QUEST – RISK, ADVENTURE AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING With John Graham

Hello, it's Howard Brown is the Shining Brightly

Show. Oh, I've got an amazing guest today. It's incredible. If

you want to talk about that renaissance man, I've got that

man for you. John Graham. Welcome. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to shining brightly. How are you? Alright,

fine. How are you? Thank you. Thank you for thank

you for having me on.

I'm so pleased. So I have to tell you when I met

John, I mean, he's got so many stories, and we just don't have

enough time to cover them all. So we're gonna give you the

highlight reel. And then you're gonna go out and get his books,

and then you're going to contact him and you're going to support

his nonprofit because this guy is just lived a little bit,

right? At 16. John, you know, shipped out on a freighter, and

he really hasn't looked back. He's been all over the world.

He's been in apartheid South Africa. He's been to Alaska a

whole bunch of times doing some dangerous stuff we're going to

talk about. He's worked for the Foreign Service. This guy is a

cool cat, man and deli. He's still going. So we've got lots

of lots of cool stuff to share with you as well. But before I

do that, John, I always ask, tell us something maybe we don't

know about you that you don't often share. Oh,

well. I can say that I was the first person ever

to climb up the north wall of Mount McKinley, Denali claim.

It's so friggin dangerous that no one's ever done it since.

Wow, that's incredible. When did you do

that? Well,

I was a kid that I was 1963. Yeah, it's been a long

time. And it was called McKinley before. McKinley. Now it's

Denali. Now it's Denali. But it's the climate is so

dangerous. No one we were so a bunch of idiotic young kids from

a climbing club. And we didn't understand the dangers. But we

just walked right through. Unbelievable,

because I actually had the territory of Alaska for

this company called avid technology. We changed how

broadcasting was done from analogue to digital. And every

chief engineer that I ever met at a television station, had a

pilot's licence and a plane. And so because I was up in Alaska, I

got to circulate in a plane never climbed it. So I don't

know if I could that you did some crazy stuff as well. So

share with me, you know, some some background of God, you

know, as a 16 year old venturing out into the world. What was

that all about? Well,

it was a crazy thing I won't go into the whole

half hour is a complicated thing. But But I ended up

winning an essay contest when I was a kid in high school. And

the prize was a trip on a freighter to the Far East, but

then the shipping company had booked all their passenger

space. So they said, oh, we'll take you all right, because you

have to be a member of the crew. I said, Oh, that's great. My

mother, however, who was a Catholic, a very staunch

Catholic, by the way, said okay, 16 year old 17 year old John is

going on a freighter now those days no containers, right? I

mean, is this, a freighter was a big ship with a bunch of 60

really tough guys on it. And so, it took me a long time to

convince her to let me go because because she figured

that, you know, I was gonna like lose not only my virginity, but

just you know, it was a tough time. But she let me go, God

bless her. And I wonder where they're and boy, I saw a world

that was a whole lot bigger and more colourful than than white

bread, Tacoma, Washington where I grew up. Man, I got into a

first bar fight. I mean, it was just I was 16 years old doing

this. And it was like, it changed my life. All of a

sudden, there was a world out there that was big and, and huge

and exciting. And it I never looked back as you. As you said,

I never looked back in my life became one adventure after the

next from that moment on.

It's incredible. I mean, you've just got yourself

into places and experiences that you know, a 16 year old kid, you

know, sophomore, junior in high school. I mean, you're you're

still wet behind the ears. You're a young buck, you know?

Yeah,

yeah. That's yeah, I I try. I put down what

happened in my memoir. We'll talk about that later. But it

was pretty amazing. I was incredibly naive. And the seamen

were determined to teach me all the lessons they knew I would

never get in school. And they did. I will leave it at that.

You got the life lessons I got the important life

lessons and a whole bunch of Big Brother seamen that were you

know watching out for you teaching Yeah, all the good

stuff.

Yeah, they took care of me they took care of me

when we get into that bar fight. I passed out and one of them put

me on the on the shoulders and carried me back to the ship

before I got cut to pieces. So yeah, it was cool.

Let me ask you this, because I find this

interesting that that did you find these wars that you are a

chorus minder, do they find you?

Ah, I found them. I look I deliberately look for

them. Yeah. I hitchhiked around the world after I graduated from

Cal Well, I hitchhiked to In North Africa when I was a

sophomore in college, because it was the only shooting war, I

could find I was climbing mountains in Switzerland and,

and the colonial war in Algeria was still going on, and we just

ended. So I said, I gotta get down there. It's only a few 100

miles away. So I hitchhiked down through Spain, through Morocco.

