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.
The next morning, I go for a run and a block away I come around a corner and there's twenty fifteen story projects Cabrini Green Housing project. I had moved by mistake, a block away from the worst housing project in America? Is that really true? Yeah? You didn't know? Yeah? So people, you are a smart guy. How did you not know? We came in from the Hasinos from the lakeside? Seriously? Yeah, I mean we had a UHUL behind it. I had a couple phone calls and I said, this is thirty three years So that night, I'm sitting on my deck that night, near room. I don't think of this. It was May. It was around Memorial Day, and I thought this must be a patriotic neighborhood this year.
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part somehow led to an oscar for the film about our team. That movie's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people. And nice sus using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks us just you and me deciding, hey, maybe I can help. That's what Bob Muzakowski, the voice you just heard, has done. Bob accidentally moved into a home that was next to the worst housing project in America, and instead of running, he dug in.
He started a little.
League for its kids, then intentionally moved into the hood on the West side of Chicago and ended up starting the largest inner city little league in the country. And finally he decided that would enough, so we built a world class school there called chick Haigo Hope Academy. And on top of all this, this dude is hilarious. I cannot wait for you to meet Bob right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, Bob Muzakowski, Welcome to Memphis.
Good morning.
You know, I don't know if you played football, but if you did, that would have to have been a middle linebacker or full back.
With that name moves Zakowski. I can hear people going moves. What kind of name is that? Polish? And Uh? I was a tight end and outside linebacker in high school when you have to play them alt right, you got to play both waysers, Well, you're only playing half the game, that's right. But uh, there's been a lot of good polish by Bronco. Nogirsky was a Bull's fullback and he was a great player. Ran hard, and in those days the goal posts were in the front. So it's fourth and eight. They give it the Bronco breaks three tackles and slams into the goal post right and spins in the end zone. He staggers back to the huddle and everybody says, are you okay, Bronco, and he goes that last guy hit me really hard. Got to be a polish joking. Yeah, So Bob.
This we could literally sit here for much longer than we have, hours and hours and hours.
Your story is phenomenal and to unpack it all and I'm excited to get into it. But first, just I think it's cool. Just kind of tell me where and how you grew up. So I grew up in Bayona, Jersey, which is actually the closest point to the Statue of Liberty in New York. The statue is actually closer to the Jersey side, so I actually watched out my bedroom window as the two towers went up. The twin towers went up, and then on September eleventh, we watched them. We all watched them come down. You're kidding. So Bayone blue collar town, a lot of veterans, exon a lot of dock workers. My father worked at Westinghouse factory in Jersey City for thirty one years. Died when I was nineteen. They beat the Germans so that they couldn't beat the cigarettes and the boosh, you know. So anyway, my neighbor, this is Bayone. Chuck Webner was the new Jersey state champ. I think Chuck was like twenty six and ten boxing, yes, and between Ali flights Fraser fights, Ali wanted to tune up. So he fights the Bay One bomber, Chuck Webner, who knocked muhammed a Leid down in the eighth round, went the distance, got about sixty stitches, but went the distance. And Sylvester Stallone so the Webner Ali fight and wrote Rocky in three days, you're kidding. The bail guy shopd Webner. Stallan saw that fight in Cleveland and and wrote Rocky. He was the he was the the it was ration behind rock He was a liquor salesman and was a good boxer, but you didn't get paid enough. Then he was your neighbor and there were five guys on my block that could beat up Chuck. Are you so it was that kind of neighborhood. I know that was a classic bal So if you google the bay O one bomber, Chuck Webner, Rocky So and still Loan made a fortunate and but and you know would be fair. The Rocky stuff was great. It made hundreds of people go work out and get in spot whatever. Who didn't go for a run, not to the Rocky So you're gonna fly now and the whole thing. But that is so you so you know this? So Webner, I saw that a Yankee game maybe five years ago when I was in New York. He's still around. Yeah, Chucks, what gott to be mid seventies maybe late seventies. So he would say, he said, uh, he was on Johnny Carson two days after the fight, all banged up, and Johnny Carson says, Chuck looks pretty rough. He goes, I get it worse a night out with the boys. I would have kicked his in a phone booth. So that was bad. That's where I grew and I went to All boys Catholic School Marist. I had a scholarship there, played football, bass, was captain of all the teams. And I had a great experience growing up in the Catholic system. You know, ninety nine percent of the