Newton County Times' Outhouse Companion - Newton County Times

A compilation of facts, questions and answers

A rare bongo
The Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Michigan, described the bongo as "one of the most majestic and endangered members of the antelope family" in its announcement of the rare, recent birth of a female eastern bongo calf. How rare are bongos? According to the zoo, only about 100 eastern bongos remain in the wild and about 300 bongos are protected in accredited zoos; "their ornate horns and vibrant orange coat make them a target for hunting and poaching."

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A rare catch
Fishing guides Dylan Wier and Blaine Kenny knew that the fish they had hooked on Orange Beach, Alabama, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico was a big one. They thought they might have a tiger shark on their hook. About a half an hour later they, indeed, found themselves reeling in a shark but it wasn't a tiger shark; it was an eleven foot great white shark, a species that is rare for the Alabama coast. In fact, the state's Department of Conservation and Natural Resource, believes it might just be the very first great white caught off the Alabama coast.

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A rare tongue
Just a month ago the Guinness Book of World Records declared Nick Stoeberl of Salinas, California, had the longest tongue in the world. He wasted no time to seek a second award, visiting the Guinness offices in an attempt to set the record for touching his tongue to his nose. He didn't break that record and so he used his nearly four inch long lingua to set the record for removing five blocks from an unstable tower of 54 blocks in less than a minute.

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Seven steps for protecting employees during business travel

By ANUJA AGRAWAL and MARY MILLER SALLAH

Business travel inherently puts some level of stress on a traveler. The more someone travels for business, the more their health risks can increase. And those risks and related costs don't just affect employees and their families. They affect the employer, too, in terms of insurance and the temporary or lengthy loss of an employee.
In the context of business travel and employee health, duty of care obligates an employer to research, plan, develop, and implement a set of policies and operational procedures to mitigate the risks that employees might face when they travel for business. Duty of care encompasses both the legal and moral responsibility of organizations to care for their employees when traveling. Successfully evading risks is a matter of careful planning.
Post-COVID-19, many companies have elevated their focus on employee health, especially for business travel. Cédric Fraissinet, general manager Central Europe at International SOS, says travel health and security policies need to be intimately linked. "Just as 9/11 completely changed the security rules of the air transport industry, COVID-19 has done the same to travel risk-management practices," Fraissinet says. "A siloed approach to health and security risks is no longer adequate; assessing employee fitness to travel, and on-trip support, is now needed more than ever before."
From our research and experience, we have become convinced of the value of an organization assessing its objectives, its traveler needs, its culture, its current policy status, and its own unique needs before developing or revising travel policy. We have seen too many businesses that have borrowed travel policies or used policy templates to create rules that no one understands, rules that are inapplicable, or rules that may even be unnecessary.
We recommend a seven-step approach to achieving duty of care for business travel:
Internal assessment
Conduct an internal assessment to determine the foundational components that will form the basis for the travel program in general and how it relates to employee health in particular. Gathering all relevant materials – not just position descriptions but also existing travel policy directives and perceived risks – gets everything on the table for review, analysis, and ultimately, coordination.
For organizations looking to revise corporate travel policies under a duty-of-care model, we suggest inviting feedback from employees, those responsible for business travel, partners/vendors, and any other key stakeholders.
Risk assessment
The next step is to assess the health, safety, security risks, vulnerabilities, or exposure associated with the organization's business travel requirements. The objective of any risk-management program is to mitigate risk to an acceptable level consistent with the organization's business goals, governmental laws and regulations, and prevailing industry standards. Key risk factors to consider include:
Destination and location risks – weather, crime rates, civil unrest, political and socioeconomic factors.
Travel risks – issues with passports and visas, travel delays, missed connections, jet lag, fatigue.
Health risks – hygiene and sanitation issues, infectious or food-borne or water-borne diseases, unfamiliarity with surroundings.
Safety risks – the mode of travel, the accommodations, the neighborhood where the hotel or business meeting is to take place, the safety of local transportation
Policy and procedure development
Travel policy is not about control or mere expense management. It should strike a fair balance between efficient use of the company's resources and efforts to maintain the health, safety, well-being, and morale of traveling employees in a manner that encourages employee compliance with policy.
Key elements of establishing and revising policy and related procedures include:
Stating the purpose of the policy
Clearly stating your duty of care objectives
Identifying the products of step 2, including determination of essential and non-essential travel and locations approved for travel
Designating lead/responsible parties
Establishing guidelines and/or acceptable exceptions, processes, and procedures for relevant groups/locations.
Documenting policies and procedures for each step in the process, including pre-approvals, pre-travel risk assessment, reservations, monitoring, incident response, and feedback.
Employee education and training
Proactive communication is key to driving awareness and to anticipating or challenging misinformation. By educating everyone, an organization creates and reinforces a culture of risk awareness and discernment. Training everyone, including leadership, on policy and procedure is necessary for fulfilling duty-of-care responsibilities. All employees should be trained on the entirety of the policy itself, related procedures, processes, and protocols, and any supporting technology or other tools used by the organization.
Pretravel risk assessment
Identify anything that might compromise the safety, security, and well-being of a given traveling employee with respect to each specific business trip. Department managers and others responsible for managing travel should understand and carry out required reviews prior to each trip.
Monitoring employee travel
At a minimum, organizations should be able to track itineraries and see at a glance who is traveling, where they are, where they are staying, the length of stay, and how to contact them should an emergency arise.
Incident response
Should an incident occur, an organization must be able to coordinate efforts to react rapidly to the situation at hand and provide immediate and appropriate assistance to the employee. The capacity to respond quickly and efficiently is often hinged to measures taken to track and monitor employee well-being. Additionally, organizations should have comprehensive emergency response plans, including the ability to determine what constitutes an emergency, immediately implement emergency protocols, provide appropriate support and activate local support if needed.
Companies need to proactively, rather than reactively, develop policy that is thorough and explicitly addresses the health, safety, and well-being of employees. Outdated or ineffective policies create confusion and mistakes on the part of employees and often also their managers. Regular audits, analytics on compliance, and feedback collection are important tools in implementing policy and procedural changes that better ensure compliance.