And I showed up at the Algerian border and there was no border

guy because there was a friggin war going on. So I put an

American flag on my chest. Really smart move. Because if

they thought I was French, they kill me. Right? They were

fighting. Yeah. So I put this American flag on and I walked

across in the war in Algeria, because it was the most exciting

thing I'd ever done. And sure enough, I mean, people saw that

American flag and the the rebels or the commandos or whatever the

soldiers would point their guns at the driver and ordered him to

take me wherever I wanted to go. Wow. So yeah, that was my first

my first war was Algeria. And I graduated from college and I

hitchhiked around the world and I deliberately got a rare they

call it a press pass from the Boston Globe press credentials,

you know, yes, yes. And so I reported on I went to Cyprus,

where there was an active war going on. Then I went to Laos,

and went up to the Plain of Jars where the people were fighting,

and they went to Vietnam, where America's war was just starting,

you know, and it was like that. And then 10 years later, I came

back to Vietnam, but this time as an adult as part of the war,

our war in Vietnam, doing all kinds of difficult and

thoroughly dangerous stuff.

To China. We back then we are you still an action

junkie? It what was driving all this?

Oh, man, I tell you, I gotta be careful. I mean,

you know, I'm driving, I'm driving to the next town and my

gas tank is almost empty. And so I'll say to myself, you know, I

got about an 80% chance of making it to the gas station,

but 20% chance that they won't, yeah, let's do it. Let's go for

it. My wife goes crazy. She thinks I'm nuts. What are you

doing? I can't help it. I don't know. I was, it's a gene. I was

born with it. And the fact of the matter is, Howard is that.

Gosh, by the time I was 40 years old, I figured I had almost been

killed. I died a violent death real close a dozen times. And I

kept walking away from it. So what else was I supposed to

think was that I was invulnerable. So I could keep

doing all this stuff. Because, you know, I kept walking away

from it. So every time I took a risk, it was a bigger risk than

the one before. It was crazy. It all changed. And I gradually

moved myself to the side of the angels, but it took a while.

Yeah.

So I have to tell you, I one of my other guests

was a firefighter. And he said something so astute and it just

reminds me of what you're doing. He said, You know, as a

firefighter, we are taught to run towards fire, not away from

it. It's a safety. And that's the same thing with you, you are

running towards the action, you put yourself in the middle of of

bullets and bombs and real real danger. And I mean, it's just

incredible. But you're you kept on going and doing it. And what

are some of the lessons? What are the takeaways and seeing all

these war torrents and these revolutions and all that?

Yeah, that's a difficult question. Because the

lessons changed for me. In the beginning, my 20s, you know, the

lessons were there was nothing more important than adventure

and risk taking. That's what life was about. The adrenaline

rush, but it was more than you know, you probably experienced

it yourself. But you know, when you're young you think you take

more risk. You're you know, you're you're 17 at 21 years

old, you're taking it but it was different for me. For me, it

became a way of life. And then I kept walking away from stuff I

mean, both whistling by my ears via contract to kill me. I can't

walk away from it. So but the thing was, was that that was

what my life was about. Everybody else's life was like

kind of dull, but this is incredible. Well, that that did

shift that that did shift and the lesson I learned after a

battle in Vietnam. We were surrounded I was the adviser to

the city called way which some of your listeners viewers may

have heard of the Tet massacre? Yes. In Vietnam. Well, I was the

city where I was the I was an advisor to the mayor and also

had a lot to do with some pretty rough counterintelligence

operations and intelligence stuff and we were surrounded on

three sides by the North Vietnamese during what was

called the Easter offensive, this is three years before

Vietnam actually failed. North Vietnamese. I don't know if

people remember the history almost we were at it three years

earlier. And we're stopped just short. But I was in the city at

the time. And we were surrounded in all the American troops and

left as part of a peace agreement. So just a couple of

us so called civilians who are civilians, we were armed to the

teeth, and we knew how to use the weapons. But still, we were

civilians, and there were only four of us and we were and the

South Vietnamese Army had panic and refugees were screaming

through the city, it was my job to take care of 300,000

Screaming impoverished refugees and the North Vietnamese guns

were blasting away and it was a incredible situation. And then

the finally the skies cleared a little bit and American fighter

bombers from carrier jets came roaring over the city. so low

that I could practically read the name of the pilot on the

cockpit. And they finally blasted the North Vietnamese

tank just six miles short of the city. So I didn't die that time

but I damned I did. And it it was after it went so much after

that, or in the middle of all this everybody had panic right

but not me because I love it. The worst thing is get i You

want me in your foxhole man. And I was steady and I was helping

put the city back together getting people to run the police

forces and stuff but because everybody else had panic. And

and I finally realised that the problem was deserter is from

from the South Vietnamese army. Were terrorising everybody else.