priests didn't abuse anybody. And it's not everybody. It's great people. And the priests and the nuns that taught me, they taught for forty years for they didn't get paid. Right. So now in Chicago, one hundred and fifty Catholic schools have closed in the last fifty years, and the gangs filled avoid of the parish. Wow, parish was a good thing. That says a lot. Yeah, and everybody, you know, it worked, the Catholic school system when the urban poor were white, the Germans, the Italians, the pole they saved millions of us and it worked and everybody went golfing in the suburbs. They forgot where they're from. So uh oh, say that again, that's really interest the school system. Dagger John Ughes in New York City was He's buried at Saint Patrick's and not many people are. And they called them dagger John, because he signed a big cross that looked like a dagger. There is a priest, an Irish priest, and he went to the mayor of New York City and said, why won't you let the Irish Catholic kids and your Protestant schools? And the mayor said, because you're a disease ridden, filthy, violent animals. So John Hughes says, well, give me some money and I'll educate the Catholic kids. And the mayor had a security throw John Hughes down the stairs of City Hall in New York City. And then John Hughes that afternoon started the Catholic school system in New York Saint John's Fordham. All these wonderful schools and all privately funded, not a government nickel, but the teachers taught for free. Now, there's not many duns and brothers and Jesuit priest around, right, And so the math of it didn't work right. But it isn't fair because at this point I asked all the time, should faith based Christian Catholic schools be only for rich kids? I'll ask you that obviously not. Should they are, Should they be racially segregated? No? But they are if you look at a picture of except for the guy who runs a four or five and conduct. That's true. Everybody's got a couple. They got Jamal and Tyrone out there. Man. So but so we started, let's I'll get into our school later on when we talk about that. But it's just not right. And so the Catholic school system America did a great chat. Think about this. Nineteen eighteen a constitutional amendment past called prohibition banning alcohol. Whether it worked or not doesn't matter, but that was because of the Irish in Boston, New York, Chicago. The family starve and the death and the guy's drunkly in the street with is bending his whole paycheck. And that changed. The Catholic school system changed every time. I don't know how strong it was down here in Memphis, but I'm sure there's some good Catholic schools here. No, it's actually still pretty strong. Yeah, And so that's the why I went. So I went with a thousand boys, had a great experience there, and then my other was dying of cancer. I had offers to play at Villanova Rice. I visited. First time I ever heard people say y'all all better. So, but I have forty five minutes away from Columbia University in New York City, so we were training the bus. So I went and played at Columbia, trying to turn the program around. I was in a powerful four five and one team, which for Columbia is pretty good. And so look, I go to a school and half the school looks like Woody Allen. So how are you going to be good in football? Right? My classmates, listen to my my graduating class school looks like Woody. Here's my here's my class, Obama graduate. He transferred into the sophomore from Occidental to Columbia to general studies, so he was he came in as a sophomore. George Stephanopolis from Good Morning America wrestled. These are all my graduating class Obama. Stephanopolis McGreevy, who was a governor of New Jersey and left his wife or a guy a clumb University is like a noble thing because he found So this guy is on the Jersey shore. He's governor of New Jersey and is making out with a guy on the lifeguard stand and a dumb sover and breaks his leg and that's how he kind of got out. It. I wouldn't do that in high school man with my girlfriends, like, that's a right true story. Couldn't make this up. And then Patterson replaced Elliott Spitzer. He was an African American partially blind guy. Because I remember I ran the columb University pub. Drinking age was eighteen. Great job for a future alcoholic, right, running the school pub, and Patterson would be reading a book at a picture of Heineken in the corner of the bar. We had cheap trick and live bands. I mean it was mommy's all right, that is this university's pub, five hundred people and he's reading a novel in the corner, drinking a picture Heineken. And he became the governor New York. Great guy because Elliot Spitzer got out and he was next to them. So that was there's a classic Columbia, right, blue collar kid from New Jersey hanging out with people like all kinds of people this culture shop. Yeah, I didn't even know it was the Ivy League. So I got recruited to play. So he had no idea and I didn't have to play. So and then Columbia was five that my son just graduated. Two of my boys just graduated. I got a lot of kids. I missed that bird control section of the vib I was not in there. If the good guys have a lot of kids, maybe we can change this thing. I tell my kids and all his students and everybody up. Coach, make more good