Life’s Short, Get Ducks Part VI: Scars

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line podcast, I’m Rocky and I’ve got Jake Latendresse and Mr. Ramsey Russell joining me in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Guys, how are you?

Ramsey Russell: Doing good Rocky.

Jake Latendresse: Doing good. I was just going to say I’m outside, I’ve got my headset on, I’m ready to roll, but I’m outside with my kids and they’re not playing fair with each other. You guys hear kids crying and that’s not me beating them, they’re beating on each other.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah. Well guys, it’s on the episode 5 of the Life’s Short Get ducks story of Ramsey Russell. As a lot of you’ve been following this story and the numbers are really showing it. Last week we left Ramsey, Ramsey had left the hospital, returned back to school, going through physical therapy with his injury. The past two weeks have been totally unbelievable and the struggles and the physical and mental blows that Ramsey hit and his rise back. I’m still thinking about two weeks ago when we talked about the initial injury itself, I was kind of just sitting there and all that day that we were telling that story. But Ramsey, like I said, we’ve gotten to the point where you’re back in school, you’re going to physical therapy to be able to just walk and do normal things in life, that pre-injury you were able to do anything, I guess, you’d say.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I wish it was just easy, but it wasn’t and I wish – it was a long road of hope it really was. Like what you see in Hollywood, a guy gets hurt, he goes to hospital and two weeks later he steps out, everybody cheers and but real life ain’t like it, it wasn’t like that at all. And it wasn’t just physical, it was spiritual and it was emotional. It was a very low and dark place in life and I got home and I went back to high school and I was absolute looked like a mummy, covered head to toe, which was very, very difficult. I was taking care of myself a lot because I had to and just learning a lot. Boy, let me tell you what, I can fix a cut, I’ve got a PhD in that kind of stuff. Where we left the story last time about being bandaged up, limping and going to school and going to physical therapy that went on through my junior year in high school and sometime around that summer, the suit came off, well, it’s supposed to or not, I don’t listen to doctors verbatim, I never have, a little too stubborn for that, but the suit came off, I went back to school my senior year. And at this point of this story, really and truly my son – I watch my kids, my two sons go through their senior year in high school and what a glorious time to be a teenager. I mean, that’s got to be the highlight of any person’s life, is that their senior year in high school, I mean, school is kind of sort of behind you, that the good times and the friendships and the sports and the whole pageantry of it. The whole thing is laid out for your senior year, the big exit and boy I sure took a lot of pride watching my Children graduate. Duncan has joined the US Marine Corps. He’s got a solid future and solid game plan. Forrest is going into his junior year at Mississippi State, he’s got a very solid game plan. It’s 10 o’clock in the morning both those boys have been out working for the last 3 or 4 hours. They’ve got jobs and then they come home and do more work with a little lawn cutting service on the side, they really got their stuff together and yet they’re still kind of at home, the whole world of mortgages and bills and true responsibility raising a family hasn’t really hit them yet. But when I went to senior, my senior year was a complete utter waste. I was not in a place that I needed to be there. What little I showed up, I don’t remember because I really didn’t show up very much my senior year in high school, I might as well have just stayed home.

Jake Latendresse: So, as a parent Ramsey, I mean, man, this is heartfelt for me because I’m a parent going into the elementary years and then junior and high school, I got all this in front of me and looking back on my time with my dad thinking about how proud he was to watch his Children go through school, both of my parents for that matter, but I’m speaking in terms of dad’s here because that’s what you are, that’s so important, yet you were living this high school life all over again, vicariously through your Children because you missed out on it and so in my opinion or at least maybe this is a question I’m asking is that, that must have been 10 times more emotionally pivotal for you. Because you were looking at – there was a reflection of yourself and you were thinking about or at least looking at things that you probably missed out on, is that right?

I cried and blubber like a baby when the doctor just handed me all three of my children. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life.

Ramsey Russell: Well, the word vicarious to me means I try to live my life through them and that’s not the case. I think both of my kids would tell you all three of them will tell you, I’m kind of a hands off. I know that kids have to live their own life, they have to walk in their own shoes, but as an observer, kind of like when you watch television, it was very rewarding. It was very humbling. I’m going to tell you all this jumping 20 years ahead of story, it was very, very emotionally humbling to me, I cried and blubber like a baby when the doctor just handed me all three of my Children. To see this most perfect little pure as a driven snow goose handed to me was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. There wasn’t a blemish, there wasn’t a scar, it was just absolute perfection. And then spending their lives taking time with them, but it was very – I didn’t set it on the calendar, I didn’t mean to think about it, but I was aware sitting at the dinner table two weeks before their 16^th birthday, exactly who they were relative to who I was on that night, I knew. You see what I’m saying? And I could look at all three of my Children and think, where I was compared to them at that age. And I didn’t plan it that way, but I couldn’t ignore, it just came to me, I knew I was aware of it.

Jake Latendresse: Exactly, it’s the reflection.