So I screamed at the mayor that he had to set up a firing squad.

I remember in the middle of all his guns going off, you know,

people shouting and screaming, I put my fist on his desk, bang,

bang, bang, you got to sit up a firing squad. I didn't know if

it work or not as a deterrent to start shooting these. These

these kids and they were kids. They were farm boys drag wound

off their patties maybe the month before and shoved into the

South Vietnamese Army and then shoved into the face of a highly

professional North Vietnamese attacking columns. And they were

scared out of their wits. So a lot of them got drunk and and

they were causing a huge problem. So I set up his firing

squad. Not knowing whether it would work. And then I realised

somehow something about firing squad. I was unaware that I

never believed in. I was in a war whose aims I thought were

false even evil. I was in a war where the only because of the

adventure. And here I was ordering the deaths of farm boys

innocent foreign boy who just got drunk and panicked in a

moment of total chaos and it suddenly hit me that that's what

my life had come down to the adventure and all that wasn't

just me and evil I was now in a position of real authority with

the power of life and death. And and I was misusing it. I was

causing people to die making things worse was that there? My

rest of life gonna be like that. It was the lowest point in my

life. I mean, I just put my head down and and I actually cried. I

think I just I realised how shallow my life had become.

Living a life just her adventures not giving a you

know, what about anybody else or their concerns? Or life or death

just one more adrenaline rush after the other. It was a long

road back out. It took me a long time to crawl back out of that

hole.

It sounds like you're an amazing storyteller.

I'm so captivated listening to it. I guess we have talked but I

want to we could talk for hours on it because I'm a history buff

and you've been there. But also you've again you face death.

Again. I faced death for cancer stage four cancer twice in my

life. But I mean, I think the Alaska story of the second ship

I said you thought you're gonna die

right? Once again. Share that share that story.

Share that story with you want that story? Oh, I do. I do. I

do. Yeah. Okay. All right. Look. I'm crawling back from that

hole. That moral spiritual hole in Vietnam. Long story short, I

ended up with the United Nations and my life had changed by them.

