EP263: Life Beyond My Wildest Dreams: Professional Dog Walker and One Black Troop's Trip to Buchenwald

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To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, we're going to hear from Ryan Stewart. After going through life unsure of what he wanted to do for a long time, he settled on something quite out of the ordinary. Today, Ryan runs a very successful dog walking business in New York City, but a job isn't the only good thing in life that dogs have brought him.

Ryan's here to share about the many ways in which dogs have impacted his life and continue to do so daily. I was born in Taipei, Taiwan and I was given up for adoption like immediately, like when I was three days old, I was handed over to a military family and they weren't happy together. You know, it was one of those marriages where the woman was pregnant and so my father thought the honorable thing to do would be to marry her, but they weren't really a good couple. So I think they tried to fill that with kids and so they adopted me and then they adopted two other Taiwanese children and you know, they had two of their own.

So then they had five and when I was six, my adopted mother and my adopted father divorced and she left the house and he raised us for a while alone. My father growing up, I always thought he was really, really boring. He didn't talk much. He did stuff like he ate the same food. I remember he ate like grape nuts and like almost every morning or oats or something like that and he liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And he, aside from his military outfit, he wore like jeans and a t-shirt and like a cheap windbreaker and it never occurred to me that he was anything more than like a boring man. But later on in life now, he's my role model. I mean, he adopted me and two others from Taiwan and he put bread on the table and he took no credit, no glory, no limelight. You know, he was a church-going man.

The church loved him. I remember I spoke at his funeral at the church ten years ago or so and I told them, I told a church full of people that I would be pretty proud of myself if I could somehow become half the man he was. You know, they say blood is thicker than water. He adopted me so I always think now that sweat is thicker than blood because he put the work in, man. We were in D.C. for several years and I got the crap kicked out of me like on a daily basis growing up in D.C. so I toughened up.

I've had to fight every day, you know what I mean? So then we moved to Europe. He was reassigned and we were in Holland and that was interesting too because then you're like, you're the Yankee, you know? I remember there was this big graffiti like two blocks from our house that said, Yankee, go home.

I remember reading that every day of my life there. But for the most part, I loved Europe. You know, I got in a lot of trouble at first because I was used to fighting so I thought, oh, you know what I mean? Like, you solved your problems with your fists.

Well, you know, like in nicer areas, you don't do that, you know? So I was in the principal's office. I was like his favorite, you know?

He's like you again. And then he would have like a bowl of candy and say like, have a candy, sit down. And then he wouldn't even discipline me. He would just sit there and talk about his childhood and I would just listen to him. I also accelerated grades so I apparently was very smart when I was young. I don't know what happened, you know, where it went. But when I was young, I was very, very smart and I would be like that kid who you get an hour to take a test.

I'd finish it in 20 minutes and slap it on the teacher's desk and then all the kids would look up, you know, and glare at me, you know? And then I got beat up for that. So slowly learned fighting wasn't the way to go. And then we moved from Europe to the St. Louis area, St. Louis suburbs. And I got picked on a lot because I was small and young. But fortunately, my sisters were pretty popular, you know, homecoming queens, stuff like that. So a couple of the guys who became my friends wanted to get close to my sisters so they would sort of try to get close to me, you know? And so that helped me a lot.

I finally probably stopped getting picked on when I was maybe like a senior. So, you know, we had chores. One of my sisters would maybe be doing the dishes and my brother maybe has to mow the lawn, but I had to walk the dog. So I always had the dogs company. And something that sort of saw me through my solitude was my relationship with dogs.

And I don't know what I would have done without them. Years later, my girlfriend at the time got a new puppy and she got a trainer and I watched the trainer. You know, I followed the directions and the trainer looked at me and says, you have a natural talent with dogs, you know? Have you ever thought about working with dogs? And so what I did with that is nothing, but I did read some dog books and I taught that dog maybe 40 or 50 tricks. Like walking on its hind legs or walking or belly crawling like an army soldier or turning circles one way or turning circles the other way.

