A Life of Service: Risk, Calling, and Paying It Forward with Tom Shevlot

In this episode of Risk & Resolve, Ben Conner and Todd Hufford sit down with Tom Shevlot to explore a career shaped by leadership, risk, public service, and faith-driven impact. From senior roles at AT&T to serving on the Lawrence City Council, leading Life Centers, and joining the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Foundation Board, Tom shares how one act of generosity early in life became a lifelong call to pay it forward.

Main Talking Points

• Tom’s early career in telecom during the rise of cellular technology
• The mentor who invested in his family and challenged him to “pay it forward”
• Taking career risks by leaving AT&T and later returning in a new leadership role
• Moving from corporate leadership into nonprofit ministry at Life Centers
• Serving on the Indianapolis Public Library Board during a difficult financial season
• Running for Lawrence City Council and helping stabilize city finances
• Leading through broken processes, budget challenges, and organizational messes
• The importance of being governed vs. helping govern
• Why service became a consistent thread through every stage of Tom’s career
• His passion for outdoor conservation and the Indiana DNR Foundation Board
• The difference between being “of value” and being “important”
• His current focus on protecting children through the Indiana Family Institute

Transcript

Welcome And A Career Built On Service

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome back to another episode of Risk and Resolve. I'm Ben Connor alongside Todd Hufford. And today's special guest is Tom Chevlon. Tom is a graduate of Taylor University with his MBA from IU. And Tom has done it all, or almost it all, as we talked about maybe just a little before we hit record, but 20 years at ATT in various senior executive roles, led Life Centers for 11 years, retiring in 2024. But was also elected to three terms on the Lawrence City Council. Recently appointed to Governor Mike Braun's Indiana Department of Natural Resources Foundation board. Also on the Indiana Family Institute board. Joined that in October of 2025. Tom, thanks for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Thank you, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Tom, you've had um, I was looking through, we've known each other for at least 10 years or more. And as I was thinking about guests for the podcast, uh, you made a post about joining this uh board that the governor put you on. And I thought that was really interesting, and we're definitely going to get there. But before we do, when I looked at kind of your the LinkedIn, there's a theme. And the theme is you have been able to interweave uh service throughout your career.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

And that is kind of an overarching theme I want to keep going back to. So when you when you feel it naturally, definitely go back there because that's a real great message for anybody in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, every every decade of work, that how you've been able to say yes to things while you were already basically gainfully employed in full-time work.

SPEAKER_05 2:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

And then kind of how that became full-time at Life Centers. And I think there's probably a lot of things there that along the way that you said no to, because you can't say yes to everything. Um, I'm sure there were some some of those things, but t tell me how you got into telecom.

Breaking Into Cellular At The Start

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Okay. Uh, I think 1991 was your freshman in the real world. Is that about right?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah. So um cellular was at its infancy. Um phones were going for thousands of dollars apiece. Uh still are. Yes. Yeah. Um, yeah, so it was it was uh um a fluke chance. Uh a friend of mine from high school. I happened to be talking to her father, who was involved with the Indiana uh regulatory committee, IURC Indiana Utility Regulatory Committee. And he said, Hey, he said, we just saw these licenses come up that this company called Bell South just bought, and it's for cellular. I didn't know anything about cellular. He said, You ought to look at check it out. So uh there was a job opening I found uh back when they had newspapers, and uh I put my application in, I didn't hear anything, and then after about three months, I got a call, and it was from a gentleman from Atlanta, and he said, Hey, uh I want to come talk to you. And uh he was actually uh wasn't even in recruiting, but long story short, I drove up to Indianapolis and he said, Well, before we begin, I want to let you know that I found your resume in the trash. Oh gosh, and uh I said, Well, who put it in the trash? He said, Well, we were told that they couldn't find any good candidates for all these were all brand new offices. So Lafayette, Muncie, Anderson, Terra Hope, Bloomington, they were all brand new offices for the company that they were opening up. And um long story short, he pulled my resume out, and uh we became and are still to this day very good friends.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Um, and he made the recommendation for me to be hired. And he he didn't even know me's from Atlanta, and that it literally changed the the course of my professional life working for that Dell South. It was an absolute dream job. Uh, looking back, had no idea I was on the cutting edge of technology, the way that it's now evolved. I remember the president of our company at one of our events, two or three years into my job, and he was very excited. He said, because we just got reports that the statistical analysis in Wall Street thinks that by the year uh 2000, we'll have 25% penetration level as far as people having cell phones.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

Times four.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Way wrong, way wrong. Um, so yeah, so that that's uh but part of that was um, as you mentioned, Todd, the service element has always been a passion of mine, and it comes about, and I don't mean to take this off into a different track, but it's a part of the story that is why I ended up at Life Centers.

The Pay It Forward Moment

SPEAKER_01 5:35

But I used to work for a company out in uh I was out in Phoenix, Arizona, and um the guy that uh we bought electronic components from, he was from Taiwan. Long story short, he built he built a company in Indiana. He hired me to come work for him. This is prior to ATT, by the way. And um and his daughter was coming to Bloomington to go to law school, and um he uh he had he and I became pretty close. And one day he invited me uh over to his daughter's house for dinner, and so we're in the living room, and he said, Tom, I understand that your wife is is going back to school because when we met at Taylor, I had already graduated and she'd only got an associate's degree, so she'd only had a two-year degree, and so she was trying to finish up her accounting degree in Bloomington, and I said, Yeah, and he said, Um, well, how much how much does is tuition? And uh I said, it's about five thousand a year. This is 25 years ago, and he said, Okay, he said, Well, how much does she make at the accounting job that she's at right now? I said, It's about 15,000 a year. He pulls out his wallet and he laid down five thousand dollars. He said, I want you to go home and I want you to tell your wife to quit her job and to enroll into school full-time. I'm paying for the school and I'm gonna pay for her salary for the next two years.

