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Sept. 14, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
19:30
Simply, Mr. Crawford
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast today.
I got a special story for you, just on the other side of the break.
I want to remind us all, I think all the time we need, we hear so much about our military.
We hear so much about the issue of recruitment being down.
We hear so much about generations that are so into themselves and me generations and others.
It's a good reminder that there was a generation That went to war, not having a timeframe of coming home.
They were just saying, you'll go, you either die or we're done.
They didn't have the luxuries of phones and emails and everything else.
They went, they served, they did their duty, and then they came home.
And when they came home, they came back to real world.
They came back to real life.
And today, after the break, I want to share with you a story and some leadership lessons about this gentleman that I think hopefully will make you sit back, ponder, and realize, you know, hey, there's important things in life, and maybe each day we ought to find those important things.
So we'll be with you right after the break.
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All right, folks.
I'm going to read some of this to you, and this comes out of a civvy supply.
Several articles have been written about this, but I want you to hear about it.
We think about people and coming back and heroes and what that actually entails in this world.
And especially with football season, I love football season as much as the next.
You know that here on the podcast.
And we talk about heroes and we throw it around loosely.
You know, this football player is a hero or this basketball player is a hero.
No, no, they're people that you look up to.
But hero is a different classic category for me.
And I want you to listen to this as we talk about this.
And this happened in 1943. The gentleman's name was William Crawford.
In 1943, Crawford's squad was pinned down by machine gun fire.
And without waiting for orders or to be told to do so, or what to do, Crawford leapt up, rushed the enemy, knocked out the machine gun nest single-handedly.
But there were two more nests still pinning them down further up the hill.
So he did it again, and then again.
By the end of his charge, Crawford was the one firing on the enemy, turning their own weapons against the Nazis as they ran away.
He was still covering his squad when he was captured and taken POW. Unable to find him, his battle buddies assumed he hadn't made it.
But he wasn't dead, and he survived the war, making it through the horrors of Nazi prison camp with the same steadfast purpose that had led him to charge three enemy machine gun nests single-handedly.
After his camp was liberated, he returned to his family, who he had just received.
Now, get this.
This received his posthumous, in other words, after death, Medal of Honor in the mail, recognized his actions on that day in Italy in 1943. When Crawford returned, it was a miracle.
His family rejoiced, and he soon reenlisted, serving soldiers he loved for many years before he retired.
After he had enlisted at this point, retired, he still had to go to work and had to have bills to pay, his mouths to be fed, and this was a Medal of Honor winner who was very heroic.
But he got a job.
Now, many of you are thinking, well, he got a job maybe as a spokesman for some defense company, or he got a job commentating on...
News.
Well, this was a long time ago in a different place.
And he went and it just shows the character of William Crawford, Bill Crawford.
He got a quiet job, a humble job.
He took a job as a janitor at the United States Air Force Academy.
The cadets only knew him as Mr. Crawford.
He never brought up his own story.
He never talked about his experience.
He never told them it was a Medal of Honor recipient.
Instead, every day, he just went in, picked up the trash in the trash cans, cleaned their bathrooms.
As a student would remember, there was nothing really.
He was just sort of unimpressive.
He was, as they would say, a janitor.
But Crawford was comfortable being a servant to others, the story goes.
He had nothing to prove to anyone.
He simply served quietly and professionally.
He wore a new uniform, the blue-collar uniform of a civilian, but he hadn't stopped serving others.
It was years later when a cadet just happened to be reading about Medal of Honor winners and ran across an account of William Crawford, who had received the Medal of Honor for the Second World War.
The black and white photo of William Crawford or Bill Crawford looked like a lot like Mr. Crawford, the janitor.
When he was confronted with the picture, Mr. Crawford said, yeah, that's me.
And he continued to sweep.
Well, as you can imagine, the Corps of Cadets were amazed that someone who was a janitor was a Medal of Honor winner.
Ultimately, he was going to be a beloved figure and celebrated figure within the campus community.
They went from just simply, you know, Mr. Crawford, but they would talk to him and it became a respect.
An interesting format for someone who was once just thought of as a janitor.
But that heroic act in World War II and the Medal of Honor winner became someone that they then looked at in a different light.
