Tommy Foltz
Editorial Writer

Tommy Foltz is a man with a long and varied career that's taken him around the country, living a life that includes dazzling successes and gut-wrenching tragedies.

When Tom's early attempts at a career as a place kicker didn't work out, he transitioned from football to politics, his journey taking him from an intern for Governor Bill Clinton in 1985 to an appointment at the U.S. Department of Energy in 1993. From that point, he spent several years working to get cleaner fuel sources in vehicles, even founding Arkansas' first independent biodiesel refinery.

In 2012, Tom began regularly posting on Facebook what would eventually be called the Foltz Report, a writing endeavor that would become a valuable outlet following his son's death by suicide in 2014. Tom's new path included writing freelance articles and an unpublished book about recovering from the loss of his son.

Tom was hired as an Editorial Writer in 2023 by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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FlagandBanner.com Radio Show · Tommy Foltz, Editorial Writer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

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Suicide Hotline: dial 988 on your phone

TRANSCRIPT

EPISODE 358

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] GM: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly radio show and podcast offers listeners an insider's view into the life of an entrepreneur, the commonalities of successful people, and the ups and downs of risk-taking. Connect with Kerry through her candid, funny, informative, and always encouraging weekly blog. Now, it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:50] KM: I was looking at your camera. Watch out for me. I'll be looking up your skirt before long. All right. Here we go. Thank you, son Gray. After four decades of running a small business called Arkansas Flag and Banner, now simply flagandbanner.com, my team and I decided to create a platform for not just me, but for other successful small business people to pay forward our experiential knowledge in a conversational way.

Originally, we thought we'd be teaching others, but it didn't take long before we realized that we were the people learning. Listening to our guests has been both educational and inspiring. To quote the Dalai Lama, “When you talk, you're only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you might learn something new.” The act of listening is learning. As Greek philosopher, Diogenes, once wrote, “We have two ears and one tongue, so that we can listen more.”

After listening to over 300 successful people share their stories, I've noticed some reoccurring traits. Most of my guests believe in a higher power, have the heart of a teacher and are creative, because business is creative, and they all work hard. Before I introduce today's guest, I want to let you know, if you miss any part of this show, want to hear it again, or share it, there's a way and son Gray will tell you how.

[0:02:11] GM: All UIYB past and present interviews are available at Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy's YouTube channel, Facebook page, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's digital version, flagandbanner.com’s website, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just ask your smart speaker to play Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. By subscribing to our YouTube channel, or flagandbanner.com's email list, you will receive prior notification of that day's guest. Back to you, Kerry.

[0:02:34] KM: Thank you again, Gray. My guest today is an intelligent, longtime acquaintance and avid writer, Mr. Tommy Foltz. I first became aware of Tommy's intelligent perspective when he wrote for the Best of Arkansas Sports, an online publication based in Northwest Arkansas. At the time, my husband would read out loud to me Tommy's articles. I always agreed with his written comments.

Later, I began to follow Tommy on Facebook and read his Razorback Post game post. Sometimes my husband and I would use Tommy's perspective to settle an argument about how a game was won or lost. I am not the only person to notice Tommy's bright ideas and quick wit. As far back as college, he worked for some impressive people, President Bill Clinton and Senator Dale Bumpers. In his early career, he worked on a national scale, in a big business of natural gas. Most recently, Mr. Foltz has become an editorial writer for the Democrat Gazette newspaper, a platform for him to write about just about anything.

Like many 50-plus people, Tommy has a windy story full of ups and downs. Like all successful people, he has a never quit attitude. I don't say this next thing lightly. With Tommy's permission, today we're going to talk about his early successes, his political connections, his near-death experience from liver failure and the unthinkable, the tragic loss of his son to suicide. If you don't already know, the number two cause of death among 10 to 24-year-olds is suicide. It is with great pleasure. I welcome to the table the deep thinker, thought-provoking writer and survivor, Mr. Tommy Foltz. Hey, Tommy.