SPEAKER_05 7:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

And of course, the upbringing that I had, uh, my father was never one about uh taking handouts. It was frowned upon. And uh I said, I can't do this, I can't, I can't accept this, Henry. And we kind of went back and forth a little bit, and then his then his daughter overheard this, and she asked me to come into the kitchen to help. I think, oh great, I can get out of this. And so she pulls me aside, she goes, You don't understand in our culture. My father's my my father's thought about this for a long time. You've taken good care of me, and this is his way of of honoring and and paying you. I said, Well, I work for your dad now, I you know, so I don't need you know, this is not kosher shoes. No, he he will lose space, which in our culture it's embarrassment. And she goes, You can't do this, you've got to accept it. So I did. And uh here's the strange part. So after about a year, he sold that company that I was working for, and I lost my job. And I remember him calling me and saying, Don't worry about my word is my bond, and I will continue to for the next second year pay for your wife's school. And I said, I don't know how I'm gonna ever repay you, Henry. He goes, You'll never repay me, but I want you to remember this. Uh, you're gonna find yourself at a point in your life where you're gonna be able to pay it forward. You're gonna be able to parlay this. He didn't use the word parlay, but you're gonna be able to help somebody like I've helped you. He says, So I'm counting on you to do that, and that is where my service um gene came from. Whether it was at my church, whether it was in my community, uh volunteering with big brothers. It didn't matter. I just felt that that was my mission, and I needed to honor Henry for that.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

How old were you when all that took place?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

That was in uh the city. I was probably 26, 27. Yeah, well, he did a lot for me.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

And he was he was your boss, he was your employer?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah, I mean, he was way up. I was I was I was a little marketing sales guy. Um, he he he was very successful in life. He had a ton of businesses everywhere. Um, and this was a company that man uh manufactured ceramic tile. But the company that that I worked for before in Phoenix, we were in the cable TV business, and he also owned a company that provided electronic components for the stuff we were making. So he actually was a vendor of ours.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

Interesting, yeah. And how is he still living?

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I don't think so. I've tried to find him, it's very difficult to find a person with the last name Chen, C-A-T-N, in Taiwan. It's got about a million of them.

SPEAKER_03 10:26

There's a lot of them, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

But I I did I did uh I I tried to also track his daughter down, and I found the law firm that she was working at um some time ago at Taiwan, but they did not know where she went. So unfortunately, I've never been able to um talk with him. I I mean I talked to him about 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago over the phone, but that was the last time I was able to talk to him.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

So you was uh was that Bell South, was that Cell One, Cellular One here locally? Yes, exactly. Um that was a pretty good run. You had some 13 plus years there. You saw everything from bolted to the center console in your car to actually the the Motorola, the the flip, and yeah early early models. Um I still have the same phone number from the cell phone that my mom had that I carried around in high school. So we're talking 1994 56. Wow. Still got the same number.

unknown 11:35

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

It works. So you you do a little stint at uh on the cable side

Betting On Cable And Returning Stronger

SPEAKER_03 11:41

of things. Was that uh totally random or was it connected somehow?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

No. Um you know the your your program has the the title or the word risk in it. Um so let me let me tell you how that happened. Um I wanted to get into the cable business because that was the business that my father was in. My brother still is kind of in, well, no, he just retired, but um and and I wanted to be in that business. And ATT at the time, actually it was Bell South at the time, was trying to get into the cable business, and I was doing everything I can to lobby everybody I knew that I wanted to work in that division. And the president of the company at the time, uh he used to be one of my bosses. I called him and and I said, Bob, I said, you know, I want to come work for you. I want to be in the cable business, and I think what you guys are doing is is pretty remarkable. And he said, We're just not quite ready yet. He said, We're still a few years out. So I was disappointed in that. Meanwhile, there was a uh an old customer of mine who was a senior vice president of Comcast. Um he'd reached out to me and said, Hey, uh I'm looking for a guy to run uh our cable system up here in in uh northern northeast Indiana. So it was from Fisher's all the way up to Fort Wayne, was the cable property. And they were half owned by uh Comcast. So it was called Insight Communications.

SPEAKER_06 13:10

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

They were half owned by Comcast. And you at ATT, the culture there is, I mean, they paid for my graduate degree, uh, they treated you very well, and they put me in all these great leadership programs. I learned so much. And they they they considered an investment. Uh and so they don't take kindly if if they put all that money into you and then you quit. And I remember talking to my boss about the opportunity, and I said, I want to learn the cable business, and I think that me going to Comcast is gonna be valued to ATT when you guys get into it. He goes, Well, you know, we don't hire executives back after they leave. I said, I know. I said, but I'm just gonna take a risk. I want to learn the side of the business, so I did, I left. And almost two years later, I get the call uh from my boss. Hey, Comcast has exercised their right, they want to buy the other 50 percent. I said that means I'm fired. He goes, Yeah. I said, okay. Here we go again. But I knew I knew the risk. I I I I factored that into my decision. The next week I'm having lunch with the vice president. Uh at that time we were, I think we were called ATT at that time. No, singular.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