There was a Colonel now, Colonel Moskatt, who was at one of those cadets, and he later went on to do 10 leadership lessons.
I'm going to read a few of those to you here in just a few minutes.
Mr. Crawford died in 2020, in 2000, but his spirit lives on in the way that you would hope it would.
And that is the many, many of those who served, just like Crawford.
They went from trading weapons to come home and to run forklifts, to run, you know, trucks, to build houses, to be plumbers, to be electricians, to be dads, to be baseball coaches, football coaches, coach Little League, be a part of Kiwanis, Rotary.
They went back, they were accountants and lawyers and doctors, and they all just went back to being who they were.
You know, it's one thing to think that your service demands a level of respect.
It's one thing to think that because you have rose to a certain level, that you should be treated differently.
The reality is, is when you look at folks like Bill Crawford, who had the Medal of Honor, who No matter the rank of the person in the military who comes across a Medal of Honor winner, no matter how much higher in rank they are, is to treat them with respect and honor of what they've done.
And to see that he went and took a job as a servant, as a janitor at the United States Air Force Academy, never told anybody about what he did, should remind us, maybe in all of us, That as we look around the world today, as we look around our daily activities, maybe it's that waitress that you never say hey to.
She writes on your table all the time and the most you'll do is give her your order and maybe give her a little tip and move on.
Have you ever thought about talking to them?
How about the bus driver?
How about the person at work, that quiet person at work that always just does their job and then goes home, they come back, they're always there, they're always dependable.
In fact, you know, it's always the dependable ones that sort of blend into the woodwork.
It's the dependable ones that bleed into the sort of the color of the carpet, if you would, because they're always there.
They're not causing trouble, they're not causing situations, but yet because they are there, things get done.
And today in our society, and I'm as guilty as anyone in others, we all like to have our moment in the sun.
We like our publicity.
We like our tweets.
We like our opinions.
We like everything else.
But it's always a good reminder that no matter how high you go in life, you came from somewhere.
And that everybody, no matter where they start in life, deserves the same dignity and respect, no matter what they've done.
And for someone...
Like Bill Crawford, who saved many lives, who did so in such a way that after the fact, never draw attention to what he was perfectly justified in doing.
He could have been on the speaking circuit.
He could have went and said, I'm a Medal of Honor winner.
Look at me.
He never did.
He was a janitor at the Air Force Academy.
Kids had no idea.
But when they found out, they started treating him differently.
The question would be is, why would they have treated him differently?
Was there not a level of respect for someone who gets up and cleans the trash cans and cleans the bathrooms and does it in the floors every day?
I'll tell you as a person, when I was in the Georgia legislature, there was a couple of guys who cleaned our offices and worked there, and they'd worked in the state capitol for years.
They knew more about the state capitol.
They knew more about the workings than anybody else there, because everybody just assumed they were just cleaning the offices.
And they could hear.
They could see.
They knew what people were doing.
And they knew information.
And these people were valued, not by many, but by some, because they were human beings who had had a lot of experience.
And frankly, for me, I talked to them a lot of times, and I found that information that other members would never know.
Why?
Because they never took the time to ask.
They knew who was working late, who wasn't working late, who was having a meeting with who.
You know, again, it's not your high-powered lobbyist all the time that knows whatever's happening.
It may not be even the other members who know it's happening.
But, you know, sometimes those people that go around the halls and open the doors and clean the carpets and empty the trash cans, they can see who's in offices.
They know who's walking around.
They don't ever say anything.
They know who's there.
They don't go sell their story to the Inquirer.
They don't sell their story to the New York Times or anywhere else.
They just simply do their job.
And when people are nice to them and kind to them, and they respond in kind, you form a friendship.
And you find out what they know in life.
You find out where they go in life.
And you find out that they are just as important as anybody else wearing a name tag in a building.
Colonel Muscat wrote out 10 leadership lessons that he learned from Bill Crawford.
I'm going to read some of them to you.
He said, number one is be cautious of labels.
I agree with him.
Labels you place on people may define your relationship to them and bound their potential.
Sadly, for a long time, we labeled Bill as just a janitor, but he was so much more.
Therefore, be cautious of a leader who callously says he's just an airman.
Likewise, don't tolerate the old one who says, I can't do that.
I'm just a lieutenant.
Don't label yourself and don't label others.