people dealing with your best friend. So so, so here I met Columbia, and I remember this. Uh it's freshman orientation. We're sitting in a room and you know, forty of us on our floor, and you talk. You have to introduce yourself. And a guy before me is I'm Chauncey Phillips, the third My father was captain school watch team at Yeah, and Bubba and I said, I'm bubb musa Cali. I'm from Bayone and that's in France. You've probably never heard of it because it is named after Bayonne, France. So but you know, you fake it, so you make it. And if you got in my teammates football, you know the dumb guys are smart Columbia, right, So my teammate Pomer played football and running back and he's like the best cardiovascular surgeon in the world. Maybe, right, And so a lot of guys went on to do really well so uh, and a lot of people quit football. I think that's one of the If you start with fifty freshmen and I think fourteen of us finished, a lot of the kids finish school. But it's pretty hard to go to school and put four hours into football, and it's hard to do it any school, much less Ivy. Yeah, and freshman year I played baseball too. I'm giving you breaks. In the classroom, I wouldn't say they hated us, but there was a little anti jock thing going really. Yeah, we were the jocks, were the dumb guy, the stereotyped dust right. So fortunately we had Barnard College across the street, Fashion Institute of Technologies, a lot of others school that would come visit us, so you'd graduate from Clumbia. Yeah, And then I was admitted to a joint program business in law school, which is a prestigious thing at the time, And that summer I got yeah, and I got a job working for Mayor coach right that summer, and so I ended up taking my MBA. But I didn't finish law school, and I went to work for the city under Mayor Cooch, who was a phenomenal guy. Right. I don't know if you remember him, bigh so Cotch looked like Frank Perdue the chicken, Yeah right, only only six six three hundred with Frank Perdue's face, right, remember that. Yeah, So he was he just loved the city with a passion. Single guy. I don't know what people would say it was, but I never saw a pretty good gaitar and I didn't see that on him. But yeah, he was just a riot Mayor Coch and he loved his city and he was handed from and at that point it was fear city. Remember the movie Death Wish with Charles Bronson that I was about saying. At that time, New York would add on Columbia, we lost a kid or two every year student, you know really yeah, crazy from to shot or stabbed to death. Because the Columbia's and Harlem right now, it's a giant Starbucks. It's like the safest place in America. So you I remember that these guys were playing football in the middle of the campus and this young African American guys running by say hit me. So the kids threw him the ball. He caught it and just pulled kept going right. He caught the ball and bull Stride was gone. That was just classic. We used to have to again or the locks on our cars right because of my battery got stole stolen monthly out of the car and people were killed. So then came Juliani, Well, hold, let's go about what did you do for uh mayor car I was in labor relations, so we we probably might have saved the city of New York. A bunch of guys at Columbia Business School and Frank Hablichak and Professor Ray Horton started a thing called overtime equalization with the unions because guys were bankrupting the city. When you're sixty five, you worked, you get, you get like sixty percent of your last year's pay, and all of a sudden, the guy's getting all the overtime his last year making two on a grand. Yeah he's going to get one swan. He's a fireman, right, So we started overtime equalization where they have big son. Now it's all computerized, but you had a big board and nobody could get sixty hours ahead of anybody else, so the old guy couldn't load up. And it saved the city hundreds of millions of dollars and pension over you know. It was a bunch of guys in a case of beer at Columbia Business School doing that, and so so we I was like there, Columbia whiz kid with an NBA. I'm twenty six and I'm playing rugby at that point for Old Blue couldn't play football. They said, why didn't you play play pro football there? Because the other guys were better than they were bigger. There was only one reason we played Rutgers in the Meadowlands and that and they beat us like forty seven to seven, and we were three and one at that time, and it was the first college game in the meadow Lands and uh, and all of a sudden, may be Tennessee the following week. Rutgers was starting to get good, right, and they shouldn't have been playing us, And everything was just happening a little bit faster. Everybody's just like, you know, if you were blocking down on a guy who's gone, you couldn't get to him at time, like chop legs. But it was great fun, you know. And so uh, I was working there playing rugby for the Old Blue really competitive rugby blosus in the National Championship a couple of times. Rugby is a great game is one of the fastest growing sports in America. We have a thing called mephis inner City. Yeah, they've been up and visit at Chicago. Oh yeah, okay, well we went. We played saw them in Washington, d C. Last year they played in a tournament with Yeah.
