What's up? This is your boy Lil Duval and check out my podcast, Conversations with Unk, on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Each and every Tuesday, Conversations with Unk Podcasts feature casuals and in-depth talk about ebbs and flows of life and the pursuit of happiness. Unlike my work on stage, I tap into a more serious and sensitive side to give life advice and simply offer words of encouragement, yet remind folks to never forget to laugh. Every Tuesday, listen to Conversations with Unk hosted by Lil Duval on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by AT&T.
Connecting changes everything. Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I like fun too.
It's a thing, and now the truth is out there. I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from, with new games released each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses. So join me in the fun. Sign up now at ChumbaCasino.com.
Hey everyone, this is Jody Sweetin from the podcast How Rude, Tanneritos. I've been needing a quick getaway with my family, and the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe is the perfect vehicle to take us there. It has standard third row seating, so I'm able to pack my entire family plus pets in the car while also having enough room for our camping essentials. Available H-Track all-wheel drive will get us through any dirt trails, and available dual wireless charging pads will ensure we never have to worry about getting stuck with a dead phone in the middle of nowhere. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details.
Hyundai, there's joy in every journey. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories Memorial Day Special. All show long, we're honoring our nation's fallen heroes. You might know the song I Drive Your Truck by Lee Brice. It went to the top of the country charts in 2014, but do you know the story of the man who inspired the song? His name was Jared Monti and he was a hero of the highest caliber. Jared received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan in 2006.
Here to tell Jared's story is Paul Monti, his father. I think his lot in life was to try to bring joy to anybody and everybody that he ever met. Well, Jared was a very adventurous kid. There wasn't a tree too high for him to climb or a hill.
There wasn't a body of water too wide too deep for him to cross. There were certain characteristics in him that became apparent as he grew. We like to talk about his life in terms of three principles that he lived by, the first of which was to always try your hardest. And this we noticed with him, whether it was sports or school or anything else that he had to do. He was a kid that always gave a hundred percent to everything he did.
His second principle was to never give up and that became also apparent. One of the stories I like to tell regarding that was he was a really, really good basketball player. He was pretty much the shortest kid in this class, but he was a heck of a basketball player. And when he went to middle school, he tried out for the JV team and he was the last one cut from the team. His fellow players said they were all going to quit because Monty wasn't picked. And Jared got them together and talked to them and said, hey, you don't quit. You guys keep going.
Don't worry about me. So that passed in the next year, middle school, he tried out for the team again. And again, he was the last cut. And then the third year he tried out again, this time for the varsity. And the varsity coach came up to him and said, Jared, why don't you accept the position as team manager?
And you can warm up with the team before games, but of course you can't play. And he accepted that. After the second game, the coach found a uniform for him because it was kind of embarrassing. He was the only one in street clothes warming up. And then after the third game, the coach started using him as a mop up player towards the end of a game. By the end of the season, he was outscoring some of the starters on the team. At his graduation from middle school, when they were giving out the awards for the basketball team, the coach got up and read all the names. And then when he got to the end, he said, but he said, this last guy is the epitome of what an athlete should be.
And he's the biggest mistake that I ever made in my 25 years of coaching basketball. What an honor to a young man and what courage it took for him to do that. And to be that guy that, you know, never gave up, that kept on trying. What a character he must have had to do that kind of a thing. He always did the right thing.
No matter what it cost him personally, doing the right thing was just out of him. You know, one day when I came home and looked in his room, his bed was missing. And I called him and I said, Jared, where's your bed? He said, well, dad, one of my friends was kicked out of his house. He's sleeping over someone else's house and they don't have a bed for him. He's sleeping on the floor and he can't sleep. I don't mind sleeping on the floor, dad. So I gave him my bed.
Another incident. He came to me one day and said, dad, would you mind if I cut down one of those spruce trees we have in the front of the house? I said, well, what do you want that for? He said, well, guys and I, we want to have our own Christmas tree. I said, well, okay, go ahead. And it was only after his death when one of his friends came up to me and said, Mr. Monti, you remember the Christmas tree Jared cut down?
And I said, yeah. He said, well, he didn't really cut that down for us. He found a single mom in town that had three kids and didn't have enough money to celebrate Christmas with the kids. So he brought it to her house and got lights for it and ornaments for it. He bought presents for all the kids and for the woman. And then he stayed and made Christmas dinner for them all and never told a soul.
It's, it's these kinds of things that he did and with great humility. I remember a day when he asked me to drive him to a weightlifting competition. I did. I drove him there and I said, well, when do you want me to pick you up? Or do you want me to come in? And he says, no, no, no, no, no.