Ramsey Russell: And seeing them get to experience a real senior year in high school was just, I mean, I couldn’t have been prouder and they did it right. They didn’t make mistakes they weren’t – between your daddy, I’m a little hand off, let them walking on shoes but hey, you got to do this, you got to do that. It’s like, Forrest and I walk around at junior high school year and we go turkey hunting and I don’t turkey hunt, but I went with him and we were walking out and I said, man, just think a year from now you’re going to be walking off that stage and you got to rest your life ahead of you, what are you going to do? And his response was, well, a bunch of us think about going down to Jones Junior College, we’re just going to kind of chill out and just kind of figured out, just kind of get down there and figure it out. I said no, that’s 13^th grade son, there ain’t no such thing. Not for you it isn’t. I said, you get on that lawn mower and figure it out. You can make money and figure it out you need to have a game plan. I didn’t have nobody tell me that Jake, but I told them that and to see them pieces together, Forrest was cutting grass, making pretty dang good money for himself and buddy had a heck of a long service on working daylight to dark, cutting grass and edge and yards and doing landscape stuff and he came to me about a year later said, you know what, Mississippi state has a landscape program, I think that’s what I’m going to do. And he’s doing very, very well in it. I mean, he just took to it like a fish out of water. But that was very rewarding for me because when I was a senior, I’m telling you, I might as well have just, I mean my head and my state of mind was just not there. I had to do it. I got up and left for school every day but man, I’ll tell you the story there was a friend of mine –

Rocky Leflore: Hey Ramsey, I want to ask this, what made you go from state of thankfulness to kind of a rebellious, do you recall?

Ramsey Russell: Man, I think, I don’t know that I was rebellious now –

Rocky Leflore: That may not be the right word –

Jake Latendresse: When you mad?

Ramsey Russell: I think, I was rebellious. I think I’ve always been kind of a non-conformist, I think it’s just who I was meant to be. Heck Rocky, I was 40 something years old in the federal government career and I can look back at a long list of terrible bosses I’ve had in my life and I just realized I really didn’t have a bunch of terrible bosses, they had a terrible employee. I’m just not that guy that can be told what to do and how to do it, that’s just not my personality and I’ve never been that way. I haven’t been that way since birth.

Rocky Leflore: That wasn’t the right word though Ramsey I’m just saying –

Ramsey Russell: Where I was at that senior year at that point in my life, it wasn’t a rebellion against the teachers – I had some good teachers, I can tell you some stories about and I will tell you some stories here in this segment right here, when I look back, it is just so humbling. Some of the things they did, you just pass me along because they knew, I think that I was in a crisis moment of life, I was just trying to cope. I was a 16, 17-year-old kid, just trying to cope with unimaginable reality is just the thing about trauma and we hear about post-traumatic stress disorder and we think soldiers, but it’s not just soldiers, they go through it man, but it’s everybody and it’s not just people that go to a burn center, it’s everybody, it’s trauma. Trauma is like just imagine your emotional being is like an eggshell trauma shatters it and even though you pick it up, try to glue that shell back together, there’s pieces missing, there’s a big major crack that lets stuff in inside that shell and it doesn’t ever go away, ever. It never fully goes away, it’s something you deal with for the remainder of your life. And my wife, God bless her, people kid all the time that she’s a saint, they don’t know just how true that is. Because she has seen some things, there have still been some dark times. I was talking to her just the other day or two, how long it had been, maybe a year, but the number of times I have woke up in terror, having night terrors swinging, kicking, punching something and hollering and wake myself up. There were years after this injury and I didn’t know this until you know, I started having sleepover with friends that I slept with my eyes open, who does that? Who sleeps with their eyes open, I didn’t even know it was. I’d be sound asleep with my eyes wide open it’s a trauma.

Jake Latendresse: I didn’t know you could do that.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I’ll tell you this, when I was in the burn unit after I kind of came out, they room me with somebody and that poor kid and I’ve never met anybody in this whole experience that I would swap places with, this poor kid here and I don’t know, I remember the story, he told it one way, but I suspected it was another but essentially he and one of his best friends, he was older than I was, he was 17 or so years old and have been struggling with this for a while, he was about a year or two old than I was at the time and we would talk across the room. He was horribly burned from the belt up, very, very horribly no ears, most of his nose gone, no eyelids, most of his hands and features gone, I mean, it was really bad but what he had told me is, he told me that he had discovered that his friend and mother was selling drugs and that when he found out, they held him down toss him on gasoline and lit him on fire and what I always suspected the time I hurt it and God bless him, but what I suspected he was probably in on it and they probably got a little in older heads. That’s what I always felt like had happened to Shawn. But we would be sitting there talking, I could see, we’ll see right across the room, we’re talking face to face more or less for both in our own beds, but he didn’t even have any eyelids to this day. I mean, I don’t know that you can replace eyelids, you know what I’m saying. So, if he’s still around to this day, I’m certain he never spent a day since then sleeping with his eye shut but he would say goodnight and next thing I know he was asleep with his eyes wide open, but for me I got eyelids.