[0:04:21] TF: Hey, thank you. I appreciate you setting me up to follow the Dalai Lama. There's nowhere to go but down from here.

[0:04:29] KM: I told you he was quick witted. That's pretty funny. You're the only person, I think, that has ever filled out the questionnaire so perfectly. I mean, you could tell you're a writer, you're like, “Uh, I don't really want to fill out this questionnaire. I'm going to send you a chronological date of everything that's happened to me since I graduated from high school.” I was like, “Thank you very much, Tommy.”

[0:04:52] TF: I don't know if that’s you want. That's not everything that's happened to me, but some of the highlights for sure.

[0:04:58] KM: After reading your bio, I know that you love sports and I didn't know why you love sports and I didn't know why you knew so much about sports, because like I said in the intro, I've been reading your articles. But you're a place kicker. I guess, you kicked in high school, at central high school?

[0:05:14] TF: I did. I did.

[0:05:16] KM: Then you were going to go to college and be a place kicker?

[0:05:18] TF: Well, I had an opportunity to be what you would call now a preferred walk on at the University of Tennessee, and I decided that if I'm going to play for a state school that I'd go play for my own state school. I tried out my freshman year and didn't make it. I felt like I didn't make it at Arkansas.

[0:05:38] KM: Where? At University of Arkansas?

[0:05:39] TF: Yeah. The second semester, I tried out again and felt like I did make it. At that time, we were struggling with kickers up there and I was basically rejected, so I walked on back to the Fidel house and continued my career from there.

[0:05:58] KM: Your drinking career. That's about all those fraternities are good for sometimes.

[0:06:02] TF: Yeah. Well, my college career was a major in chasing girls. I played a lot of basketball, drank a lot of beer, played – say, it’s a lot of girls.

[0:06:14] KM: I could tell, because when you graduated from college, you moved to Colorado and you – and with your good brain, you worked in bars and you worked on the ski slope.

[0:06:23] TF: Well, I did. I mean –

[0:06:24] KM: That's for fun.

[0:06:26] TF: To get where I am today, I've followed the normal path that any journalist would take, which is get a communication degree, not journalism, move to Aspen, ski and mountain bike for a year, move to D.C., work in the presidential campaign and administration, move home, build a biodiesel plant, become an oil and gas lobbyist and then apply for a job as an editorialist at the Democrat Gazette.

[0:06:55] KM: That’s exactly –

[0:06:55] GM: Very normal competitor. Yeah. Right.

[0:06:56] KM: That’s exactly what you should do.

[0:06:58] TF: It is textbook. It's a textbook route to get where I am right now.

[0:07:02] KM: When during college, you summer interned for Governor Clinton. I guess, it was Governor Clinton at the time. Then you were also one year in Washington with Senator Dale Bumpers. Talk about those years and what you learned.

[0:07:13] TF: Well, I was in Washington for that summer, in the summer of ’87. I'm already dating myself. It did something for me that really, for one, it made me understand that there's not all that much difference between me and the guy who goes to Harvard, or Yale, or Vanderbilt, or wherever. I gained some confidence just, I guess, maybe intellectually, but also, I got very familiar with the town itself. Moving back up there, I mean, it was always my plan. I mean, literally, I mean, before I left high school, was I was going to go to D.C. after college.

When I should have been listening to economics, my senior year in high school, I was sitting back to read a book called A Hero for Our Time by John F. Ken, about John F. Kennedy. I was bitten pretty early by the political bug and, and really the soaring rhetoric of Kennedy and some others and that's what got me moving in the direction of writing, I think.

[0:08:33] KM: Why didn't you major in political science?

[0:08:35] TF: I did.

[0:08:36] KM: Communications.

[0:08:37] TF: I changed my major from political science to communication, just because I was wanting to talk about current events, and political science, at least the classes that I had taken up to that point seemed much more like a history major. I mean, I'm a big believer in understanding and remembering history. That's one of the things that Dale Bumpers always used to say is that when you forget history, you're doomed for the future. Because you've got to basically learn from your mistakes, which is, I guess, metaphor for life in general. You either win, or you learn in sports. If you don't learn, then you really did lose.