And uh, and he was an old colleague of mine, and he had moved from Memphis to run the Indiana properties. And I said, Hey, I said, I'm reading in the press or the trademags that ATT is getting into the business of cable, and it's called Uverse. And I said, It's a fiber product. I said, I know quite a bit about it. And he says, Yeah, he said they're really ramping up here in Indiana, Michigan. I said, Are they looking for someone to run the the organization? He says, Yeah, they are. I said, Well, who's in charge of it? And he he gave me his name. I said, Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you let him know that I want to talk to him? He said, Well, yeah, but Tom, you know, they don't I'm not gonna hire you back. I said, I know that's that's that's what I hear. So we had we had lunch, and uh it was a good conversation. Kind of left it at that. I just was more questions than anything, and I wasn't really trying to do much other than introduce myself and learn more about what they were trying to do. And so he called me back a week later. He says, Hey, uh, can you come in and talk more formally? I said, Yeah. So what they were doing was they were launching this product uh via two sales channels. One was what they called door-to-door, where you're literally knocking on people's doors and hey, there's now another cable product in the neighborhood. You don't have to be tied to one provider, you don't have a choice. And then the other was we were selling it through all of our retail stores. Well, that's what I managed most of my career was retail properties. And I said, You know, his name is Hardman. I said, Hardman, you know you're not gonna have anybody else sitting across from you that's got my experience. I know the retail channel, I know many of the people there. I've hired most of these managers that are still there, and I now know cable. He said, Yeah, but you know the policy. I said, Well, is it a written policy? He goes, No, but it's policy. Um, anyway, uh about a week later he called me back and said, Uh, you're hired. So my wrist paid off. Um, certainly there was a lot of prayer and a little bit of anxiety along with that, but um, yeah, so I did the short set of comcast, came back to ATT and and uh did that gig till 2011. And then I quit again.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Then you quit again. It reminds me of the phrase, don't say their no for them. And that you that's what you were unwilling to do. Yeah, is you knew the answer was no, but you wanted them to say it. And when they couldn't find a reason to say it, it turned into an offer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

And you know, they they it was a pretty the the team that we had, um, we were pretty successful. Um sadly, they shut the product down several three years, I think three years ago, but nevertheless, so yeah, that was a it was a big risk. You can imagine the anxiety that my wife had.

SPEAKER_06 17:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Uh we'd moved around so much with the company, and then me leaving, and then coming back, and then leaving again. Uh, and then going to a nonprofit ministry was a real whirlwind for her.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

So when you rejoined ATT, yeah, and we hindsight now says you only had six more years there, but when you rejoined, how long did you think you were gonna be there?

SPEAKER_01 18:19

I was gonna retire. Right. That was my plan. In fact, when I left, I had uh and the nice thing is, which which was another blessing, when they hired me back, they bridged my time.

SPEAKER_05 18:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

So all all my yeah, all the 15 plus years prior, I came back, it was as if I was a 15-year employee, so they bridged my time. So my retirement, I could have been eligible retirement in um about five, four or five years.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

So then you started towards the end of that, so 2012, 2013. Did you have some other life circumstances changing? Did you become empty nesters or something? Because you then uh you do a couple things, right? You you join uh the City of Lawrence Council, but then shortly after that, you get into life center. So I think I think the council was first, was it not?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, so I was first elected in uh November of 2010. My term started in 11. Um, and so I was actually working, uh I was on the council and still working for uh ATT at the time, um, in addition to being on the library board. So it's it was pretty busy time for me. But yeah, it uh both of the kids were out of the house by then. They they were at Heritage. Uh my son went to uh IEPY. Um, my daughter graduated from Heritage. Um, she got a degree, and you know, they're both local here. So yeah, it was just my wife and I uh at that time.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Well, which was first, the library board or the council in Lawrence?

Learning Government Through The Library Board

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Library board. So Ballard got elected in 07, and uh I remember that call because it was one night uh the phone rings and it says chief of staff and said, Hey, uh the mayor wants to appoint you to the Indianapolis Public Library Board. I said, I don't even know where a library is. I don't go to a library. I don't. I just I said, and I'm a finance and business guy. What what do I I don't know anything about library science, and I now know why it was they were uh I don't know if you remember that there was a lot of problems in building that downtown I do remember and the big garage and the lawsuits. Well, there was there were still two big pending lawsuits, and the the mayor and and then the city council, because they're the ones that vote you in, they wanted someone from their camp to keep an eye on things.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

So who were you to receive that call? Were you active in other political activities? Were you yeah? Well, what were you because I would probably never get that phone call, but so what were you doing?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Well, yeah, it's a political appointment. So uh, much like my DNR appointment. And so I have been involved in the political world, uh, again, from a service aspect, uh, for a long, long time. I care about local issues, I care about zoning, I want to make sure we put the right buildings up in the right way, that we're using the land the right way, that code enforcement is done right, all those things that make everyday living good for people. Um I'm a big less government, so I my mission was to try to get out, get in there and streamline things. It's very difficult to try to bring a real world experience into government. But uh, but yeah, they they they all knew me and they knew my background. Um I'm thinking part of it is I probably I wasn't gonna embarrass them. Them. I didn't really have you know anything in my background that would compromise the position, if that makes any sense. And it was a you know, it's a it's a pretty big organization. I think if I remember right, their budget's over 50 million a year.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah. And we had 20 whatever branches. And that was also a really tough time because it was right when the property tax caps got put in place. And and a lot of that revenue that the library uses comes from property taxes. And so, you know, I was on the I was it seemed like I was in the press almost every other day because we were gonna have to close some branches, and that's not popular with anybody. It's like that's how I got the call, is I was a known commodity, and that's usually how those work.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

And how many years were you on that library board?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Uh I want to say six because I remember when Ballard, when Ballard stepped down, I was fully expected to get the call that you're you're done, because there's a new sheriff in town, but I didn't. And they wanted me to stay on to finish the last lawsuit that was still pending um with one of the contractors. And so once once I stayed on and we got that done, um, I I at that time I was done mentally anyway. I didn't want to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

So I it was mutual.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

What kind of what stirred you mentioned that you got interested in politics and it sounded uh fertile? There were some technicalities that were interesting to you, but what kind of stirred your heart to get involved, even just outside of those technicalities? Was there something that happened or what what what what got that process going for you?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