But and yeah they It is not only a great game, but they are turning inner city kids.
We want to stay championship. It's rugby has gotten professional now. There's a new league about five years old, and the Hounds in Chicago practice at our place. So if you wonder why United State He's loses to New Zealand and South Africa for fifty to nothing in rugby, it's because they're getting paid and we're not. Now you're starting to pay our guys. We'll get good just on the table and we'll so so and it's just a great game. You know, you don't dance when you score. He handled ball to the rough. I act like you scored before. So I'm gonna make up some dance where the Bears guy is mocking the fans and he misses the last play and we lose the game. I don't know, or you blow your knee dancing. Yeah, so that also happens. Yeah, so it's just a really great and the home team is required to feed, host and feed the visiting team every game, and that is magical.
I had a friend that was from Liverpool in college. Actually he was he was skid studying at his doctorate, believe it or not. I played a little football and all that, and then actually I hurt my shoulder and I played soccer right, And he used to say that rugby. He would say that soccer is a gentleman's game played by Ruffians and rugby is a ruffians game.
Yeah, yeah, that's you really see a fight. Sometimes you see a fight, but rarely a fight in a rugby game. Really is a big changing thing in my life.
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So I'm playing rugby. To me, I never smoked pot, never smoked a cigarette. Like my father died from lung cancer. Three packs a day. Chesterfield king. It was thirty cents, and he'd always give me fifty, so I knew I had twenty cents for candy. It's great incentive bringing home cigarettes. So I but I was when I was in business school. When I was in I was a senior in college. I'm running the pub. So it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday night till three in the morning, and a guy comes up to me and says, you look tired, man, try this art hungsuckle. He's sober now, so he wouldn't mind me saying his name. He was at Prince from Taiwan, and he had cocaine. I never knew. I never took hardcore dro so I tried it, and I went home and studied right, And this is from four to six am. And the next night he was by. I tried it again. And the third night he said, hey, it's a cheaper if we get a lot of that. So I had to run with you. Yeah, and I didn't, you know, I picked what, you know, just suck it up. How could someone be an alcohol ark or addict? Do we start doing that? I mean, it's just it's hard to stop it. So I wouldn't do it for a month but when I was a streaky guy like that, but I would go out on Thursday night, you'd see me on Sunday, so and we had all this creative stuff. We had a sippy cup, like you know he'd give to your kids or your grandkids so they don't spill their drink. We'd crush an ounce of cocaine that which is that's prison time, right, and I'd have it in my car with the sippy cup. So if I ever get pulled over, the cops are never going to think this cocaine and a sippy cup. You're hitting me and I'm going to work for the mayor banging up? Are you serious? Because the drug is a stimulant, so it's not like a pot guy or drunk who's staggering around. You're actually on top of it, right, So yeah, it's kind of expensive. Yeah, And that was my bay only thing, wanting to act like a big shot, you know, because I'm now I'm working making money with the city, I'm running a club three nights, I'm making money and acting like a big deal all that. And that was when I made a searching and fearless moral inventory, which is the fourth step and a na it was all about that, trying to act like a big shot. Right, So hold it? Can I just make sure I heard what I just heard. You've got cocaine in a child sippy cup, working for the mayor and running a club, doing life in New York in your late twenties, and playing rugby, playing hard rugby. Yeah, so that sounds pretty mong Yeah. So the great thing about rugby there's usually three or four sides. So if you're not on the A team, the other somebody has a B team, the other team and your second string and third thing. So I played the game was better at that than football. I mean concussions and people say, oh, you don't get concussions and rugby because you hit with your shoulder. That's that's assuming the guy doesn't move. My job was to go get a concussion, and when you got one, they put you next to the keg right. That was that was that was question produce what was what was the saying he got his bell rung? He got it right there? It is so so I'm not condoning this behavior. So I'm on the sideline, finish my game, got the sippy cup, and a guy gets old you're hanging out with a concussion by the keg and you got your sippy cup well, because you probably need to wake up a bit because I have to run the club that night. Right. So this guy is thrown out of the B side game for fighting, right, and somebody says to me, that guy's a priest, so I go over with my sippy cup. It's bj Weber, the Shepherd of Times Square, evangelical pastor in Times Square in New York City, and he played rugby. He just moved from Iowa where he played rugby and it came to christ there, picked up by a Trappistine monk. So I offer him phissippy cup. He turns me down and it gives me a business card. Bj Weber Lamb's church one thirty West forty fourth Street and dares me to come to his church. And the next morning, with a brutal hangover, I go to this church, right, and people are calling for a fair catch when they're singing, and there call in the I mean they were singing, they knew the words, and they were into it. And they were homeless people, middle class people. Everybody was there. Hold it. They were calling for a fair catch. Where that's hilarious, But at this point, I've never been in a non Catholic church.
