An Army of Normal Folks - My Employee Sam Quinn, A Common Laborer Who Was Anything But Common

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

For our "Shop Talk" series, Coach Bill Courtney pays tribute to his late employee Sam Quinn, who had an extraordinary redemption story.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, welcome to Shop Talk, episode three of three on our mini cast. Give you just a 10 to 12 minute thing to listen to. And today we're going to be talking about commitment or dedication or dedication and commitment. But we're going to look at it through the lens of a very special person who entered my life and recently left this earth right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also

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This past season on my podcast, Here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people like actress and director Cheryl Hines. They were looking for an unknown actress to play Larry David's wife. I said, well, how old is that guy? Isn't he old? And author David Sedaris. You know like when you meet somebody and they'll say, well I want to be a writer or I want

to be an artist. And I say, well is it all you care about? Because if it's not, it's going to be pretty hard for you if you're not on fire. It's like opening the door of an oven and it's like, wow, you know, you take a step back. It's all they think about, it's all they think about. It's all they talk about. It's all they care about. They don't have relationships.

They're not good friends for other people. This is just what they're always focused on. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart, and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Dan Belkin

about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who change the world. Encore Jane about creating a billion dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant, about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody. Welcome to three of three shop talk.

We're gonna talk about commitment or dedication. I can't really decide which word best describes what this shop talks about, but we'll call it commitment. And when you think about commitment, you think about, I don't know, being on time, a commitment to marriage, a commitment to work, being dedicated to your word, doing what you say you're going to do. All of those things are true, but I think there's levels of commitment maybe or depth

of dedication. And I think when you run across people who demonstrate a depth of dedication and a deep level of commitment that they are inspiring. One of the most inspiring people I've ever met in my life is a guy named Sam Quinn. Sam was a Marine and after the Marines he entered a world in the 60s as a young black guy looking for opportunity, looking for love, looking for work. Sam didn't find much of that but what he did find was he found alcohol and he found trouble. I didn't know Sam then. When I met Sam was in 2001, shortly after I started my business. We were on a wing and a prayer. I didn't have much money and the equipment that I was installing to start this fledgling business was... that I was installing to start this fledgling business was it was wore out when I got my hands on it. And literally, I drug old pieces of equipment out of the weeds behind large

furniture manufacturers and paid $300 cash. And frankly, the people that own those furniture manufacturers just glad to see that stuff go and brought it back to my place here in Memphis and fixed it up and started using it. That's really the genesis of how I started my business. And we started operations in September of 2001. And when you're running lumber in a manufacturing process, you've got packs of lumber with boards stacked on top of each other, but you got to grade them and you got to do things to them. So you got to get them in single fashion and you don't want to sit there and hand handle every single board.

So there's a machine called a tilt hoist, which tilts the pack to a 45 degree angle, then hoisted up in the air so that each level, each layer of the lumber slides out onto moving chains that then take it across the face of an inspector who looks at the lumber and boards and inspects it as they pass them by. And then once it passes in by, they're then pulled back off the chain and made back into packs. That's kind of how lumber is handled in our industry. And we just started operations.

I'd spent all the money I'd had. I was way in debt and we needed to generate sales and we were operating and going. And the reality was I was grading lumber and working outside on the yard every day. And then when three o'clock happened and the shift shut down and hourly guys went home, then I spent the next six hours on the phone calling customers buying lumber and it was tenuous.

And one Friday, our till toys broke. And that sounds like a bad thing, but when your tilltoys breaks and you're already broke and you've got to create revenue the next week by making lumber and shipping lumber and you can't do it, you have to get that thing running. And so my maintenance manager, my yard manager and I knew that this was going to be an all weekend deal. We saw the sun rise and set three times before we ever went home. We had to basically take the entire Tilt-O-Oys apart with torches,

remove chain, fix sprockets, rewire a motor, and put it all back together. And it's very heavy industrial stuff. About 5.30 that Friday evening we started working in and put it all back together and it's very heavy industrial stuff and About 530 that Friday evening. We started working in about 615 I looked up and there's this guy Sam Quinn a guy had hired only a month and a half early earlier to pull lumber $6.75 an hour guy, just manual labor. And he walks in and he picks up a ballpen hammer and starts heading to the other side. And I was like, oh, Sam, what are you doing?

He said, well, we need to get this tilt voice running so we can run Monday and we can make money. And I'm like saying, yeah, you're right, but I can hardly afford to pay you 40 hours. I can't pay you to be here and I sure as heck can't afford time and a half." And he looked at me and said, I hadn't been a part of anything since the United States Marine Corps and I feel a part of this company. I don't want you to pay me, but I ain't going home either. I'm not going to let you guys work and me watch. And he went to work.

We slept on the floor of the deck, when I say slept, a couple hours, covered in torch soot, hydraulic oil, grease, filth, sawdust. Woke up, Lisa brought some biscuits, and we worked all that Saturday, and then we worked all that Sunday, and literally Monday morning about 5.30 in the morning, we finished and finally got that stupid thing put back together and operational 30 minutes before the line crew showed up, start running again Monday.

None of us went home. None of us had a shower. And Sam did all that with us for nothing. And then to my absolute shock, when the line turned on, Sam came out of the bathroom after cleaning himself up and pulled lumber for eight hours behind that chain to hit his Monday shift before he went home Tuesday night. Over the course of that weekend, and got nothing else to do, you learn a lot about one another. And I found out about Sam's past and I found out he had no major violent issues with the law, but lots of DUIs and things he hadn't paid and really became systemized, institutionalized, like many are that come from where Sam comes from because

you got to have a car to go to work, but if you can't afford a driver's license, you get pulled over, you don't have a driver's license, you get pulled over, you don't have a driver's license, you get a ticket, you can't afford to pay for the ticket. If it's between paying the ticket or putting gas in your car and paying the light bill, you don't pay the ticket, then you get a warrant. Then the county starts putting interest on top of your ticket and penalties,

and what was a $40 ticket becomes a $1,000 ticket, and then there's a warrant out for your arrest. Then you're arrested, then you gotta post bail. what was a $40 ticket becomes $1,000 ticket, and then there's a warrant out for your arrest, then you're arrested, then you gotta post bail. It's a never-ending downward vacuum spiral of misery that people find themselves in. And I'm not excusing it, but it's just the reality of what happens to a lot of, a lot of poor folks.

