Bob Muzikowski: If I Get Half, My Neighbor Gets Half (Pt 2)

After accidentally moving next to the worst housing project in America, Bob Muzikowski dug in. He started a little league for its kids, then intentionally moved into the hood on Chicago’s West Side, and started the largest inner-city little league in the country there. Finally, when Bob sold part of his company, he donated 50% of his earnings to build a world-class school there called Chicago Hope Academy. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks.
And we continue now with part two of our conversation
with Bob Muzakowski. Right after these brief messages from our
general sponsors.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Success in America today, Black white Latina, whatever you are
is moving as far away from any suffering as you
could possibly move, right. That is so true. You don't
want to be done. And you know I have might.
I had someone call me the Gone. So we live
a mile from the United Center with the Bulls and
a black Hawks play, and people say, well, I got
off the highway earlier, and this real bad neighbor. I'm like,

(00:47):
that's my corner. Here on my corner. It's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
So me, you probably don't know this, so I'm going
to do it with you real quick. The whole reason
this podcast exists is because that Catholic over in the corner,
otherwise known as my pain, and that producer, and the
reason is the paint in that producers, because all producers
are that interviewed me, and you know, I was frustrated

(01:20):
that day and kind of got on my soapbox and
I said, there's neighborhoods that we drive by in every
major metropolitan AIA all over the country every single day
that we don't want to have a flat tire. That's
where we don't want our car to break down, because
we're convinced if we have to get out and change
flat tire here, we're gonna get mugged and lose our
life and our wallet and everything else. And then as

(01:40):
we pass by safely, we kind of exhale, and as
we look down that road or over that viaduct and
we see all that despair and all that disenfranchisement, sadness
and poverty and loss, we think to ourselves, men, somebody
got to do something about that one day, as if
the government's going to swoop in and after being woefully

(02:03):
inadequate for the past ten decades, they're all of a
sudden going to swoop in and become effective, or maybe
the people on seeing it and box are going to
swoop down and help us. And the answer is we
need to tilt that rear view mirror to the left
about fifteen degrees and maybe think maybe I could do
something about that.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, and you can't and you don't have to do
like everyone thinks, let's macro fix the inner city, and
it's islands of strength and hope. Right, Little Paris is
little church at Londale Community Church in Chicago. They own
like fifteen city blocks where of houses and pizza Bria,
and those guys are really down and dirty doing it,
you know.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
And so.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
It's islands of strength and hope, little churches, little youth programs,
sports programs. We just need ten times more.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Of those little spots of need and community.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
With young Life, Fellowship with Christna Chicago, our athletic center,
our athletic facilities are nicer than anything in the nicest suburb.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
All right, hold it, we got to get to that. Yeah,
so you get married because you get set up on
the New York dating game where thirty fit and you're
making I guess you're making some money again.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Now, yeah, my wife's and so. But I wanted to
be out of New York City. So we moved because
you know, alcoholics anonymous, I say, stay away from people,
places and things, people used to hang out with, places
used to go. That's your entire world. And even uh,
New York's a big city. We can still bump in
an old girlfriend, right, So we moved to If you
remember victim.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I remember.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
So we moved to Chicago because the only other place
you could trade farm currency. And she's got a new job.
Offender up old buddy of mine has a new office
in Chicago, Tom Mitchell. So so we move out, figured
we're going to stay for a year maybe, and and
we have just a day to look and on Saturday
we find a beautiful rehab brownstone, two stories, three bedrooms,

(03:58):
two beds, fireplace like a thousand a month in New
York would be five thousand. So we take it. And
the next morning I go for a run and a
block away I come around a corner and there's, you know,
twenty fifteen story projects Cabrini Green housing project. I had
moved by mistake, a block away from the worst housing
project in America?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Is that really true? Yeah? You don't know?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, so people were a smart guy.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
How did you not know?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
We came in from the from the Hissinos, from the lakeside?

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Seriously?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I mean we had a U houl behind it.
I had a couple of phone calls and so this
is thirty three so and the building is still there.
It's gorgeous where we were living. So and that night
I'm sitting on my deck that night and here pop
pa popa. I'm thinking this was it was May. It
was around Memorial Day, and I thought this must be
a patriotic neighborhood this year. So I go for a run.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
In the morning. The Division and Sedua, you know what.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So on the corner are two baseball diamonds with high grass.
It's called Carson Field because the police officer named Fred
Carson had been shot that on the field. And I
hadn't been used in a while. You could sell. And
so I went for a run in the cops. It
was Sunday morning. I could see the Sears tower. Figure
I'm going to I'm going that way, and the cops
pulled me over and said something like what.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
The hell are you doing?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
She said, So I said, I just moved here from
New York and they're laughing. I go, this is Cabrini
Green pal So a couple of months.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
The bottom line is they saw a white dude running
around and they're like, yeah, what you're going to get killed?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
So which isn't going to happen because if you're white,
or you're using your a cop or social work or something.
If you're a thousand times safer if you're white. You know,
I'm definitely not a vice lord or a gangster discycle, right, Yeah,
I don't fit. So so that's an illusion that because
you're white, they're going to want you know anyway, that
you're more muggable. So a guy running is not he

(05:54):
doesn't have a wallet probably, So uh, I start to
have a catch with some of.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
The boys where working. You start to have a catch.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
I there a bunch of kids on the corner when
a guy was playing baseball. He had like six kids.
Al Carter, He's playing baseball with him. So I went
over started to help him out. Bots what a box
of balls, a bunch of baseball gloves, And I'm goofing
around with these kids.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Sold it. You see these kids running, and you just
go home.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
And and I see every time i'm running or going
by there on my car, there's a bunch of kids
on the field, not like six or seven.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, so you're like, I'm going to bostroom stuff and front.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Everybody played baseball, and I played freshmen through college, so
I'm decent at baseball, So I said, I gave him
a fifty flyers in Scotch tape and said, look, take
these flyers and put them on a telephone on and
I showed him how to do a Little league try
out Saturday, ten am. Maybe we'll get some more. Maybe
we get six or seven more boys. We could have
a team and we'll go play My friends in the

(06:45):
suburbs their kids. So that's Saturday. Three hundred kids show up,
three hundred and so we were part of Williams Little
You know.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
What that says that there's nothing else to do for
these kids.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, well that on the field there and it's right there,
and it's a baseball diamond, and the kids want to
do something organized.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Do you have any help? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:08):
I had about four buddies you were, and four guys
all over the hun.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Joe, Guynan Tina.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
So that I went home that Monday and I bought
forty little league baseball bats and I put them in
long stem rose boxes right and I sent them to
the forty guys I knew who either liked baseball or
cared about poor kids or something. At that point, I'm
only in Chicago for you, not even a year. But
I knew a bunch of guys because they were my
clients and friends of friends, and all kind of stuff.