I've got to ride home with somebody else. Now, after his death, I went up to clean his room and underneath his bed was a box full of trophies. He had soccer trophies and baseball trophies and basketball trophies. But what stood out was this three foot trophy that was under the bed of a weightlifter.
And I read the plaque and it said, New England Weightlifting Championships, first place, under 17 division, Jared Monte. Never told anybody. It wasn't being done for personal gain.
It was just this is something I want to do to, you know, for myself. And that's what he did. It just carried on throughout his life. And the culmination of all of that was on that day that, that he died. And you're listening to Paul Monti tell the story of his fallen son. And my goodness, if you're a son and your dad speaks these words over you like this, you are one lucky man.
And if you're a dad who gets to speak these words about a son, you're one lucky father. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, this beautiful story, Father and Son Bond, a fallen soldier story, honoring all those who fell in all of our wars. And I'm going to tell you a story about a man who died in the first place, one of those who fell in all of our wars. Here on Memorial Day, more of Paul Monti's story and Jared's here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American stories.com and give.
It is Ryan here and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like, are you a fist pumper, a woohoo-er, a hand clapper, a high fiver? I kind of like to high five, but if you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. At chumbacassino.com, choose from hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly plus free daily bonuses.
So don't wait, start having the most fun ever at chumbacassino.com. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh, wow, you look so good for your age. Like, why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age? That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now.
This is Amy Brown from 4 Things with Amy Brown. Today, healthier is happening at CVS Health in more ways than you've ever seen. It's wellness destinations for seniors, including select locations with Oak Street Health and CVS Pharmacy. It's doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and everyone in between offering quality care and support virtually in person and on the phone. It's in-home evaluations through Signify Health and meeting mental health needs through Aetna. And those are just a few of the ways that healthier is happening. To see more, visit CVSHealth.com slash Healthier Happens Together. CVS Pharmacy, Oak Street Health, CVS Specialty, Signify Health, and Aetna are part of CVS Health.
Eligibility and services vary by location and individual. And we return to our American Stories Memorial Day special and the story of Sergeant First Class Jared Monti. When we last left off, Paul Monti, Jared's father, was telling us about the kind of person that his son was.
Let's pick up where we last left off. Well, it was his junior year in high school and he came home and said, dad, can I talk to you? I said, sure. He said, I want to join the army, dad. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I said, you know, you're, you're an A student. You're going to go to college, son. He said, well, dad, you can't afford to send me to college. And I said, well, you know, Jared, I'll just get another job. He said, dad, you're already working two and three jobs.
Let me do this. I'll go in the army and they'll pay for my college. What was I to say? You know, being only 17, I had to sign papers for him and I did very reluctantly. But, you know, like I had said before, he was a very adventurous kid and this, this really appealed to him. This idea of, you know, the adventure of the military and seeing the world and he loved his country. So there it was, it was made for him. He was a 13F Ford observer, what we used to call the suicide squad because they were always operating behind enemy lines.
That bothered me too. I mean, like I said, we called it the suicide squad, but danger, dangerous things never bothered him. You know, he loved the rollercoaster. He loved riding a motorcycle. That kind of thing didn't bother him. And especially in the military where he knew how important it was to saving lives. That's, that's what he loved. He number of times got himself into trouble in the military for that kind of a thing of being a little more adventurous than some officer wanted him to be.
I remember an incident in South Korea where he had to take his platoon out on basically a basically a war games maneuver. And they came to a stream, which was flowing really quickly. They were supposed to cross the stream. And when Jared saw the stream, he halted his guys and said, you know what? That doesn't look safe at all.
Let me go out and check it and make sure it's safe for all of us. Now being a Sergeant at that time, normally you would assign that to, you know, a private or someone. But Jared always led from the front. It was always my boys, dad, my boys. He looked upon them as young people that he had to protect. It was his job to make sure his guys were safe. So he forded the stream, but he ended up getting washed downstream. They all thought he was dead.
But luckily enough, there was a floating branch in the water that he was able to cling to until they found him and took him out. But that's again, it was always a matter of him taking the chances and not allowing his boys to be in the line of danger. That's just who he was.
It's just what he did. And yeah, he ended up being twice deployed to Afghanistan. Probably the most dangerous area in all of Afghanistan was this area in the Kuna Valley. This was the place where the Taliban would come in from Pakistan. This was their main route. And the army had decided that they were going to put a kibosh on this.