Jake Latendresse: Ramsey, we talked about this. I think we were in Australia when we talked about this a little bit. I told you about a young man that used to come to my bar on a regular basis every day, every single day and he was badly burned and I could tell obviously, I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out but I could tell he was in that black hole and he couldn’t get out of it and he was coming to the bar just because there was a handful of regulars in there that accepted him, he felt comfortable there, it became his comfort zone, plus he could get a few beers down and make things go away until the next morning and when you were telling me the story about you, I was thinking about that guy Ron and what he was going through like looking back on it. I didn’t realize how deep it probably was until I heard your story because I can relate it to it and now this guy Ron reminds me of the guy you’re talking about that was in worse shape than you were.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I do and it’s so personal and like I was in a bad place at that stage of my life and the thing about is I wish I could say I snapped out of it when I left high school, I did not. I had this friend since 7^th grade, Lana Sparkman really good friend, I loved her to death and we’re still in touch on Facebook. She worked across street from high school little old store we call Babeu’s, you know where he went and played video arcade, bought coke and fried chicken things that nature for school. But Lana wrote so many excuses for me my senior year in high school that when it was a legitimate excuse when my mother had sent a note that I had a doctor’s appointment or had something going on that I had to go to Lana and get her to write a note but the administration would never have recognized my mother’s writing. If I actually showed up, I showed up let alone I’m finished, if I actually just showed up to school half the day’s my senior year that would be a miracle, if I completed a third of them that would just be an amazing, I don’t think, I ever showed up. And it cost me because I only had to have 16 high school credits. Remember what I told you, my school was tiny, you have the smart guys taking advanced courses. You had the guys that went and did biotech and you had the rest of us in between. And I had initially planned on, I’d probably go to biotech, I wasn’t that smart and biotech is a good program, if you want to make America great again man, let’s get the biotech programs going and that’s a whole another story. But I ended up in the middle, just coach and just grab and I couldn’t reach out all of a sudden and catch back up taking advanced courses so I just had to coach and I end up trying to take Home ACC. It was six period Home ACC and I flunked it royally because I never showed up, teacher hated because I never showed up. So, I left my senior year, I can remember my principal coming pulling me out 1^st or 2^nd period and just tell me in the hall, are you okay? Is there a reason you’re missing so much? Is there a reason you’re coming late? And I just don’t know what I said, but he didn’t boot me out of school, I got kind of a pass.

“When Ramsey talks about scars, he’s not just talking about his body. He’s talking about life.”

Jake Latendresse: I was going to ask you Ramsey, how did your school handle this? Because again, this is so strong because in my opinion or at least what it would appear to be like in real life, most people are going to give you a pass because of what you’ve gone through and what are they going to say to you. They don’t know that’s like other than holy crap, this young man’s life has turned into a mess and we got to help him figure it out and the only thing they can do is to give you a pass on things, so how did –

Ramsey Russell: They kind of gave me a pass. Man, did my English teacher didn’t boot me out of her classroom because I was disruptive, it was a bad time of my life, it was a bad time of the day, to be in un air conditioned room it was a boring subject in an irony that as much as I love to read and write that I struggled in her classroom, I think they really as best they could, they helped me cope by just looking the other way on some stuff and it really wasn’t my behavior, although I was at times less than polite, just terrible, but there’s only so much a man can cope with or a boy, there’s only so much you can deal with but I left. I remember going to see high school graduation because all my buddies got their degree and I did not, and I sat right there in the audience with parents and just watch my buddy and got up with them afterwards when I did some stuff. But I left high school without a diploma and that period of my life –

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, I just want to ask you this. From a spiritual perspective, did you ever look up to the heavens and say why God, this point?