(07:35):
So I invited them to a thing at the nice
little health club that has a bar, restaurant, a buffet,
and I signed a batman, so I said, you must come.
So everybody shows up or has their assistant show up
with their goofy baseball bat and a long stem rose box.
And I said, I needed a sponsor team. It's fifteen
hundred dollars for uniforms and equipment, and I need somebody
to coach it. You can't just give me money. So

(07:58):
they said, well, where is it? I said, sure, you
said you bumbled it and everybody knows Cabrini, but we
made the fields look really nice. Two diamonds and so
a bunch of guys everybody, Anita, Northern Trust, Northwestern Mutual, Merrill, Lynch,
bear Sterns. All these companies were coaching. The first year
was sixteen teams, and then a grew to sixty four,

(08:19):
shrunk a little bit with COVID and making a comeback now.
So nothing to do with baseball. It's about how would
a guy for the Border trade or a guy one
of my coaches was in residency, played baseball Boston College.
He's an orthopedic surgeon. How would a guy like that
ever meet a Cabrini Green kid if he wasn't his coach?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Explain what that is?

Speaker 2 (08:37):
So you're never going to meet a kid from Gabrini Green.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, but I don't even know what that is.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Explain that Caen named after Mother Cabrini. There's a movie
about her this year, right she was canonized. Was an
Italian project and became this the one in by White
Sox Park was the biggest, but the worst, most notorious
housing project in a marri was Cabrini Green Housing Project.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
And when you say that in Chicago, everybody shriek. Everybody
else and everybody goes. That's which is now completely knocked down.
And we moved everything to the west side, three miles
west Kabreen Green.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Now our current field. A two bedroom is five hundred
grand there now wow. And they did a great job
at mixing it. So every fourth unit in the rentals
is for someone who has no money. They did a
pretty good job of providing for people.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
You know.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
And actually, if you said well, people were saying, well,
I've been there twenty years. I'm like, well, if you
haven't paid rent in twenty years, you really don't have
too much to say in my mind, right right, So look,
you just it's like you said earlier. So now the
baseball thing, people, my friend Paul O'Connor adopted three of
the kids. He's got grandkids from these kids. So and

(09:46):
we started a Highsight scholarship program. A lot of good
things came out of that.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
All right. So how you were thirty or so when
you did this, yep, all right, So basically let's just
be kind of melt this down. You're going on a run.
Some cops say you're crazy. You notice some kids you have,
the kids put some flyers out, and within a year

(10:12):
you've got fourteen baseball teams, sixteen being sponsored by and coached.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
By Northern Trust bankers. Guys you'd never think, right.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
So now you're introducing people to one another who would
never have crosspaths, and it's.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Getting a lot of notoriety. Not by my choice. You know,
when you give quietly, so your left handed because it's
a big corner with two diamonds on it, and you
got a kind of dead end in it to go to, like,
so it's in a visible spot. Right. So the day
of the game one Lakers Bulls I remember it, Jordan.
It was the first year the Bulls won it nineteen
ninety one. So this one the league started and actually

(10:53):
the Lakers won the first game with men. Then the
Bulls swept them. But we were on ABC seven right
after the game. They did a little spot, so a
three minute thing on it. Well that's huge, yeah, and
so it got allowed the Sports Illustrated diamonds in the
rough and a lot going on. So we did.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
I know how that works. I was mine and my
own business coaching a football team in Memphis, and sometimes
things happen.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, people find you, uh and you know what, if
inspired some good people on my right because then we
did the East Harlem Little League and we did it
in the South, so they so the league grows second
year by we had we had five kids killed in
the first season. One of my what Brian Dick, Bill
Reinos and I who was an authopedic surgeon. I tell

(11:35):
you about what what are age of these kids? Little
league baseball nine, ten, eleven, twelve and.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
You had nine to eleven twelve year old kids get killed?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Oh yeah, I get We bought to kid a bicycle
for his birthday and they killed them for his bike,
Ryan Dixon.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, what does that do inside you? Me? Pisses me off.
I was going to go so, I was going to say,
you're you're You're the guy that grew up next to
the dude who got sixty stitches, Muhammad Ali and but
he said he did they.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
But then nobody had you grew up, nobody had a
gun though you could just get your ass kicked.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah. No, the point is who you are and tough
Catholic kid and all that, how you grew up all that.
When I hear that, it breaks my heart, but it
also pisces me off. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Look the gang.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Look, I'm in my sixties. I could kick these guys at.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Skinny Little before this, the older gang guys in their
sixties and seventies, they had to be like Mike Tyson
to be out of the gang.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Sam Dillon lived in my basement. He was out of
the Blackstone Rangers. Then got born again and say what
he and uh, so we had an apartment downstairs. So
we moved to the West Side to ask because let's
move to a bad neighborhood and make it good. Plus
we built a brand new Brownstone. If you do it
in a bad neighborhood. You know it's half the price, right,

(12:52):
We'll be right back. So we started having kids, and
I had a basement apartment for recovering guys and see him.
Dylan lived there when he got out of prison. A
guy asked, could you help this guy out? He's born
again coming out of jail. And so I had lunch

(13:13):
with him, and I said, I went to jail. I'm
trying to relate to him. I went to jail for
two days for a bar fight, right, he says, I said,
what are you going for? He goes, Actually I could
cook cook. He had a stutter, but he was jacked,
jacked up, muscled up guy, maybe in his forties. I
could cook, cook, killed round about twenty. But I just
got caught on the one. So people said, why you

(13:33):
gotta let those guys live in your basement. I'm like, man,
the toughest guys in the neighborhood live with me.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's gonna mess.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
With you like that, fiercely jacked up.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
What you're saying is these guys today, they're just shooting
up stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
If you got sixteen bullets in there, you might hit
with one, right. So, but there's just a bunch of
gods they got. Sorry, ladies, it's true.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
I'm sorry. That'll be bleeped. There's a there's a bleep
and they're bleeping. Yeah, we'll bleep that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
And you know fatherless boys. In nineteen sixty, eighty seven
percent of black children were born to married parents. Now
it's twenty five percent, and white people ain't much better.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
So, uh, that's it.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
You know, even a bad dad told you pick up
your shoes, cleaners, take a shower, wake up, there's your books.
Read the book.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
So now there's most of the kids are raised by women,
so they don't really know, right, And we have some
super moms, great mom, I'm at a forty three year
old great grandmother.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
What do that math?

Speaker 2 (14:32):
It's like fourteen fourteen forty So, uh, you know, the
kids are they're not being and you could say whatever
you want or how bad the schools aren't all but
the number one school is in your house, right, So,
and it's really been tough like that. I could be
politically incorrect. I don't get what anyone they try them
up running for office, although they've been talking about to
me about that, so I that's the issue. Look, even

(14:55):
all marls aside two people banging away at one rent
and one car payment works two people at It just
works better, right, So.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
And like you said, it can actually be fun. Yeah,
it could be.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Fun, right, you got to be Here's what Wayne Gordon
Londale Community Church told me. Your kids need to know
they're part of something bigger than themselves and that they're
your most important kid. But they're not the only important kids.
And I think my kids growing up, my own kids,
and he had grown up where they have. So I
have seven biological and I've been legal guardian for four
African American boys, one formerly so Tyrone, who's doing great.