You know, that's a that's an actually an excellent question. I've never been asked that um in the way that you just did. Even in my college, what when I was in in even in high school, uh people that I still know today would always remind me that I was very active politically. I don't even remember that in high school, but I was always reading political magazines and and I was very interested in the topical conversations about what's going on. Um you know, the Reagan had just gotten elected uh in 1980, and that's when I just graduated high school, and you know, I was worried about the Soviet Union, had no idea why I was worried about it, but you know, all those kinds of things just were were fascinating to me. And and um probably when I was in high school or in college, yeah, I was in college, I remember talking to this field director for uh the Reagan campaign, and just asking them all kinds of questions, and they wanted me to be a campus organizer and all that, and I and they and they said something that probably is why I got involved. They said, you know, there's two things that'll happen as a voter, you'll either be governed, or you can get in the involved in the process and govern, but either way, you will be governed. And if you sit back and you think about that a minute, if you're not involved in the process, you're going to be governed because there's other people making decisions about roads, bridges, all the things that are local government and national. Or you can get involved in the process and be part of governing, but you're still going to be governed. So I thought I'm gonna be part of the process. I want to understand and learn how these things work, I want to have a voice at the table, and and so that's that's really what generated my interest is I don't want to just be governed, I want to be on the other side too.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

So, what led to so going back to the Lawrence Township? Uh, what was the conversation between you and your wife about you know, you saw that you saw some inner workings from the library? And you're like, well, let's let's give this uh let's give Lawrence Township a run. What was kind of your yeah?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Uh my wife's a complete opposite, so she's the CPA, she's the introvert. Uh in fact, we're going to some political dinner tonight and she's hating every minute of it. Um but um yeah, it it just um it was a call I got because I was I was still involved in politics, but I was on the I was on the inside, but not in an in an elected

City Council Wins And Hard Budget Cuts

SPEAKER_01 26:57

position. So I helped raise money, I helped candidates get their campaigns together, helped them file campaign reports, things that I knew how to do that as a new candidate you wouldn't know how to do. So I felt let's put some people around these candidates that we can work the back office stuff and they could just go out and talk to voters. And so I get a call from the my party chairman, and uh he's he's a dear friend of mine, I've known him forever. And he said, Chevlot, uh we have slating tomorrow. This was a Friday night. We have slating tomorrow, which means they don't do slating anymore, but all the candidates go down and and the party will vote for the candidate to be on the primary ballot. Um, so let's say there's five people that are interested in running for office. You go down to the convention, and the people that are at the convention, they are the voters, meaning they're precinct committeeman, ward chair, but they're the people that would vote to put you on the ballot, and then the public votes you in May. I said, Okay, I I know I'll be there. He says, Well, um, we need you to run for at large. I said, at large. I said that our city's 50,000 people. That's a I don't have the money. I mean, that's a big job, Jim. He says, No, you'll you'll be all right, but think about it. I said, I don't think I'm being asked to think about it. So I so anyway, um, I told my wife that night, I said, they want me to run. She goes, Well, you've always wanted to do it. I said, Yeah, you're you're right, but I'd like a little bit more time to think about it, but there was no time, so I said, Yeah. And um, so they I I I won in Slating, which meant I was on the ballot in May, but I was also running against uh three other people that were, and one of them was an incumbent at large. So I won by 18 votes out of out of over 3,000 casts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Wow. Yeah. What were some of the things that you were you're most proud of at your time with the city of Lawrence?

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Uh two things. Uh one, I spearheaded the development of um of a new police station. Lawrence has never had its own standalone police station. Uh, it was co-located in the government building, which was not ideal because you're bringing in detainees into the government building with the mayor and the council and the controller and everyone else's. It just was not, and it wasn't safe uh for a whole host of reasons. And so being a part of of drafting that um RFP, putting it out for bid, uh, we had to bond it out uh through uh surety bonds. Um so that was a really big deal. I was very, very proud to be a part of that team that to be able to get Lawrence's uh first standalone police station. Um that that was a pretty big deal. The second thing is when I got there in 2011, uh the city was in really, really bad financial shape. Um really bad. And uh I wasn't very popular with the mayor's administration uh for a couple of reasons when I was on the other side of the party. Uh but I'm not a status quo guy, and I pushed and I challenged because I saw things that I felt were we were not doing the voters and the taxpayers um well. And again, that comes back down to being responsible and just having the opportunity to govern and do the right thing. And and so um the second part of that question, you know, what else am I pretty proud of was it took about two years, but we finally we finally got things settled down and uh into a situation where we weren't operating in the red and at risk of defaulting on bonds and things of that nature. But it took a lot of time and a lot of working across the aisle because when you first start to work across the aisle, everyone's got their guard up, everyone's got their sword out, everyone's got their shield, nobody wants to compromise, nobody wants to talk. Um, but it took about two years and and um got the city back into some decent financial situation.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Was it an expense and a revenue problem that you had to solve? Expense.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

It wasn't a revenue problem.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

What was the biggest expense that you guys had to cut that was the hardest for the incumbents and those that were already there to agree with?

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Um well what what they wanted to do is they wanted to they wanted to terminate all the paramedics. There's 21 paramedics, and they wanted to outsource it. Uh it didn't take me long to put pad to paper, pencil to paper to do to write out the math that this is this is done. We're gonna be paying more to contract this out. Response times are gonna get slower. You don't have local people, you're getting them from the counties. It was an expense issue, it wasn't a revenue, and so we found non-essential expenses that were just crazy. We were spending money, we had contracts that were signed by mayors, you know, 10-15 years ago, but nobody bothered to ever look to say, are we getting what we're paid for? Yeah, so it was it was really it was it was not difficult to find that low-hanging fruit. What was difficult was to chop it off the tree.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

People got very territorial. Um, well, we need this program, or we need this service, or this and that, because so, but fortunately, the council has the authority to be able to cut that, and and we did that in budgets.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

So now, Lawrence, you know, we're in a Unigov city-county deal. Yeah, Lawrence is like Beach Grove, is like Speedway. Is there anybody else? Uh aren't those the three that are kind of still have some services on their own?

