid that I wanted to be a pilot and went through building model airplanes and remote control airplanes and was able to solo at the local airport on my 16th birthday and get my private license on my 17th birthday which is the youngest you can do that. And Purdue at the time was the only school in the country that had a four-year degree in aviation technology and they were the only university in the world to have a supplemental or a charter airline and so all the team sports were carried on Purdue airplanes and that was part of the training program at the university level. The first year was traditional courses math and science and English and speech and all of that but then everything else was at at the airport and you were being trained at the airline to be a co-pilot on back then I'm going to date myself 1968 DC3s which exist primarily in museums these days and four engine DC6s and then the year I graduated, unfortunately for me, they moved to a jet fleet of DC9s and those Royal passenger airplanes and team sports and military called CAM, civil air movements for the military, it was an awesome program and again there wasn't anything like it in the world and it certainly was by the grace of God that I was accepted to Purdue it wasn't my transcript in high school because I was always looking out the window in high school wanting to be at the airport and so you know one size does not fit all in education I spent a lot of time in K through 12 with our foundation trying to improve public education in my found home of Tennessee, Greenville, Tennessee but the experience at Purdue was just absolutely amazing and again it was one of a kind it was a preeminent program in the world and it's still a pretty good program. Sure is. So tell us you know a favorite story or memory you know you're always at that Purdue airport what's what's something that really stands out to you as a student? Oh gosh I'm not sure I should tell this one because it is the first one that came to mind. So in the summertime that we would take the DC3s and they had lined up chargers all summer long from Minneapolis to take fishermen, sportsmen up into almost the edge of the Arctic Circle way up into Canada a place called Reindeer Lake that had a 3,000 foot gravel strip and a DC3 with 24 passengers could land on that gravel strip. Well I was one of the first ones to go from my class up there and you did it two weeks at a time and it was wonderful it was wonderful the fishing was great and it didn't hurt that the lodge was staffed by co-eds from the University of Saskatchewan. When I got up there and kind of fell in love with it I came back and I told my roommate I'm like man you do not want to go up there the mosquitoes will carry you out of that place you really don't want to go and so I talked him in to not taking that rotation so I could go back up and continue my flying experience and maybe other experiences as well. Certainly fishing I'm sorry that's the first one you got to go with your gun share that one so do you have any professors or mentors within your time at Purdue? Yes I'm so glad you asked me that question the chairman of the professional pilot technology program was a wonderful man by the name of Charles Holloman Charlie Professor Holloman and I'd been there the first semester and there are only like 16 in my class so we got to know him very well and I was homesick girlfriend was in Ohio here I am 18 years old at Purdue which was a big campus then but only half as big as it is today it felt really big to me then and I wanted to go home and I told him that and so we sat down in his office one evening and he convinced me that I needed to stay and see this program through and because of him I stayed with this program that in retrospect was absolutely an elite elite program and I'm so thankful for him and he at I believe 91 or 92 this past fall was inducted into the Indiana Aviation Hall of Fame and I got to go to that event and once again thank him for everything that he had meant to me and without him I would not have continued the program but that wasn't uncommon then for professors to be that close and that helpful and very interested in their student and that continues today regardless of the number of students Purdue is exceptional because of the staff and faculty that they have there in caring for the student what would you say you know if you hadn't followed through with Purdue and had gone back to Ohio you know there's all these things that aligned right and it happened after you graduated what looking back you know what did what does what did Purdue mean to your to your life and after graduation well I need to continue a little bit of the first I guess the first question but because they were in a supplemental airline it was your curriculum was really applied science in every sense of the word you got to work in operations of the airline you got to work in weather you got to work in dispatch I got to see all of that and I'll bring you back then I'll tie that one off in a minute but had it not been for the Purdue education I'd have been a very happy pilot for some corporation or some airline for the balance of my life from that point forward but because of that experience that I just told you about after I had accepted a job with the Magnavox company flying a corporate airplane that was based in Tennessee they asked me to start a freight service with a small freighter and that led to the creation of