(15:34):
So I kind of and I live and what was
a mostly black neighbor now it's makes a lot of Mexicans.
They become, i think, a larger portion of the city
than African Americans now. And so Chicago Hope, outside of
my own kids, was an all black school and now
we're like forty percent Latino.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
And we hadn't even gotten to that.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
So anyway, keep screwing up the whole story.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
You're really excited about that, Okay, So we're going to
go doing You got the baseball, Yeah, things, take them
pick it up.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
There so they start to knock a briny green down.
And so we moved to the West side and we're
just having our second kid, and my wife decides to
leave work and we build this house on the west
side of Chicago. And what people would think is a
bad neighbor. So and so iron in Macha is like,
if the Lord of the Universe came down to Earth,
he had a pretty nice place, I think, Heaven, pretty

(16:25):
nice place.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
It's all right, and.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Comes down here he gets his ass kick. It doesn't
like it doesn't look so go so good, right, you
see the passion of crime. I mean, it's not going
too good until he rises from the death, but it is.
So if he could do that, come down here. The
least we could do is downsize a little bit, I think.
And like you said earlier, we didn't need a bunch
of people to do this, And so now we got
a bunch of people drinking the kool aid doing that.

(16:46):
The young kids out of Wheaton College, Notre Dame and stuff,
they're phenomenal. They don't they're fearless. My kids are crazy,
fearless for Jesus, so my son, So my kids would
like the Jackie Robinsons of the Little League, only they
with a first white player. It's the inverse and they
were all stayed in tracking to go. How do your
sons get so fast? I'm like, I grew up in

(17:08):
a black neighborhood. You gotta get fast and go home.
So my son Ike is the principal of Chicago Hope.
They all want to hope. And so he his roommate
just married my daughter Scout, who was notre names rugby captain,
so he was living with a guy all the time.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Out you have a daughter named Scout? Is that to
killer markenbrod to.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Very much like that character too. When she had she
had a wedding gown and all the kids went.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Scout's wearing a dress. Is that where it came from?

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh yeah, yeah. My favorite character, one.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Of my favorite, my favorite Bob Atticus, Atticus Finch. I
used the word to merity to describe courage all the
time because of Attica's Finch. And I wanted my we
have four. I wanted to name my second daughter Molly.
I want her name her Scout, and Lisa wouldn't let me.

(17:58):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
This is my sixth so we run out of names
at that point. So she but she's very much like
that character, so she's notre names rugby captain. So Ricky
menci your daughter. Yeah, so she this kid comes in
who I know since he's fourteen, came in as a
gang banging Latin king at Hope. It's born again, baptized
him and his mother and sister and is dating. My

(18:22):
daughter plays for Carthage College small school football. Comes back
and last year asked me could he marry him Scout
And I said, Ricky, I'm not worried about Scout, I'm
worried about you. You see her greatest hits phone. So
they get married. So he was living with Ike and
moves out. So my son Ike has a three veteran
condo in the hood. So you know what he does.

(18:43):
He meets at Venezuelan couple begging for money and their
two kids, and he takes them and those are his roommates.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Then for the last year, your kid.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
He must been paying his name Isaiah from Isaiah f
ft eight, but we call him Mike, so he must
have been paying attention to the sermon.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Right. So, and these.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
People go to work every morning at seven then a
chicken plucking factory and work there off right and so,
and the kids get dropped off and that Hope. We're
a high school. But after school there's always one hundred
little kids running around because the parents if they're working
or something. If we don't pick you up or nothing,
just go to Hope, just go there. We still hadn't
got it started, so so we moved to the West

(19:23):
Side and we're homeschool. So we homeschool K to eight
and my wife, so, my wife's pretty smart. If you
could afford a part one parent to stay home, it's
pretty good. It's what everybody did for centuries before the
last one hundred and fifty years, right, they homeschool that could.
So that went well. And then when the local Catholic
school closed, look one of those one hundred or whatever

(19:45):
you closed. I'm supposed to love the Lord, my guy
with my whole heart mind is so love my neighbors myself.
So my kids could go for high school to say
Ignatius or Latin, or I could move to Wheaton where everybody,
all the Christian people, I could do that, or and
then all their teammates from the Little League they got
to go to Variant right or Warez or something Crane

(20:06):
or Manly or Colin So how these bad Inner City?
How Manly is where Cooper went the podcast?

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Okay, that's that's right Manly So R Shay Cooper's a
great guy.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Rcha's Little League coach ken Al Part Rchha played in
our Little ken Yes al part my Jewish run that
is crazy road for Penn when they won a national champion. Yes,
I remember that again.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
There's for those of you listening, go back and listen
to the Rhade Cooper episode and this will connect.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
But Manly Crew was rough. It is birth out of
the Little League because can Al Part coached in the
Little League and he rode for.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Penn and that's the connect. Believable.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
So and I still talk to him once a month.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
So your kids are about to go to high school.
Their options are infinite, but their friends' options that they've
come up living with around on our Manly which is
where went, which is terrible.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
So I just had just sold the business to National
Financial Partners, and I had I paid off my mom's
house in my mother's house and did the fifty to
fifty thing and bought the local Catholic school to open up.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Oh, you bought the school. Bought a school from the dooces.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, we were the first ones they ever sold to.
They rent a lot, but if they sell, that's admitting defeat. Right.
So because the Little League was so strong and we
had a good reputation, they sold it to me for
a million nine and I would have paid five million.
Church Rectory Convent School. The structural engineer when he came there,
he said, Bob, if there's a tsunami, come here. This

(21:39):
will be the last building sting. This thing is so
the Italian artisans built it really well. So we open
up with one hundred and twenty freshmen. All of the
kids are from the Little League, the whole schools that
come out.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Hold it. You buy it the facility for me and
nine from the dooces. All right, that's a lot. Got
to rehab. Then that means the bureaucrats are going to
come in and tell you about the asbestos and everything.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, that happened that I was like a hundred. I
was really surprised. It was mostly in the tiles and
wrapped around the pipes.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
Okay, so now you got to me and in the school. Yeah,
here come one hundred and twenty five.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
And we had I had to guarantee you all my
stuff on that loan too.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
I did that. When these kids show up for school, Listen,
the two million dollars is amazing that you did that.
But here's my question. There's operating expense. We spent that.
We spent a private school. We're independent school. My friends
and I put in another three or four. So when

(22:44):
you put an air conditioning, because it didn't have any,
you've got to cut a hole in every single room, man,
and a whole bunch of things like that. So now
we've got and we did it in about six months.
We made the school ready looking beautiful. Right, So we
start with freshmen and sophomores and we're playing football right
out of the gate, right.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
So I have nobody to play. And he knows the
story because it has to do with his alma mater,
so and his uncle. So I'm talking about Alex the Producer,
Alex the Producer quartet. So we have nobody to play.
I actually scheduled we had one game and Brentwood Academy,
we're going to play Thanksgiving weekend and come down here

(23:23):
just play them a JV game.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
I was about to say, what the hell Riverwoods Academy's good.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
They was scored a hundred. So we open up. Somebody
dropped football a month before the season. One school seat
and academy drops football, So that means there's nine teams
out there with an empty day. So I'm going, Hey,
I'm Bob from Chicago Hope. I see you're empty on November.
So I got my nine games and I open up
with Saint Ignatius College Prep.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Who's coaching these kids?