Or, you know, playing dead or rolling over, you know, all kinds of tricks. And we used that dog for like commercials in New York City and stuff like that. And that got me hooked up with a commercial agent for animals.

And so she would always call me. And so I've done, you know, I've been the trainer on set for dogs on stage, dogs on runway, dogs on commercial sets, dogs on short film sets. So I wasn't really full time into it at that point. I was just kind of beating around the bush, you know, picking up some commercials here and maybe like sometimes waiting tables. And then I'm not sure how appropriate this is, but I started selling mushrooms.

So this is like eight years later. I was going out with a different woman now. And she said, what are you doing with your life? You know, like what are you doing?

It's not that she was a nice person, but she was smart. And I said, well, what should I do? And she said, well, you're good with dogs. Why don't you try working with dogs?

And basically she said, if you don't quit all this nonsense that you're doing, I am going to break up with you. And so I almost got forced into the dog business. I looked into working in a dog daycare. It just the money wasn't good enough.

Training wasn't steady enough. And I looked into dog grooming. I just wasn't into grooming.

You know, it just wasn't me. And so I just settled on dog walking. And you're listening to Ryan Stewart share his own stories, not only about his passion for dogs, but about everything else from his father to his girlfriend telling him to essentially grow up. When we come back, more of Ryan Stewart's story here on Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told.

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That's OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue with Our American Stories. And Ryan Stewart, owner of Ryan for Dogs, a successful dog walking business in New York City. When we last left off, Ryan's girlfriend was pushing him to grow up and to get a life and we'll get serious about his life.

Let's pick up where we last left off. Being a dog walker, it's scalable. Like if you walk three dogs at once, that's three times the money of walking one dog. Although I wasn't really like, the goal wasn't to make money. The goal was just to get a regular job so my girlfriend wouldn't leave me. So it was a little slow going at first because you're going to go into someone's house with their keys and take their precious dog out for a walk. So the most important thing is having the people who hire you trust you to go into their house. So you start off slow and you have to build a reputation.

So the first couple of years are kind of slow and they're not making a lot of money. But as the years progress and you do a good job and you work hard and you don't kill any dogs or lose any dogs, then you get more of a reputation and more and more people hire you. And it's just, I didn't imagine this would turn into like, I mean, it's 15 years later now. So it wasn't how I imagined it would turn out to be, but it's what's known as life beyond my wildest dreams.

I actually like who I am finally. I work with dogs every day, seven days a week, and I haven't taken a vacation since 2008. Must be because dogs are great. So when I first started walking dogs, it was a bit of a novelty to get large groups together, you know, because then it's sort of fun because, you know, like, wow, how many like you want to stretch your limits.

Parents out there, that's why your teenagers drives 95 miles an hour and gets arrested because they're testing their limits. So when I first started, of course, I'm like, huh, I can walk three dogs together. Let's try four.

Let's try five. And so I would go up to 12 all at once, sometimes on a bike. Sometimes I would be riding a bike with like 10 dogs on one side.

The thing is, that's really hard. So I would prefer not to make my job harder because what happens is if you have like 12 dogs and one of them stops to poop, you sort of have to kind of shift all the other 11 to one side. You've got 12 leashes and you have to get your poop bag out. And then you have to somehow reach over and get the and still keep the other 12 from fighting each other and pick up that poop and then get it to a trash can. And then like, whew, that was like two minutes of hard work getting that poop up.

Let's be on our way. And you take three steps and then another one starts to poop. So like three or four or five, you get a lot more done.

Plus, people don't stare at you and take your picture. There was an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that, you know, where the guy scoffed at dog walkers and said anyone can walk dogs. Let's not even call it a profession. And he might be right when it comes to one dog or maybe even two. But if you want to walk six or eight or 10, you have to be good.

You have to have some talent. There's certain types of customers who like me because I'm no nonsense, like at all. I'm actually considered a bit rude, but I'm not trying to be rude.

I just don't feel like B.S.ing. And I've noticed that amongst a lot of good trainers that I've known. Good dog trainers are so to the point that it's almost considered rude. Like we would be at dinner.