So oh yeah, you're using to this, yeah, Neil down, stand up man, And I'm not saying that was bad.
So uh so, And after everybody eats, they put up tables and chicken and all these people. And I'm like, there's this guy who smells really bad sitting next to a family with their three kids. And this is how church. Now, I know, this is how church is supposed to be, right, So don't tell the rich man come and have a good seat and till the poor man sit over there somewhere in Matthew So I uh, I started to go to this church and work on one night a week. And I'm still doing my jack one high thing, right, but I'm going to the church and I get invited to the presidential prayer breakfast by bj Weber and those guys in Washington, d C. Why because they're the lamps. They're like this cutting edge in New York City church. And I've been working on Wednesday night with the youth group. You know who I's working with, Mike de Toronto and Denny Rule. And Denny Rule had a little kid then a little five year old Matt so Matt Ruhle head coach in Nebraska. Who we're kidding. He's running around at the Lamb's Church on forty fourth Street when he was a little boy. So he was born in series rule was born in New York City, no kidding. And he turned around Temple, he turned around Baylor, and then he did a year in the Pros, which he can't turn the stuff around because he'll tell you what to do, right, it's all about money. And now I was on Nebraska and he still goes and has dinner at people's houses when he's recruiting kids. Was just a wonderful. But his dad was a key guy. Whoever I'm still in touch with at the Lamb's Church, assistant pastor. So I got when I get down to DC, and I didn't realize this prayer breakfast is a big thing at that Hilton and they have that mother Teresa speak and it's a massive thing. Yeah, it's Bowler. Now they've tone it down because of Biden and them didn't want to go to it because they might ask hard questions. Right, Catholics for abortion anyway, So don't get me started. He doesn't have a filter. No, we want no filter. So I say, give me my ticket, I'll meet you guys there. So I go out somehow I end I went to dinner with an old girlfriend or her husband, which is so stupid, right, that's weird. Yeah, and I end up in College Park, Maryland, at a big bar with big bouncers at it, and I'm wondering why do they have all these bouncers? And now I'm are you here to go to the Prayer brother prep breakfast the next morning? But You're don't get I'm just following along, like I'm not an alcoholic. I just go drinking at a bar where I don't know anybody, in a city where I don't know anybody. Right, of course, that's don't everybody. I didn't have it, Okay, this is important. So I a fight breaks out, and all of a sudden, the bar gets packed. It's College Park, Maryland North Carolina basketball game across the street. I want to why do they have these big bounces because the bar is going to get packed. So somebody's this kid stole a long hair tattooed up kids, stole a purse, and the bouncers grabbed him and they were holding them on the ground. I saw this one bouncer kicked the kid in the face once and the second time, I just it wasn't even my fight. He was going for the kid's face and I just nailed them right. Why you felt sorry for the long hair to hit again? And I had I'm spider Man after ten dricks kind of save everybody, right, So I nailed him and the other guy bounce and breaks a Heineken bottle goes from my face and I catch it. He puts it right through my hand, so I got the bottle stuck in my hand. The broken bottle. Yeah, and I hammered his face with a you know, the heavy beer mug. It's got some serious and I hit him perfect. So his face is on the other side of the room. The other guy I gotta hunt. I'm handcuffed, assault would intend to main, malicious destruction of property and battery. Did you not explain everybody you were just taking up for the kid. Yeah, I did it, But they and in court later on. There were fights in that bar every night, and those bouncers were always in some stuff like they were looked gunning for. You're supposed to be a protector, not the aggressor. Near the bouncer. So anyway, I'm locked up, and two days later I get a phone call. Buddy in New York calls BJ. Here. They come and bailed one hundred thousand dollars bell I had and this is what this is eighties, so that'd be a lot of money. Now he gets a lot of money. Then when you see a guy in a hot right after a fight and he's got it looks a lot worse than it is. In a couple of days. It's not so bad, but right after the fight you got, so it's like Chuck Webner, right, give it a week to cool that. So BJ bails me out with Brad Curl, who played at Oklahoma, spoke French and was a beautiful artist and he had an art gallery in Washington, d C. So much for all Christian guys being born right the plays for Oklahoma, speaks a lot of different languages and as an artist, right and Pat Rowayne, a Catholic guy, they come up with the ten thousand bucks because when you bail someone, which I've done many times, you need to pay ten percent cash, which is a big topic right now because a lot of