Speaker 2 (23:49):
We had Renee Stewart who played in the NFL, and
we have We've Chicago Hope has always had great staff
and great people.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
And I came up from Brentwood and Brad Perry who
was at Brentwick Academy kid. So they came up and
lived for you, came up for a year or just
stay four a year.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Got us going. And so.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
We we open up with Saint Ignacious and it's when
there it was the new field, the new astrotar field
and track they had just set up. And Steve Cortez
was coach of the JV team and said, look, Bob,
I know you're brand new, and if it gets ugly,
I promise not to run up to score. So I
did use that in a pregame talk. So my wife's

(24:28):
at the game and some of our donors come at
halftime and it's twenty six seven, are going, well, that's
not that bad, and know we're winning. We ran him
off the field, so we beat him like forty eight
before you did. Chicago ho beat the sixteen on it
student st nacious. Now they're not a football power at
that time. They've gotten really good, but the fact is
we won the game, which was really big for us.
So picture you're paying playing. I have great pictures of

(24:49):
that game with the Chicago skyline in the background, this
beautiful huntred year old Catholic.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
School and you kick there.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
So we're fast speed kills. We had like four four plays, right,
there's unlimited place you could do when you leah, that's true.
And we had Romel Robinson was lead a later stay
after that. So we we had a good team. And
we're all boys. Most of my know since they're nine
or ten because I know them from the baseball program.

(25:19):
So we really have good relationships going. And then we've
had we've had one losing season in the twenty years.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
We're good. I want to go back to I get
you piled a bunch of money in it. But how
are you operating this thing that operational cost because it's
a private school, and I don't gets many people paying tuition.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah no they everybody pays. And if I had a
billion dollars, you'd pay so right now, cost about.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
You want everybody.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
But it's knowing in Chicago. The public school kids often
don't show up. When it's knowing in Chicago. The Chicago
Hope kids show up because Grandma's going. You. I'm paying
two hundred a month, get your right, You're going, So
you got to own it, right, So no one's ever
been kicked out for money. We make them work in
the summer, so and so I got to get the

(26:05):
rest of it. So I'm getting two or three thousand,
and I got to get sixteen. So we raise a
bunch of money from.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
First that would have cost about twenty per kid.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
To sixteen sixteen, about thirteen short this year times three hundreds,
I'm four million short. So we raise a bunch of
money for mostly my clients, because I know what they have.
I invest their money. I'm like, don't give me no
ten thousand dollars, not missing a zero pile, you know, right, So.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
You advantage their money.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
I know we've done a really good job with them,
so missing a zero. So we have that kind of relationship,
and they like guys. I have never asked anyone for money.
I just tell the story, right, And at one point
they're going to say, how can I help? Right, there's
an awkward silence going on.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
You're missing a zero?

Speaker 2 (26:56):
So fifteen and I remember the third year I barred
my life insurance cash value to make payroll, so it
was tight. Right.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
So is your wifeless a reminder?

Speaker 2 (27:05):
She she's used to me her gift and the problem
is with her. My pastor said, my gifts are exhortation
and compassion, and hers her discernment and those two bank
heads right wow. So but her passion was the school too, right,
and so she's very involved.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
So, and my wife is wicked smart. She's smart girl
in homeschool.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
We'll be right.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Back then, the banks, it was the big short, right,
So the banks started to donate foreclosures to nonprofits with
audited financials. So I have a guy working for me, Kevin.

(27:50):
He's one of those guys played rugby at Williams and
the univers Chicago.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
MBA crashed and burned.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
And he's been with us from day one for twenty years.
And he's one of those guys. You put him in
the woods, he'll build a house. I think you kind
of probably like that. So we get the first donation
from the bank and a foreclosure, put in twenty grand,
sell it for a buck fifty and go. So we
just flipped our five hundredth house with the largest nonprofit
receiver of four close homes in Chicago.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
You are kitty.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
So the real estate business pays the teachers, plus the tuition,
plus donations. So when you put someone in the house,
it's a big deal. So I mean, I'm like George Bailey,
and it's a wonderful life when someone gets their house.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Remember that, mister man seeing me.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Like you own a house. Hey, you want to get conservative.
You see black people who own their house. You want
to see people turn Republican. Quit you want some You
want to stop and frisk on your block when people
are getting high on your doorstep. You want the cop
to stop and frisk these guys. And if you get
five or six houses on a block, the block turns.
When you own it, you fix it. You go down

(28:50):
the street. I'll tell you who's renting and who's owning
by the garden in front of your house, that's true.
So uh and so, and we flipped the house in
Hyde Park for allion. It's not all like inner city house.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
So uh and where the banks c ALR they have
to do community reinvestment, they don't. They give us like
a six and a half percent. Aren't doing anything right.
They're acting like they're doing us a favor right community reinvestment,
And they don't give us money, they just lend it
to us. So and we have investors. So I got
a dozen guys who put from one hundred grand to
a million. They get a five percent coupon. Every year
they get five percent interest. Most of them rip the

(29:24):
check up. If I'm delivering that check in person, they're
ripping that check up. That's important. But not if some
of them take it, I'm like, my family office guy
did it? Like, well, your family office guy. So, so
then they got a deduction if they don't take it.
If five percent looked great until the last three years, right,
five percent was going When it's just right for three

(29:44):
or four percent, five look right.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
So you're really strong arming your clients out of their
money in the name of Jesus in the fair catch, which.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
I guess I have to report it to my bro
dealer every year, like I did, And so I don't
really talk, you know, just hey, am I Honor Boyd? Yeah,
I'm CEO of Chicago Academy. But I don't talk about
that that much because I guess i'm technically you know,
we're getting money from people who are our clients to
do some of that's their call, right to five and
one seed three audited fundy, and the people in my
business a lot of them support it, right, So that's

(30:21):
it's kind of wonderful. We're employing a bunch of guys.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
How long has the school been out your twenty this year?
Twenty yeah, Chicago twenty years? Yeah? And how many what's
we read? Three hundred and ten?

Speaker 2 (30:33):
We're high school, right, and we turned down one hundred
and fifty kids last year. You turned down because I
just don't have the room. So I have a twenty
four acre across from our nud little League fields, which
you could picture four Little League diamonds with the center
fielders are back to back right on that beautiful field.
Alex knows about it. Steve Cortez's uncle coach there for
a couple of years on that field. We put our

(30:56):
football field right. I got one hundred and twenty four yards,
so you better. That's why you got a helmet on.
You hit that brick wall two yards beyond the end,
squeeze it across the street. Fifteen years ago, I see
this beautiful building going up, looks like a warehouse.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
I go in there.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Michael Jordan's trainer, Tim Grover, builds the nicest basketball facility
you've ever seen across the street fifty yards from our littlefield,
and he goes bankrupt and we buy it out a foreclosure.
So Chicago hope our gym is as nice as any
suburban gym. You have four full NBA courts, mahogany wood,
locker rooms, oh my gosh, cold plunge, you name it.

(31:35):
Built for the NBA guys, and we buy it out.
A room with a batting Our weight room looks like
Clemsons and so it's home for special Olympics.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
This bought in.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
They stroked the check for a couple million dollars.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Going in there.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Joe Mowglia made the down payment on the gym. When
we end up buying it for seven and a half.
He was ceover mer trade and now he's had football
coach a Coastal Carolina I know store. Yeah, so head
of football operations. Because of his asthma, he can't be
down on a field the last three years.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
So how does you think this thing costs? To build
this gym?