a of a cargo airline with big airplanes called general aviation and we had 38 big airplanes flying every night in scheduled service but had it not been for Purdue and the experience of everything I learned through that airline I would never have known how to get started and start my own cargo airline so that was kind of a kind of a one-off that that that was able to happen we sold that to a public company the cargo airline about 10 years in just as trucking was deregulated and when trucking was deregulated that meant you could move multiple types of of cargo commodities between any two city pairs before that it was very very regulated and so a lot of those small routes from Charlotte to Indianapolis to Chicago we could take trucks and make that same service overnight and that began a company called land air which we took public okay forever changed my life on let's see the week before Thanksgiving 1993 and then in 98 we took the second company that would specify that just did air cargo for the major airlines of the world over 100 of the airlines of the world moving the freight from a gateway to the interior of the United States called that deliver America we took forward air public and so from that very humble beginning where we put $2,500 into a bank account to pay for the gas for the first truck we took those public and today the sales are about of those two companies about 2.2 billion and I signed my a lot of personal endorsements but $2,500 that was all we ever put into it and forward air room we converted land air to a more philanthropic endeavor where the free cash flow from land air we were able to create in this belt of Appalachia Greenville Tennessee where I live which borders western North Carolina eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia go into these rural very small public schools and put in math and science programs and this has grown now that has enabled us to we're over 500 high schools we're in every high school in Tennessee teaching online AP STEM coursework 19 of them you can actually get college credits for all of those if you score higher high enough so the foundation is now in every public high school in the state of Tennessee and this creation of these companies enable that to happen and I'm still sitting on the board of Forward Air which is based in this little town in 250 or 300 corporate employees and land air has 150 corporate employees and that makes a difference it doesn't make a difference in a city like Indianapolis or Chicago or Atlanta but those kind of jobs in a town of 20,000 people really make a difference and so if it all ends today it's been a beautiful ride none of it would have been possible without Purdue University and I mean that from the bottom of my heart you know you talked about bringing STEM courses to to these public schools rural areas why was that so important for you did you have that that type of coursework in Ohio for example before you got to Purdue that's a great question the first place I saw online coursework was at Purdue University and this would have been over 20 years ago okay and the foundation is just 20 years old this past year and there was a class a technology class working with online lifetime with a class at Stuttgart Germany and I'm like wow that's really the future of how you can deliver excellent coursework at a very affordable price and when you're representing in in our region we have one high school called Clinch on the Kentucky Tennessee border that has just 53 to 56 students a year in the entire high school they're too far to bust to a mega school and so through online learning they have a number of AP courses available to them we put math and science labs in and so they have the ability now to go on to higher education and have had the same sort of rigorous coursework that you might have in a high school with 1200 people that can afford the on-site teacher sure that's incredible gosh did I answer the question yes no now you you've you told me a little bit about this story last night but I want all of our listeners to hear it too so you've with your foundation donated to create a children's hospital in Tennessee tell us about about that story and you know why you were so passionate about that oh gosh you got to make me emotional on this one so part of our foundation work nice longer foundation is also taking young people from that region who have expressed uh an interest in and getting higher ed returning in some specialty and we'll send them to the best school in America and we've had three of them at Purdue I might want more one more but one of those that we had accepted was diagnosed with cancer and had to go to st. Jude's hospital in Memphis and um the family was forever split up because of that they stayed in the mom had to quit her job they lived in a Ronald McDonald house in Memphis for almost 17 months and the good news is child's cancer free to this day but I was saying to our director of the foundation at the time like buzz how can we get better health care for the people the children of our region if you drew a hundred mile circle around there you'd have over a million people and I've forgotten how many tens of thousands of children obviously and so I just called the local hospital and they said you know we've been trying to build a freestanding children's hospital but we just we can't fund it and so in conjunction with east Tennessee state university where there are several Purdue