Steve And Lambrecht: Episode 1155

Transcript

[0:00:45] HA: Hey, if you’re a fan of movies like Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October, and Forest Gump, you’re going to love this epic tale of struggle, tenacity, and heroism. Welcome to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I’m joined by authors, Steve and Ron Lambrecht. We’re here to talk about their new book, called Boundless Brothers: Two Warriors from the Heartland, One Mission for the Homeland. Let’s flip through it. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the show. I’m super excited to have these “boundless brothers” with me today. Steve and Ron, welcome to the Author Hour show. How are you guys doing today?

[0:01:25] Steve And Lambrecht: I’m doing great, thank you for the invitation.

[0:01:27] RL: Yeah, it’s great.

[0:01:28] HA: Yeah, thank you for coming on today. I really appreciate you. So I had the privilege of sort of swimming through your book in the last 12 hours or so and just kind of picking up some golden nuggets here and there and I learned a lot man, you two have gone through so much, and such an experience and so many stories. I’m really excited to get into them. However, I always like to set the foundation out and share with our audience a little bit about who you two are, perhaps where you grew up and maybe one person that’s sort of had a really positive influence on your life. We’ll start with you Steve and then we’ll pass the ball over to Ron.

[0:02:04] Steve And Lambrecht: Okay, well, I grew up in Southwest Minnesota, out in the country, near a small town called Ivanhoe, Minnesota. I was born 18 years after my older brother Ron, who is the coauthor for the book and you know, my growing up experiences were significantly different than his. I spent a little time on the farm but grew up out in the country in a different house than he did with some different experiences and those are all chronicled accordingly in the book. In terms of who had an influence on me, you know, I would go to a couple of examples and you know, one would be my older brother, who having been gone 18 years ahead of me and eventually joined the Navy, steered me in the direction of the military, which is where I ended up for 39 years. And I would also add that I had a handful of people that were very influential but one teacher in particular who was my shop teacher who happened to be in the enlisted Navy reserves who got me pointed in that direction and I enlisted while I was in high school and attended boot camp between my junior and senior high school and then drilled in the Navy reserves my senior year that had that program back then. And that really got me going in the right direction along with my guidance counselors and some other teachers. I think it raises the point of you know, you never know what one thing you’re going to say that’s going to have a big influence on somebody’s life.

[0:03:31] HA: Yeah, so powerful man. I love that and I can definitely share many stories where there are a lot of similarities in this. Ron, how about you?

[0:03:40] RL: Well as Steve said, I’m 18 years older and the experiences I had growing up were completely different. The family, we have a family farm and it’s rural in the true sense of the word. My very first school was a one-room school, I have one classmate, I was in kindergarten in first grade and then I moved on to another one-room school and I got a new classmate. It was the only time I was in the top two of my class. As I joined the military and started sharing my stories with my fellow naval officers, I realized that my experiences were completely different and unique from my peer group. You know, growing up in Minnesota again, growing up on the farm, we didn’t have running water when we first moved into the house. Eventually, we got running water but we never had an indoor bathroom the whole time that I grew up there, which is a real inconvenience in the wintertime in Minnesota as you might appreciate. Focusing and being interested in my stories, I progressed in my career. Every two to three years, I’d have a new audience because I’d have a new command and as I share in my stories, I realized there’s a lot of interest usually more out of curiosity than envy, I assure you. I decided to write them down and so the book started with basically talking about growing up where I grew up and as I got through that part of my life, I realized Steve, being 18 years younger than me probably had his own and so I asked him to join me in this endeavor and that’s how the book kind of evolved.

[0:05:10] HA: It’s so powerful and you know the power in sharing our stories, even for curiosity to feel that urge to know things about other people, that you know, the things that they’ve stepped into. Like my brothers, like I said were in the military and I just never saw myself there but those stories were always so hard to hear, so hard to digest but it always kind of exemplified the strength and the courage of men and women who put themselves in those situations and so I think that’s really powerful. So obviously, you both served in different branches of the military. How did you manage to stay connected during your deployments and how did you just support each other during these difficult times that I’m sure you’ve had all throughout your careers? How did that bond really start to sort of flourish?

[0:05:58] Steve And Lambrecht: I think that you know, through shared experience comes a shared bond and that’s true across the military and within military organizations and for Ron and I, that was not an exception. We had shared experiences and sacrifices and all those sorts of things by virtue, just of our time spent in the military, even though we're 18 years apart, you know we didn’t grow up together obviously. So you know, Ron would come home and visit throughout my childhood years and you know, we would bond to whatever extent we could at that point, and then once I joined the military, we had a lot more in common, frankly. You know, we spoke a common language and I was able to on occasion travel around the country for the military to pay him a visit and you know, I think that probably helped to enhance our bond.