I really do believe that we all have a purpose. If you don’t have a purpose, you need one.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. The first thing, I grew up in a little Christian school and had understood all that, read the bible and you know, was cognizant of God and there’s no way these come out of a fox hole. Well man, let me tell you what, there ain’t, no way, just come out of a burn center. That’s just, I just can’t imagine that. But yeah, you wonder why me? Why did this happen? You don’t understand it and then you get the whole philosophy that different people got different reasons, well God doesn’t do this. It just happens. And he gives you a tool chest to draw from and cope with things and other people say because you’re on a path, he led you to something on the path. And I don’t know really what I think even now, but that it happened and that he was there and I really do believe either by your free will or his greater design, I really do believe that we all have a purpose and if you don’t have a purpose and your life, you need one. You need a purpose and this is kind of where this story is going because – There’s two important things that happened, there’s two real important things that happened because I had no purpose, I was coping, I was struggling and I just did not need to be there. I don’t know where I needed to be, but it wasn’t high school and I left and I didn’t have a diploma and the thing about it is, I couldn’t at that point, I couldn’t mastermind a plan for myself and a purpose because of where I was at the same time, I had some things to do before I could get to that point. I still have some major surgeries to go through. It’s like in between my junior, senior year, I went to surgery and it was to get some foot problems, nothing cosmetic god love, it just functional, mobility issues dealt with and it was a complete disaster, I just wasted summer that nothing happened and I still had this crucial stuff looming. I mean, another dozen surgeries hanging over me and I couldn’t and that went on for another three years and it was just at a point where I really, I couldn’t just put my feet on the ground and walk that direction out into the sunset because I had these intervals of – some of the surgery I was doing, I might be off my feet for 6-8 weeks. There were things that it takes time to get to a point where you can do another one. And so, I would just really drifting listlessly at this point, but maybe feeling sorry for myself, a shell shot not knowing what to think, no what to do. Now, let me say this, remember my parents got divorced right by the time I got back, they were going through a divorce when I got hurt and like a lot of divorcee, I did not grow up going to church every weekend, my family just did not and the truth matter is, I hated going to church when I was a kid because we only went on Easter, which means I had to wear brand new stiff clothes and uncomfortable shoes and go to Sunday school that I didn’t know anybody. So, I hated it and then the more we hated it, the less the parents were inclined to drag you there kicking and screaming so I did not go, but after I got home, my mother started taking us to church. We had met a preacher, my brother and I had met a preacher, Mr. Keith Taco [**00:25:06] and on a summer revival up in Hernando, Mississippi with my aunt and uncle and we loved him. I mean he just delivered a sermon, he was such a spiritual person, he was just a way that a kid could relate to a teenager, this is before I got hurt and we loved him and so because he was very – man, he was at the spear tip of civil rights in Mississippi back in the day, which was unheard of and for somebody who had democrats to be that way back in the day. And the church had rewarded him “I put him in charge of the church right in the inner city of Jackson” and that little church is still a beacon of hope right in the middle of district four in downtown Jackson, I mean the absolute hood. We drive all the way up across town from Brandon 20-30 minute ride to get there and that’s where we went to church and we started off going on Sundays and I’m struggling with this and it don’t make sense but then we continued going, we got more involved with Sunday schools and like churches like go on Sunday morning, then churches on Wednesday night and every other time the church doors are open. And that’s kind of where I was more or less. As I got in my senior year and got a driver license and got a car, I was a little less participating, but that was kind of a spiritual beacon, spiritual point in my life but you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, he’s not going to drink till he’s thirsty, you understand that. And as I was coping and sorting and realizing and figuring out some other different things that part of it just kind of got put on hold. I left high school, I was listlessly drifting and I don’t know when after high school this happened, but I just remember one day driving up to Greenville my father and his wife were living in my grandfather’s old home, I went there to visit they left for work and I didn’t have anything to do, and I’m at my son’s age now sitting in the house by myself, just maybe watching little TV or whatever I was doing and I sat down at the table and I was restless. What am I going to do? I was trying to sort out what do I do now? Where’s my life going to go? What the heck am I going to do? I mean some of the jobs I would get, were just menial, unskilled labor jobs and working in retail or doing something and unfortunately, the thing about skin grafting and burns and some of the stuff I dealt with, I really don’t cope well, even though I spent a long time since then working outside as a forester and biologist and things like that, I really don’t, I’m physically not cut out to do unskilled long work, I can tell you that. I don’t sweat in certain places, I get intense body heat built up dangerously high times and so what am I going to do? And I sat down one day, at that day at my grandfather’s table right there in the kitchen, I pulled a piece of paper out and I just started writing things, writing just a list. And I don’t remember everything I wrote, but I remember, one of the things on there, just to put it to focus on one thing on there, maybe I’d go out west and join that outfitter in wrangler school and just start fooling with them dumb horses again and get back into maybe become a professional outfitter and guide, I don’t know. But I wrote a lot of stuff down and as I look at that list, I realized that what I had to do first was I had to get that high school diploma and there was a spot down in Jackson, South Jackson at the time it’s called Ed Center and there were a lot of – other teenagers that didn’t do well in school or couldn’t do well in school and their parents paid whatever was $250, $300 a month. And you showed up and it was a very simple curriculum, I figured out, now, I understand I’ve been out of that. Last I left high school I turned 18 and I’d come into the middle of the night to a quiet house, I didn’t wake up till lunch or something like that and I just hanging around with crowd and going nowhere. At one point I woke up and my mother left a note on my dress and said something, that said, hey, it’s time to move out. It’s time to get your own place. She was married, she had another step son. Well, look when she was 18 years old, she was married and had a child and I called her up at work and it didn’t offend me, I wanted to say it. I mean really, I mean, I was 18 years old. I vote for Ronald Reagan that year, first time, I ever did.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah. I didn’t mean wow as in like, wow, why did you do that? It was like, wow! Here comes yet another phase in your life that you have to adjust to –