They had tried a number of times and were never successful. But they did put together this plan. So Jared with his platoon and Chris Cunningham, who was another Sergeant, he was a sniper and he had his snipers. So there were 16 of them all together.
Eight of them were forward observers and eight snipers. And they were tasked to climb this mountain. The mountain was 8,500 feet high to set up an observation post at the top of the mountain to view the crossing area down below in the valley so that they could call in fire when the main force a day later was to come into the valley. So in 100 degree heat and all of these guys carrying, you know, packs of 70 plus pounds, climbing mostly at night, they climbed Hill 2610.
It took them two days to climb that. Now as an aside to that, the night before they left to make this climb, I got a call very early in the morning, got me out of bed. Get out of bed, I answered the phone, said hello, and I heard, hi Pop, Happy Father's Day.
And I was like shocked that he would call me to wish me a Happy Father's Day. And at the end of that conversation, he said, Dad, I got to go. We're leaving on a mission. And that's when they left to climb that mountain.
It was hot. They were out of food. They were out of water. And the Army had made provisions to have an airdrop for them. At the same time, they were going into the valley so that the helicopter dropping their provisions wouldn't be noticed. However, because one helicopter was down, needed repairs, the Army decided to postpone the attack into the valley for two days, which left the guys at the top without food and water. And the Army then decided to send in their supply helicopter anyway. The helicopter came in, it missed the drop point, and dropped the stuff way too near them, marking their position.
As the sun was setting on that day, they heard noises in the woods that surrounded this plateau, about half the size of a football field. And at that point, all hell broke loose. Small arms fire, machine guns, RPGs started raining in on their position so badly that these guys couldn't pop their head up. One of them got his rifle shot out of his hands. Another one was shot in the wrist and in the back.
The trees surrounding them had no branches left on them. And Private Bradbury and another soldier who had been kind of at the point, they were in danger of being overrun. And so they decided to run back to the opposite end where there were some rocks they could hide behind. The one soldier made it, but Bradbury was hit and he was down.
You know, it's like being in the middle of a football field or baseball field, totally devoid of any cover whatsoever, no rocks, no trees. And the enemy was still fighting at him. Jared called in for artillery, mortars, air support, danger close, which I think people understand that means the bombs are going to be dropping so close to you that if you're not down, the chances are you're going to be killed as well as the enemy. And after calling in the coordinates, that's when Jared handed off the radio to someone else.
And that's when he tightened his chin strap. Chris Cunningham had said, I'm going out to get Bradbury. And Jared answered him back and said, no, he's my boy.
I'm going to get him. When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Jared and Paul Monti here on Our American Stories. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards and come back to get free coins every four hours only at Hi5Casino.com. Hi5Casino is a social casino, no purchase necessary, void or prohibited, play responsibly, terms and conditions apply. See website for details at Hi5Casino.com.
Hi5Casino. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh, wow, you look so good for your age.
Like, why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age? That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty, beautiful skin at every age. Learn more at MeaningfulBeauty.com.
This is Amy Brown from Four Things with Amy Brown. Today, healthier is happening at CVS Health in more ways than you've ever seen. It's wellness destinations for seniors, including select locations with Oak Street Health and CVS Pharmacy. It's doctors, nurses, pharmacists and everyone in between offering quality care and support virtually, in person and on the phone. It's in-home evaluations through Signify Health and meeting mental health needs through Aetna. And those are just a few of the ways that healthier is happening. To see more, visit CVSHealth.com slash Healthier Happens Together. CVS Pharmacy, Oak Street Health, CVS Specialty, Signify Health and Aetna are part of CVS Health.
Eligibility and services vary by location and individual. And we return to our American Stories Memorial Day special and the story of Sergeant First Class Jared Monti. When we last left off, Jared and the group of men he had helped to lead into one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan was surrounded by a group of 50 insurgents, outmanned and outgunned. And to add to the situation, Brian J. Bradbury was down and exposed to enemy fire.
Jared decided he would expose himself to in order to save his private. Let's return to the story. He ran out to get Bradbury and he was driven back by the heavy enemy fire.
There were at least 50 Taliban firing at them. And then he tried a second time and was driven back a second time. And, you know, not being able to give up and wanting to do the right thing, out he went the third time. That's when he was hit by the RPG and he was killed.
And that's what led up to him receiving the Medal of Honor. I haven't gotten through it. Next month will be 15 years and I'm still stuck in it. No one should you lose a child. It's not supposed to happen that way.
