Finding Light in the Darkness With Reggie Williams: How to Overcome Adversity and See the Good in Any Situation
Resilience is key to survive in a world full of hardships. It allows you to adapt and recover from whatever life throws your way, giving you the strength to move forward, find light in the darkness, and master your fate.
Although you can be born with resilience in your blood, it’s also a skill set you can develop. Resilience relies on your outlook and the ability to see opportunity during challenging times. Resilience is putting your energy into things you can control — and that’s exactly what Reggie Williams did.
Throughout his life, Reggie has dealt with countless obstacles. Born hearing impaired, he developed a speech impediment as a child and had to work extra hard to improve his articulation. In addition to attending public school, Reggie also attended the Michigan School for the Deaf in evenings and on weekends.
But adversity doesn’t stop after childhood. Reggie, who spent his adolescence preparing to attend the University of Michigan after high school, had his dreams crushed. The university’s football coach came to Reggie’s high school and told him that if he decided to go to Michigan, Reggie should “do him a favor” and not try out for the football team.
With some support from his father, Reggie picked himself up and got into Dartmouth. While proving his excellence on the football field, he received hate from some of his fellow team members. Because of Reggie’s skin color, two white teammates refused to be in the locker room near him. Instead of taking it out on these two teammates, Reggie channeled his energy into football. And, upon hearing about the hateful remarks, the freshman head coach nominated Reggie to be captain of the team.
Even after all of these challenges, one of the most difficult times for Reggie was when his best friend, Lenny, took his own life. Reggie often wondered what he could’ve done differently to support his friend. But he took away the greatest lesson from this challenging time: we can be resilient, but what makes us more resilient is having other people to help us stay strong.
Listen to this episode of The Judd Shaw Way Podcast with Judd Shaw featuring Reggie Williams, ex-NFL linebacker, former Disney executive, and author. They go deep into Reggie’s childhood and backstory, discussing how he turned adversity into positivity. Reggie also shares tips to be more resilient, why he’s focused on bettering the community, and the importance of supporting others through the difficult times.
In this episode:
- [0:36] Judd Shaw introduces his guest, Reggie Williams
- [1:24] Reggie shares why he wrote the book Resilient by Nature
- [4:39] Reggie talks about the challenges he’s faced and how he learned to become resilient
- [8:57] What was it like for Reggie in his first-ever leadership position?
- [11:55] How Reggie dealt with the loss of his best friend, Lenny — and why he believes it’s so important to reach out
- [17:00] Reggie discusses his biggest achievements and why he invests so much in his communities
- [27:24] How Reggie worked through one of the greatest challenges of his life
- [30:49] Reggie talks about his hero, Willie Lanier, the strength he inherited from his family, and other people who inspire him
- [35:46] How Reggie’s book fulfilled his childhood dreams
Transcript
Hi everybody. Welcome to the show. I’m Judd Shaw. I’m here with a special guest, Reggie Williams, all-time Cincinnati Bengals pro, two Super Bowls. Reggie, thanks for coming on the show, man. Really appreciate it.
Hey, I appreciate the invitation, Judd. I’ve I heard nothing but great things about the quality of your podcast.
I appreciate it. Well, let’s see how it goes. I want to get right to it. You wrote this book Resilient by Nature. It was published, I think, September of 2020 put out by Post Hill Press. It’s sort of, to me, I read it as part of a memoir, there it is, and really part of a story about your resilience. Great book. Amazing. I love the stories in it. Why’d you write it?
It was about time that I sort of documented my life’s experiences, primarily thinking about my family, my grandkids in particular. The lessons that come out of the mini stories that I have in the book are survival lessons and it starts early in my childhood. So there were many things, adversity that I had to overcome that fortunately my kids have not had to overcome, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have learnings from those experiences. So I wanted to write the book for that primary purpose. I love my alma mater, Dartmouth College. We have a lot of great authors coming out of there. I just wanted to add my little toothpick to the pile of success stories on a literary basis from Dartmouth College.
I love it. I love it. In the beginning in the foreword or preface, you sort of give out your bucket list, right? The kind of things that you still want to accomplish. One of those was fall in love. Is that still the story?
Love is such a wonderful feeling, to have the awe of another person that you think about in a loving way. Sure, I’d like to have that, but I am very satisfied with the love I’m receiving from my children, my great grandchildren. My mom is still alive. You’re competing with a mama’s love, so. But I’m looking for that in another person, another special person that I can be an advantage for her success and she can be an advantage to continue to drive my success.
