[00:00:11] Speaker: All right. Well, welcome, everybody. This is Matt Ryan on, I believe, our fourth podcast that we've been doing. And the title of this podcast is All Roads Lead to Real Estate. And so here today I have a special guest with me and I will give him a little bit of a.

[00:00:29] Speaker: intro here in a second, but as a reminder, essentially what the purpose of this lovely podcast is and my intention behind it is simply to connect with people, their clients, their neighbors, their friends, their family, their people in the community and the people of interest that I think that I have a relationship with in one way or another.

[00:00:49] Speaker: And, you know, it's just fascinating, I think, given what I do for a living and the nature of my job to just interact with so many unique, wonderful people. And so I have someone today that exemplifies a unique find in the community and he's a neighbor of mine. So I just moved about two years ago, actually, this two years ago, this December. So

[00:01:14] Speaker: Two years now and we remodeled our home in historic Lutherville And so who you're about to listen to is a neighbor of mine who's lived there for how many years? We moved to Lutherville in 1971 so we're only 51 years now 51 years in Lutherville, Maryland so I think he knows something about our community where we serve and so I'll make sure to Find out a little bit more about that and how it's changed over the years

[00:01:41] Speaker: But my guest today is Dr. Jim, that's what the kids call him at least. And so he has a very fascinating background and he has been, and I wrote a few things down here, but he has been the director of psychology, is that correct, in Shepherd Pratt for those, for roughly 30 years or so? Right, about 30 years, joined the staff back in 1971 when we moved to Lutherville. So that was, that's primarily how I know of him, but he has

[00:02:09] Speaker: Just an amazing resume here. So he he was in the FBI hostage negotiation team for many, many years. He was the chief psychologist for the Baltimore County Police Department from the 70s until around 2000. Right.

[00:02:25] Speaker: Yes, retired from when he retired around 2001, I think. And so, I mean, he he's been affiliated with the Orioles as a team psychiatrist for about 10 years. He's wearing a World Series ring right now on his on his hand. And so he's he's worked with professional athletes. He's been

[00:02:43] Speaker: Involved with the US Olympic team in the 90s. He's worked as a team psychiatrist for the Washington Capitals He's an outside consultant currently for What explain that again? That's one piece. I didn't write down exactly Gavin de Becker and associates it's really the country's leading firm that provides bodyguard and protective services for public figures and

[00:03:06] Speaker: and celebrities, and most of our clients have stalkers. And I run the forensic psychological services for the company, which involves threat assessment and profiling and case management. And also I do a lot of teaching for the company as well.

[00:03:25] Speaker: I just find it fascinating. So you're a wonderful neighbor and I'm happy to have met you these past two years. So I just wanted to take an opportunity now to just get to know you a little bit better. And so that's where I'd like to start is just, I mean, that's quite the resume. And so as someone who's lived in the community, I mean, let's start. I know you were not born here.

[00:03:44] Speaker: Right, originally from Pennsylvania, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, it's about 30 miles northwest of Philadelphia. And born and raised, went to school there, was just up there last weekend, sadly to attend a memorial service for a friend, a young lady named Jean, who we lived across the street from one another and were

[00:04:08] Speaker: first met each other when we were infants and then ended up in 1946 starting first grade at a local parochial school and became lifelong friends and she passed away and we had a memorial service for it last weekend. So I got to go back to Pottstown. Wow. Do you go back often?

[00:04:28] Speaker: Not really. There's a family plot there. I'm the youngest of six, and it's only my one sister and I that are around at this point. But if I'm passing through, I'll go by.

[00:04:44] Speaker: uh... kind of bittersweet to return because i grew up during a golden era uh... post-world war two in the fifties when they probably had a hundred percent employment in that town they had bethlem steel firestone tire uh... jacob's aircraft and there was a great deal of affluence in the town uh... two movie theaters uh... friday night downtown shopping was wall-to-wall people uh... and nowadays it's one of the many kind of

[00:05:14] Speaker: more or less failed communities that just don't have the economy anymore. It's kind of a small version of Baltimore in the sense it's got all the same street crime, drug problems, et cetera, et cetera, that we have locally in the city.

[00:05:31] Speaker: Right. Well, well, so it sounds like so you came from that background in Pottsville. So from what you've shared with me, it sounds like your education at that point might not have been the greatest as to what you had available to you in high school. Right. And it sounds like it was a pot's town, not to be confused with Pottsville. Oh, OK.

[00:05:53] Speaker: Pottsville is where yingling beer comes from, but Pottstown is Mrs. Smith's Pies. That's their claim to fame. I went to the University of Delaware and that's all you had was yingling beer for some reason. When I was a kid, that was the cheapest beer you could buy. That's what you drank. I think we answered it. When you couldn't pay for anything else, you bought yingling and now it's this very fashionable pocket. Well, let's not go that far.