And that was Sam's world and he told me about it. And I told him, I said, Sam, you know, you gotta take care of your responsibilities. I kind of get why you ended up where you are, but if I help you out and we find a way to get all this cleaned up and straight, he looked at me and as he said, I'll never go back. He was living at Lighthouse Ministries, which is a daily rent a room for eight hours a night thing. He literally was almost homeless. The

next two and a half years, we worked with attorneys, we worked with all kinds of people to clear his record, pay his fines, which I loaned him money for and he paid me back, and get himself straight. Then his girlfriend, Regina, he married. And he adopted her children because he believed if you're gonna commit to a woman, you need to commit to the children and they don't need to be living in the same house. And he actually got a marriage license,

got married and adopted the kids as his own. And then I'll never forget the pride on his face when he'd saved himself $3,500 to put a down payment on a home which he bought for his wife and his children. Over the course of time at the company, he went from that low-level common labor job and ended up being a manager on the yard at my company. There was no prouder human being on the face of the planet than Sam Quinn. Because what he found out was this life that he'd screwed completely up he was able to fix with commitment and dedication.

Commitment to a wife, commitment to his bills, commitment to his children, commitment to his job, commitment to his children, commitment to his job, dedication to those things. And it changed his life and it changed the life of his wife and it changed the life of his children. But more importantly, not more importantly, but maybe with greater perspective for me, I watched a formerly homeless, alcoholic, drug-using person living at lighthouse ministries with half a chance to be committed and dedicated to something better, become my friend. There was never a time that this company was dealing with difficulties, that Sam wasn't the first in line to volunteer to help. There was never a time that I didn't have a need that Sam wasn't the first to volunteer to help.

He was so ultimately committed as a friend and an employee and a father and a manager that he inspired everybody at this company and me. About two years ago, Sam got diagnosed with a really terrible form of cancer. And when he told me about it, he looked me dead in the eyes and he said, I don't think I can beat it. I'm going to try to extend my life as long as I can. And he said, I'm paying for some of the things I did when I was young. And he told me there were times he sniffed paint and there were times that he drank rubbing alcohol and there were things he did to his body that his body was now no longer to fight

off and he was paying for. But he, he wasn't a victim to it. He just, he didn't even gripe about it. He kind of said, I'm a man, I made those decisions and now I'm paying for them. And he just looked me dead in the eyes and he said, Bill, just know, I wanna work. I don't wanna miss a day. And I'm like, Sam, if you got cancer, I mean, come on. And he's just, with this steely look in his face, said, I'm gonna deal with it, but don't not let me run my line.

Don't let me work. It was his dedication and commitment to work and the dedication commitment of the business and the people in the business to him that changed his life and that was what he cared about most even when he was dying of cancer. This man would schedule his treatments early in the morning and would show up in the dead of summer working on a production line in a lumber yard with dust and noise and loud stuff and be at work 30 minutes after treatment. Treatment that most people would go home and lay in bed for two or three days and this guy would come and stand on his feet for eight hours in the hot sun or the cold brutal winters in this unforgiving atmosphere that is a lumber mill

and manage his people. I cannot tell you the depth of the inspiration that people had knowing that that's what Sam was doing. See, it was not just his commitment and dedication to the company that mattered, but it was the commitment and dedication that we showed to him. It changed lives. It changed perceptions and it changed me. About five months ago, I was pulling onto the yard and I saw Sam coming across the yard with some of his materials and Oh my God, he could barely walk. Sam was not a tall or big man, but he was a chiseled guy.

And by this time, his clothes were hanging off of them. You could see all the bones and veins in his neck and his clavicle through his t-shirt. Um, and he was in pain. And uh, I said, Sam, how you doing? I'm good boss. Sam, how you doing? I'm good, boss. Sam, how you doing? He looked at me dead in the eyes and he said, I'm hurting. And I said, Sam, there has been no more committed, dedicated human being that I've ever seen to anything in my entire life. why don't you give yourself a break and take a rest?" And he said, I'll be fine. He died three days later. His dying days were walking around

a lumberyard because he was dedicated and committed to what was dedicated and committed to him and changed his life and in doing so he changed the lives of everybody around him. He remains an inspiration. He's been gone now for months, but people still call the line that he worked on Sam's line. Problems come up around the yard and some of the other managers and other employees will immediately say, well, what would Sam have done? Sam Quinn has an everlasting legacy on my company, on my children, on my employees, and on me,

because of what a depth of commitment and dedication meant in his life, and what it meant to the lives of those around him who experienced that depth of commitment and dedication. So when you think about committing to something in the future, I hope you might think about Sam Quinn. It's more than being on time. It's more than saying, yes, I will. It's more than just being a person of your word.

True commitment and true dedication inspires and it changes the perceptions of people around you and ultimately will change your own life. So when you commit or dedicate something, do it like Sam would do. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week. John Stewart is back in the host chair at the daily show, which means he's also back in our ears on the daily show years edition podcast. Join late Night Legend, John Stewart, and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more.

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This season will be even more revealing and more personal with more entrepreneurs, more live events, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Encore Jane about creating a billion dollar startup. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who change the world. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.