[0:06:47] RL: Again, we keep hitting on this 18-year age difference but it really made a big difference in the way we each looked at our individual careers. You know, my career basically happened before Steve’s. I was a lieutenant in the Navy when Steve was still in Junior high, believe me. So I was able to I guess, influence in some regards. We had what was called a tiger cruise where we could invite our dad and brothers out on the ship and I did that on the USS Kitty Hawk. Me, Steve, and our dad rowed the ship back from Hawaii to San Diego and I think that was definitely an influence on Steve and his choice in deciding to go into the military as well.

[0:07:34] Steve And Lambrecht: Yeah, absolutely, that was a turning point in my life. I mean, there were two things. I was 14 years old, and there were two things that happened then that made a difference in my life – all of this is described and articulated in the book and throughout the course of the stories but up until the point I was – I went on the tiger cruise, I was the definition of a troubled child. Frankly, I was goofing off in class, I had gotten in trouble for stealing a car, which is you know, not something that happens every day in Ivanhoe, Minnesota, population 765 people, and I was always in trouble with the teachers, and just had a bad reputation all around and I went on the tiger cruise and that gave me focus on what wanted to do with my life and I came back from the tiger cruise and walked into the shop class where just one year prior, the shop teacher had – Which was the first time I’d had him for a class, pointed to me and directed me to the front of the class to sit down where he could keep an eye on me because my reputation had preceded me, and after the tiger cruise, I walked in and it was a different tone altogether. He said to me, “Do you want to go to the naval academy?” and I immediately said yes. I had no idea whatsoever what the naval academy was, I had never heard of it but it sure sounded good to me and from then on, I had a new focus, a new direction, a new inspiration for what I was going to do with my life and it started with those two events.

[0:09:02] HA: I love that because you guys go really deep into sharing a lot of these stories that kind of help to shape those perspectives, even throughout your careers. You cover the pursuit of sort of this identity and inspiration spanning the decades of selfless military service. How did your experiences in the military shape your personal identities and your perspectives on life and how have you applied these lessons to your lives since leaving the military? And we’ll start with you, Ron.

[0:09:31] RL: Again, growing up on the farm, our dad was a disciplinarian in the true sense and we had a very tight schedule. We were dairy farmers, we spent somewhere around six hours a day in the barn, seven days a week. You know, when I finally decided to join the Navy, the lifestyle basically was not foreign to me. I had that kind of background to begin with and so I felt somewhat comfortable being guided, certainly during my enlisted days but then when I applied and was accepted into aviation officer candidate school, from that point on my life really came into focus. I became an intelligence officer after aviation officer candidate school. I had wonderful career opportunities right from the beginning because I was part enlisted, I flew in an anti-submarine warfare aircraft. I had 400 hours in the airplane and after I finished intel school, I was detailed right back to the antisubmarine warfare squadron. Out of all the intel officers and all of the squadrons, I was probably the only intel officer that had that kind of experience in the airplane and so I brought that to the job. Those kinds of experiences, the success I had right from the beginning as a naval officer, evolved into opportunities in terms of other commands that I was selected to join and I ended up going to basically a training command after my initial operational command and where I got to then start training other basic aviators and naval flight officers, enlisted folks on the kinds of things that was trained to teach and that was basically the Soviet threat.

[0:11:28] Steve And Lambrecht: Yes, well as for myself, I think, you know, growing up the way Ron and I did as Ron mentioned, we had a disciplinarian as a father. He was also an extraordinarily hard worker and so was our mother and you know, that instilled in us a work ethic that carried us a very long ways and I think that you know, as I had mentioned the book any time, you know, I may have lacked intelligence or natural ability in something, I was able to make up for at least a component of it through brute force that is from work ethic and I think Ron would say the same thing. You know, when I, either it’s an organic piece I think to human beings and then there’s the nurture piece, you know, the nature and the nurture piece. So you know, when I got to the naval academy, that’s when I really, I think evolved professionally as a human being, as a leader, as an officer. You know, so that took me a very long way, the honor code there, all these things that just help shape you morally, mentally, and physically to lead and you know, that set me up well for my next career path, which was the Marnie Corps and all the challenges that came with that and I think that just over time, the experiences you gain and for myself, I’ll just say that there are a lot of challenges along the way, a lot of difficulties, a lot of opportunities, and when you face those and you know, you conquer them or sometimes you don’t, the failures and the successes alike are the things that shape you into who you are and those opportunities wouldn’t have been there for me if I hadn’t gone the military route. So between nine and a half years after the Marine Corps, after the naval academy, after enlisting in the naval reserves, then I ended up in the Vermont International Guard where I’m about to retire after about 23 years. So I had a whole other group of all the same things, experiences, you know, combat experiences, domestic emergency responses, and all these things that we do in the guard that all served to shape me into who I am.