people I might add on faculty they have a medical center and a pharmacy school and so in conjunction with them I said I'll build the hospital for our children if we can get a st. Jude's clinic and at that time there were six or seven there may be seven or eight or nine today and so they said well we're not sure that's possible because we're on this end of Tennessee St. Jude's is on the other end of Tennessee so I went to a man by the name of Bill Evans who was at the time he's still at St. Jude's as far as I know but he was the CEO and he was again because the mothership is in Memphis the other end of Tennessee he wasn't he didn't think that that would work but I guess a god moment occurred here and we were I explained to him that if you turn Tennessee north and south we're 30 miles closer in eastern Tennessee we're 30 miles closer to Windsor Ontario Canada than we are Memphis it's 500 miles to Memphis and he took note of that and I just asked him to take then take it to his board and as did several other people involved from ETSU and long story short the god moment occurred and Bill called and said we're going to do this we are going to put the seventh affiliate clinic of St. Jude's in eastern Tennessee and so today our children and the one other thing I said to Bill was what I'd really like for you to consider and your board to consider is that the children of eastern Tennessee western north Carolina eastern Kentucky southwestern Virginia can have the same health care as the children in Memphis and so it happened and we're getting ready to double that was 10 or 12 years ago we're getting ready to double the size of the children's hospital this fall what did you feel like when you got that phone call I think you may have just noticed my expression and it was a lot like that it was a divine moment to say the least that that was going to occur and that that began that project right then that's incredible it really is now you're an entrepreneur you've served on all different types of business capacities you've had a very successful career are there any challenges that you had to overcome throughout your years I'm sure there have been but how did you overcome those challenges well you hear this a lot it may be an overused phrase but I truly mean this whatever success I've had I owe a large part to others and it was being able to bring people to the dream and say we can do this and have them buy into the dream that we're much more capable at a particular skill set within a business than I was I'm a pretty good generalist know a little bit about most everything but not a lot about accounting and finance and so we were able to put together this wonderful team of people that allowed us to take two two companies public with 2,500 bucks invested any have so uh so you're here you know in Naples for for the president's council and you're still involved with Purdue aviation I can tell how much you love Purdue what is what is being part of this community and this family mean to you yeah well it's uh it's something that I'll take with me forever and for the university to allow me to continue to be involved is um it it just amazing and things that we're accomplishing up there again and who knows we may uh like the movie title back to the future maybe we can get back to the future where we've got bigger aircraft that can move the teams around and and do that internally and and like my class get the experience of actual actual learning applied science and how an airline works and do you have any favorite Purdue traditions traditions like watching games or tail do you ever go back to tailgames well we I don't get to come up too often okay but I get to one or two football games and um going to Maryland this uh to the Maryland game when we take a group back up and in my plane to uh to Lafayette on Sunday going to go to the Maryland game and then I'm trying to get grandson number three I've had two grandsons that went through the sales and and marketing major at Purdue who're doing pretty good and so I'm trying to get number three of eight I hope I'm here to see all of them a couple of them are pretty small um I'm going to take him to the Indiana game and and get him in there and see if he can't catch the boiler up spirits I think that's a perfect game to take him to to expose this it's the one where it would be the craziest yeah and I think he'll enjoy that what does you know you said you just said two grandsons went to Purdue what is what does this mean to your family and and just you know everything that Purdue has given to you over the years and now given to your grandsons well yeah I'm trying to give it back and um I um I tell my tell my children that I don't want to deprive them of understanding the joy of working for a living and the self-esteem that that will bring to them by doing their own we have four children and three of them are are in education and teachers and so you can't take it with you and so without Purdue none of this would have been possible I mean that very sincerely it would not have been possible and so to be participating in Purdue aviation and giving back to the program that really set me up for success is where I want to spend my time that and then K through 12 education and making sure that the kids have a purpose when they come out yeah do you have any stories to expand on that of a student who you know went through because of your program and is now a pilot or an