[00:06:20] Speaker: It has made a resurgence. All right, so going from high school, so you started off at Villanova. Was that right? Studying engineering. My dad was an engineer and I sort of followed in his footsteps. And then later for my PhD, my PhD major was clinical psychology and I'm board certified in both clinical and forensic psychology.

[00:06:45] Speaker: But my doctoral minor was human factors engineering, which is a combination of engineering and psychology. It came out of World War II aviation, where the engineers were designing these P-51 Mustangs that were going to be flown by 18-year-old high school graduates.

[00:07:03] Speaker: And they never thought about the pilot, so they would put 20 different switches on the control panel that all looked exactly alike and were only about a half inch apart. One of them dropped bombs, the other turned on the landing lights. And I'm also a pilot, so there was a natural fit there. Or they would have critical controls that were up behind the pilot, and you had to look at them in a mirror.

[00:07:28] Speaker: And then somebody got the bright idea, we ought to design these airplanes around the pilot. That's where human factors engineering comes from. When do you think that started? In World War II. And then I actually did consulting at Lockheed Martin for a while and it was fun. I enjoyed doing that, but then I decided to really stick with what I was doing at the hospital.

[00:07:54] Speaker: Well, my question to you is, I did this whole bio on you. I didn't even mention your military service. So when did you first get interest into the military? It sounds like with your background, that's not necessarily the thing I would have assumed you to do in college.

[00:08:12] Speaker: Well, if anybody doubts that children are influenced by what they see on TV or in the movies, I'm the poster child that will tell you that it has an impact. In 1948, I saw John Wayne in a movie called The Sands of Iwo Jima. And it's actually an excellent movie, and it's about the Iwo Jima invasion in World War II against the Japanese.

[00:08:40] Speaker: And I was so impressed with the movie at age 8 and watching it in the Hippodrome Theater in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1949 that I thought, that's what I want to be when I grow up. And then when I went to Villanova, I joined the Navy ROTC program and they had a Marine Corps drill instructor who

[00:09:00] Speaker: should have been on a Marine Corps recruiting poster. I mean, he was very squared away in his dress blue uniform and all that. And by the end of the freshman year, I felt that I wasn't really ready for college. I was doing all right, but I knew that I could have done better. And I had a couple of conversations with a Marine Corps drill instructor and decided that I was going to join the Marine Corps.

[00:09:28] Speaker: So that summer, my parents both were wondering what the hell I was going to do since I decided not to go back to college. And late in the summer, I was walking home and I happened to come by the post office where there was a Marine Corps recruiter sign out front and I went inside and there was a recruiter and I chatted with him for a while and signed some papers and went home to have dinner with my parents.

[00:09:54] Speaker: And honest truth is I sat down and I said oh my and I was home by myself at that point the rest of the the other five kids at all left home by that time and Because I'm the youngest of the family and I said well I got a job mom and dad and My mother was in particular was most worried about what I was gonna do and said oh, that's great That's great. When do you start and I said actually I have to go to Philadelphia. I start tomorrow

[00:10:24] Speaker: Really? You have to go to Philadelphia? What kind of job did you get? And I said, well, I just joined the Marine Corps for six years. But God bless them. I think they were stunned. My dad was a World War I Army veteran, so he was on board right away. And my mom never expressed any reservations about it at all. And they were both as supportive as she can possibly be.

[00:10:52] Speaker: And incidentally, I'll use this as an opportunity to emphasize something. Obviously, what we hear about a white privilege is absolutely true. There's no doubt about white privilege. But I've come to believe that the really powerful privilege in life is family privilege.

[00:11:13] Speaker: And I was born into a funny, crazy, imperfect, loving family, where from the first breath I drew, I knew I was cherished. I knew I was important to my parents. I was valued. And sadly, nowadays, they're just an army of children who don't get that and don't get anything near to it.

[00:11:52] Speaker: Well, actually, the CDC has an entire website about what is called ACE, Adverse Childhood Events, traumas that children experience. And they use a 10-point rating scale. And basically, they've partnered with the Kaiser Foundation to do a study that now includes over 25,000 subjects. So it's a huge medical, social, psychological study of the impact of trauma on children.

[00:12:04] Speaker: and it really builds the foundation for the rest of your life.

[00:12:21] Speaker: And using their 10-point scale, if you look at the data, if a child has a score or an adult has a childhood score of five or above, it has ruinous impact on their life. The likelihood that they're going to have a life that turns out to be a good story is slim to none. It's that bad.

[00:12:49] Speaker: And, you know, sadly, they're just an army of children who don't get the foundation. And the findings in this research are independent of ethnicity. They're closely associated with poverty. But if a kid is Irish-American and grows up with a lot of trauma exposure both in the family and out of the family, they're going to have a tough road to hoe later on in life.

[00:13:15] Speaker: and virtually every bad outcome you can think of. Early deaths, increased suicide rate, much, much higher rates of being a victim and or perpetrator of violent behavior. It's a horrible story. Well, I know I'm going down a rabbit hole here, but as a parent of three small children, I do think about the amount of time that I coddle or say I love you and

[00:13:39] Speaker: I'm just in love with these three kids I have in a way that was not the experience I had growing up. I did not hear that as a child, period, for my father. And I often wonder, how can you overdo it as a parent? So it sounds like that's a superpower that you feel grateful for, that you knew you were cherished right away.

