hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to brian shell executive director of the peters township chamber of commerce and public relations director for the military affairs coalition of western pennsylvania after that we invite you to day to meet dr tamerlan a pittsburgh's very own  i'm a research analyst small business owner teacher dance fitness instructor a film and television actor i'm enough is clear i'm a copywriter i'm a veteran i have a proceeded leg i have multiple sclerosis i have palsy posttraumatic stress disorder i'm blind and i'm working in a job i love i love because i was given a chance because i was given the chance to contribute my skills can tell me show my disability is only one part of who i am who i am who i am where it's what people can do that matters for more information visit what can you do campaign dot  org thank you for coming back to spotlight on pittsburgh brian it is so nice to have you on the show tell me a little bit about yourself and maybe where you started absolutely thanks for having me i really appreciate it it all started when i bank found out that one of my coworkers was was a squadron commander for one of the flying units and lo and behold i had a choice computer programmer or fly thirty five jets tough decision tough decision had to wait for about are you kind of an outdoors guy oh yeah yeah about three and a half seconds later i said i think we'll go fly airplanes so i flew for the air national guard kept me right here c s i got back from pilot training and i moved to and moved to our place in the south wales with my family and been here ever since twenty seven years later here i am here on the set to better absolutely so what was it like working with all the jets i mean what what experience did you take from that i wouldn't give up one minute of my military time like i said i was prior enlisted so i worked on the sixteen's got a chance to to live in vegas which was pretty cool for a one thousand year old  was during desert storm so when i got back it was all checked out eleven point eight hours i flew to cairo so it's given me a great opportunity to fly around the world i'm very blessed and very fortunate to join the garden  family supported me and i thank them and so in two thousand and six after twenty years i retired and i've been retired for eleven years now thank you so much for your service you're very welcome is it a lot like the airplane i received a phone call from congressman murphy asked me to come work for him and so i did that and i'll tell you what if you want to meet a lot of people in a short amount of time that's the place to do it it was it was a wonderful gig and i enjoyed it but not long after that my wife  decided we wanted to move i guess to charleston south carolina so we did that for it actually for a few months and then only a few months unfortunately we pulled our daughter out of a local school very good school district and  took it took a little different toll on you and what you mean by that your mindset really changes so the company i work for was great and they told me you know when everything is good you come back to work but i had male self foma in the one thing you learn really quick is who your friends are and in fact it was unbelievable for me and in fact you know i've always been a community service kind of guy but then i really became a community service addict because while we had the cancer the support was unbelievable from the folks i worked with at the packed the community the p t a i was very involved in the upper santa clara p and so the p t a ladies put together a website for us everybody brought us food the students at the high school at the classic rock club had a concert for me it was just unbelievable the rotary came to support us a little credible support and that's really important so if you're facing so you know somebody with cancer that's the biggest thing you can do is say what can i do for you because it really it really does make a difference and in this case it made a profound difference for me so you know i just like i said i'm going to i mean at least i'm admitting it as a community service addict and i really enjoy it you meet a lot of great people and it just so happens that being at the chamber fills that being in rotary fills that being on the boards that i'm on and things like that it consumes me but i really enjoy it so  with the rotary and the peter township chamber right i've been with the tabor about four and a half years now and that was a direct result of working with a congressman and being in rotary actually because i've been in rotary for about eleven years so it all comes together and  unfortunately carol foley he was my predecessor she had passed away from cancer and she was also a friend of mine and when i knew that then i contacted the chamber because when i was with the congressman i worked with the chambers it's an unbelievable position i mean it works great for me i think it works great for the community i'm a cheerleader for peters for the most so it's a living one great community work in another great community  and that's what i do i promote peter's so whether it be the business slash nonprofits whether it's the partner with the township the school district the residents and so that's my primary purpose at the profit member usually based with businesses or non profits and you are to promote commerce in general but it peters were a little different we are it's basically a single community chamber so we're not a county chamber we haven't gone to the fact that you get bunch of communities together because we have four hundred seventy members of our own so we're a pretty big community chamber so we work very well with the businesses to help promote them we do networking we do seminars whether it's personal professional development just like you had robbed his stance on he's one of our members and he has done those for us as well absolutely you got to scott is awesome scott actually came to our holiday luncheon and he was our entertainment and he's just a great peter's resident and we really appreciate him and he's my idol so i guess that fundraisers because we have a community scholarship fund you have anything coming up we do we have our chamber chase in october october fourteenth that's a five k right on the trail and so it goes in there comeon scholarship fund and we use that to fund scholarships  we help the call to be clean organization at the high school excuse me at the middle school and it's a pledge for kids to to be clean not to use drugs and alcohol and things like that and so we give in the fire department club we net about close to forty forty five grand fundraisers and then we give it away so we create a lot of relationships we have a lot of fun with that we do a lot of different things we do community days we do clean ups this weekend will be in bethel park working on a project there for them with their gardens and we're also working with historical society there because they're redoing their their historical society thing