Ramsey Russell: Another adjustment but I called her at work. I said, what do you mean? Well honey, you’re 18, we need room and you can do this. I went out and bought a $500 mobile home. It took the first week I was living there to get the possum out among the kitchen cabinet and getting blocked off where he couldn’t come back in. But I’ve been out of my own about a year and a half at this point when I made that little list of what the heck am I going to do. One thing I wanted to do was get on the volunteer fire department. That there in Hind’s County environments at that time was a volunteer fire department, that was another thing I’d put on that list. I wish, if I still had that list, I promise you that’d be framed because it’s very, I see now looking back it was very, it was a moment of truth in my life I didn’t realize it then. But I started and I went down to that Ed center, I was on my own and I didn’t have a year to spend doing this thing to a normal program, I had about a month of money so I need to get this high school credit half in a month and I walked in and signed up and started, whenever they started, I think it’s kind of a come as you are start when you want to and work at your own pace program and the way that curriculum was is, I took biology. I got a biology book and you really don’t know what 10 or 20 chapters and it was just your pace. So, you read the chapter, you answered the questions at the back of the chapter, you turned it into the teacher, the teacher corrected it and it was your size backing, you took the test. I went to my first day and took a test. I went my second day and took a test, when I went of my third day and took a test and on my fourth and I was on a mission. I didn’t have a finite budget, I had to get this done. Somewhere along the 5^th or 6^th day, I don’t know if it intimidated her, the fact that I was year or so older than everybody else, I don’t know what it was, I really was on a mission, I’m just come in and do my work and get the heck out of there. But she slowed me down and so it doing about the 3^rd, 4^th week into it, we had to go have a meeting down the office and I’m like, look that check I wrote, that’s it, you all need to turn me loose, let me get out of here because this ain’t going to in pretty if you don’t, they did. And I left and here is a real important part of my life, my friends were up at college or working or doing something they’ve been out of high school, the boys, I went to high school, my senior year was gone. They’ve been gone. They were on with their lives. They were in that stage of their life, like my Children are and I just, when they gave me the paperwork there from the Ed center took it and I go down to the high school just walked into the office, principal Husky was there, I could see him through the window, I tapped on the glass, walked in, he stood up, smiled said, what do I owe this pleasure? Handed that piece of paper. Understand I wasn’t a popular guy in school and I was one of his troubled Children. He had looked the other way and previously getting hurt, he didn’t look the other way, he whoop me son and put me in some places but he didn’t. And I showed up and I handed him that piece of paper and he smiled. He said, I knew you were coming back for this and he walked right to his bookshelf and he took that diploma out and very theatrically he held it up and he blew a cloud of dust off at diploma. He said, I’m proud of you son, I know, you could do it and –

Jake Latendresse: What a great man he is.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah, somebody outside your family that really had belief in you.