All right. Well, let’s take this to the national level. All right, ladies nationally, you’re listening to this right now, right? On the podcast right now, you have 14 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, Ivy league, Dartmouth, probably the greatest player to ever come out of Dartmouth, all-rookie NFL team, Walter Payton Man of the Year, co-sportsman Sports Illustrated Man of the Year, College Hall of Fame. I think your sales hook on your social dating app will be Reggie Williams, I’m there in your good times and I’m there in your tough times and I have the story to prove it. How’d I do?
You did good, man. I think that’s a nice little lead into creating some interest somewhere.
All right. Ladies, send me your interest. Shoot it out. Forward me some profile and I’ll shoot it over to Reggie. Reggie jokes aside, you’ve reached really remarkable achievements in your life. Unbelievable. Aside from your career in the NFL, aside from that, you’re picked up by Disney, right? You’re hired to basically create the ESPN World Wide Zone Complex that they have there. But life wasn’t always easy, was it?
No, I’m from Flint, Michigan, and I was born hearing impaired. So if you don’t hear sounds, it’s impossible for you to repeat those sounds. So I developed a speech impediment as a child. I had my very first ear operation when I was two years old and then another ear operation when I was four. So I would take classes at Michigan School for the Deaf, as it was called then, which fortunately was in Flint. I’d go through public school during the day, but after school and on the weekends, I would go to Michigan School for the Deaf to improve my articulation. I had a lisp which I still have a little bit of, but I used to have a stutter.
Then of course, that does not supersede the social issues of my childhood. I was born in 1954, the year of the Brown versus Board of Education decision, which basically ruled that separate schools were unconstitutional and that every child deserved equal opportunities for quality education. So I actually attended the very first integrated elementary school in Flint, Michigan, Scott Elementary School, and which is still there today. Obviously, through my childhood, my speech impediment was secondary to my skin color. My need to learn how to be resilient began at a very, very early age.
So it’s Resilient by Nature. So you can be born resilient and, but resilience is a skillset and you can improve on resilience and you can learn how to be more resilient, right? That Reggie, that experience in elementary didn’t end right there, did it? I mean, I read that in Dartmouth University, you come in as a freshman. There’s a story about two white proud guys who’s not going to shower with a color man even though he is on their team and they’re not going to, right? That brother is you, that black man is you. They’re literally guys on your team who won’t be in the locker room because of that color of your skin. I love how I read later that you hit the shit out of this guy so hard-
I did.
That he did that he quit the team. But how do you overcome that? I mean, race is a big issue and still is. How did you overcome that?
Well, it starts with how I ended up at Dartmouth in the very first place. I had spent my whole adolescence preparing to go to University of Michigan. I studied every weekend at the library. I had straight A’s. I received a academic scholarship to go to Michigan, but Bo Schembechler, the hall of fame head coach of the Michigan Wolverines came to my high school, Flint Southwestern, and there with my coach, Dar Christiansen. He proceeds to tell me that if I decide to come to Michigan, do him a favor and don’t come out for his team. At that moment, my dreams were crushed.
When I went home and told my father about it, he basically said, “Forget Bo. I’ll get a second job and I’ll be able to afford for you to go to Dartmouth College.” So when I’m going to Dartmouth, I’ve got a chip on my shoulder not only because of Bo Schembechler, but also because my father is working an extra job so that I can be there. To be insulted on the very first day, something that you had spent your whole childhood overcoming, going to the very first integrated school and then you run into two teammates that refuse to have lockers near you or shower with you.
My freshman head coach did one of the most amazing things. His name was Jerry Berndt, and he was also the wrestling coach, but he did one of the most amazing thing. He heard about it from the athletic trainer. Before practice, without even telling me, he had assembled all of the players, over a hundred players on the field. He said, “I’m nominating Reggie Williams to be the captain of the team.” All of a sudden, I’m put in a leadership position for the very first time of my life. I’d never been a captain in my high school team.
Wow.
I didn’t even know how to lead calisthenics, but I made it up. It sent a message to the rest of the team that they need to leave their prejudices behind. This is a whole new world that you’re about to enter into. It’s on everyone to take advantage of this opportunity. Every teammate, in one way or another, had fought to get there. I had overcome being snubbed to be at Dartmouth College. So when I hit that guy and it reverberated all over the green mountains of New Hampshire, echoed, one of my teammates named Fairfax Hackley III said, “Boomer, boomer,” and that became my nickname on the very first day. So every time someone called my name Boom or Boomer, then I know I was being resilient because I was still there taking care of business.