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Medal of Honor: Army Staff Sgt. Herbert Burr
By KATIE LANGE
Department of Defense News
When it came to tank warfare, Army Staff Sgt. Herbert Hoover Burr seemed fearless. He saved the day twice during World War II during separate actions that earned him the Distinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor.
Burr was born to Maurice and Edna Burr on Sept. 13, 1920, in St. Joseph, Missouri. He had five brothers and two sisters and attended the town's Central High School before moving to nearby Kansas City when he was 17.
Burr told a reporter at the St. Joseph Gazette that he had tried to join every branch of the military when he was young, including the National Guard, but they all turned him down because he had bad teeth. However, by early 1942, when the U.S. war machine was in full swing, he was drafted into the Army. He trained as a tank gunner and was eventually sent to fight in France with Company C of the 41st Tank Battalion, 11th Armored Division.
Burr's bravery was evident throughout his time in Europe. On Jan. 15, 1945, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross for saving an injured soldier from a burning tank in Belgium. He then put the fire out and drove that tank back to U.S. lines.
What earned him the Medal of Honor happened about two months later, on March 19, 1945, near Dorrmoschel, Germany. Burr told the St. Joseph Gazette that he was in one of three Allied tanks moving through the area. The first tank was knocked out on the outskirts of town; the second was told to hold its position, and Burr's was told to explore the area.
A short time later, Burr's tank was hit by an enemy bazooka shell. The blast severely wounded the platoon sergeant, killed two men in its turret and forced the rest of the crew to abandon the vehicle.
"The big gun was over the top of the tank, and I couldn't get out," he told a reporter for the St. Joseph News-Press/Gazette in 1988. "I couldn't hear anything, but I could feel the vibrations and I knew the tank was running. I wasn't about to jump out with that guy with the bazooka out there."
Burr, who was the tank's bow gunner, had been deafened but was otherwise uninjured, so he immediately climbed into the driver's seat and kept the tank moving into town. But as he made a left turn, he realized it was the wrong choice — an 88-mm anti-tank gun was facing him at point-blank range.
"I guess there was not supposed to be a left turn there," Burr told the News-Press/Gazette reporter. "Well, it was too damn late to back up."
Even though there were no other crew members in the tank to man its guns, Burr made the bold move to directly charge the German weapon. It would have been easy for the Germans to take him out — Burr's Medal of Honor citation said the anti-tank gun was fully manned and only needed someone to pull the lanyard to send off a shell. But the German's were so surprised by Burr's unexpected and daring run toward them that he was able to drive his tank completely over it, destroying the weapon and causing its crew to flee in confusion.
Burr kept going, sideswiping and overturning a German truck before whipping back around and returning to his company's line.
Burr then climbed out of the tank and rank through sniper fire to find some medics, who had been looking for him. Burr pointed them toward one of his injured comrades, who was still alive in the tank's turret. Unfortunately, that man didn't survive the ordeal, the Gazette reported.
Burr's fearlessness and determination quickly earned him a Medal of Honor nomination, which allowed for him to be transferred back to the U.S., according to the St. Joseph Gazette. He was sent to serve as an instructor at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and then at a war college in Washington, D.C.
Burr received the Medal of Honor on Aug. 23, 1945, from President Harry S. Truman during a White House ceremony that honored 27 other war heroes. Burr's parents and his wife, Verna, were in attendance.
To add to his accolades, Burr also received the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1946 — Great Britain's second highest military decoration at the time — and the Luxembourg Croix de Guerre — a rare foreign decoration bestowed on Allied troops — in 1947.
Burr was discharged from the Army after the war and returned to Kansas City. He and his wife went on to have three sons and a daughter.
Burr worked in construction and as a painter for the federal government until he retired in 1986. He was a member of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the 11th Armored Division Association and was content to live a quiet life, according to a 1984 Kansas City Times article. Burr's son, Jack, said his father didn't like to talk about the war much and loved fishing.
Burr moved to Urbana, Missouri, in 1988. He died two years later, on Feb. 8, 1990, at a hospital near his home. He was buried in Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri.