Let them Help them be all that they can be.
Look, I go by saying I've never missed anything that I've ever gave away.
And I think that is true.
That is also another quote that I live, try to live by is from Zig Zig.
If I help enough people in life get what they want, I'll get what I want.
And I think when you label people, you can tend to move those down.
And one of the other things he talked about was everyone deserves respect.
And he deserved respect.
And here was a Medal of Honor winner who all of a sudden gained respect, but he should have had respect just simply because he was a human being doing a job.
I think one of the great quotes out of this, if you want to take a different tack, was for those of us who grew up in the 80s, the movie The Breakfast Club and the janitor in The Breakfast Club.
I rest my case.
Even the kids look down on the janitor.
And he made a comment.
He said, I see everything that goes on.
I know what you do.
I know where you hide everything.
You know, you may look down on people, but don't look down.
Everybody deserves respect.
Courtesy makes a difference.
Beyond, you know, from a military perspective, beyond just a salute, beyond a welcome, beyond in your business life, beyond saying, hey, how you doing?
Actually getting to know people.
You'll be amazed at how that turns and translates into people getting to know you.
Take time to know your people.
This is important.
If you're a boss, if you're leading a company, get to know your people.
Know what makes them tick.
Not everybody's gonna respond the same.
Not everybody's gonna do it the same way.
And not everybody is gonna have the same motivation factors.
Find out what your people respond to and get out there.
And the only way you can do that is by actually getting to know them.
You know, anyone can be a hero.
You never know.
That quiet person in your office that never does anything could end up being the one that makes the biggest sale, that has the biggest impact on the community, has the biggest impact on the life of your company.
You know, the junior sales associate, if you own a store, If you don't train them, if you don't teach them how to help people, if you don't train them to give people the respect that they deserve, then that one person, you could spend a billion dollars on every senior management and everything looking in the store looking perfect or everything in your department going well.
But if you're not training those that have contact with the public or those that can actually affect your business, then you're making a mistake.
Leaders would be humble.
We've seen a lot in life where the end zone celebration is the thing that everybody looks for.
And they don't realize that down the field, the one who actually caught maybe the pass or run the ball, there was linemen up there who were pushing who don't really get to celebrate.
You know, they try to encourage them, but it's always the one that does it.
Everybody has a part in the team.
when no job is beneath a leader.
Thank you.
And a marijuana winner, if he can clean the trains and he can do those kind of jobs, then you can too.
Martin Luther King once said, if life makes you a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be.
Mr. Crawford modeled that philosophy and helped our dormitory, make our dormitory area home.
Look, Do the best you can where you're at.
I go by the philosophy of Teddy Roosevelt.
He said, bloom where you're planted.
No matter where you're at right now, listen to this podcast.
No matter what you're doing right now, whether you're 20 years old, you're 50 years old, you're 80 years old, wherever you're at, bloom where you're planted.
And that's hard sometimes because there's always times we want to be somewhere else.
We want to do something else.
We think we deserve something else.
No, you only get in life where you're at and then you go from there.
So if you're in a position you don't like right now, do it the absolute best that you can possibly be.
And I guarantee you somebody will notice.
They might not notice tomorrow.
They might not notice a week from now.
But they will notice.
And you're gaining respect from those around you because they know that you're going to do your job every day in and out the way it should be done.
And no job is beneath a leader.
And for leaders, you know, look, if you're asking your folks to work late and you're leaving early, you're not going to get any help.
They're going to leave.
If you're asking them to work late, you ought to have been working late before you asked them to work late.
If you're asking them to clean up, then you need to clean up.
Just be a part...
Look, you're not going to...
Leaders have different responsibilities, and you can't always be the ones to turn tables over and put tables up and clean the trash cans and everything else, but you can some.
And don't just expect others to do it for you.
And everywhere you go, life is just a leadership...
I hear so many times people go out and they try to spend thousands of dollars going to leadership seminars.
They read leadership books and everything over and over and over again.
But the reality is, life is your best leadership laboratory.
Look around.
See those around.
See what they're doing.
See how they experience life in their families, in their places.
You do that, And then you will be able to make a difference.
Short lesson today, but one I think that we all need to remember.
If a Medal of Honor winner can clean a trash can, so can you.
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