Lucas Shay: "That's a Community I Want to Be Involved With"

Alex: Hey, Taylor County. I'm Alex Renneman here with the Living Unleashed podcast for, uh, from Unleashed Tygart, and I'm here with Luke Shay. Luke, thanks for coming on the program. Lucas: Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. Alex: Absolutely. Now, we could talk about a lot of things, um, but, well, the reason we brought you on today, and I, and I do want to note, you are remote, so, uh, you're not in Grafton.You're, you're down in Texas. We'll talk about that in a minute, but you're at an Air Force base, so there may be planes going by, and that's all well and cool, and I want to get into your history. of what took you away from Grafton and I think that pretty much is where we can start. So why don't you tell us, you're a Grafton native, um, you're now in Texas.Give us a little bit of your backstory. What, what pulled you out of Grafton? Lucas: Yeah. Okay. So I'll start off for those that don't know me. My name is Luke Shea. I grew up in Grafton on the West side, right next to the National Cemetery. Graduated in Grafton High School in the class of 1999, and I'm currently serving as a Chief Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force as a safety professional stationed in Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.My wife Jennifer, um, Hartwell now Jennifer Shea. Uh, she grew up a good portion of her childhood in Grafton as well. And we have two boys that were born in Germany. Uh, but we still have a lot of our family is still back in Grafton. Um, Alex, as far as what led to my departure, uh, from Grafton, uh, I joined the Air Force in 2004.Again, I graduated in 99. I joined the Air Force in 2004. Uh, I had some college at that point, but I hadn't graduated. And, uh, I felt like I was kind of floating and I wanted something more. My brother was a Korean linguist in the air force and he was doing really well. And I thought, Hey, let's, let's give this a shot.This might be good for me. Um, I never intended to do a day over four years in the air force. I thought four years and I'm out. I'm going to learn. Uh, job. I'm going to gain some, some experience, uh, get the GI bill and then punch. Uh, but every decision point, every step along the way, uh, it's just made sense for, for us to stay in.And it's been, it's been a blessing for my family, uh, to be in the air force for the 19 years and some change now. Yeah, that's great. You know, Alex: the, the military service, if you haven't experienced it, it is challenging of course, but it can be very rewarding. Um, I was right at. Right at my nine years, do I re up or not?If I re up, I'm staying in for the long haul and, uh, but, but I was always told go in the Air Force, right? Now I went in the Army and, uh, the Air Force, you know, the accommodations, the food, all of that's much, much better, right? Lucas: So they say. Yeah, so they say. Alex: Awesome. Hey, so. What the reason you're on here and I appreciate that intro and I'm sure we'll get into more of that.And I know lots of folks here in graph to know, you know, your name, see you on, on active on Facebook, and we're going to get into that, but the reason we're here today, it kind of, uh, a couple of reasons. One, uh, I want to, I want to really talk about the, the ornament, the, that, uh, unleashed tiger to selling that.It's really your brain child, uh, to reboot that, but, but even just, just taking back a little bit again, you're, you're, you're here, you're from Grafton, you've, you've moved away. You've got a great career in the air force. You've, you're growing a...