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Think you're set up for success as a new entrepreneur? Not without a mentor

By TONY DISILVESTRO

Running a business is hard, and the early days of getting it off the ground can be rough.
I worked over 100 hours a week for years. I missed the first five years with my oldest daughter. I ran myself ragged, and it affected everything about my life.
I also wanted to grow, and I soon learned that I couldn't do it burning the candle at both ends. Something had to give. But I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have anyone coaching me or teaching me how to market, delegate, train, and scale my business. I had to figure all of that out on my own – at least until I made one of my wisest decisions.
Are you a business owner or an entrepreneur?
As a young man in the early days of my business, I thought I was an entrepreneur, but the fact was, I wasn't an entrepreneur at all. I was just a business owner. And a stressed out and busy one at that.
The main thing I wish I'd had in my early days is a coach. I suffered so many losses in the first years of business that could have been cut by at least 50 percent if I'd had someone guiding me. It wasn't until I was 10 years into business that a mentor came into my life. His name was Don and he worked for one of the first marketing companies I worked with. He would sit with me and go over business trends.
When I first met Don I wasn't growing. Eventually, I had to admit that. I had hit a ceiling, and to achieve my growth goals, I had to try something different. I was trying to do everything myself. The business was entirely dependent on me, and I'm only one person. So one day I took his advice and started looking at the big picture, thinking bigger. A huge part of this was learning to trust the systems I had in place and to begin delegating and trusting my employees to do the work without me. For years, Don had given me that advice over and over, but it wasn't until I had a mindset shift that I followed it.
I've told him it was the best advice he's ever given me. The most rewarding thing I do now is to be that mentor for others and to help them avoid making many of the mistakes that I did.
So if you're ready, I'll say the same thing to you: If you want to grow and scale, you have to move from a business owner to an entrepreneur and know the mindset that shift requires.
Willingness to fail leads to success
"Failing well" sounds like an oxymoron, but it's part of the path to business success. One must take risks to push their business forward, and failing is inevitable within that process. Learning to fail well is essential to becoming an entrepreneur.
For me, there are two types of failures: micro and macro. A micro failure is something that won't cripple your business. It could look like trying a new product, depending on how much your products cost, of course. At my store, adding a new menu item that does not do well is a micro failure. But a macro failure will sink you. I almost experienced a macro failure when I opened a bakery when I was young. I wasn't prepared, and I didn't have a coach guiding me.
A good business coach helps you avoid macro failures and will often push you toward micro failures. Too often we associate failure with negative outcomes, but failure teaches us so much. And most important for entrepreneurs, failure builds confidence. Often, to make the jump from business owner to entrepreneur, you need to get your feet wet with failure. You need to experience some small bumps and learn that you'll survive so that you can get back up and try again.
Business owners who haven't yet jumped into entrepreneurship are usually risk-averse and overly cautious. Entrepreneurs want to scale and grow. They know their business cannot depend solely on them. Thank goodness Don entered my life and got me to understand that critical point.
Everybody needs something a little different from a business coach. If you skew toward the business owner's end of the spectrum, you likely need a coach to help grow your confidence and light a fire under you. If you're more of a serial entrepreneur like me, you need someone to rein you in and help you make wise choices. Either way, one of the wisest decisions you can make is to have a mentor to help you on your journey.

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Social Security Matters
By National Social Security Adviser at the AMAC Foundation,