[00:13:59] Speaker: But as a parent, can we pour it on too thick? Oh, yeah, I kind of had the best of both worlds. My parents were particularly my mother was the disciplinarian in the family. And so we had very strict discipline. Plus, I went to Catholic schools where the nuns didn't put up with anything. You know, the only bullies in the school were my homeroom teacher, Sister Bella Lugosi, and the school principal, Sister Darth Vader.

[00:14:29] Speaker: But so there was a strict disciplinary code both in the home. You didn't talk back to your parents. They were the law. They set the expectations about behavior. But that was coupled with this kind of an atmosphere where the idea that you weren't cared for never even occurs to you.

[00:14:55] Speaker: Whereas so many children lie at bed at night before they fall asleep, they're just thinking about how awful their day was, where they were beaten or exposed to substance abuse or whatever. And you just cannot reasonably expect that kids are raised in that environment.

[00:15:13] Speaker: are going to turn out to be well-functioning citizens. It rarely happens. There are what are called invulnerable children who have both bad DNA and bad environments that somehow make it through that. But they're rare. There's a psychologist who was at the University of Minnesota named Norman Garvey, who did a great deal of research on what are called invulnerable children.

[00:15:38] Speaker: And it's a fascinating area of research, but not surprisingly, it's not usually the outcome when a kid is burdened by one of these horrible environmental experiences. So as a parent, we can both be loving, but lay down the law. Yeah. You know, not necessarily be best friends, but

[00:16:01] Speaker: I find that challenging because I do find myself wanting to be best friends. It's a tendency to do. I work long hours, you get home, you wanna be with your buddies, your kids, and learning that they test you at every minute. Oh, they do, absolutely. They're looking for guidance and parenting is a challenge. There's no doubt about that, it really is.

[00:16:28] Speaker: And you know, you're always starting with a blank slate, you know what you received from your parents. So that's a guide. So if your parents were abusive, one of the things we know is that runs in families, you know, that people who grow up and are abusive with their own children very often were abused themselves. And it works in the other direction. If you had good hearted, well intentioned parents, loving parents, that's what you bring into raising your own children.

[00:17:00] Speaker: But yeah, I think one of the most important jobs in the world is raising children. Well, I think it's been my privilege that I've had it for, I've only have a six year old, that's my oldest, so I'm getting to experience this the first time, but when I first heard about your background as a hostage negotiator,

[00:17:18] Speaker: I was thinking, I'm doing this. I'm literally dealing with a hostage negotiation at times when it comes to TV or homework or anything else. And he knows every button specifically with my wife. I mean, he is either part of me is proud because of how quickly he's learned. And then part of me is like, this son of a gun, you know, you just all you want to do is go out of a window.

[00:17:42] Speaker: And I just, I don't know what to do. And sometimes you just laugh and you can't help yourself. Well, I think the key to it is that behavior should always have consequences. And, you know, there's good consequences and not so good consequences for kids. The good consequences, hey, good job, Charlie. Good job, Henry. You're really hanging in there. I appreciate that for helping out, whatever.

[00:18:10] Speaker: And you catch a mother good and you lay it on thick, but when they're bad, there's gotta be consequences. That's when the naughty chair can come in handy. My mother, uh, you know, I lost her years ago, but I just, I always remember she told me, even as a child, as she was disappointing us, she would say,

[00:18:26] Speaker: When you become a parent, the hardest thing to do is back up what you say, because it's not convenient. So when you're in the grocery store and your kid's acting crazy and you say, if you do it again, we're going home or whatever it turns out, when you have to follow up. And if you're at the family party, you say, do that again, we're heading out or whatever it

[00:18:42] Speaker: It is. You actually have to follow through or they'll figure out it's just empty. It's just empty talk. And the other thing is that that a lot of times parents overdo explaining things and it turns into a debate. And what you're really doing there is teaching a three or six year old how to be a lawyer.

[00:19:03] Speaker: And they all but why you know what that kind of stuff where they just drive you nuts with but but Somebody else's mom lets them do it or their dad lets them do it. That's kind of thing What's the answer to that? Well, the answer is you got to set limits, you know, okay end of conversation You either pick up your toys or you sit on the step. That's it. That's it

[00:19:26] Speaker: Yeah, no other options and then you make sure that you because a lot of times if you don't start early with that By the time they're as big as you are and they're teenagers You can't pick them up and put on the step. It's much harder to enforce the rules at that

[00:19:43] Speaker: So the training's got to really start pretty early on. There's actually, it's an older book, but it's called Children the Challenge, written by a guy named Rudolf Dreykers. And he talks about the motives for mischief. Why do children misbehave in the first place? And what he's come up with is brilliant. It's a short list. They misbehave to get attention. They misbehave to get revenge.