engineer or any type of STEM related career I have 101 stories of we have 101 scholars that have either completed the program I guess we have maybe 20 that are in universities now across the country that have been wildly successful and it isn't about what they make it's about having the heart and the passion for what they want to do we've had a lot of great educators we've got a lot of great doctors that have come out the head of the radiology department who did an MRI on me last year this was a really full circle right to have him the head of radiology is one of one of our scholarship students but it's more than the money it's a leadership training program where each summer we have the kids for two weeks and we bring in leaders in business education government to meet with them as a matter of fact we have Mitch Daniels coming this summer to talk to the talk to the the the alums will come back for that and the ones in the current program talk about politics and and what he has seen as governor and so it's a leadership training program as much as anything the capstone of that is the last thing I want these young people to see is Normandy so we take our plane and we go from Little Greenville Tennessee seven hours and 25 minutes later they wake up and we're in London England we do the Churchill bunker we do everything spend a couple of days there and nights channeled of Paris spent a night there but the rest of the time we're out in the the farms of Normandy and we have a guide that we've worked with for years that lives there to tell them about the World War II experience and when you see and they're not being taught that today and when you see these young people for the first time look out over gray over 10,000 graves with young people who are younger most of them younger than they are laying there in the field it it's impactful that freedom is not free and and they're not learning much about that so we give them a little Ohio flag to represent where I grew up in a Tennessee flag pencil and tracing pad we say now go find someone from Tennessee on those markers and someone from Ohio and they'll trace the names and everything and with today's internet capabilities then we have them look up who these young people were and where they were from and it's impactful but they learn the responsibility and what it took from those that have gone before them for them to be able to enjoy today's freedom sure that's a really unique experience for them it is it really is is there anything when you look back that you would have done differently I had a word harder than I said that I work the only part I really want to let's go fly yeah I would have focused a little a little bit more but at that age we've all been there you got to have some fun too you turned out okay no it worked out when you look back to it's it's really unique that you've wanted to be a pilot since you were a little yeah so I'm 12 years old and writing the tricycle in your hometown was in the flight path Fort Lane Bear Field was in the flight path right over my home and I'd see those airplanes letting down and I want to do that so I started building model airplanes and then my aunt gave me for my 12th birthday 25 dollars to go to the airport take an introductory ride well back then it was just five or six bucks so and a little two-seater araca champ and so I did that and that was it I knew for sure that's what I wanted to do so I was my mom always she couldn't find me she just called the airport because she knew that's where I was and I'd wash airplanes wax airplanes sweep the floor anything to get the next flying lesson and so I had a scads of time back then you'd have 40 hours to get to get a private license I don't know how much time I had because I'd worked at the airport but I was able to get that solo on my 16th birthday and then as I said I got my private I've been telling this story for so long I told one of my classmates who Jim Rice who lives in Dallas and and was went through the program went to Magnavox went into the Air Force in an air guard unit in Fort Wayne where his father had flown and became the chief pilot of Southwest Airlines and retired just a few years ago I said Jim I've been telling this story about soloing on my 16th birthday my private on the 17th and I got weathered out on my 18th birthday to get my commercial for so long I'm not sure it's true so I found my original logbook and I was relieved to find out the story I've been telling for 50 60 years is in fact true was that really helpful for you to have that before you got to Purdue where your classmates kind of intimidated in in no in professional pilot technology you had to come with I believe you had to come with a commercial license or get it in the first year you were there and and that was part of that program and then about that same time they then began taking we call it zero to hero young people with no flight experience at all and take them all the way through what I've just described to you at the university and in a four-year then in a four-year program we talked about this a little bit but why is it important to you to stay so involved with Purdue and with the aviation program well first of all I love aviation I can't tell no I know I'll try not to hide it but um and to just be around young the young people you know I was once there and so to any extent that I I can help them overcome some possible mistakes or things I would have done