Ask Rusty – Widow Stung by Social Security's "Claw Back" Rule

Dear Rusty: My husband of 48 years died on December 30th, and he received a Social Security direct deposit for December's benefits in early January, but Social Security demanded the bank return his December payment. I used part of his December benefits to pay for household expenses, so his bank account was overdrawn after his bank paid back his Social Security for the December benefit. My questions are:
1. Is it legal for Social Security to demand a return of his benefits because he died one day prior to 1/1/2023? That just seems so wrong to me!
2. Am I legally responsible for the overdrawn amount his bank repaid to Social Security? I was not notified by Social Security or his bank before "the deed was done".
3. Aren't there Social Security spousal benefits available for the surviving spouse, and how do I apply for them? (Form #, please)
My husband medically retired early, and his Social Security benefits were always lower than mine, but I fear that my benefits may be affected by his death. Is that true? Signed: Grieving Widow, Feeling Wronged
Dear Grieving Widow: Please accept our sincere condolences on your husband's passing. Unfortunately, I don't have good news for you about his December benefit payment. Social Security pays benefits in the month following the month they are earned, and the recipient must live the entire month to be eligible for that month's benefit. Even though your husband lived until almost the end of the month, Social Security's rule says that he must live the entire month to be eligible for December benefits; thus, they took back (often referred to as "Clawed Back") the December benefits paid in January.
So, is all of this legal? Yes, I'm afraid it is. From what you've shared Social Security took back the money they are legally entitled to, so you have no further obligation to Social Security. The bank had no choice but to return your husband's December Social Security payment – they were legally obligated to do so. Thus, your obligation to resolve your husband's overdrawn bank account resulting from the bank fulfilling its legal obligation to Social Security still remains.
As for any spousal or survivor benefits you might be entitled to – you say your husband's Social Security payment was less than yours, which means you weren't getting a spousal benefit and cannot get a surviving spouse benefit as a widow (you can only get your benefit or his, whichever is higher). You will, however, be eligible for a one-time lump sum death benefit of $255. I know it's not much, but you're entitled to it and should claim it. And, from what you've described - that your monthly Social Security amount is more than your husband's - your own benefit will not be negatively affected by any of this.
This article is intended for information purposes only and does not represent legal or financial guidance. It presents the opinions and interpretations of the AMAC Foundation's staff, trained and accredited by the National Social Security Association (NSSA). NSSA and the AMAC Foundation and its staff are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other governmental entity. To submit a question, visit our website (amacfoundation.org/programs/social-security-advisory) or email us at ssadvisor@amacfoundation.org.

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Middle-of-the-road success vs. musical superstardom
Not every musician reaches the top, and that's fine with many of them

Every year ambitious musicians eager to jumpstart their careers try to win a spot on such TV shows as American Idol and The Voice, hoping the exposure will hurl them into the music-career stratosphere.
But for every Kelly Clarkson or Jennifer Hudson who breaks clear of the crowd, untold numbers of musicians give up on the dream.
Yet superstar-level success or abject failure aren't the only options. Somewhere between the extremes are thousands who find that success in the music business doesn't have to mean becoming a household name.
"Success for musicians comes in a lot of different forms," says John Kim Faye (www.johnfaye.com), former lead singer of the Caulfields and author of the new memoir The Yin and the Yang of It All: Rock 'N' Roll Memories from the Cusp, as Told By a Mixed-Up, Mixed-Race Kid.
"There is a huge community of what I call 'middle-class musicians' who all play, sing, write, and produce at the highest level. They go on tour, blow people's minds when given the opportunity, and yet the general public has never heard of them. Trust me, there are a lot of us out there, just doing what we do and finding a way to keep on going."
About 24,000 people in the United States are employed as musicians or singers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median income is about $30 an hour, far below the multi-million-dollar contracts young musical dreamers might imagine.
How any individual artist defines success often depends on the person's particular talents and strengths, as well as what they want their everyday life to look like.
"Some people want to reach a certain level of financial gain and are willing to play 250 shows a year to do it," Faye says. "Others might be focused on writing and getting their songs placed in films or on Netflix. Others might put their efforts into building an online following and spend their days creating content. There are lots of different paths you can take. It's a mosaic, not a monolith."
Fleeting Success and One-Hit Wonders
Still, reaching the heights of Billboard popularity with a hit song that has the entire country singing along is enticing.
In his book, Faye mentions how much he enjoyed the song "Moonlight Feels Right," a hit in 1976 for the group Starbuck. But Starbuck could never duplicate that success with its subsequent music, an example of how fleeting and flimsy music-industry success can be.
Faye knows because he soared to his own musical heights as lead singer for the alternative rock band the Caulfields, which recorded two albums in the 1990s for A&M Records.
"When I got my little taste of the trappings of success in the mid-90s, I basically convinced myself that 'this is my life now,' " Faye says. "My record was on the radio. I was touring all over creation. I was paid a hefty advance for my publishing. The idea that it would all go away faster than it had arrived was definitely not something I kept in the front of my mind, and my behavior would confirm that because I blew through that money pretty fast."
Faye says that's why it's important for budding musicians, especially those on the brink of major success, to realize that their so-called fifteen minutes of fame can't be the main driver behind a sustained career path.
"Those opportunities in the spotlight do go away quickly," he says. "But if you're in it for the right reasons, you'll gain the fortitude to put yourself in a position to learn from it, move forward, and maybe even parlay it into something more valuable down the road."
As he looks back on his career so far, Faye says he would tell his younger self to "savor and appreciate every experience through the lens of connection." Instead, he says, it was too easy to get caught up in the industry mindset that bigger is always better, and to think of the audience only in terms of the head count.
"But in many ways," Faye says, "every time I got closer to the traditional idea of rock stardom, the further away I got from the true reason I started playing music in the first place, which was to use my voice and my songwriting to show people who I am. I want to be seen, and just as importantly, I want to see the people who are listening back. I want the experience to be symbiotic."