My mentor, her name was Linda. She would like in the middle of dinner, she'd say, I'm not feeling very well. I'm going to go home and stand up, you know, throw $60 on the table and leave.

And I'm in the middle of like my quesadilla. You know what I mean? Dogs are to the point. That's what dogs understand. So if you work with dogs for years, you're just to the point.

Eventually, after several years passed, I was popular enough where I had too many dogs to walk myself. And so I hired a guy and then, you know, another couple of years passed and I hire another one. And I looked at it and I knew I could hire more and more and more.

And I could become a manager or owner of a large operation. And very quickly I saw that when you have people working with you or for you, they're human beings. So they have their flaws. So some of them are late often or some of them don't communicate well or, you know. And so that can be very annoying. So I thought, well, gee, like if I keep hiring people, I'm going to be annoyed all the time. And I'm like, that's not what I signed up for. I signed up to work with dogs.

And so I held three people. I also do dog training on the nights and weekends and I could do that like a lot. But training is difficult for me because I will go and meet a dog owner and their dog. And I will tell the dog owner what to do, give examples, and they will nod their heads and say that's completely makes sense. And then they will go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. So that's not easy for me to get paid to be ignored.

And that's what it feels like. So I'm not overly fond of training, but I do it. I have a Rhodesian Ridgeback that came first, a German Shepherd and a little, he's like a little terrier mix. They were all owner surrenders, so they all have their little problems. I had known this little terrier. They hired me to walk their dog. And the owners finally gave up on him after five years of trying and trying and they knew they wanted kids. And he's a biter. He bites them. He bites other dogs. He was going to bite their kids. And they said, we can't keep him. We're going to turn him into a shelter. And I knew that like he's going to he's going to get killed, you know, because he's going to bite his next owner.

So I kept to myself. He's not my favorite dog. Sometimes I wish I didn't have him. Often I wish I didn't have him. He's a pain in the but I see a lot of myself in him. I was given up more than once like him.

And it's like personal, like I'll be damned if I'm going to give up on him. Now I take dogs into juvenile detention facilities for a job. And they tried several people before me and they don't last very long, like a week or two, because you can't just want to help. You have to be able to mingle with like 18 year old convicted murderers and be comfortable with them. And coming from a tough background, you know, that helped me a lot. And also having made so many mistakes in my life helps me not judge others.

And I've been working there for about a year and a half now. I'm trying to get youth to engage and to bring them out, you know, and get them to talk about themselves and try to get some of them to learn something. And sometimes that's not easy because they're very guarded. I'm working with teens who have shot someone. Most of them have killed. I bring the dog in and it grounds them. You know, their feet don't touch the earth anymore and the sun doesn't kiss their face.

So if I bring a dog in, they can touch the dog and then they touch the earth by touching the dog. And perhaps just for that, for that minute, they feel human again. You know, despite the horrible things that they did, they're still children of God. I'm not saying I want them out on the street to kill again, but that's what dogs did for me. They kept me from straying too far off base when I was in my darkest. I think they have helped me be very in the moment.

So that's what I use. I use that ability when I'm in the juvenile facility because I don't care what they did in the moment. Like a year ago or like six months ago, I just try to get them to engage with me now. These are hardened murderers, but some of them are still 15 or 16, so there's still a child in there. And so then you get the dog there and sometimes you can see the child come out and that's, that's pretty heartwarming. Like one time I saw this big guy, you know, he always acts tough and I brought in a French bulldog and French bulldogs are like kind of, you know, kind of interesting looking.

They look like little frogs. And he stopped acting cool because he just forgot who he was. He was jumping up and down off the ground.

This big six foot two guy who killed someone and he's jumping up and down like a little kid. And I looked at that and I'm just like, yep, some of them are still kids, you know. So dogs have done a lot for me and also like dogs, I was taken from my original mother and re-homed immediately. So all dogs are that. So basically I'm a dog, you know. It's not really glamorous to be a dog walker, but I find that I care about that less and less. And helping these kids who have done some bad things in their life and using dogs to make their lives better. I still have a picture of 12 dogs on a bike.

