Sergeant Major Stevens

I heard there was a distinguished group, a band of brothers here. What's up?

Walking past, and I was like, well, let me just drop in real quick. How you guys doing?

You hopping in? No. This is your hot seat, bro.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's a pleasure having you on. Appreciate you making time. Yeah, no, thank you guys.

That's, what, three decades.

Can I tell it real quick? Yeah, absolutely. So Smokey Robinson, singer, right? Yeah. That's my grandfather's favorite entertainer. So at birth, he's like, hey, you're my Smokey. Now, my mother was like, okay, he can be your Smokey. That name is not going on the birth certificate, though. So Christopher is my government name. But from birth, my family has known me as Smokey.

And obviously, you know, playing sports, joined the Army. I want people to be comfortable with me. So it's like, hey, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

92.

No, I wasn't.

94. Wow. Oh, wow. I was five. You know, and I love telling troops nowadays, let me tell you about the 1900s, right? In their mind, they're like, oh my gosh, like, okay, we're getting ready to get something from this guy, so. Yeah, 92. Great year to join.

First assignment was Vicenza, Italy. And there were a lot of Vietnam veterans that were kind of still going. They're on the back leg of their career. So being able to kind of get mentored and developed by them and what they experienced and then what they went through in the Cold War era, because most of them had spent most of their career there in Europe, you know, after coming out of Vietnam.

So it was very interesting. And then, you know, coming back stateside and then, like you said, now we start going into some other things there in Southwest Asia. So, yeah, it's been interesting over the last 30 years what I've seen.

Classic. Wish I would have known that. Do you have a set of foreign jump wings? Like, do you have a run and tally of foreign jump wings? I don't think so. Wow.

What are you guys doing later tonight? There you go. Hey, there we go.

What's your next step when you... Did you think you were going to stay in as long as you did? Absolutely not. I definitely had a plan when I joined to come in because, you know, things were not going the way I needed them to go in college. The baseball career that I thought I was going to have was not happening. So had a plan to come in for four years, knew the Olympics was coming around in 96.

So my plan was to get to Atlanta. as my last assignment, try to get to some tryouts and get back into baseball. So, no, never would I have thought that, you know, I'd be sitting here, honestly, with you guys right here, at least in uniform. Same, honestly. We never thought we'd be sitting here with you. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Shout out, Tyler, Sugar Free, Stevens. Based out of Birmingham, Spartan Fitness. Nice.

You saw that, right?

Man, you caught me off guard with that. Because my youngest son plays college basketball. So, I mean, that's a rectangle.

Very good. I like that. Might need to bring you into the Army G1. That's just dad jokes. Yeah.

You bring joy to veterans. That's important. We need that.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, sir.

I didn't either. So you do know, though, we do have an honorary SMA that every year that is awarded to a civilian.

That might be something we can talk to SMA Weimer about.

What?

No, no, no, no.

Well, I don't think that'll work, though. You might have to resign from the ATF. Conflict of interest.

Have you seen any of what we do other than Chaos? I have not. I'm not going to lie. When Massar and Carter brought up it, hey, SMA would like for you to take a look at this and do a drive-by and just walk in. It piqued my interest because, again, it's about helping veterans.

It's about ensuring that people understand the importance of all of your service because, again, you're providing a service even now, although you didn't wear the uniform just yet.

yet yeah yeah i still have that haircut appointment yeah yeah we we got you um but no it's it's an honor for me to have an opportunity to be here with you know with the four of you so we appreciate that we really do saturday we're um interviewing uh grandpa jake and it's a world war ii he was at the beaching enormity okay and he was at a battle of bulge and he's coming on the podcast saturday so stoked for that one where will you guys be at for that

Were you actually in San Antonio?

But let me tell you. hold on hold on to your seat because what you're getting ready to get right now with verne daly is going to be uh very interesting so hey gentlemen again i really appreciate you guys absolutely yeah thank you for coming down yes sir thank you thank you yeah i love that shirt thank you yeah it's my tuxedo tank top eli i dressed up for this occasion okay