Speaker 2 (32:10):
He built it for twelve We bought it for.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Seven and a half. It's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
And then we put it in a beautiful So we
have twenty four acres there with a beautiful track and cats.
That's where we want to build a new school. And
we go to six or eight hundred.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
But I can't imagine that every kid on earth wants
to be in the school.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
Pretty easy to recruit there, you know. And we have
kids that can barely read. We have a trades program
now we're in a second year of that for electricians.
Why can they barely read because they can't. They got
passed through grammar school and just and shouldn't have passed.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Can you catch them out? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (32:41):
So there's that great philosopher Chris Rock said this us,
if Johnny can't read, that's mommy's fault. If Johnny can't read,
because the electric bill hasn't been paying. The lights are out.
That's daddy's fault.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
I'm daddy.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
And so the kids come in. And then I got
kicked my Valthers. Wh I went to Stanford last year,
hire kids at Brown. Yeah, we got a couple of
Vanderbilt and so our best kids are as good as anybody's.
And then we got a bunch in the middle. We
have two stationed in Poland right now in the US Army.
I don't know if you know we have twenty thousand
American soldiers in Poland.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
I didn't know had twenty.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
We must think something might happen, But I knew we.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Had a bunch. So anyway, let me I'm sorry to
interrupt you, Bob, but it when you started you had
how many kids was that first year? Ninety kids? How
many were white? No?

Speaker 2 (33:33):
I won Sammy, my daughter, Sammy was in the first
liston your kid.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, and my second year Bo came. Then I what
is the demographics? School now?

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Sixty percent black, thirty percent Latino, ten percent white Asian.
You know who comes to the white kids who come
with the homeschoolers? No kids want to play? That's serious
about Jesus in there and the athletic side of it.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
We're good.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
We played the big schools and we were beating Whitney Young.
It's a big, Notory public high school in Chicago. It's
a testing school, so it's for the smart kids, and
so all the smart black and white kids go, you know,
and so we opened with them this year.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
We're beating them Ford. Have you ever thought about boarding?

Speaker 2 (34:13):
We did board some kids. We boarded, and we had
kids coming in from Vietnam, South Korea. We had a
big house that we boarded them, and then they stopped
coming because of COVID and I'll mix them in with
like homeless black kids.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
And I love this stuff. Right.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
I picked this kid up at O'Hare Airport from Vietnam,
so obviously if they're coming here, they're rich kids, right,
And they're coming to a Christian school in the hood,
and we haven't been this beautiful building. And the kid
is cranked up, Chance the Rapper, he's never been an
American in his life. I'm rooming him with Tyrone, right,

(34:50):
and Tyrone's math scores go up, and this kid's gotten
him so.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Roads math scores go for Vietnam and.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
All these funny little math tricks and stuff. So uh so, look,
I can't remediate you to Harvard, but I can make
you a good man, right, And we've probably uh six
or seven Hope graduates or police officers.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Now.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
I was just playing in the gym with one of
them the other day. So you know, the great thing
about our facilities is everybody could come. So I'll see
a kid in there who's thirty, he graduated twelve years ago.
He's just in there, working out, hanging out. I'll see
all these little kids running around. It's a huge facility.
The NBA Draft combine is often in our gym. That's
how nice it is. Wow, we have to shut it
down for four days. They give us twenty five grand.

(35:37):
They should give us a quarter million dollars. So yeah,
I haven't gotten to them yet, but yeah, so but
it's sort of a notious place. You know, it's three
miles from downtown.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
What's your budget? Budget is.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Therefore?

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
So I get a call the Sunday before the around
the election at my house. Scret Service calls that Obama
wants to play basketball. I hope for good luck. The
morning of the elect presidential election for his second term.
So we say Yeah, they got snipers on the roof.
Dog sniffed the building. Arnie Duncan was there pipping some
of the bulls.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Came.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Obama comes. He says, you look old, and I said,
I don't see no crowd around. You need the Paul
remember that from Rocky So and he smokes cigarettes. So
he playing basketball. He's a lefty. Obama's probably six one
one seven. He's a lean guy, so he could You know,
we weren't allowed.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
To hit foulu. Does they have a good shot?

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah, if nobody's on him, he could hit it.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Arnie Duncan had of education, can still play good.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Right?

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Janulis whose secretary's day?

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Get dunk?

Speaker 2 (36:46):
He's like forty five. So they're all playing. But he
asked me, Hey, Bob, what's your secret sauce to having
a great inner city school? And I said, Barry, if
you want to fix an inner city school, put your
own kid in it.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
He ain't doing that. We ain't doing that.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Look you know how my black friends say, first black
president was Bill Clinton?

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Bill Clinton?

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, chasing a women, single pirate, grew up, play saxophone,
AstroTurf in the better his truck. I'm glad this is
a private show. We could say whatever we want as
long as it's true.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
My black friends in Memphis went talking about Bill Clinton said, yeah,
we knew he was a scally wag and a dog,
but he was our dog. That's right. That is exactly
how the black folks in the southeast, my friends he
went to.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, he's smart, Georgetown and Yale, right, yeah, yeah, and
he come from trailer park just like jd.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Vance. Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
You gotta love that matter. We'll cut you our same trailer.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
So my question is this, what is the budget of
this school?

Speaker 2 (37:48):
The budget is about five and a half million dollars,
and question rings in about one and a half.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
So there's a four million dollars.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
We make about five hundred net renting that gym out.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
For different things. So now you're three to five.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah, now I'm three five. We'll probably net a million
and a half in real estate. Okay, so now you're
too Yeah, but that's just to stay flat. So right now,
we now have about forty million in real estate the
school owns, and about fifteen in a bank.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
So where does the two come from? You're not getting
interest you, I'm.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Getting money from friends to Mowgli. We got a lot
of people give us five thousand, one thousand dollars. We
got caught up and people want to support it.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
We got a couple of big guys. I give a hundred.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
All right, So what about school voucher thing? Wouldn't that
be a big deal? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
So we had that for five years of Illinois undergo.
You had it for Bruce rown Er. Yeah, you can
take five percent. It was called investing kids. So Illinois
state income taxes five percent flat. So if you're making
a million dollars, you pay fifty grand. You could steer
that to Chicago and people. I was like shooting fish
in a barrel. And when round Or lost to Pritzker,

(38:56):
they didn't have the guts to take it away. So
now there's twenty five thousand, mostly black and Spanish kids
on these scholarships for any Catholic school, independent school in
the city and so, and it's it's like fifty million dollars.
It's not going to break the Illinois budget. They're given
ten times more of that to the Venezuelans. So Governor Pritzker,
who's heir to the Hyatt company, our four hundred pound

(39:19):
governor who talks about COVID and health doesn't put it
in the budget. So they just didn't put it in
the budget, so it didn't get voted down. So last
year it ended.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
So it's gone.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Now. Yeah, we picked up a million seven off that
last year and we lost it. But to be fair,
we did it for fifteen years without it. But it
puts some little Catholic schools out of business because they
got used and you can never get used to the
government money.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
There's a big there's a big governor building here in
Tennessee is a huge school voucher. Yeah, did they have
it here kind of but not how he wants it
to be. But they're working on it. And look, I
get both sides of the argument. One side is if

