Mayor Glenn Jacobs on High School Students Building Homes for Homeless Veterans

Glenn Jacobs (0:00)

There's been a lot of business involvement in this, and I think the business sector realizes that we're talking about. It's like, where's that next generation of skilled tradespeople gonna come from? So they've been very involved, not only because it's a good project that benefits veterans, but also because they see their own pipeline, and they see the need themselves for folks that can fill those positions, or their businesses are gonna suffer.

David From (0:25)

Well, I think this is such a great example of entrepreneurial thinking being infused in government. You know, I mean, I always, I am, like you, I'm very much a small government guy, but there's a rule for government in our society. And it's just, we need to do it well, and doing, I mean, this is, there's, it's like a win-win-win here.

So, you know, as we kind of wrap up, how do you want to see this program progress? And, you know, I think you had mentioned a desire to export it to, you know, to the other parts of the country. How do you want to see this progress in your day?

SPEAKER_3 (1:00)

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David From (1:10)

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the American Potential podcast. I'm your host, David From. Today, we're going to talk about a really cool program that's going on that involves high school students building things that will benefit veterans. So I just think it's such a cool, multi-layered story that's going on in Tennessee.

And I'm pretty passionate about students learning to build stuff. I think a lot of cool stuff to that benefits societally and individually. Engineer Matt, did you guys ever build stuff in high school? What's the coolest thing you got to work on in high school?

SPEAKER_4 (1:46)

I didn't necessarily get to build stuff, but I'm really excited for this interview. Especially because I love the stuff Glenn Jacobs is doing with the high school students. Because even though I didn't get to build anything, I did when I was in high school, I got to be a part of the Civil Air Patrol, the US Civil Air Patrol.

I did. It's sort of like, if people are unfamiliar, it's sort of like ROTC. It's an Air Force Auxiliary. And you got to do all sorts of cool stuff there. Namely, one of the things I love, sure, they have their leadership programs and they have various different things that cadets get to do. One of the things I loved was learning about search and rescue. So I got to be a part of their search and rescue program. We would go out and do like sandbagging for wildfires. We'd do disaster relief for things like that. That, for me, was really exciting. And I can kind of through that, even though we weren't really building things, like we're going to hear about the students doing here, it kind of, this is getting me excited for the same reason, because it's getting high schoolers out there and getting them learning how to do cool stuff and to be engaged in their community. So I can't wait. This is going to be cool.

David From (2:55)

Yeah. I mean, anything that Glenn Jacobs is doing is probably pretty cool. And this program is pretty fun. So I'm excited to talk about it. Well, I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast, Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, to talk about a program called Operation Hero's Hill, where high school students are putting their skills to work, building tiny homes for those who answered the call to serve.

Welcome back, Mayor.

Glenn Jacobs (3:19)

Thanks for having me on, David. I appreciate it.

David From (3:21)

Yeah, anytime. We love talking to you about all the great work that you're doing. Obviously, we talked a lot when we were back in Nashville about your experience, your just amazing life as a professional wrestler, as now elected office and serving. And we kind of in conversation, you happen to mention this program, which just really caught our interest. It just seems so cool. So it's great that we have a chance to talk about it.

So where did the idea for Operation Hero's Hill come from?

Glenn Jacobs (3:50)

Well, first of all, I get credit for the work that other people do a lot. So this was kind of my idea. I stole it from someone else. I'll get into that in a second. But that's the easy part. The hard part is actually the folks that put in the work to make something happen. So I'm eternally grateful to everyone who worked so hard to make Hero's Hill come to fruition. We just cut the ribbon on it last week. So we should have a veteran moving in by the end of the month. But the whole thing started with a conversation I had with a friend of mine who is with Nine Line Apparel.