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Moose News
There they were, a pair of brothers on snowmobiles out on an outing near Palisades, Idaho, when a menacing moose ruined their day. The moose managed to get in between Jeremiah Bigelow's snowmobile and that of his brother and for whatever reason it decided to charge the brother's sled. No one was hurt, although the moose did some damage to his snowmobile as it made its escape and Jeremiah videotaped the whole thing.

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Grow old, grow strong
Sixty-year-old Floridian Rob Stirling shows that age needn't get you down. Stirling recently contested the Guinness World Record for doing the most pushups in one hour -- 3,264 pushups in sixty minutes, almost 54-and-a-half pushups per minute. Stirling is not done yet. He plans to set a new Guinness record for the most pushups in one minute. The current record holder earned his title by doing 144 pushups in the span of sixty seconds.

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Ready for a cup of café oleato
Coming soon to a Starbucks near you-- café oleato, coffee with a taste of extra virgin olive oil? Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz came up with the idea while on a visit to Italy. Food and wine publications, thus far, are giving the seemingly odd idea of mixing olive oil and coffee a cautious okay and Schultz is said to be preparing a global oleato roll out in the not too distant future.

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Four ways all leaders can multiply their impact

Leaders are all around us, in corporations, sports teams, civic clubs and other organizations.
In many cases, the work they do and its impact doesn't extend much beyond their immediate sphere of influence.
But leaders also can guide, teach and inspire people in such a way that the impact will be felt far and wide – and maybe even linger long after the leader is gone, says Brendan P. Keegan (www.brendanpkeegan.com), author of The FUD Factor: Overcoming Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt to Achieve the Impossible.
"Leaders should ask themselves, 'What do I want my legacy to be? What lasting impact do I want to leave on the world? How can I be an inspirational legend to others?' " says Keegan, who is chairman, CEO and president of the board for Merchants Fleet, a company that offers commercial vehicle leasing, maintenance, and other services.
He says some ways to make that legacy come about and to leave a greater imprint on the world include:
Lead others through a clear vision and the resources to achieve that vision—together. Ever notice with sports teams how successful head coaches leave a legacy of other head coaches who worked for or played for them? Keegan says the same can happen with leaders in other sectors. "When you make the decision to lead," he says, "you build an exponential legacy of leadership. If you lead 10 people who then lead another 10 people who then lead another 10 people to achieve a common goal, you will have impacted over 1,000 lives." That's a lot of impact, Keegan says, and your efforts also have the added positive effect of removing fear, uncertainty, and doubt from people about their abilities, while instilling confidence.
Be a mentor. Keegan suggests looking around your circle of friends, family members, and colleagues and "picking a person to take under your wing and send down the path of leadership." Mentors, he notes, are volunteers, even at companies with formally structured mentoring programs. Mentors also are focused on helping their mentee achieve their career goals, not the mentor's goals, and doing so with no personal or professional benefit expected in return.
Coach others to be the best versions of themselves. Take time every week to invest a little extra time to show someone how to improve a specific skill or attribute. "Thirty minutes of coaching may change the trajectory of someone's life," Keegan says. Coaching has similarities to mentoring, he says, but there are differences. Mentoring plays a much broader role of cultivating an individual's career and overall personal and professional development. Coaching drives at a specific goal through learning. For example, coaching someone to make a sales call, to perform a job function better, or to complete a 20-yard pass. "With coaching you do immediately see the impact you have on others," Keegan says. "If leading and mentoring is the long game, then coaching is the short game."
Cultivate. Leaders have opportunities each day in every interaction to inspire leadership not only at work but also in the communities in which they live, Keegan says. "Really anyone we meet is an opportunity to begin to light the fuse of leadership for another person," he says. "That can be our neighbors, our kids, our social circles. It can happen in our places of faiths, or gyms or our coffee houses. So many people in life have never been told they, too, can be a leader, let alone have another person invest in them."
Finally, Keegan says, find other ways to give without any expectation of receiving. Giving can mean sharing your time, encouragement and wisdom, and it can also mean philanthropy.
"We all have the opportunity to give in more ways every day and to do it with no expectation of getting anything in return," Keegan says. "It can be running a 5K race for a cause, buying Girl Scout cookies, serving meals at a local shelter, coaching a youth sports team or donating blood. The opportunities are endless."