It sounds like resilience, also part of that is how you see the situation, your perception of it, your outlook. In a way, it seemed to me as reading through your story, you went through very, very difficult times, but you were able to see opportunity. Wow, I never met that man and that coach and what a great guy, right? Here’s a great story of a leader creating the next great leader. But in that resilience, when you’re able to overcome that, you have a friend, your best friend Lenny in your book, chapter one, right out of the box titled nightmare.
Lenny’s your best friend. You guys are inseparable. You do everything together, right? At the end, you guys graduate and Lenny ends up in a relationship. It goes south on him. He had never been in a relationship before and he takes his own life. As you write about it, the struggle that I read is, “Lenny never reached out. I don’t know why he never reached out. I wasn’t given the opportunity to help him.” How do you get over that, Reggie?
That was really a heartbreaking situation in my lifetime. I loved Lenny Nichols. That’s why we started the book off with his story and a recitation of all the great things that he had done. When he left high school in Elmsford, New York, he was all-state linebacker. He had legitimate aspirations to go from Dartmouth to the pros. Me going to Flint, Southwestern, I was all nothing. I wasn’t even all-league. I played well on our defense and our team was very good. We were eight and one.
But I had no aspirations that I would become a professional athlete when I’d made the decision to go to Dartmouth, or if I had made the decision or if the opportunity had presented itself to go to Michigan. I was focused in academics to be a doctor. Lenny was told by the head coach, Jake Crouthamel, who was the varsity head coach that he wanted Lenny to change positions to help the team. He had to move from middle linebacker to offensive line and that put me at middle linebacker. I became an all-American at that position. Instead of Lenny being resentful, he instead became my best friend. He became my roommate. He became my fraternity brother. He became the guy that I would go a home with when we had breaks from Dartmouth College.
We went to Mexico together to study Spanish in language study abroad. We went to San Diego together to study sociology together. The fact that he had so much love for his family. He had two children. When his wife told him that she was leaving, everything for him fell out the bottom. He didn’t reach out to me. He didn’t reach out to anyone. That’s one of the things, I think, it’s one of the lessons why I put in there, when you’re in trouble, that’s the time to reach out. There are a lot of people who are suffering a lot of mental issues and when they internalize it, you normally don’t ever come up with a great solution for an eternal situation than discussing your adversity and recognizing the pain, you can survive.
That’s one of the reasons that that was the beginning story because his nightmare became my nightmare because I totally internalized it because thinking, “What did I not do? How was I not as good a friend as I should have, could have been to be there for him, for him to know that I was there for him? Maybe, just maybe he would’ve picked up the phone or maybe just maybe I could have called him at the right time.” So either way, he’s a person that was a pastor. So that’s why the whole idea of a pastor committing suicide was how the book starts with me being in hell trying to save Lenny’s soul.
It really is an incredible story in terms of the concept of reaching out, right? The stigma of mental illness that we still ha have today, another stigma, right? We need to move past that, so we realize that when we are struggling, we can be resilient, but what makes us more resilient is having other people to help us stay strong. What a great story. I really love stoic philosophy. Part of stoic philosophy is the idea, the concept of amor fati, which basically means love of fate.
What I was parallel to your story was this idea that you went from an all-pro football player to an all-pro humanitarian. Looking back, it seems that you are almost blessed that that thing happened at Michigan, that they turned you down. I mean, any of those things would’ve changed the entire course of your life today, right? That’s what you embraced. You didn’t regret any of it. In fact, when you look back, I think that all of those sort of continued. Is that humanitarian, the Walter Payton, the things you’ve done with kids and outwards in the community? Is that one of the strongest values that you’re holding today in looking at one of your achievements?
Oh, I definitely am very proud of the investment that I’ve tried to put in the communities that I’ve lived in, whether it’s been Flint or Hanover, New Hampshire or Cincinnati, or now in Orlando. Especially related to kids, because I know how kids can struggle and there’s nothing better than kids having big, big dreams. So I had big dreams going into the National Football League after enjoying an all-American career at Dartmouth College. I did get the NFL all-rookie team recognition. Then the very next temp, the head coach, Bill Tiger Johnson, he benched me. He benched me in front of the whole team without warning me on the very first day of practice.