I don't know how the heck that happens. Glad he got down to three and four and five. The story of a professional dog walker and how dogs changed his life and shaped it. Here on Our American Story. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop. But for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot.

And I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story from author and historian, Ronna Simmons. Ronna is the author of The Other Veterans of World War II, Stories from Behind the Frontlines, which features stories of men and women who served in less visible roles to help America and her allies win the war. Today, she shares with us the story of William A. Scott III or Bill Scott.

Take it away, Ronna. Bill was born in Tennessee and when his parents divorced. He actually moved with his father to Atlanta and grew up there.

For the time, it was actually, I'd say, relatively a different experience. He was a young black boy and his father was a black businessman in Atlanta back in the 30s. His father was the head of the Atlanta Daily World, a newspaper and a successful black-owned enterprise, one of the only successful black-owned newspaper in the country. So one might say he had a life of privilege.

Of course, I think he would absolutely deny that. He was able to spend time with his father and get to know the newspaper business. But his father insisted that he not start anywhere, of course, even as a child, that he wouldn't be working. But when he grew up, that he would not just assume a role of president or vice president of this or executive that. He said, no, you're going to sweep the floor and you're going to start at the bottom and you're going to learn the business.

You're going to learn about business as well as learn the business of the newspaper. So he did. And every once in a while, he and his younger brother, of course, like any child, wanted a few nickels or dimes to buy something that had caught their eye. And so his father said, well, if you want nickels and dimes, guess what?

Here are a few papers. You get to go sell them. So he learned about selling newspapers. So it wasn't the life of anyone of privilege. He learned the business. But his father was shot and killed in an accident in Atlanta one evening, and the family fortunes took a downturn. He adored his father. And so it was not the happy childhood that he had expected. And he didn't have a guiding light. He didn't have his father to tell him what to do or how to go further in life. But I think he had that early, early training that stuck with him. At least he had that much of his father to carry with him and to remember. He then went on to Morehouse College in Atlanta and started volunteering for the newspaper in Morehouse College.

And beyond just writing stories, he became the photographer for the Maroon Tigers. And he really hadn't thought about the war. The war was not at the top of mind at that point in time and had more intent on finishing college and marrying his sweetheart than having anything to do with the war. But we were preparing for the war. So in 1940, we passed the first peacetime draft in history, and everyone was required to go down to their local draft board and register black, white. Unfortunately, while the blacks were registered because of the prejudices that existed at that time and perhaps the feeling or not probably more than perhaps, but the feeling that blacks would not be able to perform as well as whites in the war.

They were often registered but looked over. So if a request for a troops came to their area, they would pick the white soldiers and send them off first. And it was actually worse than that as the war went on. Not only were they passed over for prejudices because of the segregation of blacks and whites, even in their communities. That was also found to be true in the army, where there were no separate facilities available. They would not send black soldiers. So unless there were barracks that had been constructed, sanitary facilities, eating facilities, water supplies, everything replicated for the blacks separate from the whites, the boards would not refer the black soldiers to foreign units. And while that did allow blacks to then be deployed, they had further stumbling blocks. At one point in time, the officers or the commanders in the field were not accepting of receiving black units. So if you were an officer in Europe, whether it was England in the early days or even in the Pacific, you had the right to approve the soldiers that were being sent to you. And so they would often not accept black troops, believing they would not perform as well. So it was fruitless for them to submit these black troops to them. They overlooked them. But the draft found Bill. He really wasn't interested in going.

He hadn't thought about it. But when the army calls, the answer is yes. And so he was drafted and went into the army in 1943.

He was to some degree lucky by 43. It was a little more tolerant. However, he was still assigned to an all black unit. That was the norm. And that would persist throughout the end of the war.

All black units would be generally non combat units and would almost all be supervised by white officers. And that was his case. He was assigned to the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, which is a group of men who were responsible for following behind the army or behind the advancing army, the combat units, and maintaining roads, laying the groundwork for airfields, widening roads, you name it. That was their job.