(40:01):
you strip that money out of the public schools, you're
just gonna make them even worse.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
It's not true. It's not stripping money. They're having one
less kid, so the kid is going, the money's following
the kid.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
That's the argument. And then the other argument is if
it costs thirteen thousand dollars per kid in the state
of Tennessee to send them to public school, if they
choose not to go to public school, give them a
thirteen thousand dollars voucher to spend it any private school
they want to, and let them choose how educated. Right, exactly,

(40:32):
that's the idea.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
So we're sixteen right, the public schools in Chicago, it's
been thirty per kid. There you go, and the results
are bet. The results are bad because it's from tough families,
really tough situations. And the good kids are going to
the magnet and the other charges. Right, the kids who
a parent has some.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Kind which means that public school and the inner city
continues to get degraded. But here's what's happened now. Nobody
wants to say it. Our local school manly urshe attended
when he was there. We're sixteen hundred kids, right, it's
a big school. There's ninety kids in there, ninety just playing.
Ninety they've gotten the charters. And I haven't seen a
big black family in twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I used to see seven kids. They might have three
different dads. But the lady's having a baby, and if
you had mentioned her the word abortion, she might punch
your lights out.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Man. Then I did it.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
It was an article on Sports Illustrated fifteen years ago,
called the Vanishing Black Player, and they wanted to talk
to me about it. So they're saying, well, it's money,
there's no money for fields. And I'm saying, no, that's
not it. It's a father taught game. And if you
don't live, nobody's around that guy. Yeah, a grandfather father,
you're probably not going to play baseball. You're gonna want
to play eighty seventy nine basketball. Give me the ball, right,

(41:43):
So no.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
They oh, that made them uncomfortable. Whatever, it made them uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
So anyway, Julianni comes to opening that he's the mayor,
so we throw out the first pitch. There was some
major lete, Paul O'Neil, there was some Christian players from
the Yankees and so, but everybody's gone by the three
o'clock game, right the three PM game, and I'll remember,
like I'm we had guys from the drug and alcohol

(42:09):
Rehab with the umpiring crew from the U the Christian
drug and Alcohol Rehab. So they're umpiring the game and
it's I'm hearing.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Pop pop pop pop, and it's a.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Shooting battle going on from one rooftop to another one
the fields in the middle. But they're shooting out people
over there, and I'm at midfield with these guys and
they're debating between innings what caliber of weapon it is,
and you know, I'm like, the score is four to three.
You know, I'm umpiring behind the plate, which I love

(42:42):
doing because you get to really control what's going on.
Got a big strike zone because you don't want kids
walking all over the play. And so I just looked
at them and like, forget it. We didn't even call
anybody or something. The cops came at one point, but
that league was phenomenal. That was great and a bunch
of people that really took it on. So that's why
the Johnny apple Seed they start one, and uh Nashville

(43:04):
had one for a little bit on the other side
of Nashville.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
What are you the ceo? Are you the grand poo
bother school? What?

Speaker 2 (43:14):
No?

Speaker 1 (43:14):
I was?

Speaker 2 (43:15):
I was CEO of the school until three years ago.
My son I Brian Sarr, retired chief operating officer of Guggenheim,
who bought the Dodgers. So he did the Dodger deal
when they bought it. Guys in Chicago on the Dodgers
Mark Walter So Brian is now Chamber of the Board
up because it's a movement Bob Youfford started called halftime.
What are you gonna do? You made a lot of money.
You're gonna go golfing in your sixties and seventies and

(43:37):
eighties and eat dinner at five o'clock. So he's with
all that talent you have in money. So Brian Surr
is now Chamber of the Border Chicago, Hope. And we've
gotten and your son is the principal, my daughter the
Notre Dame girl as that mission.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
What are you doing just hanging around?

Speaker 2 (43:51):
I have I'm the f I have influence. I still
get the vote.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
You still are rounding up?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, I'm still we have We say we have to
stop becoming fob friends of Bob. So uh, but you
know I'm happy to do it. And there's no mention
to retirement the Bible.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Right, we're going.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
If you're working out hard, I'm gonna bench squad three
license time. So we can't run with the kids. You could,
if you're careful, you could still live with the kid.
I'm gonna bench and squad three fifteen this year and
I'm gonna come on, yeah, are you really?

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (44:21):
I got two eighty five the other day and they
put on more and I felt like a truck was
on my chest. But if you're careful and you don't
blow your shoulder out, it's.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Sixty five, you're gonna bench. Really. Yeah, I kind of
hate you right now.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, And I was a tighter. I wasn't oidlined.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, I wouldn't either. I was a safety. Be careful
what you see today.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
But that's but that's how I had your guard. Now, man,
you know, pull it down. But that's uh, that's something
you should still that. Hell, everybody that you should be
lifting weights for older people. Grandma broke her head. Why
she does any muscles around her head? When she fell,
she had no muscles. So we're supposed to stay fit.
You know, I'm walking that thin line. I don't know
if you've seen these pas. That's the thing, these electric pads.

(45:01):
So instead of putting heavy weights on, you have these
electric pads on. One's tyson fighting that guy this week?

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah, did you see him yesterday or the day before?
Something that really likes off. He actually punched the guy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I like him a lot. He's a really sympathetic character. Right,
he said, you know, he had my favorite quote is
from Mike Tyson. But everybody's got a game plan until
they get punched in the face. We're gonna have some
one more person come up to me. Oh, we have
a passion to start an inner city school. I'm like,

(45:34):
I come here, I'll talk you out of it. And
if I can't talk them out of it, then they're
going to do it.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (45:39):
It's it'll take your whole life. It'll take your whole life.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
But would you give it again?

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (45:44):
I would have done it a little differently, But I
would have done it. What would you do different?

Speaker 2 (45:48):
I wouldn't have had us be something because it's three
blocks from my house. All my kids are there, I
know all the kids. It's all the neighborhood, right. So
for me, I could roll with that because to whom
I was forgiven much and my wife's a little so
it was a little more painful for her. Ala. I
think ninety five percent of the stuff she wanted to
happen happened. But some didn't. Like Brentwood Academy, we can't
like we in our handbook, if you cheat or you steal,

(46:10):
you're kicked out. Well, freshmen always cheat. He steal because
I don't know. We have no locks in our lockers.
We just don't steal. And if you do steal, I
would come to the Mica chapl and say I have
to I'm responsible for it. So if somebody's ipay I
got stolen, I gotta pay for it only Bob. So
you can always steal from Bob. Right, and the freshmen
inevitably steal because they don't get us yet.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
So but my wife would be like, well, why do
we have a rule book? Then if the kids because
the kids kicked out, he's going to join the ice,
looks right, so let's make him mop the floor for
two weeks, right, some like So there's a lot of
the main thing the Christ Center. Place the scriptures on
the walls. You're walking, We're solid like that.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
We got approved to be we're the only ones in
history to get approved to be charter school eight thousand
a year per kid. And then the women came from
the city hall. Take the scripture off the wall. You
can't have chapel till after school. Yeah, so you ketch
my hands on a kid, so the parents, we ain't
kicking Jesus out of our school. Unonymously in a pack
chapel turned the money down eight thousand a year per