Now I really was committed to doing good integral and in fact

I did I I'm proud to say that I helped end apartheid system of

institutionalised racism and South Africans. And I helped

achieve independence for some countries in Africa because that

was my job. I wasn't Africa policies of the United Nations

for our country. And so, you know, my life had really

changed. And it changed so much that I realised I couldn't work

for anybody anymore. Because sooner or later, there'd be some

you know, what, who would tell me to do something awful, I

wouldn't do it. So I quit. I quit at the top of my game,

really, because the State Department loved me because they

nobody could kill me. I was doing difficult, dangerous

stuff. I was really smart at it. So they I was there a fair

haired boy and I quit the top of my career naively thinking that

I would somehow save the world, I would write books, I would

give speeches, I would convince people and as soon as I opened

my mouth, all the bad guys returning the good guys, the US

and the Soviet Union would start getting along. I was pretty

naive. But I thought that I could make a real effort to do

that. I hadn't thought about money at all. And so I quickly

spent all of the the severance pay the State Department had

given me and I had a wife and two kids and so I had to get

some money. And and I have a friend came in, says, Look,

John, you've always had a good gift of gab. They pay money to

lecture on cruise ships. All you have to do is open your mouth on

the cruise ship, and they pay you absurd amounts of money. So

long story short, I, I applied, and I got a job lecturing. The

cruise ship Princeton damn in 1980, October 1980. All I had to

do was give some simple as soon as me simple lecture on foreign

policy, they didn't care. I also found out once I got on board

that ship that part of my job was to look handsome in my

tuxedo, in Walt's little old ladies around the dance floor. I

didn't realise that. So there I was on this cruise ship, and I

got to take one person with me. So I took my then 13 year old

daughter Mallory with me on the cruise ship. And we're about

three days out from Vancouver, when we were heading out into

the Pacific heading for Japan. And we were 150 miles off the

Alaska coast in the middle of the night is a warning on the

loudspeaker system. The intercom system in the state rooms, says

it's been a small fire, but fire has been put out no worries. But

you know, so I rolled over go back to sleep. 10 minutes later,

the voice comes on again, this time with a sense of real

urgency to it and it says look, yeah, we want you all to come up

to the ships lounge because there's some smoke and fires out

but we'll serve free drinks and come on up to the lounge just to

be safe. Totally disarming method. So Mallory and I grew up

there I only have a thin windbreaker and so does she and

we don't even take our life is which was really stupid. And

we're up on the ships lounge but it's full of smoke. So people

are extremely out on deck as to clear night and the Gulf of

Alaska, you know, Northern Lights and all that in the sea

was fairly common at the time. But any fool could look back

where we'd come from, and see that the smoke was getting

blacker and thicker. In other words, the fire had not been put

out. Oh, people are starting to panic, people are starting to

get really worried. We're all herded to the back of the ship,

the stern of the ship. And I know this sounds like a famous

movie, but that ships orchestra comes out. And they were playing

near my guide to the but but they started playing show tunes

from Oklahoma smoke getting blacker thicker, and that was

clearly over the size of the ship. And finally at about two

in the morning, the captain heard says we got to go to

lifeboat station. So we all go to lifeboat stations. And at

that moment, the fire burns through all of the glass windows

in the ship's lounge and dining room and the fire takes a big

gulp of oxygen and flames. Excuse me, flame sure shoot 30

feet into the air. I mean this the centre of the ship becomes a

torch and I can see these flames reflected off my daughter's

eyes. And now people are really freaking out as you might

imagine. So the captain comes out and he's in his full dress

uniform with a white silk scarf. I mean really they do this as

part of the lava sea or something I guess. And there we

are ordered to abandon ship. So by a miracle all 550 people on

that boat, except for the the captain and a few other people

who stay behind temporarily are in these lifeboats and they're

lowered. And there's no loss of life. I mean, it's a miracle but

the seas that are calm, but our lifeboat is terribly overcrowded

is only meant for 60 people Mallory counts 90 in the

lifeboat but it was good because it was cool. out there. So being

shoved together was not bad. But the problem was was that the

typhoon was coming on typhoon burnin, I think it was called.

And they warned us the night before that the typhoon was

coming. So they distributed, you know, seasick pills at dinner.

And we knew the storm was coming, but now we weren't in

some huge cruise ship. We were in little lifeboats, eight of

them, I think. And they, we began being separated from each

other. We had no power in the lifeboats and no oars, we were

just drifting. And it was the middle of a night, but we had

no, no radio, no lights, no flares, nothing. And I tried to

get the radio to work using Morse code, because I knew Morse

code. And it didn't work. So we were out there. And then at

dawn, helicopters arrived from bases, Canadian and US Air Force

and Coast Guard bases in Alaska and Canada. And they start

lifting people off the lifeboats, in metal chairs at

the end of cable. It's kind of like a county fair. There's a

ride where kids go spinning around. Yeah, yeah, like that

one of those chairs. And so they work as fast as they can, but

it's slow work one at a time. 550 people. And it became seven

o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock noon, about one o'clock

I see Mallory's the last female lifted off the lifeboat tough

little bugger. And she, I was so proud of her because she never

he was as calm as I was, he was just really cool. So she gets

lifted off. And I'm left in the lifeboat with eight other guys.

The helicopters can't fly anymore, because now the typhoon

has hit his head on. And it's suicide to fly a helicopter in

those conditions. So there we were. And he was getting rougher

and rougher. And we were trying we were bathing like crazy.

seasick, his dogs dying of hypothermia. But the key thing

was the light. And remember, we have no lights and no flares, no

reflectors. And even with a bit of daylight in a storm, it's

hard enough to find us and no helicopters meant that the only

source of rescue was three, two or three Coast Guard cutters.

Small boats had arrived. And we're doing criss crossing

desperately looking for, for us the last in the storm. They

might find this by daylight, but they would never find us at

night, I figured from a mountaineering that we had seven

or eight hours to live before we were all dead from hypothermia.

But most of the end we did as soon as it was dark. As soon as

it was dark, there was no hope of finding as at least with the

light. There was some hope. So there we are to half an hour

until dark. I had a whole life of of staring death in the face,

always walked away from it. And I thought my life could run out.

