This past week many of us took a quiet moment to remember where we were on September 11, 2001, which is why we didn’t post anything that following Saturday. This year marked the eighteenth anniversary. While I had to be on the road for business travel, I still took time to think and reflect. On that day in 2001, I was in a Life and Health Insurance class preparing to take my exam. On September 12th, 2001, there weren’t many in the United States who didn’t want justice. In stark contrast to today, we give an over-abundance of mercy or compassion to those who break our laws through the lack of enforcement. We, for a moment eighteen years ago, put down our differences and responded as a Nation. Thinking about 9/11 made me think of many times where tragedy struck and people came together.
In March of 2002, the events of 9/11 were still fresh in my mind. While he was looking to re-enlist through the Reserves, a friend of mine suggested I apply for a sales position at Galls, Incorporated in Lexington, KY. He had worked in the Distribution Center and raved about how good of a place it was to work where he had been trying to finish up college post service in the Marine Corp. Lee wasn’t wrong. Galls was a great place to work. It was and still is one of the largest public safety equipment companies in the United States servicing State/Local Law Enforcement, Fire, EMS, Federal Agencies and the US Military. Galls was the answer I was looking for and helped propel me into a career in the outdoor/shooting sports industry. I learned valuable skills and life lessons while I worked there and have an extensive network of Galls Alumni spread across the country that shares a common bond.
The on-boarding process at Galls was like no other I have ever experienced. We had several weeks of training and each week ended with a round of tests. If you didn’t score high enough, you didn’t go on to the next week. It was that simple. We had to learn as much as about our customers as the products they used. By the time I graduated from training, I had a profound respect for the customers I was about to serve. I quickly learned that I was going to be assigned to the State Law Division and handle the eastern half of Texas. Our VP of Sales, Mike Kruszewski told us that our territory is our own little company and we needed to run it. I took that to heart and focused on serving my customer.
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed during re-entry into our atmosphere due to a flaw in the tiles caused by an impact. Much of the debris field was in my sales territory. With the help of several teammates, we supported the recovery efforts by providing much-needed equipment at little to no cost. In June of 2003, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Mark W Allen wrote a Letter of Appreciation for the Jasper County Interjurisdictional Emergency Management Team. (A copy of which will be posted below.)
Galls Sales Teams were set up in groups and often had what we called ASR’s or Assistant Sales Representatives. Kevin Foley and I were given a new ASR in the spring of 2006; her name was Rachel Cavins Dunn. Rachel had broken the mold from the get-go. ASR’s were the cream of the crop from our Customer Service Dept., recommended to have college degrees and to be Account Manager’s in training. Rachel had been in Customer Service for a very short time before applying to an ASR position. In her interview with us, we asked what she wanted to accomplish. She looked Kevin and me squarely in the face and said, “I want your job.” Kevin and I gave each other a wink, looked back and said, “Give us six months.” Rachel was a rock star, a go-getter, had a positive attitude and fun to work with. Kevin and I quickly found her to be an integral part of our team. We asked her to work accounts that we couldn’t manage to get to. This accomplished an increase in sales but also created a track record documenting what she could achieve which was later given as part of the recommendation to promote her. Rachel made her goal of becoming an Account Manager in a little less than six months and the credit is all hers, she earned it. In May of 2019, I was in Lexington on business when news reached me that Rachel had passed away unexpectedly. The day I found out, they were having visitation in her hometown and I drove down early from work to pay her my respects as I was not going to be able to attend the funeral the next day. Looking at pictures, watching a video and standing before her casket was surreal and heartbreaking as Rachel was much younger than me. Rest in peace Rachel, you are loved and missed.
On the morning of August 27, 2006, I woke up and went downstairs. I turned the desktop computer on in order to check emails and turned on the news while the computer loaded. As the television came on, Lexington News Crews were covering a crash at the airport from Comair Flight 5191. I immediately hit the phone intercom and woke my wife up (who also worked at Galls) and told her to come downstairs. I emphatically told her that was the flight that several of our team members were on to finish up a contract with New Orleans PD after Katrina. As she tried to calm me down, her cell phone rang. Susan Joseph, one of the administrative assistants, was on the phone and she confirmed what had happened. We lost four teammates that day. Three of which we had seen the night before at a housewarming party. Three weeks prior, a call for volunteers for this trip came through the various sales teams, I had volunteered to go if they needed help as I had transferred from State Law to National Accounts. At the end of that week, Tom Rose, my Sales Manager let me know I wasn’t needed and wouldn’t be going. The realization of this and of the loss of fellow co-workers hit like a ton of bricks. Today there isn’t a time I step on an airplane and don’t think about Bobby, Cecile, Erik, and Priscilla.
Galls is where I cut my teeth in the industry and I have given it the majority of my working life. I don’t recount these events to sadden anyone or gain sympathy. Tragedies magnify truths like life is too short. All too often we wait for it to strike before lowering our guard or asking serious questions. On April 11, 2019, a US Representative spoke out with the words, “some people did something” with respect to the events of 9/11. Not only did the Representative incorrectly state the founding of CAIR, which was in June of 1994, but the comment was out of touch and rightly drew condemnation.
Sadly, it seems what used to be right or wrong and black or white is now all arguably subjective. We spend too much energy focusing on the wrong things. After a mass shooting, we hear talk about gun control but not the root cause of what drives someone in our society to do evil. The tool used to harm someone isn’t the problem. Remember, 19 people used box cutters and commercial aircraft to take the lives of nearly 3,000 people. Guns don’t cause someone to want to harm others. If this were true, by extension then cars cause people to want to drink and drive. While tragedy often seems random, there is always something that leads up to it. There is a technique called the Five Why’s. The point is to drive down to the real reasons and establish a clear Cause and Effect order of events especially for problems that might have more than one root cause. In the case of a shooting, asking the why’s on just guns doesn’t get down to the real cause since it doesn’t address why someone decided to do something bad. If we really drove down on the question of why people do bad things we might not like the result because it would ultimately point back to what society is doing as a whole.
Since 9/11/01, I have had loss as I suspect others have. As the coverage wound down, the same tired rants against our President, Gun Violence and a litany of topics began to be bell-rung again. While founding principles and traditional values are on trial daily, we see people vilify those whose views they disagree with and blindly label others as racist or purveyors of hate speech. Watching this play out on social media, news outlets and in various other ways, one might think we no longer have anything in common. The further we get from each other the easier it is to forget there is something greater than us all that connects us no matter the race, religion or gender. Without the dark, we wouldn’t know the light. Without sadness, we wouldn’t know happiness. The unity of our Nation on that day is something I hope we will not forget. We know who did what on that day. To the families of those who lost loved ones on 9/11, I will not forget. To the First Responders who answered the call that day and the soldiers who went to war, I will not forget. To the officers I had the privilege to serve, I will not forget. To the families of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, I will not forget. To my teammates lost on Comair Flight 5191 and their families, I will not forget. To Rachel and her family, I will not forget. Choose to live a life with purpose. Don’t wait for tragedy to strike before asking the important questions, the ones that get right down to the heart of the matter.
- L. Yarbrough, Bucks & Beers