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Medal of Honor: Navy Lt. j.g. Joseph Kerrey
By KATIE LANGE

Navy Lt. j.g. Joseph R. Kerrey has been a lot of notable things in his life: a business owner, a governor, a senator and even a presidential candidate. But perhaps one of the most well-known titles he holds is that of Medal of Honor recipient for his service as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War.
Kerrey was born on Aug. 27, 1943, in Lincoln, Nebraska, where his father, James, was stationed with the Army Air Corps during World War II. James and his wife, Elinor, stayed there after the war to raise their seven children.
Kerrey, who went by Bob — a nickname short for his middle name, Robert — said he had a standard childhood for the era. He became a Boy Scout and played football in high school, which he graduated from in 1961. He then went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1965.
Kerrey was working as a pharmacist after college when the Vietnam War ramped up. He said in a Library of Congress interview that he knew he was going to be drafted after he received notice to get a physical. He wanted to have a say in what branch he joined, so he said he decided to enlist in the Navy in October 1966.
After Kerrey went to Officer Candidate School, he decided he wanted to join the SEALs, so he successfully completed that training in 1968. He eventually joined SEAL Team 1, which included two officers and 12 enlisted men. After some additional training, they were sent to Vietnam in January 1969.
Within three months, Kerrey's team was called upon to try to capture important enemy political leaders. Kerrey said they had received reliable intelligence from a Viet Cong defector who knew enemy leaders had set up a base of operations on an island in the bay of Nha Trang, along Vietnam's southcentral coast. The defector told Special Forces operators that he'd escaped from the island and was willing to lead them back there.
In the early morning hours of March 14, 1969, Kerrey led his SEAL team on a mission to the island to surprise the enemy. While the night was still dark, the group split into two — one team entered the island from the front, while Kerrey's six-man team scaled a 350-foot cliff by hand from the back so they could end up above a ledge on which the enemy was located.
Kerrey said they'd even taken off their boots to scale the slope more quietly. But just as they were nearing their goal, the enemy found them.
"They were sleeping in two different groups," Kerrey said of the enemy encampment. "The second sleeping group — we got there a bit too late. They had broken camp and were on the move, and they made contact with us."
Kerrey said the Viet Cong fighters threw some sort of explosive device at them, setting off a firefight. Almost immediately, a grenade landed by Kerrey's feet and exploded, causing massive injuries to his right leg. The blast threw him backward onto jagged rocks.
Kerrey said he quickly applied his own tourniquet and tried to stand but couldn't. Despite heavy blood loss and pain, he knew he had to keep the mission moving. So, he directed the rest of his team's fire into the heart of the enemy camp. With the help of his radioman, he then called for more fire support, which seriously confused the Viet Cong, who ended up in its devastating crossfire.
Kerrey, keeping calm and in control, had his team find an extraction site for a helicopter rescue. He said that a few of his men had been deployed before, so they knew what to do. By the end of the ordeal, Kerrey was nearly unconscious, but he continued to direct his team's actions until they were all evacuated — even their enemy captors, who eventually provided critical intelligence for the allied effort.
Kerrey was evacuated to Japan before returning to the U.S., where he learned how bad his leg wounds were. He said he spent eight months at a naval hospital in Philadelphia, where his right leg had to be amputated below the knee.
"I saw real heroism there … both the patients who endured an awful lot — physically and psychologically — as well as the people who cared for us," he said of his time at the hospital.
On May 14, 1970, Kerrey was one of 12 service members to receive the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon during a White House ceremony — although he initially didn't want to accept it. Kerrey said in his Library of Congress interview that he wasn't a fan of medals or medal culture in the military, but he was talked into it by his fellow SEALs.
"I talked to some of the guys who I trusted," Kerrey said. "They talked me into accepting it for them and for other guys who didn't get anything."
When Kerrey was discharged from the Navy, he went to work as a pharmacist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, according to an Omaha World-Herald article. From there, he decided to become a businessman. Kerrey co-owned a few restaurants and some other businesses through most of the 1970s. During that time, he also had several surgeries on his leg that allowed him to walk better and even run, a 1991 New York Times article said.
Kerrey married Beverly Defnall in 1974, although the marriage only lasted a few years before they divorced. The pair had two children, Ben and Lindsey.
By the 1980s, Kerrey had learned a lot from business and wanted to try to make a difference in the world, so he entered politics. He served as the governor of Nebraska from 1983 to 1987, then as a senator from 1989 to 2001. He even ran as a Democratic candidate for president in 1992 but lost the nomination to Bill Clinton.
Kerrey continued to keep busy into the new century. In 2001, he married writer Sarah Paley, and they had a son named Henry. From 2001 to 2010, Kerrey served as the president of The New School, a private research university in New York City. He also served on the 9/11 Commission and published an autobiography in 2002 called "When I Was a Young Man: A Memoir."
When Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson decided not to run for another term in 2012, Kerrey decided to throw his hat back in the ring for his old Senate seat. He lost that bid.
Over the past decade, Kerrey has served as a director for numerous companies in health care and other industries. Most recently, in October 2022, he was listed as the chairman of Tenet Healthcare Corporation.