I wanted to get more into what was going on politically at the time, not wanting to hear about what happened in a new deal and the civil war and all that. I switched to communication. At least at that time, they didn't offer a minor in political science. If they had, I would have had a minor in political science.

[0:09:51] KM: Didn't you get a gift when going to Washington, to learn that we all put our pants on one leg at a time?

[0:09:56] TF: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I lived in DC for 10 years after when I got out of college. You do start to understand that – and I think it's a big problem today is that these are people and not everybody does everything for blatant political reasons.

[0:10:23] KM: Are you sure?

[0:10:25] TF: Well, I think we call that into question in some cases. But I think that some people really are doing what they do, because they think it's right. I mean, Asa Hutchinson said something like that, I think over the weekend that, or I guess John Brummett wrote about it, that sometimes you just do and say what you think is right, and with no political agenda, or ulterior motive. There's a lot of that goes in goes on in Washington, DC, that people just don't understand that. I think the main thing for whatever reason is that right now, people just want to be mad.

[0:11:10] KM: When they want to get on the cover of the newspaper and on the headlines, and the only way you can do that is if you say something outrageous, or you –

[0:11:17] TF: They want to raise money, so they can get reelected, and they don't – They're not so concerned about how it would impact their party. I'm thinking of a few people in general. I will say, if we get into any political discussion, I just want to make sure that you know that these are my opinions and not necessarily those of the Democrat Gazette. I mean, I do need to say that, because I'm – The way it works at the Democrat Gazette, or really at any newsroom, I'm in the editorial section and then there's the journalism section. There's a wall between us, basically. We don't tell them what to report on and they don't tell us how to think about what they reported on.

[0:12:04] KM: Nice.

[0:12:06] TF: There are some things that I would say, politically, if I had my own column, that I can't say, because basically, I'm a big music person and it's like, we're the studio musicians. We're Rex Nelsons of the world and John Brummett and those guys are – they're the lead guitarist and lead vocalist. We're the guys who don't get our name on the album cover, but we provide a lot of the music underneath.

[0:12:37] KM: You're back up.

[0:12:38] TF: Yeah. Certainly, I have a lot of political opinions and –

[0:12:43] KM: They let you write about those, though, don't they?

[0:12:45] TF: Well, they do to some degree.

[0:12:47] KM: Today, you wrote something funny. What was it? It was about the draft. No, it wasn't about the draft.

[0:12:53] TF: I didn't have one today, actually.

[0:12:55] KM: What was it that you wrote the other day that was funny? Oh, well, and you brought a lot of them.

[0:12:59] TF: Well, it's so hard to find that pieces that are not funny.

[0:13:04] KM: I know. Everything you write is a little bit funny and sarcastic and has a little twist at the end. You don't sign anything. People can't tell they’re yours.

[0:13:11] TF: Right. Well, I can't. I mean, the way that –

[0:13:13] KM: They don’t let you?

[0:13:15] TF: The way they can tell them that they’re mine, I put them on Facebook, if it's mine.

[0:13:19] KM: Oh, that's where I read it, actually. That's how I knew it was yours. Can anybody join your Facebook page? Is it open to the public?

[0:13:28] TF: It was.

[0:13:29] KM: Tommy Foltz, F-O-L-T-Z.

[0:13:31] TF: Yeah.

[0:13:32] KM: I highly recommend all our listeners to get on there, because he posts about everything.

[0:13:38] TF: Just before we go much further, I do want to – I've been there. I've been to the Democratic Gazette about 90 days. This is new. I've had 60 editorials published and they range anywhere from three or four paragraphs, to full-blown, the whole, I mean, the entire column.

[0:14:00] KM: How long did you say you've been there? 90 days?

[0:14:02] TF: 90.