[0:13:36] HA: That’s so powerful. Having you both of you on here is wonderful and I want to kind of bring that to light a little bit. The book highlights the importance of brotherhood, both between siblings and of course, between fellow service members. How do you believe the bonds of brotherhood that you formed during the military service have influenced your lives and what advice do you have for others who are seeking to build strong bonds with, you know, their brothers and the brotherhood community in their own lives? I’ll channel this back to you Steve.

[0:14:05] Steve And Lambrecht: Well, I would say the military in particular but it’s not exclusive to the military. You know, it’s a mentality of service. If you have the ability, you have the obligation and that’s to, you know, not just your fellow service member or your family member or your sibling or what have you, it’s to your fellow man. Sometimes in life, things aren’t always what you would like them to be. Certainly, in the military, we have our enemies that we have to face in combat and we have to do that and for all the right reasons but in terms of, you know, the goodness that comes with the bonding of brotherhood and service and family, you know, I think that it’s part of human nature that we have that and seek it and so I think it’s important to try to form those bonds as best you can. You know, Ron will tell you, if you want to challenge the bonds of brotherhood, write a book together. We’ve had our times of controversy for sure, it’s not an easy project to undertake to begin with. We’ve had our bumps along the road for things we didn’t agree on and we, you know, we work through them. That’s what life is, you have your disagreements with folks and you work through them. The important thing is that you don’t lose the relationship or lose the bond that you have along the way.

[0:15:20] HA: I love that so much, man. Go ahead, Ron.

[0:15:22] RL: First of all, I really don’t have anything more on that particular subject to add than what Steve just said. What he said about writing a book together is absolutely true. There were times when you know, he and I have been wearing our sword, someone was going to die but we worked through it. It is not related to your question but more to the way we laid the book out because again, of the age difference and our different experiences as a result of that. When we wrote the book together, we tried to initially thread our stories and then that just didn’t work right because mine started 18 years before Steve’s. So what we did was we broke the book into three parts. The first part was called Hay Seeds and Mascots, which basically is stories that highlight our growing up southwest of Minnesota. The second part is called Frontal Lobe Development. As it implies, that part describes the past we took in pursuit of our individual careers. In my case, I had grown a frontal lobe before I could develop it and the last part is Boundless and that basically highlights our career experiences and accomplishments. By doing that, we were then able to thread our stories. You know granted the very first part of Hay Seeds and Mascots, my start, start that part but you know, Steve was able to interject as my stories evolve. But once we got up to Frontal Lobe Development and Wellness, then the age factor no longer really was an issue. We could talk about, you know, how basically we pursued our careers and thread our thoughts and our experiences accordingly and then of course in Boundless, our individual careers and the missions and so forth that we each were involved in were totally independent of age at that point.

[0:17:18] HA: Being on the book, on the topic of the book and I love how you all laid out sort of the lay of the land and where the threads actually come together, I would like to know because I mean, writing a book is no easy feat. What was your favorite part of pulling this book together and what did you two learn from that journey? We’ll start with Steve.

[0:17:36] Steve And Lambrecht: I think it’s worth mentioning that you know, as we started this book, you know Ron started before I did. As he mentioned, he had written all of his growing-up stories and he was looking to tell a story sort of like Garrison Keillor might tell them. He had put together a nice group of interesting and humorous stories mostly from his growing-up time and then we got involved in conversations and that’s around when he said he invited me to join them because he knew my stories would be different. He asked me to join him and it probably took me four years before I even wrote the first story. I just didn’t know where to start and I knew that most of my quality stories were later in life, from you know, the age of 18 and above, I had more to talk about and so I was having a hard time getting started from the perspective of writing stories that would be complimentary to what Ron had already written. So I started out writing stories that were more from my time at the Naval Academy, which were also very funny in my opinion. We’ll see what the readers think but you know, those were complimentary and Ron coaxed me to go back to my younger years and write from there and so as this book evolved, it kind of evolved from what started out as a group of stories like Garrison Keillor might tell to our memoirs, which is what we ended up with. You know, it starts out with mostly humorous stories and then you know, evolves. By the end, we’re talking about some pretty intense combat missions and operational stories that happened across the globe. So to answer your question, you know, what was the most enjoyable part about writing a book, I think for me it would be just recounting and therefore, remembering some of the details and events that are in the story. I had to reach out to some folks that were involved in those stories and were involved around the periphery to put the facts back together again and in doing so, they reminded me of things that I would have never remembered had I not reached out. So you know, the book is much more full of content as a result. I have a lot more information and details in there than I could have summed up for my own memory. So I think that was a very fond aspect was just going out and gathering the materials and the resources and the stories themselves to be able to put together into the book.