people don't have the cash. So basically, the poor black kids can't get out, and if you have money, you can get out, right, So that's a whole nother argument. Usually when you're in there, though, you're not in there because you didn't do anything. So they bail me out, and I pray to receive Christ outside of Prince George's County jail, which is a rough jail. BJ and these two other guys, Christian guys bail me out of jail, and they pray with me. Brad Curl says to me, when I get out of here, he hugs me, big guy Barro, Yes, you remind me of Paul, And I said, Paul, whose right? So? But you know, if they were praying to bog one, you bail me out of jail, I'm probably going to go your Wayn't they right? So but I prayed with them, and then we drove back to New York and I get back in my apartment and my drinking party buddy, Dave Vidello calls me up and says, hey, let's go meet tonight, and I go. I got a court case coming for some bouncers assault charges in a bar. I'll quit drinking and all that. He goes, don't meet me tonight, so I meet him at seventy ninth Street and LEXINGTONA. I'm in New York City. Wait, I know it sent me out and love, I know that. Yeah, it's a. It's there's a meeting. I don't know there's still meetings. It's ana Aamy. So I pray to receive Christ in the morning in Washington, and that night, by mistake, end up in an AA meeting with my old drinking buddy who's still sober today and I keep in good touch with so I got sober and said this time sixty five. No, at this time when I did that twenty eight? Okay, at twenty eight, twenty nine? Yeah, So anyway, did the questions get harder as we go along? No, there's your more fun. So, so how old are you even? I remember that we will be right back? So so I'm twenty eight. Yeah, but I mean, given everything you've told us so far, yeah, I packed a lot in there. Yeah, well, I mean I guess, but think about what was it sitting in jail that woke you up? Yeah? One phone call because they came up that you know, the doctor didn't even give me anything. They pulled the thing out in the jail doctor sold me it was great, Right, that came out really nice. Can you imagine if that was on your face, you'd have to make up a really good story, you know, I think that. I don't think you have to make anything. That's a pretty good story. But what I'm saying is what what happened these between the day you missed the prayer breakfast for a bar fight and two days later, well, I'm sitting in jailing the guys bailed me out with a big number. Right, So remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, they're being chased, and they kept saying, who are those guys that couldn't they couldn't lose them, right, And BJ and the Christian guys were like that, you know who are these guys? Yeah? The real Christian. In the Book of James one two, it says, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says and with a lot of fun. At the Lamb's Church in New York City. So before this I'm doing, it was the beginning of AIDS. So the Lambs had two rooms with monk beds of twenty four, so forty eight guys in there dying of age. And in those days you died in six it looked like Auschwitz. Right, guys are really dying. In those days you got age, you died in six months. There was no cocktail, and are mostly hom active, homosexual guys and drug users. And BJ and Denny Rulin always we're doing these guys diapers. We don't know what. I don't have any gloves and I'm just changing. These poor guys are iron right and his blood. It was a mess. And actually, you know, the liberal people were watering their plants in greens Village wanted down and dirty work of serving these people dying of age was the Catholic nuns at Saint Vincent's, people at the Lamb's church. The Christian churches really served like nobody's business, asking no questions, how did you get aids? The bottom line is this guy's dying, and I'm called by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to help these people. And the Lambs was quietly doing that, and so they were just so my first witnesses of Christ, of real down and dirty Jesus people were pretty fired up people, right, And so I had really good examples of that. And then now and now they're bailing me out of jail. Who are these guys? They're the followers of Christ. And they did it laughing and joking like bj he could drop some serious f bo. I mean he was, he was not. He's a big tough guy playing rugby. Right, So Denny Rules played small college quarterback. These are Mike Toronto was a hockey I mean not wimpy little girl, dude. It's not that wonderful. There's not wonderful soft Christian people right there are, but he's not my guys, so and that might not have done it for me. So then I got serious about the church. Father William Wilson comes and speaks to the church, and he's just started a ministry in Aisle in Bolivia, South America. So instead of going now sober two months and instead of going to club med the Chase Girls with my I go to Bolivia to help this priest for a two week vacation. And my friends are going Bolivia. Isn't that where the cocaine is from? You done, as we say on the West Side of