And he did that. But he did have the experience of having been the photographer for his college newspaper and some sense of not only photography, but what to take, when to take because of his journalism experience. And I think those two things, when that was seen on his record, the army within that one combat battalion decided to make him their photographer as well. So he was known as a reconnaissance sergeant. So we'd go out and take photographs to the extent they needed to and could get an advanced look at the terrain that they were having to cross or any enemy activity. And he was an archivist. So he also was recording what his unit did from day to day.

Not that that allowed him to escape from building a bridge or a road, but it meant he did that in addition, which was very fortunate for us that they picked Bill because of his training. His combat battalion was assigned to the Third Army, which is Patton's army. So he was seeing the major battles through Europe as we pushed the Germans back. So you know he was in some of the thick of it, the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge.

Now he again was not in the combat. He didn't see the battles, but he saw the aftermath. He saw the bombed out or shelled villages.

He saw the devastation, both human and to buildings. And he was not so much writing about those times, but he was observing as any good journalist would what he saw. And at some point, Bill got orders with his group of black soldiers to go to Buchenwald. And you've been listening to Ronna Simmons tell the story of Bill Scott and what a story it is. My goodness, what happened to him as a young boy, his father shot and killed. By the way, before that, his father teaching him how to put in a day's work, not just giving him money, even though his father ran a very successful newspaper. And then what we learn about, well, as we always do when we go back in history, how blacks were treated in this country, even in our military at the time during World War II.

When we come back, more of the story of Bill Scott here on Our American Story. decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices for those eligible. Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. My family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.

Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we're back with Our American Stories and Ronna Simmons, author of The Other Veterans of World War II, stories from behind the front lines. When we last left off, Ronna was telling us the story of Bill Scott, an African American army engineer and photographer from Atlanta, Georgia. When we last left off, Bill had just received orders to go to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Let's continue with the story. For the most part, the Holocaust, which of course was not called the Holocaust at the time, was not well known. We didn't know a lot about it.

There were rumors. There were newspapers to be read, accounts that were coming out from Germany, from Austria, Poland, where the camps were. But people didn't take it seriously. They could hardly believe that something like that was going on. They might know that of course there were prisoners of war that were probably not treated as well as we would like to think we do.

But what was happening was largely ignored or just not believable. And at some point, the U.S., the American War Intelligence Office, decided that they needed to start preparing the troops for what they were going to see and what they might encounter as they moved into these war-torn areas. So they produced a number of films from captured newsreels in some cases, from first-hand accounts in other cases, and produced these black and white films that they decided they should show the troops who were advancing so that if they saw this, they would know what to expect, know the extent of the devastation they might see. So Bill was one of the ones, his unit saw the films, and he remembered saying in the discussions that occurred later that this is all propaganda.

There's no one that can be as cruel and inhumane as what these films are telling us. So they sort of watched but didn't take it to heart and didn't believe that they would see anything quite like what was portrayed on the film. But at some point after seeing these films, Bill got orders with his group of black soldiers to go to Buchenwald. It is said, and I don't think anyone can exactly substantiate this, that our officers knew that going into a camp, that the prisoners might not believe after all these years they'd spent there that they were in fact now free. Because the prisoners had been tricked in earlier circumstances. The Germans might throw open the gates and tell the prisoners, you're free, only to execute them as they tried to flee the camp. So just having the doors open, they weren't going to leave.

Very hard to believe. Eisenhower himself realized this, and so when they were coming close to liberating the camps, his orders came to send the black troops. They knew that the prisoners in the concentration camps, when they saw the black soldiers come in, that there was no way that those were German soldiers.

So this had to be true. They were in fact liberated. Black troops would be obviously American troops and obviously there to liberate the people.

In fact, they became known as the black angels to the prisoners in the camps. And that's why it was specifically Bill's unit that went to Buchenwald. Now, Buchenwald might as well have been Berlin, Munich, or any other German city at that point.

Buchenwald meant nothing to Bill or to his fellow troops. And he thought, well, what do you want me to do there? And he asked one person or another, and the other men in his group did the same, and they didn't get any explanation. And of course, the Army doesn't owe them an explanation, but he still wanted to know what he was expected to do in Buchenwald. And finally, one of the officers said, just go and see.

