Well, I am delighted today to have Mrs. Candy Carson with us and she brought along her husband,

Dr. Van Carson.

We're really glad you're here.

We'll tolerate him.

We're glad to be here as well.

Thank you for inviting.

It's an honor.

You have a connection to Murfreesboro in one of our schools actually yes we

had we over 25 years ago Ben and I were trying to find a way to help the kids that are our future leaders,

you know get behind them because too often you know they're the ones that aren't really celebrated

and so on so forth and I'm gonna try to keep it short reasonably short because I

can get long when it and sorry about that.

But, but, you know, we,

there had been a survey that came out showing the,

how kids do in 22 countries around the world was

respect to science and math.

And when it came to our country,

we weren't number one, not even in the top 10, we were number 21 out of

out of 22. So to you know turn that around we said you know we've got to start

doing something to get our kids excited about loving learning and about doing the best that you can.

So we started the Carson Scholars Fund and the first thing we give out scholarships for kids that demonstrate high academic achievement and humanitarian qualities because you don't just want kids that are smart, you want kids that also care about others.

So that was the first arm of it.

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