SPEAKER_01 33:35

You're right. They're like included cities. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

Because isn't fire all is it all combined now or not? No.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Lawrence still has its own fire.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Okay. So what's combined then? I mean, library, I think library is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Libraries can uh police and fire are are separate.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Um roads are street department has its own, Lawrence has its own street department, Lawrence has its own trash. So uh we have our own uh zoning. We have our own planning committee. Uh we have to say we I don't live in Lawrence anymore, but they have their own, they they do control a lot. The only thing that Indianapolis gets involved in is when there is a variance, um, or you want to rezone a property, it does also have to get Indianapolis's approval because they have the master plan and and all the cities, particularly Green or uh Beach Grove and Speedway, uh, it has to fit into the master plan. You can't have a city out there doing its own thing and it doesn't fit or complement its neighbor, which would be Indianapolis.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Right. Are those the only three?

unknown 34:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Beach Grove, Lawrence, and uh Speedway? Yeah, so right around that time, you take a pretty big significant, you know, we've been talking about your your service at the uh the council in Lawrence.

Leaving AT&T For Life Centers

SPEAKER_03 34:54

That's uh that's a volunteer or is that lightly paid?

SPEAKER_01 34:59

In the for the council? Yeah. It was lightly paid. Lightly paid, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

But I mean it's not a full-time job. No, right. So around that same time, you take a real big professional pivot. Um my question is did you know you were leaving ATT first? You just didn't know where you were going, or did the call come to lead and join Life Centers, and you didn't yet know you were leaving ATT?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

So um this was probably in January of 2011. I was still at ATT. They did another re-org. And uh one of my old bosses, I called him, and I said, Hey, Bill, they'll do another reorg. Uh the guy that is going to now be over me, uh, I that's just not gonna work. Uh, I I didn't know him personally, I knew of him based on his reputation. And even though ATT was a big company, uh, work gets around fast if you're if you're not a straight shooter and if you don't fly straight. And there was there was a several things that I was deeply um uh against of just his style, personality, every a lot of things. He said, Well, you can always go down to Atlanta headquarters. He said, He's a big old marine guy. He said, But you know, Chevlo, if you go down there, he said, I've always said you could take a howitzer into the ATT headquarters building, take out 30% of the staff, and your customers would never know it. And I said, You're right, Bill. He says, You're a field guy, stay in the field. I said, Okay, he said, just give it a chance. So the new guy comes in, and uh within three months, it was not good. And um, but I it but uh in the spring of that year, I was hosting a big political dinner, and uh Governor Pence, actually it was Congressman Pence at the time, was our speaker, and he was at the front table, and I put the dinner on, but I didn't have anything to do with the seating, and and there's a point to this. So I'm sitting there, and um, there's these two people that are at our table, and I knew them because one of them she worked at Life Centers, and I and I knew her socially, but every time I'd see her, and my wife had been a supporter of this ministry since we were in Bloomington, so I I stayed tethered to what was going on up here in Indy when we moved here, and I asked her, I said, you know, I always tell her, you know, keep saving those babies. Well, at the dinner table, I said, Hey, I got this letter in the mail that the CEO of Life Centers is gone. I said, I never heard from him, I don't know who he was, what happened? And she looked at me, and uh everyone knows this one person in their life that has a hotline to God. There's just just they just reek of just being so close to God, it's almost like I could never be that good. And she looks at me and she's this little lady, and she's Tom, God's calling you do this ministry. Whoa, I'm like, What? I'm here at a political date. What are you talking about? I don't even know what that means. I've never I've never been called to do anything other than when I'm working for somebody and they call me and say you've got to go to Tennessee now or something. That's the only time I ever got called, and uh and so she just kept doing it. And finally my wife leans over, she goes, Christy, you're making time uncomfortable. Because she was, because I I it was just weird. So at the end of the dinner, I'm at the ballroom door and I'm shaking everybody's hands, they're going out, and I see her, and she's just you know, she's got her eyes, little beady eyes, and she's coming at me, and I'm like, Oh, great. So she comes to the door, she goes, Can I at least give our board chair your phone number? I thought, yeah, I want to know what's going on with the ministry. I'd like to just find out. So I said, Yeah, that's fine. So about two weeks later, he calls me. He said, Hey, he said, Um, you probably know why I'm calling. I said, Let me guess, Chrissy to view. He said, Let's just meet and talk. So we met. Um, I thought we weren't gonna have anything in common until he went. He said, Well, where'd you go to college? I said, Taylor and he goes, Oh, so did I. I said, Oh no. We're not supposed to get along at all. And uh, but anyway, um, I could just sense that they were wanting to talk to me about the position. But he at the end of the breakfast, he said, Look, we're really early in the process, we've got a search firm, this and that. I said, Great, God bless you. I hope, I hope everything works out. I hope you get a good leader. Well, meanwhile, going back to ATT, things started to get worse. And uh, so this would have been in probably May. I told him, I said, I can't work for you anymore. I said, You and I are completely different people. I don't I don't appreciate the way you talk to people, manage people. Um, and he didn't like me either, which is that was fine. So I said, I'm gonna look for something else. I'm gonna try to stay in Indiana. Well, then about a month later, I get called back by uh someone that both of you know, Phil Fox. I think you both know Phil. Oh yeah, yeah, and um he was on the board at the time, and I knew him through heritage a little bit, and he said, Hey, the executive team would like to meet with you. And I said, Okay, so we met up in um Phil's office actually, and they're going through the job and uh and they're they're keeping their cards very close to the vest, but I I'm kind of the person that you know let's just just cut to it. Why why am I here? Are you guys interested? He said, Well, we're going through other people you're giving me that stuff. I said, Okay. So um I gave my boss at ATT, I said, I'll be gone at the end of July. Whether I'm here with ATT or I find something else, or I'm just not employed. I said, I'm done. So July uh 29th comes around. I only know this because it was two days before I was supposed to be gone. My boss at ATT calls me and says, Hey, um, are you able to stick around for another two to four weeks? I said, Let me guess, you can't find anybody that wants to work for you. I was pretty blunt at that point. Um, of course, he denied that, but I knew what was up. I said, Yeah, that's fine. Uh, but um, I will not be passed apart 31st. Let's just don't call me again. So I wasn't finding anything with within ATT. They all wanted me to move to a different market or go to headquarters. And uh so I had a couple other meetings with Life Center's board, but then everything went quiet. So my last day with ATT was August 15th. I hadn't heard anything, so I told my wife uh it was a Friday, and I said, Hey, I'm gonna go down to the farm. And um, I think you were you went down to my place once, didn't you?