I don't see any way out of this. I mean, the odds are like one in

1000. And so I said, I started talking to God, I wasn't I'm

still not a particularly religious person. But I started

talking to whatever I felt was God say, and I wasn't praying I

was mad. I said, Wait a minute. Here I am. I turned my life

around after that horrible episode in Vietnam, I helped end

apartheid. I quit the Foreign Service to devote my life to

service to making the world a better place. And now you guys

are wiping me out it makes no sense at all. It makes no

freakin sense at all to wipe me out.

And I get this message. I get this message no one else in that

boat heard anything, of course, but I did. And this voice came

booming through this wild storm. And basically say you got to get

serious. You you left all this do gooder stuff to start

lecturing on cruise ships because you panic over money.

You get out of this lecture on another cruise ship. You gotta

get serious about your ideals, whether they're real or not. And

if your ideals are not if it's just, you know, Bs and you might

as well die out here because the next 50 years won't be worth

living. But if you really commit to a life of service well we'll

see what we can do. You didn't see that but you got picked up

by a cutter Yeah, as soon as I looked up to the storms and

Okay, okay, I gave up I gave up as soon as I said that this

Coast Guard Cutter now mind you the visibility is like 100

yards. This Coast Guard Cutter comes crashing through this wild

storm or we get rescued. I mean, that's it. I know. It sounds

like a crazy story. It was It is a crazy story. But that's where

it's true. As soon as I said yes, yes. Okay, I give up. I

give up i give up and that's what my life will be this Coast

Guard Cutter comes and I never looked back. I'll say that for

myself. I never look back Back, am I

it's incredible story. And I mean, I thank you

and your daughter, you know, shared that with you and she's

everyone's okay, it's really just true strength and you turn

it around. So I'm gonna ask you to put on your sunglasses,

because we're getting down to the end of the show. 30 minutes

goes by quickly. So I want to shine the spotlight on you.

Okay, you are shining, John Graham, and I want you to tell

people how they can get a hold of you. I want you to mention

your books, and I want you to mention your nonprofit. And then

you'll share some inspiration and we'll close out the show.

Oh,

wow, I can do all that. Okay, right. You can.

There's John Graham and I invite communications. My personal web

address is John graham dot org. My, my email is Graham at

giraffe giraffe.org. That's because I direct nonprofit

called the giraffe heroes project, which is all about

finding people who are sticking their necks out and telling

their stories and the giraffe website. I urge you to get on it

because it's amazing. The stuff that we do is draft.org draft

that work. So it's giraffe.org John graham.org. The book, my

last book I've written five now is quest. Risk adventure in the

search for meaning and it's kind of like the story of my life

going down as far down as it can go and then coming back the

other side. And I'm I'm friggin 81 years old and still going

strong. And there we are. And as to leaving words of wisdom,

Well, hell, I've been long since that, that wisdom is a difficult

commodity. And I'm always slow to give it but I'll tell you

this. The most important thing that any of us can do is the

search for meaning personal meaning in our lives. Some

people find meaning as I did in adventure that didn't go very

far. Some people find meaning in money, some people find meaning

in power. But the real source of meaning the real source of

meaning that really work that sticks with you that makes your

life work is service. Find a way to serve, can be anything could

be something in your local town, it could be cleaning up a local

river, it could be fighting climate change could be

combating violence against women could be anything, but find a

way to serve. Find a way so that your own heart sings from the

meaning of being of service. And that's what makes a life complete.

Wow. That's beautiful. That's that's what my

show is about. That's what my life is about. So I appreciate

that. You've been listening or watching to the shining brightly

show, you can reach me at shining brightly.com And you can

find a lot about my book, my memoir and a couple other books

I've been working on and published. Also, hire me to

speak at your event. I'm a great motivational speaker and

facilitator. Let me bring some some sunshine to your event. And

also this podcast is there but my advocacy, my work in

mentorship and leadership and entrepreneurship, cancer and

cancer screening cancer treatments. And as well as

interfaith work of knowing people that are not like you and

choosing to be kind and grateful and and healing and not choosing

hate. So this has been a great show, John, you are incredible.

I will have all your information in the show notes and on social

media, people will reach out to you and just keep keep living.

And just I keep telling stories and Keep being you and the

adrenaline rush was one thing but you've learned a lot. You've

lived a lot and I'm just so glad to know you and thank you for

being here.

Thank you for inviting me