(47:19):
kid at that time, and I'm all choked out that
we're stading for Christ. They were not going to take
their money. But behind I'm Jerry Maguire. Show me the monk.
No not show you the money. Jerry showed me them.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
I say it, Jerry, So we don't take the eight
thousand a year per kid under Mayor Daily, and Auntie Duncan,
who Mayor Daily, said this, I don't care if you
call it.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Jesus Christ High School. You guys do great work. You
should get it.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
I love Daily. He gave us the park on the corner.
They were going to take the park. He gave a
Christian school a park. Daily was great.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
I don't care if you're doing good work.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, his Mass every day he would the only thing
he would come to every day. His assistant said that
he asked to go to because he has to speak
at so many events as the opening day of the
Little League, to throw out the first pitch, because he's
no one's bothering him. He's eating hot dogs, throwing her
I mean his father was mayor for twenty four years
and he was mayor for like twenty five or something
like that. Right, So his father. Here's a great Richie

(48:22):
Daily senior story the ACLU. In the seventies, the law
was passed, no major scenes or manoras in public buildings anymore.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Yeah, right, So.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
The ACLU lawyers are up in DC. So Daily invites,
this is the father.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Early seventies.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
He invites the head of Moody Bible Institute, the head
of the archdiocese, the head of the Jewish thing and
all to this meeting on a Friday afternoon with the
ACLU up from Washington. No more major scenes in public,
no more manias. So they're all there from a guy
who was personally there was the assistant to the head

(48:58):
of Moody Bible. Once the two ten Christian and Jewish
people sitting in there while they still use telling them
this is the seventies, Chicago's roughest now, right, So they
always nod in this head say okay, we understood, you
understand this, mister Mayer, Yes, you understand. On Monday there
was a major scene in minor in every single public building.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
He just flipped them off.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
He just said I understand and talked him what they
wanted to.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
You come take them down?

Speaker 1 (49:26):
It what happened?

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Nothing and still on there today. So that's good leadership.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
That is good leadership, But that's also seems like it's
the stick of your school too. Yeah, so what's next, Bob?

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I'd like to get this new campus bill if you
have If you have a forty million dollar check, I'll
accept that. He's about forty million dollars. You're going to
drop a few zero, I'll take four. Hey, it's better
to get one hundred guys with ten grand. And I'm
sure because if the big guy leaves, you got problems.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
So what are you gonna do? You're gonna build a
whole new campus.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, we have it, wold have been approved. We have
it all the time.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Gym and all this stuff. You tell me. It walks
right into the gym.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Oh, you're right here, we're at We're in currently eight
blocks away from the gym is our current school. So
our kids have an eight block walk every day to
get the practice.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
So are you going to try to connect that? Are
you buying the land in the in.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
The middle, We'll make the current school a K through eight,
build a high school over there.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
I see.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Yeah, So and we already have all the plans, and
the board said this, look.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
What about the what about the funding, annual funding for
all that.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Well we've got We're flipping houses and raising money and
people are giving money to stuff like this, right, so
the voucher thing could come back. But I think that
you have to go out on faith, like and that's
how everything got done. Look, we start when people come
who haven't been around for many years, like Bryanton Pony
came a coach. He's like, are you kidding me? You're

(50:54):
still open? Like that's crazy, right, a private school for
poor kids. So uh, but there's a lot of people
want to fund it. We have actual results. I see
a lot of people getting money from what's the Gates
wife and the other ex wife? Will God bless them
give them to stuff like that's not effective. They just
got a million dollars and I know what they do, right, Uh?

(51:17):
The Obama Foundation always kidding you know what, The head
of the Obama Face Foundation gets paid seven to fifty
I'll take that job seven hundred.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
And fifty thousand a year head.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
So people do all that and all the building is
a giant museum on the park. So I don't know,
I just think you come to Hope. This guy, Mike Kaiser,
he's one of the best golf course builders in the world.
He built Bandoned Dunes in Oregon, and he pops by.
I love this guy. He's got a twelve year old
car worth of fortune.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
He goes.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
I love Hope because when I come by unannounced, When
I come by at three o'clock, there's fifty things going on. Right,
and you come, don't tell us you're comment of your donor.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Just come and see the show.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Because we it's had a prison fellowship comes out of there,
special Olympics, the cops run break. There's twenty cops that
lift in our gym, right, they'll come at lunchtimes. Also
they're in lunchtime when it was packing, they're on the
bench with their gun. Our gym is like the safest
place in the world. So it's really there's a whole
bunch of things going on there. So and we rented

(52:19):
out to suburban because you hit a button and you
got eight volleyball courts and there's these all of a sudden,
three nights a week, the gym gets white, like from
eight to midnight. And these volleyball group they pay us
twenty five grand a month to rent it. So we're
really scrambling and hustling. We got a little bit of
a cushion now, and and I think we really need

(52:40):
to have something on. I think God called us to
build on that land with the having a really good
trades program part of the school, and we can go
to you know, we'd be six hundred and eight.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Hundred when you h and your wife gosh, what's her name, Tina,
When you and Tina take stock of this facility and
what's going to be that you're raising money for and
realize it started because you went on a run. And

(53:10):
notice six kids on a stoop one day? What does
that do for you? Does that make you feel like?

Speaker 2 (53:17):
You know, it's good you asked me that because we
don't celebrate the victories enough, you know, always.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Like pushing them. Should allow yourself.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
To Yeah, I'm better at that than she is. It's
like like, now, remember Michael Jordan when he was playing
nobody except Rodman had crazy hair, right, right, So I'm
in the weight room and it's up to two hundred
and fifty dollars to get a haircut. No, no, kidd'll
take me. They got those dreadlocks and their eyes and stuff.
So when when I left a seat president, I let

(53:45):
that slide because I used to make the kids get
haircuts white or black. Right, So now almost I would
say more than half the kids have that, right. That
takes a lot to maintain. And the reason why black
people told me that it's because they're raised by women.
So you're in front of the mirror, you're three years old?

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Are you cute?

Speaker 2 (54:02):
And so that's why they have all that luk and
that just now, that's an interesting thing that just blows
my wife's mind.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
That blows my mind too good.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
And so that's not at the core with her son.
This is our son letting that slide, right, because he
doesn't think that's important. So and he's in charge. So
I'm like at the job interview, you know, but I
think that that the most important things matter, and there's
a bunch of little things like that that that just
piss her off. Right, But so she's all hoped out.