SPEAKER_06 42:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

I said, I'm gonna go down farm, I'm gonna build a fire. Uh, I don't want, I just me and my dog, I just need to go away for a couple days and just meditate thing, could just what am I gonna do? So it's about eight o'clock at night, and I'm sitting out by the fire, and the phone rings, but I the cinema down there is really horrible.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

It's better now.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

Yeah, for for a Bell South guy, you found a piece of property outside the range.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Yeah, well, I finally got a tower put up, but it took me about five years. Um, anyway, so I um I drive up to the hill at the top of the hill to look in the voicemail and was the chair of the board of life centers. He says the board has met and and uh they'd like you to become our next executive director. On the last day that I was at ATT, I got that call. But I will tell you the the uh the story that I can share that was me a little bit is I I was a little bit like Jilra. Meaning as the conversation started to get more serious with life centers, the more I felt that I needed to run to Nitva. I run away. I did not I didn't know anything about ministry. I didn't know I didn't want to get into an environment where it was stuffy, churchy. I didn't, that's not me. Um, but I care about the work that that ministry does. It really is really important. And um but I was doing everything I can to try to not go there. It was definitely less money, no retirement plan. No health benefit. I mean nothing. Um but it was just at that point when I got that call, I thought, okay, God, you want me there. Um let's go. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 44:15

Y your time at Life Center's overlapped your work at uh Lawrence almost. That's interesting. Did you ever reflect on that and think about what the impact of that was?

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Not really, because they were two separate worlds. Um very much so. Yeah, I mean, once I went to life centers in the political environment, um mostly on on the other side, uh yeah, I'd see little messages posted about, you know, here's this right, you know, ultra-right wing, you know, pro-life nut, this and that. I never got that, I never got called that before. Um, a pro-life nut and this and that. Um, and so you take a couple shots from there, but it doesn't that doesn't bother me. I don't care. That makes no difference to me. Yeah. So but they were pretty separate. I was able to keep them separate.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

Just you know, interesting trajectory. Um, the note I wrote down was always be ready. I think you know, you maybe you knew you were ready, maybe you didn't know you were ready, maybe you weren't ready, but you did receive that message at that dinner. You heard it. Yeah, you did give her the phone number, you didn't totally shut it down. Sounds like your wife tried to a little bit, maybe by saying, Hey, he's pretty uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Um, but well, she was probably uncomfortable because she knew she knew when we moved back to Indiana. So uh I moved with my company four or five times, and so I told her we're done. When we moved back here, I said we're done. But she reminds me of this. I remember having this conversation vaguely, but she she remembers it vividly, like most wives do. Uh, she says, I remember you standing in our living room, we weren't even here a week. We had boxes all over our house, and you were telling me that you felt that God was calling you to get into some type of service, service work, whether it's nonprofit ministry. I said, Well, yeah, but I always think that was gonna be more political, which I did. I thought that was you know, that is service, but uh, but I never ever imagined it being in a faith-based environment. Never.

SPEAKER_03 46:28

So you wrap up those two gigs kind of around the same time. Um enter into official retirement.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Yeah, I retired. So I I retired in uh December of 24. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

And how long did that last before you got signed up for something else?

SPEAKER_01 46:46

About a week.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

About a week.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

No, it was good, it was good timing. It I had um three years before that, I had had dinner with the board chair, and uh, and I told him, I said, look, you know, the ministry the when I got there, the ministry was in pretty bad shape. Uh I think we only had two weeks worth of operating cash. Um you know, the staff was obviously unsettled because they all had to take pay cuts, and so it was a lot of it was pretty messy, but I I like messes. I I don't I don't I don't shy away from those kinds of things. Um, and again, because going back to what Henry said, um, you're gonna have a chance to to pay it forward, and um and also doing it in an environment where it really does change people's lives. Selling a cell phone never changed a person's life. It may have helped them, it didn't change it dramatically. Um but so I told them about three years, so this would be about three years before I did retire that I wanted to get back into the business world. I missed it. And they talked and they came back and said, Would you reconsider? Um, and they gave some reasons why. And I said, Okay, I said, let's just drop some one page, I'll stay for a minimum of three and maximum of five, but I gotta get it on paper. I've got we've got to have this understanding because I know how I am. If if we don't, and after three years, I'm gonna be bored and I'm gonna be checked out, and I don't want to be that person, I don't want to be that person in a ministry taking a paycheck and not feeling like I'm working for it. Um, so I knew after two years, I I told the board chair, I said I'm gonna exercise my three-year clause.

unknown 48:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:42

So uh you know, we got uh the library board, you went in, that was a mess. Yeah, City of Lawrence, that was a mess. Yeah, you see a pattern here. I do see a pattern. Life centers, that's the mess. I we I know who I know who to call now when there's messes. So tell me there's not a mess at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources Foundation