It's, you know, the parents go first and the children grieve for them. I'll never forget that night, 9.45 p.m., and I'm sitting watching America's Got Talent, and my doorbell rang. And I saw two men come around the side of the house in uniform. I knew immediately. You know, you answer the door and you get the government response. You know, we need to inform you that, you know, your son was killed in action. And from that moment on, you're off somewhere.
I remember sitting down with them at the dining room table and having a stack of papers shoved in front of me and asked to sign this, sign this, sign this, and you just go through the motions. You don't want to believe what they're saying. You don't want to believe what they're saying.
You want to think that someone made a mistake. I was so, I was so messed up. I mean, his guys, they couldn't believe what happened. Monty was so revered to them that nothing could ever happen to him. To this day, they have the same feeling.
They all, I don't think any of them have ever gotten over what happened. He wasn't just, you know, their sergeant. He was their friend.
Yeah, I'm your boss and I'm gonna, you know, guide you, but I'm gonna be your friend. Back in the States, every weekend, he would either be going to someone's house to help them put in a floor, or he was having a barbecue for them, or if there was a celebration for one of their children, he would be there. He took care of them as if they were, and indeed they were, his brothers. That's where my pride comes in, that he was such a good human being that I wonder if I'm even worthy to be called his father.
It's really very, very difficult to understand that a person like this is related to you, never mind being your own son. I wasn't even expecting the truck. When they delivered all his stuff from his apartment in New York, the last thing that came off was his truck, and I was like, wow.
There was a truck was his truck, and I was like, wow. There was a empty bottle. Well, it wasn't quite emptying on the floorboards. He liked his char, so he always had a bottle with him to spit into.
That was, that was in there. He had toothpaste in there. He had mouthwash. He had a toothbrush. He had, yeah, he had a little container of coins. He had, oh, lord, just, you know, a guy's truck.
I mean, it's pretty much the same even now, 15 years later, as it was when he left. I've never vacuumed it. It sure needs it, but I just don't want to remove his DNA.
I don't want that sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. So, yeah, it's a little messy, but it's him, and he's with me when I drive it, so. I don't drive it as much as I used to.
It was my everyday vehicle for a while, and then I realized that it had to be preserved, so I got another vehicle, but I still make sure I drive his truck whenever I can, at least once a week to get it out and run it. Some people have said, you know, time heals all wounds. It doesn't.
It absolutely doesn't. I'm 15 years in, and it's almost like it happened yesterday. This is the way it is. The way my life is now, you know, there's a door in front of me with my son's name on it, and I'm expecting to be able to open that door and go and visit him and go to sports games with him and go fishing with him and just have him over my house for a barbecue.
To hold his kids, my grandkids, on my lap, that's what I expect when I open that door, but when I actually reach out and open that door, it's just totally dark inside. There will be no barbecues in the backyard. There will be no Red Sox games. There will be no fishing trips. There will be no grandkids. I know the Lord works in very mysterious ways, and I know that no matter who you are, when a loved one dies, you always have that question, why God?
But I was actually able to answer that question. The whole thing that came about from my son's death, the fact that we now have a charity that places flags on every grave at the National Cemetery in porn, every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day, now placing 77,000 flags, the fact that we were able to give out $16,000 in scholarship money this year, the effect that Jared's had on so many people, especially young people, throughout the entire country, indeed in some cases the world, it seems to me that God looked down and he said, you know Jared, you're doing a fabulous job on that planet, but if you come up here with me, you'll be able to do even more. And that's what he's been doing since he passed, even more. And a spectacular job by Monty, as always. And my goodness, what a piece of storytelling from Paul Monty. I haven't gotten through it. No one should lose a child.
The parent goes first. He wasn't just their sergeant, he said, he was their friend. He was such a good human being. The story of Jared Monty, the story of Paul Monty, here on Our American Stories.
That world has eaten up and spit out a lot of young and attractive guys. This is the story of one of fashion's dark secrets. I was overwhelmed, like I had never seen anything like this.
At the height of Abercrombie and Fitch's success. This was me being carefully manipulated. Being lied to, tricked, and traded like a commodity.
Investigating allegations that would take me into a world of money, sex, and power. This is World of Secrets, season one, The Abercrombie Guys. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. We are the Voice of NASCAR.
The green flag is in the air and we are underway. The Great American Race. The Motor Racing Network. NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck Series Racing. Live on your hometown radio station and MRN or nascar.com. Martinsville, Talladega, the Chicago street course. We have the side-by-side action and last lap passes for the win. Photo finishes, Ryan Blaney will win. The Voice of NASCAR, the Motor Racing Network. Or download from the app and Google Play stores today. All you can stream with Xumo Play.