[0:14:03] KM: And you've written how many?

[0:14:05] TF: I had 60 published.

[0:14:07] KM: How many have you written?

[0:14:09] TF: I don't know. 85, 90.

[0:14:12] KM: Every day.

[0:14:14] TF: You'd be surprised when somebody's paying you to write how much content you can provide. Let me just give you – this is a smattering of what I've – I’ve written about artificial intelligence, Argenta, standard lithium, renewable energy, oil and gas, laboratory produced food from Woolly Mammoth's, goat herding in California, election denialism, book banning, mortgage rates, the Little Rock port river dredging, eagles being killed by windmills, deaths from self-driving cars, federal land leasing, voter ID, congressional redistricting, the fentanyl crisis, killer whales, sinking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and grammar misuse, and even the death of Gordon Lightfoot.

[0:15:04] KM: Oh, did he die?

[0:15:05] TF: Yeah. They've given me a lot of freedom –

[0:15:12] KM: Awesome.

[0:15:13] TF: - to find things that – the philosophy is – I'm not assigned anything. The philosophy is that if you think it's interesting and most likely, other people will think it's interesting. I question that philosophy some, because I'm not sure that everything I think is interesting, is going to be interesting to everybody else. But I do try to find things that I think most people want to write about. I've written a ton about renewable energy, to the point where I almost want to stay away from it for a little bit, just because we've published so much on it. It's great. I'm all for it. The paper's all for it. But it's at the risk of a little overkill right now. Again, that's my personal opinion.

[0:16:01] KM: Well, I remembered when you were listing all the things that's subject you had written about topics. It was that food, fake meat food and how they roll it out and then they shape it into looking like real food, but it's not really meat.

[0:16:12] TF: Disgusting.

[0:16:13] KM: Then at the very end you went, “Oh, yum.”

[0:16:15] TF: Yeah.

[0:16:18] KM: That was wonderful.

[0:16:18] TF: Well, I mean, my personal philosophy on this, and I think they let me get away with it, because I think other people feel this way too, but the last thing anybody wants to do at 40 to 65, or whatever is read a term paper. I'm not going to write it like it's a term paper.

[0:16:41] KM: No, you're not.

[0:16:43] TF: Not if you want. If you want people to read at all –

[0:16:46] KM: Got to be fun.

[0:16:47] TF: - and especially to the end, I mean it's got to be – you got to throw a little bit of humor in there somewhere, unless it's just a subject, like the piece I did on suicide earlier this week. I mean, there's nothing funny about suicide. There's some that you can't infuse humor into, but a lot of it you can. The Democrat Gazette is great about that.

[0:17:09] KM: Where did you get your drive and political drive interest? Are your parents in politics?

[0:17:15] TF: Well, no. I mean, not really. I mean, my grandmother was, she was pretty active in Fort Smith. My stepdad and mom, and my dad they – we always been around it a little bit. My mom, she worked on the ’92 presidential campaign and finance raising money for the campaign, where I was an advanced consultant and I was a communication director up – I was so important to the campaign that they made me communication break – I'm thinking Led Zeppelin, communications breakdown. They made me a communication director in North Dakota.

[0:18:01] KM: Oh, I saw that.

[0:18:01] TF: There are all three of those electoral college rugs.

[0:18:04] KM: Really big.

[0:18:04] TF: Yeah. It was huge.

[0:18:07] KM: You keep talking about music. When did you start playing the guitar?

[0:18:13] TF: I started playing guitar about five, six, five, six years ago.

[0:18:23] KM: Oh, recently.

[0:18:23] TF: Yeah. I'm self-taught. If I had a guitar, I could probably convince you of that. After my son died, there was a lot – obviously, there was a lot of introspection. I wanted to do something, something positive from a prevention standpoint. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what I could do. A friend of mine had started a blog. I called her up and I said, “How did you do that?” We talked a little bit and I started a blog called Foltz Forward. Very positive, very get up, dust yourself off and don't ever be the victim kind of a mentality, which we can come back to later, because I did allow myself to become the victim eventually.