Chicago. You done los your mind. So now I'm in Bolivia. I was actually with Mick Luckhurst, who kicked for the Falcons. He was there with NFL Charities, and that's where I meet Mickluckhurst. I meet him and aram A c. Bolivia. He's there for two weeks for NFL Charities, and I'm there to help out this priest I met in New York and the six six baby, Mick and I and my father drive him three hours down the mountain to coach Obamba, which is a modern city like that, and we go to the hospital with the sick baby and they won't let us in because the babies catch you up. And we're like the other. Now I'm sober two months now, right, and I'm thinking Christianity is going to be this boring, right, Well, I'm not going to have fun anymore. So we go to this doctor who treats Indians and I could see by the look in his face. I remember it like as I said, this was a serious situation. And the baby dies in my arms in the living room, a little Ketchua Indian boy, and I got you, I got Luckhurst, me and the father have to drive up the mountain for three hours with the dead baby. So I ended up staying there for about fourteen months. I called all work said I'm going to take some time off, and I really got rooted in the scripture down there. I was back and forth a bunch of times with the Sister Columbus Sister Lords. When people start, a lot of the evangelicals say the Catholics are trying to work their way into heaven, or their works are like filthy. Expect They're created in Christ Jesus to do good works right and with a smile and the most intense Jesus people. Often I've seen our Catholic right even in the inner city of Chicago, Like this guy, you want to get some work done, give me hungover Catholic guys, We've got some good guilt working, and the Evangelicals are praying for me on the fourteenth hole of the country Club. We got some good guilt working. Kyle was made and we let a lot of Catholics to Christ through the Little Leagano because they don't Catholics in Chicago, big Catholic town mayor Dale, big Irish Catholic ethnic and they don't care what we say. They watch what we do right. Let your light so shine before men, so they will see your good works and glorify the fuck So here I am, I come to the mission has always broke. They got no money. I'm back in New York City. My guys, I graduated with her. They got big houses in Greenwich, Connecticut. They're thirty years old now.
And yeah, but you spent you spend fourteen months in Bolivia hanging out with a priest. Your whole Yeah, your whole network in New York has now moved on.
Yeah, I would assume, well, no, I'm asking them for dumb, which is sort of like to help this mission. But the mission was always broke. So I went into the financial markets in New York City then, because I'm like, well, my amo, and that's what we're doing now we can make a lot of money and live low and give a lot of money away, right, you know, do not Matthew six, Do not stow up your treasures on earth when Moth and Russ's corrupt and thieves break in and steel. Stow up your treasures in heaven, for where your treasures are there will your heartby Also, So what is that? Because did you learn that in Belivia? I got time to really read it that. Seriously, I'm not I'm not being smart. It wasn't a whole lot to do, right, I mean, you know, help you. First of all, your storytelling is so good. You need to have a podcast because you're hilarious. But you skip something. You drove up a mountain with a dead baby. Yeah, and you stayed fourteen months. I think there's a whole lot germane to your life story from that drive to fourteen months later. And I got humble tell me about this. I used look and still still once in a while. You know, when I go to my friend's giant house in Naples, you know Naples, they called the Chicago Riviera in Naples, Florida. Yeah, and I got a little pangagin like me and I could have done. And then like in New York, New York granted some nice suburbs of Chicago. And then about a day, Lary, what are you going to do tomorrow? There's nobody out here to help. Everything looks like it's fine, right, got great window dressing, so but I but the mission was broke. So I come back to New York City and he went into the business investment business and made some though and met my wife there, who was a foreign currency trader. At Bjay's house, his wife invited ten girls and he invited ten guys and we didn't know that Bruce Harper played for the New York Jets. He was there. So what was a big setup thing. Yeah, it was kind of kind of a like a college mixer. Yeah, thirty second Street of Manhattan. So people in their late twenties, early thirty So three of ten people well got met and got married from that. No kid at BJ's Holt. So, and my wife was became a Christian of Brentwood Academy in Nashville. In Nashville, she was in one of the early classes. Chicago Hope Academy in New York City is modeled on Brentwood Academy in Nashville. Okay, let's skip to So she became a Christian there. And so she won a rotary scholarship to scott and studied in Scotland. For she was a five handicapped, really good golfer. My wife was a good golfer. And so, and you