He benched me based on the philosophy that a veteran can’t lose their job because of injury. The guy ahead of me had hurt his knee the previous year. So being demoted obviously was the last thing that I expected. But it energized me. I’d tell you one thing. I became really, really even more focused on doing the damage that a linebacker could do, especially given the rules that were available then. I was able to win back the job. But just the whole idea of being benched by your head coach, I think it affected how the media looked at me.
So when we got to 1981 season, which ended up being our Super Bowl 16 season, and as a linebacker, I led the team in tackles, one behind Jimmy LeClair, but I also had 11 sacks on top of those tackles. At that time, 11 sacks was more sacks than any outside linebacker or middle linebacker had ever got in the National Football League. That was two more than Lawrence Taylor got that year and Lawrence was the NFC Defensive Player of the Year. Here I was in the AFC going to the Super Bowl and I didn’t get any all-pro recognition. The kind of honors that I received at Dartmouth, they weren’t forthcoming in the NFL. So rather than get depressed about it, I decided to focus all my energy on the things I could control.
I could control opportunities to provide scholarship for kids. I could control visiting the Cincinnati Speech and Hearing Center. I could control being a volunteer for the United Way. I could do things that make kids happier, make kids believe more in themselves. Those are the things that energized me more than personal athletic achievement. So it did ultimately result in not only receiving the Byron Whizzer White Humanitarian Award from the National Football League Players Association, the Walter Payne NFL Man of the Year and the Sports Illustrated Co-sportsperson of the Year. It also led to me being a Cincinnati City Councilman while I was still playing football. That is a very, very strong inspirational message for kids.
I still remember growing up in Flint, Michigan and remembering that Flint, we had a mayor Floyd McCree, who was the first black mayor elected in America. So you knew that politics were a lot more pure then than they are now, but it was an opportunity to make another major difference in the lives of kids in Cincinnati. One of the things that I fought for and was unsuccessful at, but still haunts me to this day, was even back then in 1988, I put in legislation to try to ban assault gun ownership within the city limits. I could not imagine kids going to school and having to fear for their life because of someone, for whatever reason, having a weapon of mass destruction and utilizing that weapon with the most vulnerable people in our society, these children who depend upon us as adults to pave the way for them.
So the latest shooting in Uvalde, man, so heartbreaking. I mean, I’ve cried a so many tears just thinking about the parents who lost their loved ones, the little girl that had to put blood on her from her dead friend to save her own life. I tell you, those kids have had to be resilient. They’ve seen the worst of mankind already. It took me until I got to be an adult before I started seeing the worst of mankind. But for kids, they’re very precious. It was one of the things that I did take on almost immediately on going to city council.
One of the things I was successful at was getting our pension board to divest itself from doing any and all business in South Africa. It seemed at the time that Cincinnati banks, because Cincinnati has a Germanic history, that Cincinnati was the only existing banking situation for South Africa and the United States. I didn’t know that at the time. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu called my city council office after we had passed the legislation to say that he could come and wanted to talk to me. I assembled my kitchen cabinet of advisors. He came to tell us that that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that Nelson Mandela was getting out of Robben Island and that South Africa was preparing for their very first democratic election.
That kind of story is one that’s almost makes it worth it to lose a Super Bowl. I mean, your benefit to mankind supersedes putting a ring on your finger. That having been said, it never would’ve happened probably if I hadn’t been snubbed in ’81 and hadn’t totally focused in on what was best for the city of Cincinnati and the kids who inhabited that city.
Amor fati, right? Lean into it, love it. It may be bad. It could be good. It could be great. It may be bad. Just lean into it and go with it and you did. I don’t know, I haven’t checked the Guinness Book of World’s Records, but I think that stands as a record today that you remain as one of the only active NFL players in active government at the same time.
I think that is true. There’s been a number of people who have retired and gone on to office. But I am proud that I was able to do two jobs at once in the very first year. We’re coming off of a four and 11 season, okay? I had crossed the picket line the year before. So there was a lot of animus with some players, but coming into the locker room when I did, which was only on Thursday because city council meeting was on Wednesday and your committee meetings were on Monday and Tuesday, so I missed Wednesday practice which is where you install. So when I came in Thursday, I had to ensure that I made no mistakes, that I was still in top-notch shape, that I was still aggressive and still owned the job that I had at right outside linebacker.