[00:20:10] Speaker: They misbehave to get control. And the last one is they misbehave to retain a position of helplessness. And what that means is clean up your toys and the kid goes, and the parent says, oh, it's easier if I clean it up myself, you know, where they don't want to grow up. They like being little babies.

[00:20:33] Speaker: And it's, you know, one or a combination of those. When a kid, virtually any misbehavior in a child, you can attribute to a combination or one or two of the four reasons. Get attention, get revenge. They're angry at you and they want to pay back. Maintain control. They don't want to be controlled. They want to be in charge or wanting to maintain a position of helplessness.

[00:21:00] Speaker: And it's a great tool. You have that and why, you know, when Henry or Charlie is doing their thing, you can immediately think, OK, what's he looking for now? But if you identify it, how do you is there a different course of action if I identify their motivating factor? Well, there is. I mean, if there if they are doing it for attention,

[00:21:26] Speaker: Is it the kind of behavior that you want to give attention to? Like whining or temper tantrum, that type of thing. You know, there's some behaviors that, as I said before, catch them while they're being good. You know, dole out the attention when they're being nice citizens with good table manners.

[00:21:47] Speaker: You know when they're fighting with each other If it's just kind of annoyance that they're involved in Ignore it don't get involved don't get suckered into it because they often want that you know for you to take sides If it gets out of control where they're going to hurt somebody then you got to intervene That type of stuff

[00:22:09] Speaker: Yes, I actually started my career as a child psychologist at Shepherd Pratt and ended up with the FBI as a hostage negotiator. A true story about that. The training program that I went through was run by a brilliant FBI agent, a guy named Gary Nestner, who's sort of a legendary figure in the FBI and has written a brilliant book about his career as a negotiator.

[00:22:37] Speaker: After the classwork at the FBI Academy, you start doing practical exercises at Hogan's Alley, which is a town at the FBI Academy down in Quantico. And each of the buildings represents, is actually a reproduction of a famous crime site in the history of the FBI. And you practice negotiation there where an agent is the bad guy who took hostages and you're the negotiator.

[00:23:03] Speaker: Well, the the the bad guy had robbed a bank and was holding hostages in the bank and I was the negotiator and it was my very first time as a Negotiator and when I finished up the hostages were released and the guy surrendered it Gary Nestor came up to me. He said doc That's the first time you've ever done a negotiation. I'm really impressed You got a natural talent for this and I said Gary, you know back at my hospital I have a private practice where I do a lot of marriage counseling marriage counseling hostage negotiation and

[00:23:33] Speaker: Same thing, no difference. Very interesting. I mean, I guess why do you say that exactly? I want to make you drill down a little bit further. How is it similar to just a normal fight with the wife?

[00:23:47] Speaker: Well, the marriage counseling is where you're talking to people who are there because there's a problem in the relationship. And your goal as a marriage counselor is to try to identify what the problem is and then what solutions are there.

[00:24:05] Speaker: And the similarity with hostage negotiations is the hostage taker has a problem. He's stuck somewhere that he can't get out of and he's trying to bargain with you over what he's going to do with the hostages or if it's a barricade situation where there's a bad guy with a gun and there's five felony warrants for him and the house is surrounded.

[00:24:30] Speaker: He doesn't want to come out because he knows he's going to go to prison for a long time and he's trying to Negotiate with you. So in the broad sense, there's a lot of similarities, you know where you're trying to you're in real time trying to assess a problem In real time talking to upset people, you know people come from marriage counseling Don't come in with a big smile on their face. They usually come in looking unhappy and

[00:24:57] Speaker: Or at least one of them is very unhappy. So there's a lot of emotion attached to it. And you want to make in the hostage barricade situation, you want to make the bad guy feel that you're on his side, that you're trying to help them resolve a very difficult situation. And the same with marriage counseling. So it's not a stretch to say that some of the skills, there's overlap.

[00:25:23] Speaker: Well, I've joked with you before that I feel like I'm an unlicensed psychiatrist myself at times because the amount of information that's shared with me occasionally, just in the nature of selling someone's home, helping them buy a home, you get to learn so much about the intricacies of their relationship, where the power struggle is, if you're not being heard, if you're not being listened to, oftentimes financial come into it where someone might not know the whole story of the family's financials.

[00:25:52] Speaker: And the amount of times, and it's one of the more interesting parts of, I think, my job, which keeps it for being Groundhog's Day, is that you're dealing with people. And so by its very nature, it's interesting. I could sell this house, you know, in the house down the street, and it could be such a different experience for me because of the individuals involved.

[00:26:12] Speaker: And so I feel like I've learned some of those skills and I'd say if I had a new salesperson trying to understand how to be, you know, you know, successful in this career, you have to understand enough of what you're describing to at least get by. Yeah. Because boy, if you blow it up and you add some fuel to that fire.

