Powerful words. Tom Campbell from Ohio joins us for Episode 68. Tom is a rockcrawler from wayback, but also a Chaplain for Racers for Christ. He shares his history with the Navy, Veterinarian, rockcrawling, missionary work, and the life-altering accident from just four years ago.
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10:34 – my daughter says I’m spreading a disease
14:02 – we modified our three speeds to be mountain bikes
20:41 – the last 7 people to survive the pool would go on to SEAL training
24:40 – …and I got arrested
35:28 – two hundred horsepower and cutting brakes
43:25 – Veterinary college
46:11 – detecting biological and chemical weapon use
51:10 – street racing cost me my license numerous times
56:51 – Tennessee Offroad Challenge – 3 day event
1:05:10 – RCV’s were the only axles that didn’t break
1:12:33 – we were hit by a Lexus SUV going 55
1:16:29 –when you’re a Christian, being disabled is much worse than dying
1:17:48 – Racers for Christ
1:22:39 – vaccines for livestock in Mali, Africa
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:21.250] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s conversations with Big Rich, we have Tom Campbell. Tom is one of the OG Rock crawlers at WE Rock from the East Coast.
[00:01:30.340] – Big Rich Klein
He hails out of Ohio. We’ll talk about that. But we’ll also talk about his military career, his career as a veterinarian and how he got started in off road and what things were like for Tom. So, Tom, thank you very much for coming on board and being on conversations and sharing your life history.
[00:01:52.870] – Tom Campbell
Well, I’m glad to be here. I appreciate you put me on.
[00:01:57.010] – Big Rich Klein
So we’ll get into other things, of course, your Racers for Christ and Rockcrawlers to Christ and you know, the activities that that you have done. I know you did a lot of missionary work in Africa. So I think it’s a really interesting life that you’ve led and that’s what we want to jump into. So let’s get started. And where was it that you grew up? Born and raised?
[00:02:20.680] – Tom Campbell
Huber Heights, Ohio. OK, it was it was the largest brick community in the United States. I’m not so sure. It’s still not the largest brick, all brick home community in the United States.
[00:02:34.610] – Big Rich Klein
And is that in that Dayton area?
[00:02:37.310] – Tom Campbell
Yes, sir, it was a suburb of Dayton that’s own city now. It was back during the heyday of ranch style homes, and they all look pretty much alike. So we had a lot of friends and everybody’s houses very close to the same house. So everybody was on equal footing, which was kind of nice when a lot of. Powerplays because of who you were, what you were, I was pretty much equal.
[00:03:06.430] – Big Rich Klein
OK, and what was that early life like? Was, I would imagine in a community like that, it was probably a lot of friends, people your own age.
[00:03:18.450] – Tom Campbell
A lot of classmates started school in little I actually went to a one room schoolhouse. Wow. Until third grade, the guy who built all the homes, Huber, Charles Huber, donated every three or four blocks. He had two houses that he built without any partitions. And those were the the house, the school rooms that was used for first and second graders. So even though it was this big, modern brick community, most of us all went to first and second grade and a one room school building.
[00:03:57.400] – Tom Campbell
That was our school that we we could walk to because it was no more than two or three blocks from any person. Was it was that was a nice thing to do.
[00:04:06.370] – Big Rich Klein
And I would imagine with a community like that, if he thought about having buildings or schools like that, then I would imagine there was parks in the area as well.
[00:04:17.380] – Tom Campbell
Not not too many parts to start with. It was all agricultural areas. OK, there were there was lots of woods and a couple of big creeks and one river that went through the area. So not too many parts. He did have a larger area set aside for schools and they eventually put like baseball diamonds on them. But it took several years. He also had he had laid out this plot of land and had areas that he had reserved the land and would donate it to churches.
[00:04:54.590] – Tom Campbell
He had about six areas that was designated for church to be built. So he kind of looked at everything that was needed for a suburban lifestyle where you didn’t have to go anywhere but stay in your neighborhood.
[00:05:11.390] – Big Rich Klein
That’s that’s kind of cool. I know that you’re a few years older than I am. We are. But we’re in that same 60 to 70 range. You you grew up in in an area and in a time when planned communities. Especially in more rural settings, were or just outside of large cities was really popular, they were starting to people were trying to get out of the cities and get into the more rural areas and then having to commute to the factories and stuff like that.
[00:05:50.740] – Big Rich Klein
Is that am I correct in that yet?
[00:05:53.380] – Tom Campbell
Yes. Or we had a bus line, a bus service that went into Dayton. And as kids, things have changed dramatically as an eight or nine year old kid, my mom would put me on a bus with a dime to get there on a dime to get back, and two dollars for a movie at one of the movie theaters downtown and a bag of popcorn. So very trusting when a new movie would come out, she loved me and sometimes my sister on the bus, we’d go down by ourselves, see the movie, and then come back and felt very safe and watch.
[00:06:33.190] – Tom Campbell
The bus stop was three houses down from where I live. So. READ MORE