differently uh just to be around them it just keeps me young it keeps me invigorated I don't ever want to stop what does the the voiler maker spirit mean to you when you're going to that Purdue IU game with your grandson what are you going to feel like I'll be very emotional like everyone else else there but you know the dinner that we're going to have tomorrow night where we have in my opinion the best leader in higher education in certainly in the country the world the world and um everything Purdue does is done well or they won't do it the other activity I have fortunate enough to participate in at Purdue is the Purdue research foundation which has 20 or 25 startup companies coming out of the university every year have created thousands of jobs for Indiana kids and kids all over the world but being able to participate in that is truly an honor for me and so having tried to learn as much as I could in my region at ETSU East Tennessee State University we have created the ETSU research corporation well as you might imagine it pretty much mirrors a university about 350 miles to the north of the west and so I've been able to bring a lot of the things that I've been continuing education yeah four years you're not done that's just the beginning and so that my continuing education is through working with wonderful board members Brian Elba man wonderful leadership Dan Hasler before him leading that program that is just world-class so I've taken a few of those things a few of my notes back to Tennessee and say here's what we need to do to create 21st century jobs in our region we suffered heavily at NAFTA when NAFTA occurred Ross Perot was right when he said that giant sucking sound you hear will be jobs moving to Mexico well that was the first step and then to Asia we lost all the magnum box had 3200 employees in a town of 10,000 people so labor was imported we had a half a dozen furniture companies Asia we lost all of that we were the largest dairy producing county in green county Tennessee in Tennessee that all disappeared to mega farms in Ohio a lot of our milk comes on the store shelf comes from Texas and one dairy in Chattanooga but we went from 110 small dairy farms which made great employees for all the manufacturing bays to now we're down to under 10 dairies in in this lush green county of 600 square miles right at the foot of the mountains and so being able to go from 20 unemployment through having great leadership of my companies that allowed me to spend a lot of time in economic development it's made a difference where we're about the national average for unemployment now but the type of jobs we had to completely retool for something that wasn't just assembly work and now we're really focused with the additions to the hospital and the medical school at ETSU to medical devices startups research docs bringing them to the region it'll take a couple of decades but we're changing those jobs to very high technology jobs within the region again I go back to Purdue I saw it there and I see it every time I go to a prf board meeting and I remember what really worked and I take it back home and we apply it to rural east Tennessee what you've done so much for that that area you've really impacted a lot of families I'm sure what what does that mean to you well having seen this in and and what can be led me to how can I how can I help whether helping see government in a redevelopment project or downtown being able to contribute to the medical facilities there and our school says there are 146 school systems in Tennessee and Greenville City Schools is either depending on the year one two or three in the state of Tennessee and one year very recently they actually beat Oak Ridge well Oak Ridge schools that area has more PhDs per capita than any county in America because of the Oak Ridge national labs and so to see our school systems being lifted up our kids having the rigorous coursework it takes to be successful at higher education has been tremendously rewarding for me and and the community has been accepting of that and it's just been a wonderful place to live and work and raise our family you touched on President Daniels a bit ago what what do you think his leadership how do you think that's impacted Purdue where do you start where do you start I first before I answer that I just the thought that came to my mind was I just saw his commencement dress may where he comes in on the motorized couch yeah I mean most people at that level take themselves way too seriously they forget that everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time in the morning but he doesn't but to have some if you read his book to have someone of his intellect and his background and business acumen through Lily yeah state government federal government be able to bring that all in at the university level there were those that were skeptical at first and no one's skeptical anymore and you don't see many presidents of higher ed on CNBC but you see him and he's well respected in not only higher ed but in every business circle that I know of they know who Mitch Daniels is yeah and I couldn't be broader is there anything else you want to share with our listeners I think you about worn me out I did not mean to wear you out I'm telling you no I think you probably got more out of me than you should it well we so much appreciate your time and we love talking to you and hearing all your stories yeah well thank you thank you