Ramsey Russell: Well, it really is. I maybe not didn’t realize it then but when I think about it now, I kind of choke up because after all I’ve been through and all – I had not done and not accomplished and not taken advantage of and the school he did run here a year or so later, I walk in, grown man struggling coping steel listlessly drifting about taking that first step and for somebody like him to say, I knew you’d be back, I knew you could do it. I don’t think I saw it then. I don’t think I really just, it ain’t like I teared up hug him or something, I mean, it’s always been there. Now listen to this, I’ve got two more little stories I want to cover because this is all in that, this is the crucible, this is that little chemical reaction, that boom starts to crystallize this whole little story of drifting and finding purpose is where this is going. That principal believed in me for the first time that I can remember anybody since 4^th grade or 3^rd grade believing in me in an educational system that was it. And I really need to call that guy, I really need to find that principle and call him and let him know what that meant to me because years and months later as I was working through things, it crossed my mind that that man who believed in me. And just like my granddaddy had believed in me. Now, let me tell you this, I skipped ahead of my story a little bit. When I was in that burn center, my dad brought my granddad down. My granddaddy Russell, we talked so much about previously. I didn’t see it then, I was just in that place, I was so wrapped up and broke down. They carried me out to my mother’s apartment, I got to see my grandfather, my daddy, had not seen me in a while and of course he broke down in tears at the reunion. And my grandfather was very stoic and he looked and just was the same person I’d always known. But now when I look at those pictures, I realized that he wasn’t. I realized how old and frailly he was, his wife of 50 years had died while I was in the burn unit and she was his life and his kids and his family were his life. And here I was his oldest grandson in this kind of place and yet he was stoic and he was just that guy that rock that I’d always leaned on. When I look at pictures now, I realized he really wasn’t and he was frail. And what I did know then that he was going through the same cancer my grandmother had and it was a losing battle and I did not know that I did not know. I remember on Labor Day when I was in that burn unit and gained consciousness again. I remember it dawning on me one day later in bed watching TV, I remember dawning on me that it was Labor Day and I wasn’t dove hunting for the first time since I was 6 or 7 years old with my grandfather and I swore, if I ever got out of that god forsaken place, I would never miss another opening day of dove season and I have not. In those years I have never missed another day of dove season and my kids do not. I’m telling you what it don’t matter what’s going on their lives Labor Day weekend we’re going dove hunting that’s what we do. And it started right there in that burn unit and what I did not know when my grandfather came to visit was that he was dying and those days are over. Those days of us hunting together were gone forever. That part of my wonder year, that part of my childhood that real my favorite part of it was gone. He could not physically do it anymore. He would not do it. He was struggling. And three weeks before I left high school before graduation, I didn’t graduate. My mother said you need to go see your granddaddy, he’s not doing good at all. And I drove up and we talked, my daddy was living with him and they moved the bed so you can watch TV and be comfortable whatnot and the days of storytelling were over. He was coping and struggling with some very, very intense pain. And I sat by the bed and we tried to talk but he could. All he could do was just focus. I know what he’s trying to do, he’s trying to crawl down that rabbit hole and I knew it when I was sitting, I knew where he was trying to put himself, he had to, I couldn’t help. Tell me about this. I tried to rehash those stories and I want to hear those stories one more time. He never told. You know what he did say, I never forget this, that conversation and it was like two sentence conversations man, he was in a bad place. I never will forget him uttering the words Dixie farm bottoms. Dixie farm bottom best duck hunt I ever did, Dixie farm bottoms. Two weeks before I left high school, I got a phone call talking about these teachers now, talking about these administrators talking about the past, I got in high school, I got a phone call that my grandfather had died. I went to school next day. They call me out, my mother called the school and I walked to my teachers and I can’t imagine what tears roll down my cheek when I look at some of these teachers and said, I got to go to a funeral. And I think they all, excuse me from finals. Not get that it helps my GPA at that point but they all, excuse me from finals and it was a very emotional time of life. So, I lost that rock in my life. I lost a little bit of bearings. I left without a high school diploma. Now, I’ve gone back and got it and this principle believed in me. Now, let me tell you another story now it’s getting on up in years, this would be – I was shoot, yeah, I heard about 15, I was crowding in the same little listless period of – I got a phone call one day from Keith Taco[**00:40:17], the preacher and my mother still went to church avidly. I was in and out a little bit, that was the time of life, I wasn’t doing much of nothing valuable and I got my high school diploma, but I’m still doing some surgeries and stuff like that. I got a phone call from this preacher and he said, hey babe, that’s what he called you babe, hey babe, how you doing? Doing good Keith and doing this, doing that and he said, why don’t you come to church Sunday? Oh man, I got stuff going on and I think, I was in junior college at the time, I think I’d actually kind of gravitated towards that part of my life, but oh man, I got things going on, I haven’t been in a while, I know, but your mother and her husband even, they donated flowers for the altar on Sunday. Oh yeah, okay, good. He says, well, don’t you want to know why? Why? He said, because that’s your 5^th anniversary of you’re getting hurt. Oh well that man, I mean that’s might be nice of them to do that. And he said, well, I think you ought to come to church. And well I probably will, I might do it, I’m kind of get a phone right. Well look man, this guy was the most persuasive arguer and best salesman I’ve ever met and he got God on his side and so right, by time I said, okay, I’ll be there, he said, oh yeah, and I want you to get up and talk to the church. Keith, what do you want me to say? Oh, I got hurt, this kind of thing another and I didn’t think another thing about the rest of week and I went out Saturday night, do whatever you do on Saturday night when you ain’t doing nothing and came back in, lay down in bed and right by the time I started to drift off, I remember I got to be in church the next morning. Oh yeah, I got to get to talk somebody about something. ] I stood straight up in bed, I’m like man, what the heck am I really going to say? I didn’t know, I figured I could get up morning, like I always do, I said, a prayer and went to sleep. Woke up next morning, I went to church all casually said, just casual not much mom and dad, I’m just casually just come on up here, walked into that little old tiny church in downtown Jackson, there was my grandmother, there was my mother’s best friend, there was my aunt and uncle, there was cousin, there was my brother, oh this wasn’t casual at all word done got out and I broke into a full flesh sweat. I didn’t know what I was going to say. So, we went through the little Methodist ritual and Keith said and I’m going to break right here to say this guys, I don’t want anybody listening both of you judge me, I don’t represent myself to be a perfect Christian. I’ve got atrocious language, I do drink my bourbon every now and I’m a woefully inadequate sinner, I sin. I’m a fellow struggler just like us all. Okay. So, I don’t want people look at me and talk about this moment in this story and make it out like I’m represent myself to be anything other than a sinner, a bad one. I’m back on track. So, I never will forget, I’m sitting there, I’m sweating, I’m like, oh my gosh, what in the world am I going to say? Keith says, from the pulpit, he says, you all feel that, I was like feel what? He says, that’s the spirit. He called me up to the pulpit. I would say from memory because I was just a 19-year-old child, I heard the tape this year for the first time. I would have said that I got up and pounded the pulpit and yell and scream like a Baptist minister and preached an hour and a half past lunch, five minutes long, seven minutes long maybe, I don’t know what happened. I had nothing planned to say. I know when I got that pulpit, he put his arm around me and he said, a prayer and he stepped away, I was on full blown autopilot. I was calm, I was relaxed and when I got done talking, there were grown men crying, there were women crying. I had touched people the spirit had worked through me and use me as a mouthpiece. And that was a very important moment not because I got up and talked no that wasn’t that kind of stuff, no, it wasn’t that, it was in that moment that I realized and what I said that, I realized at that point in my life that all this stuff I’m coping with and all this stuff I can’t change and all this stuff, that makes me different, really is in a way, a big blessing for me that I have used to my advantage, this sense of self. And I still had a long emotional road and everything else to go from that moment on but what I realized in that moment and what I said in that moment, not thinking to say this, but it just came out was, you all look at me and I’ve got scars, but what I know you all got scars too. It may not be it physical. Life is not fair, life is not easy, no matter how many people make it. I mean, it is not. Life crushes you, life it is tough. The human experience is not perfect, it is tough. And I’ve known a lot of people in my life, we talked about a few episodes from high school buddies, one wrong turn in life and they ended up in real bad places. I’ve got clients, I’ve got close friends in adult life that have ended, that they could not cope and they ended somewhere they didn’t want to be and that’s because they may not have looked scarred on the outside but they had scars in their heart and they had scars on their soul and they had scars on their emotion and they had scars in their life and even though scars are not attractive, even though I still cannot stand up 36 years to see scars on my hands and on my leg and on my face, I can’t change it no more and I can’t change the moon phase of the tide. I can’t do it, you know I’m saying? But can say that, I don’t mean hysterically, but in a sense, what I said that morning, was that scars were beautiful because if you’ve got faith, all wounds heal and a scar is just a reminder of that wound. And that’s where I left that moment in my life. Was the understanding that –

Jake Latendresse: You made amorphous.