[00:26:30] Speaker: not only are you not selling a house, they're out the door. Right. And they're going to tell other people about it as well. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The human beings are fascinating. There was a psychologist, famous psychologist named Gordon Alport and towards the end of his career, someone was interviewing him and asked him why he became a psychologist. And his answer was because I'm nosy. Oh yeah.

[00:26:53] Speaker: But the other thing is that in our culture, and a lot of it has to do with media, etc., but people in our culture, unlike many other cultures, are very prone towards self-disclosure.

[00:27:09] Speaker: Including the self-disclosure that comes as a surprise, you know, it's like the the greyhound bus effect, you know, where you sit down next to this perfect stranger and By the end of the first hundred miles, you know their entire life story whether you wanted to know or not

[00:27:26] Speaker: Well, I think that's it. I've listened to I mean, it's kind of semi controversial, but I grew up. I used to do medical sales. I worked for Eli Lilly and I called a psychiatrist. I did that for seven years and I had a lot of road time. I did the whole state of Maryland. I did most of the Eastern Shore. So I was listening to Howard Stern interview people. And I'll tell you, I think he's the most interesting interviewer of all time because of that. He actually cares because he doesn't interview people he doesn't have interest in.

[00:27:53] Speaker: It's one of the reasons I've decided to agree to do a podcast is because the only people you'll ever hear on this little podcast are people I'm fascinated by and he just is fat within 30 minutes. He knows everything about these people. He knows he just everything does that like down to their sexual habits to the right to what they ate for breakfast and it's just I just find that so interesting and I feel

[00:28:18] Speaker: the amount of information you've probably learned in your career about people that have shared details they might not have ever shared with anyone else. I mean, is that part of the gratification of that job? I think the gratification in my case is knowing that you've helped some people.

[00:28:36] Speaker: knowing that you've had an impact. And quite recently, I got this lovely letter from a fellow who was a patient of mine at Shepherd Pratt, and he was a Canadian gentleman that came down to the States to receive treatment at our hospital. I'm going to interrupt you just for a second, just in case you're listening and you're not familiar with Shepherd Pratt.

[00:29:02] Speaker: Yeah, Shepherd Pratt is a private psychiatric hospital. It was established back in the 19th century by Moses Shepherd and Enoch Pratt. They were two wealthy Quaker merchants in Baltimore. And they left a parcel of land right off of Charles Street, not far from where we are right now. Very close, yeah. And they gave a chunk of money

[00:29:24] Speaker: And it was back during the Civil War era, so the way the endowment and everything was set up was that they were not permitted that the hospital, which was going to be a Quaker institution, and is still a Quaker institution to this day,

[00:29:41] Speaker: was chartered in a way that allowed the interest from the endowment to be used to build the facility, and they weren't permitted to touch the principle, because Quakers are notoriously thrifty. And in any case, it really took a good, because of the Civil War intervening, it took a good over 30 years. And what they would do is they would accumulate enough interest

[00:30:07] Speaker: to buy bricks. They would buy bricks and haul them in by wagon, pile them up on the ground. When they had enough money to buy lumber, they would bring the lumber in. But it took a good 30 some years before they began construction. And I think the hospital actually first opened in around 1892 and went on to become one of the leading psychiatric hospitals in the entire country. And I had not heard of it until I was looking for internships. I had to do a year-long internship.

[00:30:37] Speaker: And by the way, I'm a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. You know the difference. Psychologists are smarter. Is that so? No, actually there's an old joke about a psychiatrist would rather be obtuse than be right, and a psychologist would rather be wrong than be obtuse. And if you knew psychologists and psychiatrists, you'd probably feel there's a lot of wisdom in that. Interesting.

[00:31:07] Speaker: Yeah, I've spoken to both, especially in my last career. So I've had some experiences. But what I find is that they're also just people. And the difference is just because it says, you know, you address them as doctor. Boy, have I learned that's not not the case. Oh, my Lord, it's it could be very different.

[00:31:24] Speaker: Well, I'm a firm believer in the bell-shaped curve. There are great plumbers at one end of the curve, and on the other end of the curve there are horrible plumbers, and in the middle are average plumbers. And the same applies to any profession in the world, including medicine and psychiatry and psychology.

[00:31:45] Speaker: No, there's that fifteen percent that are really, you know, they'll be Hall of Fame, you know, twenty game season winners, things like that. And at the other end of the fifteen percent, the ones that end up in jail for malpractice and things.

[00:32:02] Speaker: Then in the middle you have the the average this the you know the 65% that are average What's the I heard another line the doctors used to have a million jokes about themselves, but they'd say you know what you call The guy that graduated last at medical school doctor

[00:32:17] Speaker: Right. And it's like, Oh, that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So, um, we'll get, I mean, just, I want to now kind of revisit your experiences here in Lutherville. So, I mean, I can't possibly fit your whole career and everything. I want to ask you in a, in a one podcast segment, but, uh, here in Lutherville, this is where you've lived. It's the Towson area. It's north of Baltimore, what? 20 minutes north of Baltimore. So.