with the chamber and so if you if you just google peters township chamber chamber of commerce you'll get our facebook page and our website because we post quite a bit there so well brian thank you we're going to bring him back on whenever john comes back at the end for talent again we'll have this information on pittsburgh on the web site as well as our facebook page you can find out more about the peters township chamber of commerce also sometimes it's hard to see where you're going the you have the power to change your problems all it takes is your life your  sure well let me first say my background is not nearly as respectable as brian chills so let's just you know so if anyone i want to cut out now but know that the podcast well the blog you have to come started about six or seven years  ago it was out of i'm sitting there drinking beers like most good things happen right and i was mad i was on my way to have beers with a friend of mine gary and there was a bus in my way and the bus would not pull over to pick up the pace the passengers along the now yeah and so my downtime i thought how do i start a blog and my friend dan show me how to start a blog in the saloon the blog became a series of videos that we do once a week then it became a book pittsburgh is defined in three different ways it's a jerk a stupid person or it's like you know if i scared the heck out of you right now you go hi a j you know or is in pittsburgh it's really a term of endearment like i haven't seen it for twenty anyway so i started it posted things about people that are embarrassing the rest of us good pittsburghers can't park them criminals bad politicians whatever that kind of thing and then and then the videos i just started being interested in people you know and you know what are these unique pittsburghers like to see the bear man that walks around and all of ending it all and you know sporting whistling he dances he plays with everybody that you know everybody knows him but nobody really knows him you know so what was his story so we started interviewing people in that way well and and and again friend of mine said you should do a book so i did a book and i really know how to do a book but we did a book and it went well and then the podcast was just sort of been the guests are good any you know if you like like you like to do we like to have fun with people you know we don't like to come on and just talk to trevor daley from the penguins about you know hockey blah blah blah i love hockey but we want to know where is he hanging out you know what does he and we got to do it video interview with garth brooks billy gardell you know pittsburgher and garth brooks loves pittsburgh and anyways so that was probably the biggest but you know i love the fact that we can interview again the with and so you know what what are your particular favorite part cath that you've done or that you've done anything that stands out other certainly like as we're taping this we're in the middle of our second year of porch tour podcasts so people go on do you jagoff dot com and they enter to win and every saturday we record our podcast and on some saturdays in the summer we'll just go to somebody sport and we'll take all the guests that we had planned to be on the podcast and we go to their ports your records you can so as those are my favorite thing because we're just out there people from everyone loves fun bring their inflatable games we bring richie's italian sausage we bring all kind of food and drinks mosts from the foundry have it i mean it's really so it's not about like nobody cares of john shows up on your porch but he comes with all those prizes it's kind of a good deal  prizes right who is that guy just can't let me what do you do what do you do if they don't have a porter you like santa claus or to appear good point no we've had you know if they have a driveway or street you know that kind of thing but we've been very lucky i mean they do have to kind of send a picture of what their porch hardwell is certainly you've had a few of those as well and but now it's totally fine you know we've had we've had tyler kennedy and his wife that we've had a great pet in from channel four show up and he course tries to give the weather and around but there are a lot of fun it's just fun because everybody's just there to have a good time eat and drink it silly cool anything else coming up that we should let you know probably that's really the biggest thing right now in work we've developed a couple of events that we're going to try to do i have more information about shortly but you know all all completely ins are based and all light hearted nothing's ever serious what's the strangest thing that's ever happened and wow well the strangest thing is we were now it was pretty something guide and so you do stuff where's your location are you all over the place we have a studio at the pittsburgh podcast network which is in moon township and but we try not to be there this whole summer we're out on location recording our podcast so we've been to the arts festival recorded there we will be recording from the from the flute tog of and we're going to be in the flute tog event at the regatta we have the  so we're all summer we're out on location somewhere and even somebody porch or you know some public event which is totally cool that's fine yeah anything as well how can they have can they watch an episode well so everything is on you jagoff dot com  of course so the podcast are on tuesday the videos are on thursdays and of course the videos are on the facebook as well you don't have to go to the website for that and then you can put the podcast or go to any s radio or google play music or i tunes go on there and just look for you jagoff and hit subscribing it gets delivered to your inbox every tuesday night yeah well thanks so much for coming on i'm going to bring you back in a moment where we can challenge with john and brian and welcome back to spotlight on pittsburgh i'm here with john and brian and they used to work together correct yeah i never met him before and i've heard of much seen him on t v yeah yeah yeah fancy as you can see there so i thought it was fine i didn't know him being very pittsburgh oriented you living someone you're pittsburgh i thought that this this would be a good opportunity to go through some of the things that are created in and around the area i don't know if you guys knew this but bingo was actually created in pittsburgh no i did not it is now today we're going to be playing pittsburgh or bingo and you will get to take home a prize the first person that i different i did remember to change them up a little bit this is one hundred percent spotlight on pittsburgh being go bingo created all right ok so you guys know how bingo works marking its free speech is a postage stamp bonus to write oh yeah you get a free haircut well yeah oh you know well read thank you so much for both of you coming on today i'm glad that we got to give away a fun prize thank you once again for watching spotlight on pittsburgh