I wrote that for about a year and that was – I got such positive feedback on it, that that's one of the things that gave me the confidence, plus the Facebook postings that people give me so much positive feedback on it. That's one of the things that gave me the confidence to apply at the Democrat Gazette. After about a year writing that blog, I really – I felt like I had said everything I could say, or everything that I knew to say. I mean, I'm not a mental health expert at all and all I can do is relate my personal experience, and I just unapologetically put it away.

It's out there for people. People still go to the Facebook page. Usually, I can see where more people visit that Facebook page when there's some tragedy, like within my community. No, it's what I started doing. The reason I did a blog is because I didn't want to write all this stuff like I do, the Razorback stuff on Facebook. I mean, I don't want to subject everybody who, if they don't want to read about it, I didn't – I didn't feel like that was the right form, or the right medium, or whatever you call it.

[0:20:49] KM: You didn't want it to be in their newsfeed. You want them to go to it if they wanted to go to it.

[0:20:52] KM: Right. I mean, if they're interested. There were enough people interested that I did start a Facebook page with that, with the blog. People could go and they could read some of the stuff on Facebook without having to go into the blog and all that. When I stopped writing the blog, I picked up the guitar. I mean, I have always wanted – I wanted to learn how to play guitar. It's just been a lifelong – not obsession, or I would have done it a lot earlier.

[0:21:29] KM: Been on your bucket list.

[0:21:30] TF: Well, yeah. I have just really, through all the ups and downs, I don't really have any regrets in life. But the one regret I have is that I didn't start playing guitar earlier.

[0:21:42] KM: Really?

[0:21:44] TF: Yeah. I mean, it's something where now, and I am getting better enough that my neighbors unsolicited have, “I can't believe you never had lessons.” I was like, “This is the greatest day of my life.”

[0:22:04] KM: Are there musicians in your family?

[0:22:05] TF: No. My dad played guitar.

[0:22:07] KM: He did. So, there you go.

[0:22:09] TF: But not – he wasn't Jimmy Page, you know what I mean?

[0:22:12] KM: Yeah. You've got it in your DNA.

[0:22:15] TF: Well, I guess. A little bit.

[0:22:18] KM: All right. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Tommy Foltz, Jack of all trades, as you've heard. Currently, he's an editorial writer for the Democrat Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still to come, entrepreneurship, his business, in the business of natural gas. Does he think we're in an energy crisis? I'd like to get his feedback on that. Loving to write, you know that. He's a survivor from liver failure. That'll be an interesting story. Last, Tommy shares the heartbreak that he's already been sharing with you, and the healing of his son's suicide. We'll be right back.

[BREAK]

[0:22:51] GM: You're listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Over 40 years ago, with only $400, Kerry founded Arkansas Flag and Banner. During the last four decades, the business has grown and changed, along with Kerry's experience and leadership knowledge. In 1995, she embraced the internet and rebranded her company as simply, flagandbanner.com. In 2004, she became an early blogger. Since then, she has founded the nonprofit Friends of Dreamland Ballroom, began publishing her magazine, Brave. In 2016, branched out into this very radio show, YouTube channel, and podcast.

In 2020, Kerry McCoy Enterprises acquired ourcornermarket.com, an online company specializing in American-made plaques, signage, and memorials for over 20 years. More recently, opened a satellite office in Miami, Florida. Telling American-made stories, selling American-made flags, the flagandbanner.com. Back to you, Kerry.

[0:23:49] KM: You're listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy, and I am telling an American-made story today. I'm speaking today with a writer, a businessman, a politician, a dad, and a survivor, Mr. Tommy Foltz. All right, you have – just a recap, if you're just tuning in right now. You have, you’re a place kicker in high school. Thought you were going to be one in college. You've dabbled in politics a little bit. You've been appointed, I think, to – didn't you get an appointment to Bill Clinton when he became the president, because you worked on his campaign?