[00:32:44] Speaker: You've lived here for 40 or 50 years. How have you seen it change over that period of time? Well, the good news about Lutherville is that the historic community area has changed very little in 50 years and the community association and the leadership of the community association really get the credit for that. And you have this and I don't think this is unique to Lutherville.

[00:33:12] Speaker: But there's this relatively small group of people over the last 50 years that have done the heavy lifting for the community. And I don't think that, and my wife Kathleen was on the community association board for a while, but I don't think that the membership in the community association has ever been much above about 50% of the residents in the community, which I think is unfortunate because everybody benefits from it.

[00:33:40] Speaker: But this group has successfully prevented development in the community. When we moved to Lutherville in 1971, the Charles Street extension was already on the county maps. And this was where Charles Street extended right through Lutherville.

[00:34:01] Speaker: Would have taken off the whole front of our property would have taken off the house at the corner of Morris and and all the homes on Front Avenue with a four lane version of Charles Street that ran all the way up to Timonium Road and Joined up with 83 that was the beltway. I'm sorry with the 83 I

[00:34:21] Speaker: Expressway, Route 83, and the Community Association fought that tooth and nail. We had a county council woman, Barbara Batcher, that was supporting us, and she played a big role along with a whole bunch of other people in having the historic district established.

[00:34:43] Speaker: And on purpose, the sign, the marker for it is set up right in the right of way of the Charles Street extension, where it says you're in a national historic site. Now they did that on purpose, selected that. But in any case, we moved, my wife found Lutherville and found our first house in Lutherville located on Kurtz Avenue.

[00:35:09] Speaker: And we were there running the house for a couple of years and then the house went up that we were running went up for sale. But we decided to look at other properties and we found our place next door to your home and I think your home was built in 1856. It's one of the very first.

[00:35:31] Speaker: According to what I've seen, it's 1852. 1852. Yours is a few years later, right? Yeah, ours was built. We thought ours wasn't built until 1875, but it turned out that that date came for another reason. And our place, when they did the sesquicentennial,

[00:35:52] Speaker: They had a historian really go over all the records about the community. And our house was apparently built in 1860, right before the start of the Civil War. So with eight years, it was built originally as the headmaster's house for the college. I thought it was the mother's home of Dr. Morris who built my home.

[00:36:14] Speaker: No, I might be wrong. My understanding was that the connection with the Morris family is that it was originally built as the headmaster's house for the college. And in fact, there's a somewhere we have a copy of the like the program for the girls college, the Lutheran Seminar for Women.

[00:36:40] Speaker: And everyone's probably seen that or driven by it that's from the area. It's a pretty large building. It's now basically a nursing care facility. And next to it is a picture of our house, which is clearly our house, and it's identified as a headmaster's house. And the date on that is about the early 1860s.

[00:37:03] Speaker: And so how have you seen just this county in general because you for what 30 years you've been a part of the you know, the Baltimore County Police Department and in that division. So how have you seen Baltimore County specifically change over all these years?

[00:37:19] Speaker: Well, the county itself has really grown. In fact, when I got involved, I was hired with the county police department by a legendary law enforcement figure named Neil Behan, a wonderful person. He passed away recently and I went to the viewing for him. But he had a fascinating career. Many people have heard or seen the movie Serpico.

[00:37:46] Speaker: It was a very early movie with Al Pacino starring in it, and it was based on a true story of Serpico was a cop in the New York City Police Department, and right when he got out of the police academy, he became aware of a great deal of corruption among police officers in the New York City Police Department.

[00:38:07] Speaker: And he began reporting what he was observing up the chain of command and discovered that he was reporting it to people who were also corrupt. But eventually he got to a deputy commissioner who was named Neil Behan and Behan reported to the FBI and the governor of the state, et cetera. And it led to a whole effort to clean up the police department. And this was back in the sixties, I think is when that happened.

[00:38:35] Speaker: And Neil Behan at that point had already been with the city police department, New York City Police Department for over 20 years or so. And he was a marked man after he really exposed all the corruption to the federal authorities and state authorities. So he took a retirement, came to Baltimore County and took over the police department.

[00:38:57] Speaker: And at that point, he used to joke that it was kind of like Andy and Mayberry RFD, you know, where you had this little bitty police department with not much business. But he arrived at a time when the county was kind of going through a growth explosion.

[00:39:18] Speaker: And he ended up hiring me to run sex services, but wonderful, great. I've been fortunate not only in my family, the support that I've had from my family throughout my lifetime, but the Marine Corps experience had a huge impact on my life.

[00:39:37] Speaker: But I've also had wonderful mentors, and I would count Chief Neal Behan among that group. The fellow who hired me at Shepherd Pratt, Dr. Bob Gibson, who was another superstar in his profession. He was president of the American Psychiatric Association.