And then we just won. We won at home. We didn’t lose a single game at home, 10 games, including the two playoff games. All of a sudden, you go from a four and 11 record to one player who is only part-time practicing and all of a sudden you’re in Super Bowl 23. So it really was a turnaround. It is. Taking adversity and turning it into positivity.
I think your contribution to literally humankind is an understatement. It just rings to me that the story after story is about the fact of how you have taken what could perceived as a terrible, horrible situation, and thought about how you can either improve your situation, improve yourself, or improve others. That story goes to probably one of your greatest challenges that you’ve faced throughout your life, which is your leg. You’ve had, I think, at least at the time of the story, it was 27 plus surgeries, maybe more since that time. Your leg is nearly three inches, two and a half plus inches shorter than your other leg. Doctors after their doctors say, “Reggie, you got to cut the leg off,” and you don’t. You push through. What has that been like in your story?
I never got hurt in high school. I never got hurt in college. It wasn’t until my fourth year in the NFL that I finally got hurt. It was a knee injury, which at that time, a meniscus tear resulted in a full-blown open operation. Now, you can go to arthroscopic surgery and you could get that kind of surgery and be back on the field in a week, which is what happened later in my career when I had my left knee operated on. But it all started then. Then it’s just the work ethic to get back from the hospital room to try to regain all of your talent. No matter how hard you work, you’re not going to get it all back, but you are going to get something better.
So if I can’t be as fast as I used to be because of the knee operation, I’m going to be stronger. So my game had to adapt to the injuries that I was suffered. Then about six years later, I had another, the meniscus was gone, and so therefore it was bone on bone for all those years and that’s where I had the very first it was called an abrasion then, but it’s microfracture surgery. So in that particular case, you can’t put any pressure on the knee for six months. So that whole off-season, I’m riding a bike. I didn’t know if the operation was going to be successful until the very first day of practice.
I rode my bike up to the practice field, got off the bike, and that’s the first time I tried to run and I was able to run. So since then, I’ve now have had four right knee operations. The right leg is three and a half inches shorter than the left leg. The thing that I was really suffering from was just enormous sciatic pain in my buttocks. Fortunately, another situation happened where I slipped and broke my hip, and in breaking my hip, all of a sudden it cured my sciatic nerve problem when they fixed the hip. So if I’d gone to the doctor and he would say, “Hey, I can fix your sciatic nerve by breaking your hip,” I’d have said, “No way. I wouldn’t go for that.”
But I ended up breaking my hip and it was one of the best things that happened to me. So that has been a consistent theme in my life. It has been a consistent theme of why I wrote the book Resilient by Nature. Sometimes when bad things happen to you, it’s really something good in disguise.
Amor fati.
Yes, it is.
Reggie, you’re a hero to so many. Tell me about your hero. Why Willie Lanier?
Willie Lanier was a middle linebacker for the Kansas City Chief when they won their first Super Bowl. He wore number 63 and he was the first black middle linebacker in the National Football League that achieved so much success. So I wore his number in college. Putting that number on, my performance excelled. So somehow wearing the number 63 has been an inspirational number for a number of Dartmouth players assistant. I have a guy who wore number 63, Brad Kittle, who started at offensive guard for Dartmouth College with only one arm. Just tremendous story of overcoming adversity.
But that’s sort of how I saw Willie Lanier and my heroes have overcome adversity. Muhammad Ali, another great hero, a person that I met right when I was getting ready to quit football. He’s the one that really instilled in me to believe in yourself, you become a hero to yourself and you believe in yourself. So I believe heroes are positive influences. That’s why when I became a professional athlete, I wanted to be a positive influence on kids as well.
I love how with Lanier and Ali, I also noticed that they were something to the black community, right?
Yes.
They stood for that and humanitarian. They gave back.
They definitely gave back. Certainly, along with other heroes I had with Martin Luther King. I definitely loved him. At the time, it was so important to fight for equal justice. The Civil Rights Act of 64 was a personal benefit to me educationally. So even James Brown singing Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud. That was timely. He was speaking for the African Americans everywhere in America, because it was time to instill pride in ourselves, coming out of all of the policies of Jim Crow in the South. My father was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a great, great baseball player as a teenager.
When he was 16 years old, he was invited to try out with the Birmingham Black Barons. On that team was Willie Mays. My Willie Mays still remembers my father. In fact, when I met Willie Mays, he said, “Yeah, I remember your dad, but I really remember your uncle Otis because he took my girl away from me.” Now this is like 30, 40 years later that he remembered that.