[0:24:23] TF: I did.

[0:24:23] KM: He appointed you. I think that's how you started into your –

[0:24:26] TF: Energy.

[0:24:27] KM: Into your energy business. You got an appointment –

[0:24:31] TF: To the U.S. Department of Energy.

[0:24:33] KM: There you go. U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. You had moved home to Little Rock to work on his campaign. Now, you've been appointed and you're moving back to Washington, a place you really know well, because you spent your summers there.

[0:24:45] TF: Yeah. Well, when I left Aspen in ’91, I moved – I mean, I was in Little Rock for about 12 days and went straight over to D.C., and was there for about 10 months. Clinton announced, and I ended up throwing everything in my mom and stepdad's house and went on the road, doing advanced work. That's why I can say that I've visited 47 of the lower 48 states over my years. The only one, Idaho.

[0:25:18] KM: Okay, I was about to say, which one? And Hawaii, I guess.

[0:25:23] TF: Well, the lower 48.

[0:25:23] KM: Oh, the lower 48.

[0:25:24] TF: Yeah, I've never been to Alaska, or Hawaii, or Idaho. Idaho's got great skiing. I don't know why I've never been there, but –

[0:25:30] KM: Does it.

[0:25:32] TF: Didn't know that. You never heard of Sun Valley, Idaho?

[0:25:36] KM: O.

[0:25:37] TF: Oh, sure. Yeah, okay. It's in the Rockies. After the campaign, it was, again, I mean, a week, or so home, and then straight over to D.C. I mean, I moved over to D.C. in Thanksgiving week of ’92. Worked on the presidential inaugural committee. When that was over with, everybody was scrambling to try to get jobs in the administration. I thought, I know I'm going to move home to Arkansas at some point. Arkansas, it's an energy state. I didn't really know what I was talking about at that time. We're not as big of an energy state as I thought we were. Although, we're turning the corner on that right now. I thought, energy department would be a good place for me to be.

I spent four years there as a presidential appointee. I learned a lot. I mean, a whole lot. There was no question about it. What I did was specifically, was I was trying to help develop the market for natural gas vehicles. I familiarized myself with electric vehicles, ethanol vehicles, biodiesel, liquefied natural gas, etc., etc. Then after four years, I left the department and started my own consulting firm called Clean Fuel Strategies.

[0:27:09] KM: Who did you consult?

[0:27:11] TF: People in the natural gas vehicle market, or in the –

[0:27:14] KM: What are some of the questions I would ask you? Or, what would be something they'd come to you and say, “I need to know”?

[0:27:21] TF: Well, it'd be – I mean, I was not a registered lobbyist, but which meant I couldn't go ask a congressman from Colorado for their vote. But I could introduce my clients from Colorado to –

[0:27:37] KM: People from the U.S. Department of Energy.

[0:27:38] TF: Yeah, or Congress. I was also a grant writer. Essentially, what I –

[0:27:44] KM: Oh, I see.

[0:27:45] TF: A lot of what I would do, and this became more prevalent once I moved back to Little Rock after – I moved back in 2001. I've been home for 22 years. We go out and we would try to develop a project and we go out and get the grant funding for the fleet that we wanted to provide the fuel for. One piece of it would be getting a legislation passed that authorizes the funding and the program to do that. Once that's in place, then go and get the funding. All that's done around a project that we developed, so that we could provide the gas.

[0:28:23] KM: Is there a project you're proud of?

[0:28:27] TF: Well, I mean, the most proud of anything that I did as a “lobbyist” came later in the oil and gas business. When I was at Petra Hawk and BHP Billiton as an employee, I wasn't consulting for them. We were able to get – one thing we were able to do is we were able to get Petra Hawk to endorse the idea of disclosing the chemicals that are used in hydraulic fracturing.

[0:28:59] KM: Oh, that's a big one.