[00:39:53] Speaker: And he basically adopted me when I came here as an intern because he was a Navy doctor and I was a Marine. So you had the Navy and the Marine Corps. And we joked that the Marines is the men's department of the Navy. And but they're, you know, they're sister services. And he was all he was from the Philadelphia area where I'm from. So we had a lot in common. But he played an enormous impact on my career.

[00:40:21] Speaker: And how specifically do you think that that's changed in the county? So getting back to just the county itself, how has the county changed as a citizen just watching it change? Well, some of the changes have been for the better, some not so much. I think that the city itself, for years, has had terrible problems.

[00:40:47] Speaker: To put it in perspective, I talked earlier about the whole phenomena of adverse childhood events on children. We've seen what's happened in the city with the crime rate and the homicide rate and everything.

[00:41:03] Speaker: In the 50-some years that I have lived and worked in Baltimore metropolitan area, the homicide rate in the city, the body count in the 50-some years is between 15,000 and 20,000 homicides.

[00:41:23] Speaker: And for every homicide, there are two or three people, there's a two to three time ratio of people who have gunshot wounds, non-fatal gunshot wounds. So for every time you hear of a homicide, add two or three other victims that have gunshot wounds that often result in lifetime disability and millions of dollars in medical care over a period of the person's lifetime.

[00:41:48] Speaker: But when you're talking about those kinds of numbers, where you have 15,000 to 20,000 young, mostly African-American males, in that group there had to be somebody who could have discovered the cure for cancer, somebody who could have written a great American novel, the waste of talent.

[00:42:06] Speaker: is mind boggling and uh what's your reason i mean this is a loaded question because i don't think anyone has a specific reason but of all people you might i mean why why haven't we seen a significant change it's not like we're all not aware of this issue

[00:42:22] Speaker: Everyone I know seems to be aware of it. Why how I think it's because of gradualism You know people can it's like the old thing about throwing the frog in the boil of water you know if you just put them in a pot of water and you don't Grad just gradually start turning the heat up. They won't jump out because it takes time it occurs gradually and human beings have an enormous ability to Tolerate things particularly if they develop over time, right?

[00:42:51] Speaker: And I often think, you know, what would have happened back in the 1950s if overnight Baltimore had had more than 300 homicides in a year? It'd be a military zone. Oh, absolutely. They declared martial law. Right.

[00:43:10] Speaker: there would have been some dramatic intervention if it happened overnight. Well then, what I see is when you have the riots in Baltimore, as long as it happened in the streets that people didn't seem to quote unquote care about, it was fine. As soon as they stepped over and they went to the tourist zones and the downtown Baltimore areas where there's significant portions of tourism and wealth, oh boy, that mattered. Those areas didn't get affected.

[00:43:38] Speaker: Well, it mattered, but the way it mattered or the impact of that is people moved, people, you know, there's been a huge flight out of the city over the years. Well, it's interesting you say that because I've been hearing, so I was born and raised 20 minutes from the city and my parents thought Baltimore was just the worst, right? That's all, we're farm folks, so to us we go to the city for an oral game and that was the big city. That was it, yeah. That was it, and we'd never go a couple times a year.

[00:44:05] Speaker: And so we live 20 minutes, but it might as well be the other side of the country. People visit San Diego. But what was that? That was in the 80s. In the 80s. Well, things had already gone downhill by that time. Yeah. And I know my wife and I used to we would celebrate New Year's by going down into the city and going to Lexington Market and things like that.

[00:44:26] Speaker: We haven't done anything like that in ages. In the 70s, you could still go into the city because the crime was isolated to certain areas. But nowadays, the carjackings and things like that are virtually everywhere. In fact, when I first did some consulting with Baltimore City Police Department years ago,

[00:44:48] Speaker: And I was assigned to one of the precincts or the districts, as they call them. And the district commander was an African-American gentleman, a major, wonderful guy, wonderful police officer. And I always remember the very first time I met with him, he said,

[00:45:05] Speaker: Doc, now what you need to really understand about Baltimore City is as soon as you come into the city, it doesn't matter what neighborhood you're in, you're always within walking distance of a teenager with a loaded handgun. And that was back in the 1970s. Imagine what it's like nowadays. So that's been a big change. And the county is affected by that. The county is seeing that phenomena is developing out here as well.

[00:45:34] Speaker: It's interesting that you say that because I still help sell in the city all the time. I have multiple closings happening in the next couple weeks in the city. And so I feel that I have certain generational differences in the opinion of people of Baltimore City.

[00:45:51] Speaker: I have a lot of young people that love the city. And there are areas where there's nightlife, there's restaurants, it's very, it's flourishing. And then you deal with some people that I think have a memory and it just sticks in their head and they just think of it all as being quote unquote bad. Yeah. Well, I think it's the media gets blamed, but it's their obligation is to report the news. And when you just turn on the 11 o'clock news night after night after night and the lead story is another shooting.

[00:46:21] Speaker: The other thing is denial is not only a river in Africa. Human beings don't like bad news. They find it easy to turn their eyes away from it.