DNR Foundation And How Land Gets Protected

SPEAKER_03 49:04

board.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

No, there's not. So I I I uh part of my my my pass my real passion from extracurricular activities is anything outdoors. I haven't um I'm the only person like this in my family. I say I tell people I'm the only redneck born from two parents from New York City. Um yeah, my mom still, well, she God rest her soul, but she never could figure out. Tommy, how did you become like this? But I was always in the fields, always working on farms, always fishing, always hunting, camping. It didn't matter. And um so uh several years ago, I had started to make uh started to make it known to at that time Government Holcomb I wanted to be in the DNR. I said I don't care what capacity. So I was already trying to plan for what retirement looked like in whatever capacity. So last year, about this time, uh I got called in for an interview for an actual job, and it was gonna be over some properties that they had. And uh I was all excited, but then I got the call. The governor put a hiring freeze on everything, which I can appreciate that. You know, don't if there's an internal candidate, give it to them first. So that everything kind of calmed down, and then I got a call about oh, I don't remember, three, two, three months ago. They said, hey, there's a vacancy on the Natural Resource Foundation, and um governor wants to appoint me to it. I said, put me in. So what the NRC Foundation does is they are an and they are actually a nonprofit, which I think my nonprofit experience probably maybe helped a little bit. But it's an actual nonprofit where if you donate to it, it's tax deductible, but they use these funds to be able to acquire land that then they can roll into existing properties that are um bordering it. So, for example, we just this meeting we just our board meeting we had last week. The DNR bought a thousand acres of land, but it was landlocked, meaning everybody that was around that thousand acres was all private property. So, all those people that lived around it, there were 15 parcels around it. Every one of those landowners was like, Yeah, I've got thousands of acres that is mine, even though it wasn't theirs, but no one could get to it because the homeowners wouldn't give access.

SPEAKER_06 51:38

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

And and that's they're right, they don't have to. So, fortunately, one of the people that had property there, and they had I think 30 acres that bordered it. In their will, they put the Natural Resource Foundation has tertiary refusal of that land. So part of that meeting was getting where are we gonna get the funds, how we're gonna do it. So now they're gonna be able to purchase that property and have it contiguous to the thousand acres. So now everyone can enjoy that property. So um that's primarily what they do.

SPEAKER_03 52:12

So DNR is an Indiana. Is there a federal and an Indiana DNR?

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Well, federal is a national fish and wildlife. Okay, and that's under the Department of Interior, right? But the DNR, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, that's under the governor.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Does every state call it a DNR? Um this land that's in this trust, it's different than the the state parks. Correct. So how many acres are in this? I I call it a trust. Is it a trust or is it a foundation, I guess?

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Well, it's a it's a foundation. So um they don't own any of the land. So once they once they acquire it, got it, they quickly get transferred over to the DNR, the Department of Natural Resource, because they're the ones that are going to manage it. They're the ones gonna have to go in there and cut roads and all that. All all we do is is we provide the conduit for funding, and then to be able to get it locked up with a contractual purchase agreement. And then once all that's done, we then hand it off to the DNR, and then we go off looking for more land.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

So, how much land are the state parks under DNR as well, or is that a difference? How many acres does Indiana have? Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

I can tell you, I know percentage-wise, um, only about seven percent of all land in Indiana is under the DNR or under the state of the DM. It's pretty low.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

So with this foundation, um what are you looking for? Are there certain types of properties? You mentioned ones that are adjacent. Is there a different category or is it just anything adjacent to existing?

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Adjacent is much better.

SPEAKER_03 54:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Because there's already an existing property there. Um I well, here's another example. Uh, in fact, I just met with a guy that was looking for some help. There's some property in in a in a county that uh this guy's been trying to get developed. And the problem with that is if you've got a nice, beautiful piece of property, um, all the neighbors around it don't want it developed.

SPEAKER_06 54:30

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

They forget that their land was once undeveloped too. Yeah, but that's another story. Um, and so he's been having a hard time with serve getting surveys in there, but getting the town to see, there's another example of local government in order to be able to rezone that, because right now it's it's AG, to rezone it residential, R1, or even commercial. I mean, it's it's an uphill battle. And so he said, Would you guys be interested in it? Um, and maybe a fair market value. And I said, Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that, but it it has to fit into the plan. I so I don't know. I I already turned it over to the smart people that know that better than I do. But that's an example where a per a landowner can't sell this land for what a developer would pay for it. But the DNR can come along and say, well, the developer is gonna give you 10 grand an acre, that's fair market value. We should too. But it has to be, you know, it has to fit. If it's just 30 acres in the middle of nowhere, it's probably not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 55:35

So most of the funding for this resource foundation board, I'm assuming, is Indiana State taxes.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

No, it's all uh donations. It's all donations, yeah. So um it's donations, it's through uh there's a couple of trusts like the Sagamore Trust, yeah, um, the Heritage Trust. There's a number of trusts that have been started over the years, last 150 years, that uh uh Indiana is a part of. And so, like, like for example, the the Fort Benjamin Harrison, you know, that was a trust at one point, you know, and then uh they turned it into a well was a base, but then it was a trust, and then it now it was a state park. So there's a number of entities that um that people fund. So for example, uh um oh gone it, uh the name escapes me. Um there's a there's a there's an environmental group out there that raises money for maintaining the environment, making share up state. That would be an example of someone we say, hey, we've got this opportunity to purchase this land. Would you be willing to donate you know a portion of a grant? Yeah, so they pull funds from various sources, but it's not taxpayer money, no.

SPEAKER_03 56:56

What's uh what's like an average annual budget for this group? How much is being applied towards purchasing land each year? I'm sure it varies year by year.

SPEAKER_01 57:09

It it does because um there's the the foundation also has a fund that money sits in that can't money can't go out, it can only go in. Um, but then if it does go out, it can only be going, it can only go out for one purpose, and that's land acquisition. Um so I really don't have a number because it's fluid. You know, this this property that we were just talking about uh that they're buying um is 1.3 million. And um, but we're able to get it because of a number of outside organizations. Sierra Plug was one that I recall. So um, so we pull funds from them, put it into this account, and then when the account or when the land um acquisition is ready, we then move that money over to the state, and then the state will then disperse those funds to the property owners or the or to the estate or to the family. So I don't have a number for you, Todd, because it's it's it could be a couple million one year, it could be 10 the next. It just depends.