(54:31):
So she's taking a step back. And we're always involved
in fundraising people for dinner and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
But I guess what I'm saying is, do you realize
are you able to.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Celebrate I mean, we got to do that more because
f c A comes out of our defensive coordinators at
an FCA Urban, right, and he's our defensive coordinator too,
So you come hope the whole back of our scoreboards
on the Eisenhower, one of the busiest house highways in Chicago,
So it's really a visible. A lot of people don't know.
They think it's a charter school or whatever. But I

(55:10):
think we just need to do that more celebrating and
we get to celebrate in heaven.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Right, you do get to celebrate in heaven. But we
have fun of that. I have a.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Blast with that. We have a saying on my BJ
passed away last year. The guy who let me says
a beautiful monument with his picture on and has a
little story about it, and it says his favorite saying
was we didn't become Christians to be miserable. That's right,
And so I don't want you to paint a pictures
with all the tragedies. We have hundreds of good things
going on for every bad thing that happened, and we

(55:41):
have a blast. We are in a football bike had
coached Chris Mallat African American guy played for Princeton and
he was head of gang intervention under Daily and then
Ram Emmanuel and Chris about fifty three fifty four. And
he's a badass, but he's it's all about leading kids
of Christ, the whole pro and so yeah, it's you

(56:02):
walk in the gym. It's as huge letters to who
much is given, much is required, and so uh yeah,
we got to celebrate a little more and just have
a little more fun with it. I'm better at that
because I'm in the weight room with the kids. I
have a blast.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
I just think you my goodness, you know, half is
a lot. Yeah, yeah, and it should be celebrated. And
I think maybe if you celebrate it, maybe you bring
more people into that tent. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
And where would Jesus love your whole point in the
vans in the suburbs.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yeah, he'd be.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
I think we might make a little uh make people
uncomfortable sometimes, right, So I've been great. I spoke down
here in Nashville for some Christian equivalent of an inner
city school there eighteen years ago. Bro and somebody sold
their house after that talk and gave it like.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
A big number.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
So he should give the house because then he doesn't
tie capital games don't sell any But I get your point.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
I think that.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
I don't think we've even tapped the people who can
support this. A lot of it just coins like that.
Joe Mowgli, he's an old friend for many many years.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Grew up.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
His father ran a fruit stand in the Bronx. No
spritskers could do a lot for you. Yeah, they could
do a lot. Mark Walter Guggenhunt, guy big, give it
to us a million dollar guy wow a year per year,
and so Joe five hundred a year.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
There's a there's a school here in Memphis called Pure
Athletic Athletic, Pure Academy.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
The guy on it was a guest, Melvin Cole, and
he is doing a private school much arter, and it
is all boarding because he has to get his kids
out of their environment. And they just very similar a
city school that is that was closed because of lack
of student body. Uh. They bought it about three or

(58:04):
four years ago and they're now rehabing it and they're
trying to do it and it is just you know,
it is so much money to get the facility right.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
I should meet that guy.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
You should meet that just his name is Melvin Cole
and he was he was, uh, maybe we go by
his his Uh, he was a he spent time in prison.
Drug guy. Actually flew back from Atlanta with a bullet

(58:37):
in him bleeding raped tight from right and he uh,
he got sent to prison and he watched a man
get raped. And he made a deal. He said, that
can't happen to me, because I will end up dead

(58:58):
if you can save me from that. When I get
out of here, I will dedicate the rest of my
life to making sure kids don't have to come up
like I did. Right, And he did, And he started
this academy and he's got kids. He's trying to go
into IS but he's he's got thirty kids. He bought
a small piece of property and house and started a
boarding school in a house, built a campus out of it.

(59:20):
Has now bought this school and is. They are right
now rehabbing the school to be open next school year
on a full campus and boarding and everything. And he
is killing himself.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Other people like that. Kevin's help them.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
I don't know. I mean, that's who needs to be helping.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
You know, A good friend of mine supporters Bill Haslem.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
Yeah, yeah, Bill Haslm's good guy, great guy.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
You act like a seven to eleven checkout you would
never know.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
No, but he's also a guy that can had a
couple of zero spots. Yeah, and and I just wish
more people knew about out Melvin. And maybe with your
connections and I know where your heart and place is,
maybe you could be encouraging to them. But we maybe
also there's other people that might be interested in his school.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Yeah, no question there. And there's usually local people. I
would say half our donors are from New York because
I'm a New York But.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
The thing is, it's just a pool of people in Chicago,
New York. To give to a school like yours is
one hundred times the size of the pool in Memphis.
But even a memphisis some crazy old money, right. If
you're not a believer, there's some good people here, yeah,
like Kevin's. So if you're not a believer, how about
it load up. But if you're a believer, and then
my wife would say that the problem with the Bible

(01:00:39):
belt is everybody thinks they're a Christian, so you don't
really The other problem is the most segregated day in
the South of Sunday.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
But there's a lot of compassionate people would give to it. Well,
he's had some progress, or somebody's given them money.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
He's had some progress, somebody has giving us money. But
I just hear your story, and you are where he
wants to be.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, so we were just making it up as we
go along. Right, I moved to the wrong neighbor I
don't have a passion for inner city. I moved to
the wrong neighborhood by mistake. I'm loving my neighbors myself.
They happen to be black and poor. If they were Afghan,
I would help them, right, or Irish or whatever. So,
but there's other And to be fair, my business is
to find wealthy people investor money. Right. I don't have

(01:01:24):
just wealthy people, but in general my job is to
keep rich people rich and make them richer. Right, so
that trade don't getting fined your health.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
You can tap into them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Now, most guys our peer group won't do that because
then you used up a chip. Yeah right, you use
the chip and you would have done a business deal
with him, but he gave it to your charities and
you can't ask them for something else.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Yeah. So apparently you feel like you just keep going back.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Look, if you asked me, what do I want to
be in my fifties and sixties. I want to manage
the New York Yankees. But they didn't call me, so
I got to raise money. You to think of something
you would rather not do, then raise money from your friend.
Oh my gosh, that's the most horrible thing you'd ever
want to do. With the calling and the mission is

(01:02:07):
bigger than Bob's ego ego AA has so many greats
edging God out right, ego ego edging God out. So
I have never ever asked anybody for money. I just
tell the story and we talk about it, and then
eventually they're going to say, like I said earlier, you know,
how can I help or or give you go away money? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
So where do people go to find out more about
the school? Chicago Hope Academy dot org. Chicago Hope Academy
dot org. Yeah, and they can help if they want
to help.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Three one two five sixty five hundred is my cell?

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
That's a pretty cool cell? Say it again?

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Three one two five nine sixty five hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Why is that a cool sell?

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Because it's sixty five hundred?

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Oh, it's real because it's you can sayap it, I
got it. I thought maybe the numbers meant something. I mean,
what what does stories of your life? It could always
mean something, Bob, from a dude who grew up in
a rough New Jersey neighborhood to what you've accomplished through
Columbia and your marriage and your family and the little

(01:03:15):
leagues and the school as good a shape as you're in,
I can't wait to see what you do next. Yeah,
do what he tells me. Man. Thanks for coming to
Memphis Tonia Story.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Guys, appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
And thank you for joining us this week. If Bob
or other guests have inspired you in general, or better yet,
to take action by donating to Chicago Hope Academy, starting
a school, or a little league, by volunteering at one,
or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love

(01:03:55):
to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Bill at normal folks dot us, and I promise I
will respond. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it
with friends and on social subscribe to our podcast, rate it,
review it, join the army at normalfolks dot us. Consider

(01:04:17):
becoming a Premium member there. Any and all of these
things that will help us grow an army of normal folks.
The more people, the more impact. Thanks for our producer,
Iron Light Labs. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.