couldn't be more op like, we're just opposite. I'm a city guy, she's from Tennessee, which is her mom. God bless her. Still, it took her a while to like she needed to interpret with me. Hey, now when I'm fixing to do that right, quick, right quick, you mean in the hurry right? So that was a lot. So well, I got met, we got married in Brentwood and at one pm. The wedding was a night wedding. Weep Old Blue Rugby played the Tennessee All Stars, so I played at one get married, it's having a black eye. My best man broke his ribs and my wife's great aunt was Miny pearl cabin. So the girls are you kidding me? The girls went to many Pearl's house, who's the opposite of that character Many Pearls one that always still had the price tag. So the girls are in my wedding album. The girls all have that and we're all banged up playing rugged so and oh yeah and so uh there's a lot of mine in New York. We were at the Brent would Marry It, and I like ran out of coke and had a FedEx to the hotel for the wedding. I believe so. And I you know, I have a lot of guys, and you know, when bad stuff happens, that's when they call me. Right. So even even to this day, I get asked to speak, it's and you say, when are you going to be muzz again instead of born again? Yeah, but when people get in trouble, they know what to call, right, so so, so that's kind of been our m O. Right, you could live, you could live great on X amount of dollars. Tithing is you're supposed to tie your first dollar. I tell my kids, if you make one hundred dollars, you're supposed to be But once you start making some money, I mean tithing you make, you make a million dollars, you keep nine hundred, Like what what versus that? At one point? At one point you become a fifty percent guy? Right? Like that? What's the guy I got?
No?
Not right? Actually no, I think it's pretty thin air someone that comes a fifty guy? Yeah, that guy in so No, not right? What's the guy's name? In California? The ministry wrote that great book, The Forty Things You go you read every day. Stephen Covey, No, Rick Warren, Yeah, he's like so. And don't you know if you could walk with kings and not lose the common touch, if all men count with you, but none too much. I like going to retreat and you stay at the ritz called the Naples. I like that, right, I have a big brownstone in the heart of what was a bad neighborhood. It's changed a lot, but I got a fireplace, so you know, I so I don't do that. I say for when I'm old. You know, it's part of my career is getting people to do that. So but the third house and the fourth house come on, guys, right, So Naples, wreckin Ridge, Shakak, come on. So action, your father, William Wilson, the priests, and Bolivi, who lives in Birmingham. Now he's still alive, right, Will's eighty three eighty four, is still super fit. And he said stuff, He said this to me, what's the difference between the brand new two hundred thousand dollars Porsche and a real nice Ford feeding the whole orphanage for a year. That's the difference in price. Right, you could buy a quarter million dollar car, you could buy a nice fifty thousand dollars car. They both get you the same place, and an extra two hundred could feed the whole orphanage for a year. So, and you know he would say things like that. Right, there's three things you can be. You could be passionate about doing ministry passionate about funding it or disobedient. That's all. You can be right and some of it overlaps like your coach and you give right. So but you know, if you have the gift of giving mind of giving an exhortation rate, if you have that gift, it helps to have the gift of getting right. I mean all the things that we run. The football program, we built an inner city high school from scratch. We run the biggest uh inner city baseball program in the country. We had a farm for drug addicts, and that all takes money. I'm a capitalist to the core. You're supposed to make all you can employ. The best thing you do is you employ an minister. You employ a ton of people. We just that's the best minister you can do. We just released recently a podcast from Todd Kombernikki, who is the director of the movie Bonhoffer, Pastor, Spa and Assassin. It's a really great event by Taxes. Is a dear friend, he wrote, who wrote the book. Yeah, he's a dear friend of yours. You have many interesting friends. What I meet them through j of course, why not? That's access. But one of the things that Todd continued to hammer to the audience was money is not the root of all evil. It's the love of money. And you know that's an important distinction, and I'm hearing the same thing from you. It's it's not making money, it's not doing well, and it's not having a comfortable life for your family. But the excesses are where it gets to be a problem. You can do a lot with those access.
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Bob Muzakowski, and you don't want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. It just keeps getting better. Together. Guys, we can change this country, but it'll start with you. I'll see in part two.
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