[0:29:00] TF: We were taking a progressive forward thing stance, and we weren't the only ones. I mean, there were some other good, large independent producers that were doing the same thing.

[0:29:10] KM: For people that don't, fracking was making people's water burn. Remember that? What they said. You don’t believe that?

[0:29:16] TF: A lot of that was staged. I mean, I know for a fact that a lot of them were staged.

[0:29:20] KM: Really?

[0:29:21] TF: Yeah. I mean, that's not to say that fracking can't contaminate groundwater, because it can. Like the earthquakes over in Oklahoma, I mean, that was –

[0:29:31] KM: From fracking.

[0:29:33] TF: Yeah. It wasn't really from fracking. It was injecting the water back into the ground in the wrong place. It's geology that I don't understand. Even the industry admits that they were the problem there.

[0:29:48] KM: Are they still fracking?

[0:29:49] TF: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[0:29:51] KM: Where?

[0:29:51] TF: Everywhere.

[0:29:52] KM: Here in Arkansas?

[0:29:53] TF: Not in Arkansas. I mean, unfortunately, the failable shale, of all the economic shale plays in the country, it's the least economic. I mean –

[0:30:05] KM: I don't know if that's unfortunate or not. I'm glad. I don't want earthquakes.

[0:30:09] TF: I mean, we weren't really having a whole lot of earthquakes as we were putting it in the right and Arkansas has been put in the right.

[0:30:14] KM: Well, just make sense. You go disrupting the ground, you're going to have problems, doesn't it?

[0:30:20] TF: Yeah. I mean –

[0:30:20] KM: Look, he doesn’t agree with me.

[0:30:22] TF: Well, I mean, there’s no –

[0:30:23] GM: A little bit more complicated than that.

[0:30:25] TF: It’s more complicated than that. Right. I mean, there is something to it. Yes, No doubt. At the same time, it's like, we don't cover a drop of oil getting from North Dakota to the Gulf Coast safely, without incident. We cover the pipeline spills, because they're so rare. It's like covering an airline crash. I mean, nobody covers it when American Airlines lands safely. They cover it when there's a crash and there's so few of those that it makes it look like it's a bigger deal than it is.

[0:31:01] KM: What an interesting perspective, but it’s true.

[0:31:05] GM: Well, it's what you tell yourself when you get in a plane to go up. It's like, it's safe statistically.

[0:31:10] TF: It still. Statistically speaking, it is the safest way to travel, without a question. Then from an environmental standpoint, moving oil or gas by pipeline is by far the most environmentally friendly way to do it.

[0:31:23] KM: Tell me. I've asked people this forever. What happens? What does the earth think when there's no more? What is the purpose of oil and gas in the earth? When it's all pulled out, what does that do to the earth? I mean, doesn't it have a purpose? Nobody seems to know.

[0:31:37] TF: No.

[0:31:39] KM: That's what everybody says, but surely it does.

[0:31:42] TF: It's not really supposed – I don't think there's really a purpose. It's dead dinosaurs and fossils, and just built up over millions and millions and millions of years and turns into something that's liquid, that happens to have a lot of – puts a lot of energy in a gallon of gasoline. Let me go back there to tell you about what I'm most proud of.

[0:32:06] KM: I'm sorry, yes.

[0:32:08] TF: In the process of fracking, there is a lot of trucking that's used. We were very big down in South Texas, and those are Caliche, dirt gravel roads that when they get wet, there's all kinds of opportunity to run them up and really, they require a lot of maintenance. We as a company would just cut a check to the county right before we drilled a well. It was never enough. I was able to get the Texas legislature, with some help, but I've spearheaded the whole thing to get 225 million dollars from the state to the counties to repair those roads.

Again, it wasn't enough, but it's a whole lot better than zero dollars. It was the first time that I know of in the history of the state of Texas, where the state actually provided money to the counties, because there's a big separation between state and county and Texas. To get 225 million dollars was a pretty big deal. It did some good.