And that's sort of chilling to us now, because of course we know what he's going to see. But there were no other instructions. So he hopped in his jeep, went with the other troops, found his way down to Buchenwald. And when he got there, there was a camp. There was barbed wire fencing, and the Germans had fled. And so they said, well, this is one of those camps, but there's nothing here.

There are some people, there's a fence, but nothing's going on. And he said as he got closer and closer, he started seeing the people who had been imprisoned, and they were of course emaciated. Certainly many of them might have shown wounds or sores that might not have healed.

Many of them couldn't walk, couldn't stand, all of the horrible things we see. And that's when he got out of his jeep and he realized what he was there to see, to bear witness in a way, to leave a testament into what had gone on. So he, again as a journalist, grabbed his camera and began shooting some pictures. Prisoners would beckon them, come look at this, come see this, and so he and his fellow soldiers, aghast, followed the prisoners to see. And as he went further into the camp and was so struck by what he was seeing and the realization that those films were real, he said, I stopped filming.

I put my camera down. I could not go on. And even knowing that he was there to see and there to bear witness, he couldn't do it. The extent of man's depravity was so overwhelming, he couldn't go on. It was so foreign to Bill. It was just against everything he had been brought up to know and to think about other people. I think that he said later as he contemplated this that he knew or thought of the German people as being an educated people. And he, through his father's influence, had been educated and could not imagine how an educated group of people who had to know what they were doing, who had to know right from wrong, who had to know what the value of other human beings is. And so it just was incomprehensible to him. He thought surely education would have prevented this from happening. And it clearly had not. And so that was one aspect of the war that he brought home with him.

And it was really fundamental to him having regarded education so highly. I don't think he ever could come to grips with how that had happened and why it had happened. But thankfully, he did take some pictures, even as horrified as he was, because he could have easily said, I can't do this. I won't do this. This is so awful.

No one should see this. And yet the journalist in him came to the fore and he said, we've got to have this as a record. He then went on through Europe, finished his tour of duty, but they now had a second fight. Unlike their white counterparts, when the blacks returned, they were still, in a sense, at war.

They were at war to establish their own place in our society. What he learned about after he returned from the war was something that I think a lot of people don't know about, which was the double V campaign to recognize the war that blacks had to fight. It was considered double V if they were able to accomplish what they wanted in terms of getting blacks integrated into our society. Bill began working to that extent. He went back to the paper, but he also spent much of his time working for the NAACP, for other foundations like the Educational Foundation of Metro Atlanta, the Greater Atlanta Council of Human Relations. He was very active in the community and thankfully had a voice and a platform through his paper to help move that along. And he became recognized for it by not only participating in the associations I mentioned, but also he got several awards. He was recognized for the Holocaust contribution, the photography that he did, by having his photographs placed in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. But a year before he died, Governor Joe Frank Harris awarded him a charter membership in the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. And in that same year, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Council. Two things that really told him that he had actually been able to realize that double V campaign. He had helped the U.S. win the war in Europe and he had come home and done his part to help win recognition for the black soldiers and the blacks in our society.

And a terrific job on the production by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Ronna Simmons for sharing the story of Bill Scott. And what a story indeed. I mean, to see what he saw in Buchenwald. What a thing to witness and bear witness to and to photograph. And then to come back and fight that second war for integration and for equal treatment. And then ultimately to be on these dual Holocaust commissions to have finally made it as an equal member of society.

A tragic and beautiful story here on Our American Stories. T-Mobile for Business knows companies want more than a one size fits all approach to support. I want the world. So we provide 360 support customized to your business from discovery through post deployment. You'll get a dedicated account team and expertise from solutions, engineers and industry advisors already right now.

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It's Dramos. You may know me from the recap on L.A. TV. Now I've got my own podcast, Life as a Gringo, coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday. We'll be talking real and unapologetic about all things life, Latin culture and everything in between from someone who's never quite fit in. Listen to Life as a Gringo on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.