EP198: When Character Stands Tall, The Colorful & Comical Civil War General and She Quit Her Corporate Job To Make Artisan Keycaps
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Eric Motley shares how despite being generally liked by the fraternity he was rushing, some parents of the boys expressed their dismay at Eric's wanting to join the group. Gettysburg National Park Service Ranger Matt Atkinson tells the story of the Civil War General who claimed to be insane in court, got his leg shot off by General Longstreet's artillery, and helped form the Gettysburg National Military Park. Keycap artist, known as Tiny Makes Things, shares her story of when she decided that she wanted to quit her job and start her own business making artisan keycaps for mechanical keyboards.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - When Character Stands Tall
10:00 - The Colorful & Comical Civil War General
35:00 - She Quit Her Corporate Job To Make Artisan Keycaps
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. |
| 0:17.9 | Send them to OurAmerican Stories.com. That to Our American Stories.com. |
| 0:21.3 | That's Our American Stories.com. |
| 0:23.8 | And today we're talking to Eric Motley. |
| 0:26.1 | We've heard from Eric before about his life. |
| 0:28.4 | Eric, you talk about how one of the most pivotal stories happened while you were at |
| 0:33.0 | Samford University involving your pledging at a fraternity. |
| 0:37.3 | It was a moment that displayed both the best and the worst in people. |
| 0:41.3 | Tell us about that. |
| 0:42.3 | I was too naive to really know what a fraternity was. |
| 0:45.3 | I arrived. Samford was predominantly a white university, |
| 0:49.3 | and as much as the majority of the students there were people not of color, |
| 0:55.0 | maybe there was four or five percent of a colored population, |
| 1:01.0 | people of color, and that's minorities, Hispanic and African Americans. |
| 1:06.0 | And, but I was in a wonderful Christian community, and people embraced me, |
| 1:10.0 | and they seemed to be interested in me, and as much as I was interested in them. |
| 1:15.8 | And for sure, maybe I was a bit eccentric and I was so intense on getting an education that everyone in the university knew that I was the first in the library in the morning and the last to leave the library. |
| 1:28.6 | And that became a bit of a joke, but a wonderful joke and an daring joke. |
| 1:34.0 | And then there were a group of upperclassmen who became friends, and they encouraged me to go |
| 1:40.0 | through rush because they thought it was a wonderful opportunity for me to meet more people |
| 1:45.1 | and to be a part of a club that they were a part of to experience something they felt fulfilling. |
| 1:51.4 | And so I went through this experience with this fraternity and I felt really good |
... |
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