[00:46:35] Speaker: And I mentioned that I still work on a part-time basis for this security firm that does protective services. And the owner of the company, Gavin De Becker, a wonderful guy, wrote a book entitled Gift of Fear. In fact, I gave you guys copies of that book and Protecting the Gift about Security for Children.

[00:47:00] Speaker: But one of the major points he makes is that we've evolved with an alarm system that alerts us to danger, but also we can deny the signals that we're getting. You know, we get a lot of information about danger and risk, but we can turn a blind eye to it.

[00:47:21] Speaker: Well i would i would say you know i i've seen a lot of good in the city and i i'm grateful to know a lot of people that are actively making steps to make the city better they're investing in the city they're helping to change the parts that you can and some i want baltimore to be a great place to live

[00:47:41] Speaker: and I'm proud to say I'm from Baltimore so when I travel I'm proud to say I'm from Baltimore and so you know I'm proud to serve the community that's around Baltimore and in it and so it's been an interesting perspective to be someone that gets to see people that are generationally from here as well as people that

[00:47:59] Speaker: move here. Some people only know Baltimore from the wire. That's it. That's all they've ever seen. And we have some of the best communities I'm aware of. And so there's communities that are historic here that like where we live, it's just a loving, beautiful place to live, great neighbors. And so there's so much there and it's so much I think it's worthy of fighting for. And so I'm passionate to give back to the community in the ways that I can. And and I think real estate is a very powerful way to change and influence the community.

[00:48:29] Speaker: And I think owning real estate is one of the best things I can do in my world in terms of educating people and getting them to understand how real estate and wealth can change their lives and the lives of their children because I'm not a psychologist, but I understand real estate and I understand if you can, you know, I've heard this statistic and maybe you can back it up or maybe you can dispute it.

[00:48:52] Speaker: Owning real estate is one of the biggest statistical differences or markers between your opportunities in life or whether or not your parents own their home. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that connects also up with my own pessimism.

[00:49:09] Speaker: My pessimism arises out of the fact that it really doesn't seem that anything really meaningful is being done about the issue. The children exposed to trauma in the inner city and you know, there's talk about will build more basketball courts build more jobs.

[00:49:28] Speaker: Well, those things, I think, may have some impact, but not the profound impact to really reverse something that now has been just going on for generation after generation after generation.

[00:49:45] Speaker: There's never, to my knowledge, there's never been a serious effort to really address where this problem starts. Could it be that the people that helped to create those opportunities have to care enough to want to change it?

[00:50:01] Speaker: Think where it has to come from is leadership. I mean if you look at any oppressed Not that I'm a great historian, but my understanding is if you look at other oppressed minorities What has it taken for them to throw off their chains and it's been leadership that came from within So, you know

[00:50:26] Speaker: an old white guy like me is not going to fix it. And I think that in my not well-informed opinion, it will change when there is leadership on the level of Martin Luther King, when someone steps forward. Because it's unimaginable to me that he would have kept silent about this. I can't see that happening.

[00:50:55] Speaker: maybe why I think it will change I just matter of when I'm an optimist I choose to think of it that way and I I just get to know so many people that I think are capable of influencing others in a meaningful powerful way and

[00:51:12] Speaker: I want to live in a better world. They want to live in a better world. I want to believe in a bright future. I think thinking of the alternative is not a reality I wish to live in. And I think there's a lot of people that agree with that way of thinking.

[00:51:27] Speaker: And I have a very hard time watching and it's funny you say like people like to deny themselves Reality and I don't choose to watch much of mainstream media in general. Mm-hmm You know, I'm I just don't I just don't feel I just so negative that it influences my world in such a horrible. Yeah way then Dealing with the positivity of the people that I get to work with and so I like to be educated I read the news. I just won't watch it. Mm-hmm because it's just

[00:51:55] Speaker: I can't hear the da da da da. It's too much. It's too much for me. And it's all brief sound bites. They don't really go into any kind of detail on it. And if it is detailed, then it immediately becomes terribly politicized. I switched back and forth from CNN to Fox News and the

[00:52:17] Speaker: In both cases, there's no straight news anymore. It's all editorialized. I mean, I grew up where the most respected person in the United States was Walter Cronkite, the most trusted person. And who trusts broadcast news these days?

[00:52:38] Speaker: I don't know, they can only trust their podcasters now. That's what we have to choose. But on that note, I could keep you here for 10 more hours, but I want to be respectful of your time and so I want to say thank you for joining me on this. I'm going to have to have you back. There's too many things I want to ask you about and so many specifics that I think would be very fascinating to discuss with you.

[00:53:00] Speaker: So I appreciate you coming on here and not like I said, I hope to have you back. So thanks so much for joining me. It would be my pleasure. And I tell people that I'm like Mark Twain. I've had a lot of interesting adventures in my life, some of which actually happened. Yeah. Well, what's the other line? Like I don't I don't let the truth get away in the way of my story story. Exactly. Well, thanks again. And I looked forward to seeing everybody on the next episode of all roads lead to real estate.