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Promoting empathy as a leadership skill and debunking some myths

By DR. NICOLE PRICE

People who lack empathy, as I once did, share the belief that they can get a ton accomplished when they don't concern themselves with "people issues."
They think that lacking empathy just might provide the buoyancy to results rather than the barrier. But the tragedy is that sometimes we need to take a subjective view. We need to humanize the people in front of us. We need to step into situations and ask: "What would I want to happen if it were me?" "What does this person need most right now?"
The challenge is how do you get leaders to start prioritizing empathy if they don't believe it belongs in their toolbox of leadership characteristics? The evidence that empathy in the workplace is a boon for business is quite convincing: 87 percent of CEOs believe a company's financial performance is tied to empathy in the workplace, as do 79 percent of HR professionals.
But I understand why some well-meaning, logical, reasonable, results-focused leaders find it hard to comprehend why people simply cannot do their jobs. After all, they've committed themselves to these roles, so why would they need coaxing, cajoling, or hand-holding? It used to frustrate the heck out of me, too, until I recognized that commitment works both ways: employee to employer and employer to employee. If the employer is not committed to providing the employee the support, tools, and resources required to get their job done, they can't expect an employee to keep their commitment to get their job done.
Memo to leaders: Empathy Is understanding your employees
Of course, for the employer to commit to providing the employee what's needed to get the job done, they must understand what those needs are. This is why leading with empathy matters. Empathy is critical to this mutual understanding. Contrary to what many believe, leading with empathy is not about hand-holding or making excuses. It is the opposite. Empathy is the foundation that allows us to move forward.
Leading with empathy is about understanding others and then strategically leveraging that understanding to make progress. Yes, I used empathy, strategic, and leverage in the same sentence – I bet you didn't expect that. The job to be done may be getting your team to arrive on time and ready to start meetings. If your team member is scheduled at a mandated meeting across town that ends 15 minutes before yours begins, and it takes 20 minutes to get across town, they rarely will be on time. If you don't understand why they always arrive late (and stressed), you're not going to solve the problem. In fact, a lack of understanding will make the problem worse.
Many people equate empathy with caring. When the topic of empathy comes up, it's common for people to think, "Now you expect me to care about everyone – what they're doing, how they're feeling. I don't have time for that." While caring is often a natural consequence of practicing empathy, the truth is caring is not required. Understanding is. When you start with understanding, you might begin to care about the person's plight.
Meantime, let's clear up some misunderstandings – some long-standing myths about empathy, and debunk them:
Empathy requires you to adopt the other person's beliefs and values.
Empathy is not believing another's beliefs or living another's values. Empathy is understanding why another person believes what they believe and values what they value, even if it's different from your own.
Empathy is feeling sorry for another person. Empathy is understanding and being sensitive to another person's thoughts, feelings, and experiences; it is not commiserating with another person, which is based on your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. While there are times to feel sorry for people, that is not the definition of empathy.
Empathy makes you weak. Empathy takes the courage to acknowledge and sit with your own difficult feelings so that you can better understand and connect with those around you. Connecting to others strengthens relationships and has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety.
You can't always practice empathy. Yes, you can. Empathy does not require action. It is the simple act of trying to understand and get into the shoes of another person. Your ability to respond better is improved as your level of understanding expands.
Empathy is give, give, give. This debunking involves three components:
While empathy can feel overwhelming at times, healthy empathy requires boundaries. You might burn out if you try to understand the feelings and circumstances of everyone around you 24 hours a day.
Acting with empathy provides benefits to the empathizer, too. For starters, it helps you understand and regulate your own emotions and promotes better connections with others.
You aren't always the empathizer. You have been on the receiving end of empathy from those you choose to spend time with.
It comes down to this: empathy is a strength, not a weakness. It can be built and developed. And it's critically important for leaders to know that. It's vital that they strengthen their empathy muscle so they can connect with, galvanize and unify their workforce. Because a workforce that feels understood will help the leaders build a successful business.