[0:19:58] RL: In my case, I want to say well, you know, the book was enjoyable. For me, it was a real learning experience in regard to what Steve did in his career. Until he wrote it down, I really didn’t know to what extent he was engaged in combat and those kinds of missions, so that was eye-opening to me.

[0:20:22] Steve And Lambrecht: I’m not big on talking about myself frankly and that’s you know, that’s why – that’s probably why I didn’t know.

[0:20:29] HA: You know I find that interesting because here you are, two brothers, you know you obviously have fostered a bond over time but even with that, I mean, it goes to show the intensity at which we experience things, and what we, you know, decide to talk about and share and what stories we really are comfortable with and you know, it takes time to process those stories and I feel like sometimes just having to write them helps you a little bit with that processing journey. Yeah, I feel like when I wrote my book and I got it out there and some of my friends you know, they called me were like, “Dude, I had no idea you struggled with this or that” or whatever and it’s like you know, we have a close bond but it’s like yeah, there’s still a part of me and a part of us, all of us that you know, it’s harder to expose, right? I think something about a book, it kind of creates this sort of invisible shield, where you can kind of explore those stories and experiences. Where you get to share them with the page and then decide later if you want to share them beyond that. I think that’s what attracts me the most about books and the book-writing journey. It does kind of undress us in a way, you know? At least get us to talk about things that we don’t normally talk about so that’s cool and it sounds like perhaps that helped your bond grow, would you say that Ron?

[0:21:47] RL: Well, yeah, definitely. All of the siblings have stayed close throughout our lives even though there’s this big spread in age. I don’t want a prospective reader to think that the book is about the bond as much as it is about the paths we took and the experiences we had and the stories themselves I think are entertaining and not everybody is done.

[0:22:12] Steve And Lambrecht: Yeah, if I may, Hussein, I would add that in terms of the content of the book and I think this is true of everyone when they lived their lives, you know, when you are in the moment and you are experiencing these things, you don’t really stop and reflect on the historical significance of what it might be. In our case, you know, if Ron and I as we started putting these stories together and this is why one of the descriptors of the book is, you know, we talk about if you like Top Gun, if you like The Hunt for Red October and if you like Forest Gump, you’ll like this book and it’s because as we put these stories together, my sister read the manuscript at one point, one of our sisters did and she made the comment that you know, it reminded me of Forest Gump. Because we had gone all over the world and done all of these things but we never really stopped and thought about, you know, how historically significant many of them were. You know, Ron has a story in there about zip to zap, which is an event that occurred in Zap, North Dakota, which nobody has ever heard of and you wouldn’t know it except that it was a big deal at the time and it’s in the book and there’s a Wikipedia page on it. And you know then, we started going through some of our operational stories and Ron served in Somalian Operation Restore Hope and Black Hawk Down. The movie is based on that and I flew combat missions in Bosnia and Behind Enemy Lines is a movie that was made about it and there is a painting made, Moonlighters over Edina, that’s about one of the strikes that we did. The movie Top Gun obviously and now Maverick are both relevant to our experiences or you know, mine in particular and you know, et cetera, et cetera, and so you go through these things and again, you don’t really think much about them but then as you put them together, you start to realize, “Wow, we were there for a lot of historically significant things throughout the course of our lives and careers” and we never really thought of it from that perspective.

[0:24:11] HA: Yeah. Man, I love that. So much experience in decades of serving our country in such unique ways and having positioned yourself to be courageous, to put yourself on the line, to you know, experience the things that you did and of course, now, share with all of us these remarkable experiences and how they unfolded from your perspective and your truth. I love that, I love how these books help bring us even closer together as men like you said. Steve, I appreciate that so much. Again you two, Steve and Ron, man, thank you for sharing your stories and your experiences with me and the audience. I am certainly moved, I’m excited to continue reading your book throughout the week, just learn more about your experiences. The book is called Boundless Brothers: Two Warriors from the Heartland, One Mission for the Homeland. So besides checking out the book, where can people find you two and connect with you two?

[0:25:04] Steve And Lambrecht: Our website for the book is boundlessbrothersthebook.com. So you can go there and sign up for email notifications and explore a little bit more about the book. You can follow us on Facebook at Boundless Brothers Book without the “The” so Boundless Brothers Book. You can find us on Facebook and follow us there and then finally, on Instagram. We’re on Boundless Brothers the Book, you can find us on Instagram that way. We’re posting photos and teasers from our stories and can go there to find out more.

[0:25:40] HA: I love it. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Ron. It’s been a pleasure and an honor speaking with you today. Again, thank you both so much for your service. Have a great day.

[0:25:48] Steve And Lambrecht: Thank you, Hussein.

[0:25:49] RL: Yeah, thank you very much, this was fun.

[0:25:52] HA: Thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. The book is called, Boundless Brothers: Two Warriors from the Heartland, One Mission for the Homeland. You can find it right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time, same place, different author.