Ramsey Russell: I realized so that you can look at me and I look different, you can see that man have been through something. But what I know about anybody listening and anybody I’ve ever met in this life is there, life ain’t perfect, they’ve got scars because life is what it is. We’ve all got it, we’ve all got a past, we’ve all got things we struggle with. And it’s just life is imperfect, but with religion we have something to cling to, we have somebody to lean on and we have a mechanism to cope. And I am far from a perfect person. I am woefully, one of the worst sinner you’ve ever met and in terms of my language and some of my habits, but at the same time, I do believe in God. I’ll say that I’m not ashamed to say that, but that was a big moment in life for me. A big realization and even though I still had a long climb, so to speak, to go to get to a place at that moment I had gotten my high school diploma, I had that epiphany at the altar now with the craziest thing, but for such a tiny little church, it looks like the biggest mega church you’ve ever been in from that side of the pulpit but I had that epiphany and with that I started moving in a little bit better direction.

Jake Latendresse: Ramsey, it sounds to me like and please don’t let me speak for you and I certainly don’t want this to come out condescending because you know how I feel about you and this whole story, but it almost sounds like, you went from God, why me to thank you God. I mean, like you said, it was almost a blessing that you were put in this position to help people, other people realize scars are beautiful and they’re not what they think they are, it’s all about perception and how you manage that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you’re not going to change scars, you’re not going to make them go away they are there. And remember I said about that egg shell being cracked trauma and for people, anybody’s been in any sort of just real trauma, they know what I mean. It doesn’t go away. Those voids in cracks doesn’t fill. They’re still going to be things you have to struggle and cope with for the remainder of your life. But having an understanding, I’ve been asked – somebody asked me one time, he said, every time I’ve seen you, you wear shorts. I do, I wear shorts and understand that me talking at age 52 about a process that started when I was 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 it’s a progression it’s a gradient, it’s not like just step, it’s just not like that, it’s easy to look back and say what happened 36 years ago, 30 years ago, it’s easy to look back with that perspective. I didn’t see this process going on. I didn’t realize after that epiphany then was an epiphany it was. It was later that I look back and could realize that progression, but it’s very important to, you’ve got to move forward. I still struggle with stuff, I’ve always struggled with stuff and I think really getting back on the conversation of purpose. Purpose really did give me a – as I started to cultivate my purpose and make purpose for myself that led through the day, it was a way of coping with so those chinks in the glued eggshell. It was a way of trying to fill it in, trying to cover it up, trying to block the negative coming into that. It was a purpose and accomplishment. I’ll tell you kind of how I got in junior college.

Rocky Leflore: Hey, Ramsey, I want to ask you this before you jump into that, I want to ask you this, you got burned, you lost your grandmother, then you lost your grandfather, your mom and dad got divorced and all in a 2-3 year time era. And then of course your mom come in and say, hey, it’s time to move out. Man, you spread those things out instead of an convinced era of time and those things you could have gone either way with so many major life happenings happening in convinced amount of time and you could have went either way.

Ramsey Russell: Man, that’s the true, I know.

Jake Latendresse: No doubt.

“I had to claw and push to get out of that hole. Once I got out, it wasn’t money that saved me—it was purpose.”

Ramsey Russell: It’s a struggle. I got a real close friend of mine now, he’s a close friend and we met about 17 years ago, we got in this camp, he’s like Midas, king Midas. This guy’s in the stoop businessman. He’s got in mind for business. He really does, started with nothing he’s got a mind for business, I call him king. Everything he touches turns to gold. Now, understand he doesn’t go sit on the toilet without running a benefit cost model, okay? His whole life is mapped out in that way. We were getting to know each other, I didn’t know all this about him quite yet and he was talking about some financial accomplishments and some different things and way back when he was talking about some stuff he was doing and making money, blah and I told him, I said, just got to tell you, I get that. But there was a time in my life I was so deep in this hole that the exit looked like a pinhole in a world of black and I had to claw and I had to pull and I had to push and had a struggle to get to that and once I got to that that exit, it wasn’t money that got me there. It wasn’t the motivation for money, you couldn’t buy your way out of that hole, just had to get there, you have to want to be there. And that was kind of my balance of that conversation we had and that’s really at that conversation, we became really good friends and believe it or not, we’re sitting in a duck blind having that conversation. And it’s just, I don’t know how I got lucky to tripped in this direction instead of the other.