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How and why leaders must head off America's child-care crisis

As businesses figure out ways to recruit top-notch employees in a tight labor market, they face an added stumbling block.
A lack of affordable childcare has caused many people – especially women – to bow out of the workforce, creating an even greater shortage of qualified applicants to fill crucial roles.
Meanwhile, workers who are still on the job may not perform at their best if they lack confidence that their children are receiving good care, says John W. Mitchell (www.johnwmitchell.com), author of the upcoming book Fire Your Hiring Habits: Building an Environment that Attracts Top Talent in Today's Workforce.
"As we are already finding, if there are not affordable options, they may be forced to leave the workforce entirely," Mitchell says.
For some parents, there are no daycare options at all. About half the U.S. population lives in a childcare desert, according to a report by the American Center for Progress. Those who can find care often pay a steep price. The report says that, on average, the annual tuition for two children in childcare is nearly $20,000.
Families of color especially are harmed by the situation. They are more likely to face a lack of licensed daycare centers in their communities, and also more likely to struggle with the affordability of that care, according to a report by the not-for-profit organization Child Care Aware of America.
The repercussions of the childcare crisis on businesses, the economy, home life, and other aspects of American life are potentially staggering. Mitchell says corporations need to meet the child-care crisis head-on and he offers ideas on how they can do that:
Be flexible. Companies can provide flexibility to employees who are parents in a number of ways, such as compressed work weeks, telework or hybrid work, Mitchell says. But the flexibility can go even beyond that. A parent who needs to take a child to the doctor usually must take a full day or a half day off, even if they just need two hours. Offering flex time would allow the parent to avoid raiding their paid time off when they don't need to, Mitchell adds.
Offer child care referral services and subsidies. The best employees are hard to come by, so companies and their bottom lines will suffer if the employees leave because they can't find safe and affordable childcare, Mitchell says. One option to consider is offering referral services and subsidies. With so many daycare center closings, Mitchell says, it's also time to examine allowing licensed providers to come into the homes of working parents.
Don't push a "come to work at all costs" mentality. If they haven't already done so, companies need to move away from the insistence that people come to work even when they are sick, Mitchell says. Sometimes this is an unspoken policy, but one that's generally understood among nervous employees. "Illnesses spread when people who are legitimately sick come to the workplace because they are afraid for their jobs or performance," he says. Ideally, providing enough paid sick time and personal time should take care of this.
Support the mental health of employees. Some people are simply juggling too much, according to Mitchell, and parents can be pulled in different directions, such as when a child comes down with a fever and can't go to daycare, but the parent needs to be in an important meeting. "Parents are exhausted and work-life balance can seem unattainable," Mitchell says. Employees will feel valued if they know the company supports them and provides access to services that help with stress, such as mental health counselors, or on-site yoga or rest areas.
Finally, Mitchell says, companies should explore the possibility of onsite partnerships with daycare centers.
That not only solves the parents' problem of finding childcare, but provides more peace of mind because the child is so close by.
Businesses with a large number of employees who are parents also benefit when they help address the childcare crisis, Mitchell says. Employees will be more committed to their jobs and, as a result, those businesses will experience reduced absenteeism, better recidivism, increased productivity, and higher employee morale.

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Social Security Matters
By National Social Security Advisoer at the AMAC Foundation

Ask Rusty – How Do I Withdraw My Application for Social Security?
Dear Rusty: I will be 67 next month and reached my full retirement age in July 2022. My wife and I are discussing whether we should take Social Security now or wait until we are age 70 to get a higher benefit. I remember reading that you can start Social Security and, if not needed, pay it back within a year and then "reset" to get a higher benefit by waiting longer. Please describe the steps of this process to take now and repay the year's benefits if we do not need them. Signed: Uncertain
Dear Uncertain: Well, to exercise the so-called "do over option" (which is essentially withdrawing your application for benefits), you need to contact Social Security (1.800.772.1213 or your local SS field office) and request that your application for benefits be withdrawn. You can also download and complete form SSA-521 and deliver the same to your local Social Security office. You can get that form at this link: www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-521.pdf.
This "do-over option" is only available within 12 months of the date you submit your application and can only be done once in your lifetime. If you use it, you will be required to repay Social Security for all payments made on your behalf, including not only your monthly payments but also any income taxes you had withheld, and any Medicare premiums which were withheld from your monthly payments (Social Security will inform you how much you must repay). Once the repayment is made, it will be as though you never applied for benefits, meaning your benefit amount will be higher when you later re-apply (which would also be the case if you simply didn't apply – your benefit entitlement continues to grow until you claim, up to age 70 when your maximum SS benefit is attained).This process would be the same for both you and your wife.
However, I suggest you consider whether you really need to withdraw your application. Be aware that since you've already reached your full retirement age (FRA) you can claim now and, if you later decide you don't need the monthly SS money, you can simply temporarily suspend your benefit payments to avoid repaying Social Security everything they've already paid to you and on your behalf (you don't need to formally withdraw your application). By simply suspending (and not withdrawing), your benefit amount will start growing again with each month your benefits are suspended (about .67% more for each month you do not get benefits) and you can keep everything you've already received to the point you suspend your payments. To suspend your payments just call Social Security at the number provided above and te...