SPEAKER_03 58:14

What would you like to people to know about this group that maybe they don't know about, don't know?

SPEAKER_01 58:21

I bet you a lot of people don't know about this group. Um you know, go to in.gov and type in Natural Resource Foundation, and it's got all the board members, it's got the projects that they've they've been able to do over the years. I mean, several years ago, the big one that they were able to acquire uh down in southern Indiana in uh parsley of Green and Sullivan County is called the Goose Pond. Um when I lived down in Bloomington, I mean I fished that place all the time, and it was owned at that time by Peabody Coal Company. Well, once they stopped mining, it just turned into a big wreck area, but Peabody owned all the land. Uh it's a huge, I mean 6,000 acres of huge flyway for migratory births, you know, hunting opportunities there, or just bird watching for that matter. So that was a that was a big acquisition that was all done through the Natural Resource Foundation. And now the state owns it and runs it, and now anybody can use it.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 59:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

Tom, you've had a storied uh career professionally, politically, nonprofits, back working uh on the political side a little bit. Um, I just thanks for sharing your story. Um, you know, you get to that point in life and you kind of say, you know, did it matter? What is what I did important? And I'll tell you today what what you've done is important. And every step led you to what you're doing. And uh I know you're not done yet. You might be taking a little bit of a break, but once anybody hears this podcast and finds out that you're the fix-it man, you're the cleanup guy. Um your phone's gonna be ringing a little bit. So I just thank you for taking time with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Well, I appreciate that. You know, you use that word important.

Value Versus Important And What Comes Next

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Um, he wrote a book uh several years ago called The Jersey Effect. And he was a professional football player. He lives, he played on the Colts, and he's gonna ring. But he wrote this book, and I love this book because it's a really it's not a long read, but I would I would recommend you pick it up. Because he talked about the effect that a jersey has on somebody when they put it on, and we and he specifically talks about Randy Moss, who was a classmate of his. He said, I just watched some of these kids that once that jersey got put on, the effect that it had on everyone around them. And and he and he in the book he talks about these two words, and he used one of them. He says, There's there's two ways to look at things. Is it important or is it of value? He said, I was a value as long as the team needed me and I could produce for them, but I wasn't important to them. I'm important to my family. I appreciate you saying that uh about the the relevance of importance. Uh, you know, is something important or is it of value? And um yeah, so that the my life lessons and things that I've learned, the experiences I've had have been extremely important in in in my life. Um, but again, it all goes back to Henry.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

How about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

All goes back to Henry saying pay this forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

So what a what a what a legacy that Henry left and then back then that you took you took it and you ran with it, Tom. Well, we asked uh our guest two questions at the end of every episode, and so we'd like to ask you those questions uh today. And the first one is what is a risk that you have taken that has changed your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

Well, we talked about it was the risk of uh leaving ATT um without a job, um, but then going into an environment that I knew nothing about. Um, fortunately, my business background helped a lot because a lot of things came very easy for me when I got there because there were broken processes that you know, I had a lot of good training and a lot of good managers and experience on fixing broken things. Um but culturally I was not ready for it. And it took me about it took me about a year to get acclimated that I can't be the way that I was in the in the profit world.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:50

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

I have to manage people differently. I have to um, yeah, it was it was a a big paradigm shift for me. So that was a risk.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Yeah, and you described your first time leaving ATT as a risk as well. So maybe maybe both of those were big risks, big risks in different ways. But they paid off.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:12

Tom, our second question is what is left yet unfinished that you have the resolve to complete?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

Well, I'm I'm I'm getting I I guess the reason I joined the IFI board is certainly they do a lot of things that um or they support a lot of issues and champion a lot of issues that are important to me. But but the primary reason is they have really taken a strong stance on protecting children. And and that's one thing that it always even even though in life centers I was never in the in the counseling rooms, that was not my role, but I always loved hearing stories about how families were spared the tragedy of perhaps terminating you know their pregnancy, or a family coming in with nowhere to go, but they found hope and and a resource through life centers that allowed them to feel safer or to to flourish. And so the kids, the the the thing that that's kind of on my to-do list, and I don't know what kind of impact I'll ever have, even if it's in a small way, is whatever I can do to protect children from predators, protect children from crazy ideologies, uh keeping the same sexes in the sports that they you know, know men and women's sports, that kind of stuff. I know that you know that's calmed down a little bit, but those those are really important to me because these children's minds are so malleable, they're so impressionable. And and so if there's organizations or things that I can do to hold that back or to at least protect them from those evils, I'm gonna I'm gonna be there. So I don't know what role I have in that, but IFI has a big role in that. And if it if there's a way that I can help them in and um parlaying that and compounding that to to bring more exposure to it, that's that's fine by me. As long as these kids are protected.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

That's great. Well, Tom, thanks for uh joining us today, and thanks for sharing your story and being an encouragement to um to our listeners of uh just being involved outside of what uh Day job is, but also uh to have courage uh to to maybe a calling in your life that's maybe calling you to something that is different or uncomfortable or you know, something that is um not what you thought you were gonna be doing. So I think that your story is an encouragement to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

Well, thank you. And I mean it needs it it it needs to be said that um the Connors have been very supportive of the ministry that I left, and I appreciate that for a long time. And um, I I want to make sure that I acknowledge that I appreciated that and supporting the banquets and just in personal donations and just think Jim was on the board there for a while, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

Well, I appreciate that, Tom.

Final Thanks And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

Yeah, um, and appreciate the time today and want to thank the listeners for joining us for another episode of Risk and Resolve. We'll catch you next time.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

Thanks, guys. Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:01

See you next time.