“Ramsey’s story isn’t just about hunting—it’s about survival, resilience, and finding meaning.”

Jake Latendresse: I love to say that. I just love that Ramsey that you say that and mean that you don’t know how you got so lucky to get to that point because I mean that’s really important. This story is a story about success and it’s like, you’ve been saying both metaphorically and literally that, this isn’t just about you and what you went through, this is plug and play a lot of people and everyone in life because you said everyone has scars, everyone has failures and the struggle to climb back into daylight is just what you have to do. There’s no magic dust that’s going to get you there, there’s no gondola ride up to the top, you have to start at the bottom and climb out.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s anybody’s situation, we’re all fellow strugglers, that’s just a part of the human condition. Mine’s very conspicuous but we’re all in the same life raft man, that’s just in a nutshell. My wife heard parts of the conversations we’ve had to past and she said something to me the other day, she heard me say this as my Children were playing sports as my Children were growing up, my boys especially. I did not play sports growing up. I did not play teams, I did when I was little, but man in high school, are you kidding? No, I couldn’t do if I wanted to. So, I kind of missed that. I missed that whole part of that. My boys got to live and experience that I did not and but as they were going through school or excuse me, as they were going through, select baseball and football and doing this stuff the whole football mentality of just gain that next inch gain that next yard and my wife heard me say a million times what I loved about, I didn’t care if they won or lost. I just didn’t have that kind of background as sports to appreciate that part of it, like a lot of folks that might be listening, I didn’t have that background in sport, but my deal was give it everything. I ain’t going to say I tried to, it just how I did and then I wasn’t a perfect daddy. I was a little too hard some way, a little too soft in other ways but at the same time, my weight on me that the thing looming in the background that was blowing wind in the sails, of steering their ship molding them and who they might become was to hopefully on them with the skill set they needed to get out of their burn center one day. Because knowing it, you got those Children, we all got Children and their babies, we take care of them but we know something’s going to happen. Hopefully they’re not going to get up in the little burn center, but something’s going to happen, they’re going have to cope with something extreme. They’re liable to experience trauma. They’re liable to experience loss they’re liable to experienced something really tough and hopefully something I did and was able to raise them and my wife is a very, very spiritual person and as a team we work coming at it in different directions, I really hope that my kids will be able to cope and let their scars heal and move forward in life, when the crisis happens. That was what’s important in my life. My wife said, you’ve always said you wanted your kids to have the skill set to get out of their life’s burn center. And that was really a big motivator as a daddy would, it wasn’t –

Jake Latendresse: I just have my money down on your kids, man.

Ramsey Russell: Well, people are people. I’m very proud of my Children. I couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve done and who they are and where I hope they’re going because all three of them way ahead of me then where I was at their age, they’ve got a sense of purpose, they’ve got goals. And that we all know that just because somebody says they’re going to do something five years from now that they’re not to come to a fork in road and take it and things could change, but it’s not important that they absolutely get to that point is that they have a plan and they’re heading in that positive direction of purpose, that’s the whole key to it all. That’s the whole thing is that, that I’ve tried to cultivate in them is that, that they just take their legs and keep on kicking and that’s life and there’s no easy way out, there’s no easy, ride.

“As a parent, hearing Ramsey’s journey makes me realize how much our kids need guidance, even when they seem lost.”

Rocky Leflore: Ramsey, I want to say this before we close up, I know this from being raised by God fearing, God loving mom and daddy. God puts his greatest burdens on his greatest chosen ones. I’ll say that. Listen, it’s your life and your choice, fight through it and learn from those gain wisdom and make your life better or you can, like Ramsey said multiple times you can go the other direction. I mean, we’ve all had friends that have taken their lives or didn’t climb out of the rabbit hole when that happened, man, I know that we’re about to jump back into a lot of business success, business failures, duck hunting but think what you’ve done here in the past three episodes. At the end of the day, we’re to utilize our lives to make others better. Edify and build up and that’s what you’ve done the past three episodes, man, you’ve made me a better man listening to you, I appreciate it. And Jake –

Ramsey Russell: Thank you all.

Jake Latendresse: I think people that are listening to this, people that are listening to it, like real listening to it and etching it into their rolodex of life lessons, they’re guaranteeing themselves some success because all they have to – it’s a model, if you utilize it, Ramsey is letting us like, he’s allowing us to use his life as a model as to how to either – once you get into a rabbit hole to dig yourself out or how to avoid the rabbit hole entirely, if you can, if it’s not, so traumatic that you just get forced into that rabbit hole and I think that, again, you listen to this and you’re guaranteeing yourself some success in life at different levels, but it’s worth listening to and it’s worth sticking into your rolodex because it’s very powerful.

Rocky Leflore: It’s been unbelievable. Guys, I just appreciate you all letting me be here. Ramsey, I appreciate you. I’ve said this past three episode and I appreciate you being, this isn’t courageous, it’s realizing that it’s time to do it because it’s not about you anymore, it’s about to tell this story and like I said, you’re making me better right here. And I appreciate it. I want to thank you all guys for being here, we want to thank all of you that listened to this edition of The End of The Line podcast powered by ducksouth.com.

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