Unbelievable.
But my father left Birmingham because he got into a fight with a white guy. That night he and all the brothers in the Williams family, they had to get on the road and get out of Birmingham, get out of the South. They ended up in Flint, Michigan, which is the last stop heading north before you go to Canada. So that’s how I ended up in Flint, Michigan. My father met my mom while he was working for Fisher Body. My mom was Puerto Rican. She was 16 years old at the time that they got married, but they were married for 66 years. So it really was a defining relationship.
My parents were both so passionate about creating opportunities for their three sons that was better than they did. My father and mother both got their high school diplomas when we were getting our high school diplomas. So we would study as a family around the kitchen table. So that’s where I really get my perspective. Just like you try to live a life of inspiration when you love books and you read about so many other people, you just become to swim in stories of people overcoming adversity, people who’ve done so much with so little. So that’s why I’d rather have more heroes than no heroes.
Well, you never lost an opportunity. You didn’t give one up. You were clairvoyant because I know that when you went to that library to study, whether it be for Michigan or elementary, you were thinking, “I’m going to be in this library. I’m going to get a book.” Right? Back then, it was as if you knew you were going to write a book.
Well, I used to go through the library and walk up different aisles and look at all these books. As a little kid, I sort of I remember coming out of a library one day when my mom picked me up and I said, “One day, I’m going to write a book and it’s going to be in there.” Well, that one day was about a year ago. I just came from Flint, Michigan and my book is in that library. They also have a display in the library that I went to as a child myself that recognizes all of the hall of fame for all of Flint athletes. So now kids can actually see a Reggie Williams picture and bio in the same library that I went to when I was a kid. So it really is one of those smile inducing circle of life stories.
Full circle. So my 11 year old, he will not know the name Reggie Williams without having to look it up because he doesn’t have the benefit of having the Flint, Michigan hall of famers in his library. But he does know the name, Russell Wilson, and Russell Wilson, his generation, he writes in your book about you. I mean, his words are just so beautiful about it. It’s as if you’re hearing him talk the same way you talk about the greats like Ali.
Well, Russell Wilson is a great leader. I wish him nothing but the best of success as he makes his move to Denver. But his father Harrison B. Wilson III was one of my best friends at Dartmouth College. He was one year behind me, but he looks so much like Russell that the apple does not fall too far from the tree. But Harry B. Wilson was a wide receiver on our football team and he was a baseball player as well. So he was another two sport athlete. I played football and I also wrestled Russell. So there is a kind of symbiotic relationship when you’re doing two sports at an Ivy League school. Because no matter how well you do in your sport, academics always supersedes it.
So Russell was actually born in Cincinnati. When he was born, his father was working at Procter & Gamble as a lawyer. So I had an opportunity to stay in touch with Harry B. even while I was playing in Cincinnati. So I was very pleased when Russell agreed to write the foreword to the book and he wrote about what his father and I mean to each other. That’s really the foreword to my book because we all benefit from having great friendships and it’s important to build friendships in your life. So my friendship with Harry B. Wilson resulted in the lifetime relationship with his son, the great quarterback, Russell Wilson.
Ladies, if you are listening, this is the man. I’m telling you now, you don’t have to take my word or his statute. You just heard it. He’s the man. Reggie, thank you so much. Your book, can you hold it up again? There it is. It’s on Audible, Amazon, Post Hill Press. Amazing story. You heard it. Reggie, thank you so much for coming on. I thank you. You are in a great man.
Well, thank you for having me Judd. I will leave you with Invictus by William Ernest Henley because it does speak to overcoming adversity. So it goes like this. Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I think whatever gods may be for my inconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeon enough chance my head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Thank you, Judd.
With that, not another thing to say, but thanks for coming on. Hope you enjoyed the show.
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Name: Judd B. Shaw
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🎙️ Featured Guest 🎙️
Name: Reggie Williams
Short Bio: Reggie is an ex-NFL linebacker, former Disney executive, and author of the book Resilient by Nature. He was an All-Ivy linebacker at Dartmouth, Ivy heavyweight champion, and linebacker for 14 years with the Cincinnati Bengals. After executive positions with the NFL and other sports leagues, Reggie became the Vice President of Disney, where he envisioned the Wide World of Sports Complex.
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Resilient by Nature by Reggie Williams
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