- Thank you Michael.

And folks, I am super excited about who we have in the studio here today.

Folks, this is Mike McFadden.

Michael, you, first of all, thank you for coming to the studio today.

It's a pleasure having you here.

- I appreciate you having me.

- And you know, I was looking at, I was, when I read, read into you, you have quite the resume.

You are a 32 year veteran, 10 assignments on Fort Drum.

In 1990, you were a flight medic and you led a bunch of operations in Afghanistan.

And today you're here to talk Advocate Drum.

- Yes, sir.

- So what is that?

I've, I've, this is new to me.

- Yeah.

So Advocate Drum is a nonprofits membership organization.

We're a community group type of organization.

And our mission is to protect, enhance for drum's, military value, and sustain and leverage it's economic and cultural significance and foster effective communications between the installation and the community.

- And with your background in military service, you know, about what the military provides to the communities that they inhabit.

So educate me a little bit, what is, what's, what does Fort Drum bring to this local North country community?

- Sure.

Fort Drum is a very unique military installation, and having moved 22 different times with the Army, I've seen a lot of different military installations.

Uniqueness of Fort Drum is, there's no hospital on Fort Drum, so it relies on our local community for any major medical care.

It also, there's no educational facility.

So all of our military children who reside on Fort Drum and off of Fort Drum, who are military associated attend local schools.

And so with that, Fort Drum brings almost $2.6 billion in economic impact Wow.

To our local area, $39 million in educational aid to our schools, and about $140 million is infused into our healthcare system each year.

- That is huge.

And I just, and you know, I, I gotta know what made you want to be, you've been a, you've been the executive director now for just about a year, and I just wanna know what made you want to, what made you wanna to sign onto this organization?

- So I, I retired in Savannah, Georgia, and after my wife and I traveled the country for about a year, looking for that perfect place to live.

And we realized that our time at Fort Drum was our best time in the military.

My wife happens to be from Lowville New York, and so her mother still resides here.

So we decided to come back this way.

And I wanted to do something that I could fully ingrained myself into the community.

And I saw this opportunity and I said, what a better opportunity than to support both Fort Drum.

And I'm a combat veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, as well as the local community - Where I live.

It's so great to hear you coming back to the community and giving back.

Now, you know, I wanted to ask you, what is, what is Advocate Drum doing this year?

I know you guys are on your 40th anniversary of Advocate Drum.

What are you guys doing this year to commemorate that?

- So again, 40 years we've been around since the division where we stood up.

Right.

The organization back then realized both the community and the division realized that needed an organization to help 'em with the significant challenges.

The population of Watertown was about 17,000 in 1985.

And here we were gonna activate a division of about 15,000 soldiers.

So you can imagine the significant challenges that comes over that, whether it's housing or healthcare and all the infrastructure issues.

So we're really proud to still be around 40 years later, still advocating for the installation.

Our major initiative this year is a initiative called Next Move, New York.

- Ooh.

- And that's a state initiative, a $10 million state initiative.

And we're partners with the, the North Country or DANC Development Authority of the North country as well as JCC.

And the mission of Next Move New York is to encourage those soldiers who are adding, ending their military service at Fort Drum to stay in the local area.

As we know there's a significant work workforce gap here in the north country, and we want to entice those soldiers to stay in the local community, be part of our community, and, and fill that workforce gap.

- And do you see those military veterans coming back to volunteer for organizations like Advocate Drum?

- We do.

We have quite a few who are veterans that volunteer within our organization.

We're about a member organization of about 250, and we have multiple retired service members or former service members that sit on our board or volunteer in our different committees.

- What about for non-veterans?

For people who wanna just, who are, who are watching this right now and wanna get involved somehow, but don't know where to get started, can they get involved?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Advocatedrum.com or fdrlow.org are all places that they can go to.

And again, we have multiple opportunities for different committees, whether it's our membership committee or spousal employment committee.

We have multiple committees that they can volunteer their time to help one, support our mission, ensure that Fort Drum remains a viable in insulation, not only for Fort Drum, but for the community.

- You've been the executive director for just about a year at this point.

I wanna look back a little bit.

What's it been like this past year seeing, helping with Advocate Drum, being the executive director and giving back to the community?

- It's been exciting.

It's been, it's been eye-opening again, get getting to learn the organization.

We have a very diverse board of directors that come from a lot of different disciplines throughout the community.

Former and current CEOs of organizations, non-profit for-profit organizations, educational institutions, the leaders of those.

So it's been exciting getting to learn the personalities of our board of directors as well as learning, learning how to advocate both with our state, local, and federal representatives.

- You mentioned earlier in the interview that you came back to the North country.

What does, what does the North Country mean to you altogether?

- Well, I think one, it, it's a tremendous sense of community.

So, you know, the, the North Country is a military defense community.

And Fort Drum provides us that opportunity where the people and the insulation are, are really cohesive based on the uniqueness of Fort Drum and the services that we provide as a community to Fort Drum.

But there's a lot of pride in the community.

There's a lot of opportunity.

We have phenomenal educational system, we have great healthcare system, and we have beautiful recreational activities, especially if you like the outdoors.

We're a four season community, so you can enjoy all four seasons and there's plenty to do through each one of those seasons.

- Looking ahead, going into 2025 and 2026, is there anything you're looking forward to for Advocate, drummer things, big goals that you would like to achieve this year?

- Sure.

I would love to see us expand our membership.

Our membership really is our strength.

So when I sit down with our federally elected representatives or our state elected representatives, and I talk about issues that impact Fort Drum, our membership shows them that the community is invested in the organization, they're invested within their own community.

They're invested in the future of Fort Drum, and ensuring that that installation remains a viable partner within the community.

- The big thing I'm curious about is why should more people know about Advocate Drum if they don't know about it already?

- Well, one, I think that the Advocate Drum gives them an opportunity to support the mission of ensuring that Fort Drum remains a viable military installation and remains a viable economic powerhouse, not only for the North country, but for the entire state of New York.

Fort Drum is the largest single side employer in the state of New York.

And our goal is to ensure that it remains that.

- Can you remind me where people can go and to learn more about Advocate Drum aside from this interview?

- Sure.

Advocatedrum.com is our website and, and they can get information there about how to volunteer for the - Organization, how can other organizations even get involved?

- Sure.

They, they can contact Advocate Drum to help champion issues that we think are important to the community in Ford Drum.

- Well, Michael, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for coming here.

And thank you for your service.

I, I mean, I, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to overstate your service to the community, but you know, for your service to the community, your service to the military and this and this great country, we couldn't be more grateful.

So thank you so much for your time, both in the military and taking the time to come to WPBS to talk to us today.

It was certainly a pleasure.

- I really appreciate it.

Thank you.