[0:33:19] KM: It does tear the roads up. I remember people in Cersei, Arkansas complaining about the roads being torn up from the big trucks. What do you think is the –

[0:33:27] TF: They weren't complaining about the low cost of natural gas.

[0:33:31] KM: No, they're not.

[0:33:34] TF: I guess, the deal is that there are trade-offs for all kinds of energy. I've got a piece that's coming out probably tomorrow, which I guess, will be way in the past by the time people see this, or hear this.

[0:33:47] GM: A couple of weeks.

[0:33:49] TF: It's just a matter of time until the environmental community started opposing projects that are designed to help the environment. This happens in this case, it's in Nevada.

[0:34:04] KM: What's happening?

[0:34:05] TF: There's a lithium mine that's being built to extract lithium for the purpose of putting it into lithium batteries, which can be used in electric vehicles, so that you have zero emission vehicles on the road. Also, lithium goes into the batteries that store the energy from wind and solar energy production. The end use of it is all good. These people who call themselves environmentalists are saying, “Wait a minute, no. This could, this could contaminate our ground, or groundwater.” It could contaminate the groundwater, but will it, is the question?

By the way, 50% of the people of the – or 36% of the people on the closest Indian reservation live in poverty. 50% of them don't even have running water. Before we start talking about groundwater contamination, or any contamination, why don't we figure out a way to really help out the people who live on the reservation, which is to get them running water. I mean, it's a matter of not putting the cart before the horse and it's a matter of priorities. I mean, if climate change is your priority –

[0:35:22] KM: Lithium batteries are good.

[0:35:23] TF: - then you're going to have to be for that mine. I know, yeah. You may have to hold your nose and be for it. If that's what you want, then that's –

[0:35:34] KM: Why is mining lithium any worse than mining anything else?

[0:35:39] TF: It’s a mine.

[0:35:39] KM: I mean, we mine rocks all day long. We've got granite mountain. We've been mining for 40 years here in Arkansas.

[0:35:46] TF: It's not any worse. There are regulations around it. Very tight regulations around that, around pipelines, around oil drilling, natural gas drilling. The regulations are there for a reason. Some people think that the regulations are too strict. I mean, I'm not one of those people, but some people think that they're too strict. Let the regulatory process work and just understand that there's no silver bullet that's going to – even electric vehicles. I wrote the piece on the – we got five electric buses down here, at Rock region Metro. It's fantastic.

The other 39 buses are compressed natural gas. That's awesome. I mean, those are great things, but don't think – I mean, unless those buses are being powered by electricity that comes from wind, or solar, the emissions are being produced somewhere. Even if it is produced by wind and solar, then there are no emissions, but you had to get the lithium from somewhere. I mean, there's an environmental impact for every source of energy that there is. That's just something that we have to live with if we want to live in a modern world.

[0:37:04] KM: Does the sun have any environmental problems? If you can gather the sun, does it have any problems? Because you just have to use battery to –

[0:37:11] TF: Yeah. No, I mean solar energy is just absolutely zero emission. But you do have to mine rare earth minerals and lithium is not a rare earth mineral. I can't even give you examples of what the rare earth minerals are. Those are mainly in China and Russia. They're commodities.

[0:37:36] KM: We're in trouble.

[0:37:37] TF: Well, exactly.

[0:37:38] GM: Well, now it's a geopolitical issue.

[0:37:40] TF: Yeah, then then it turns into a geopolitical issue. It's a commodity. They are commodities, and there are price swings in the commodities markets, just like oil and gas. It's like, you start talking about all the drawbacks of wind and solar, and they start coming real close to what the drawbacks are for oil and gas.

[0:37:59] KM: Are we going to run out of oil and gas? You can't run out of solar, but are we going to run out of oil and gas?

[0:38:06] TF: The stone age did not end because we ran out of stones. Let’s put it that way.

[0:38:11] KM: What does that mean?

[0:38:12] TF: What that means is that we will use oil and gas until it's no longer economically viable to use oil and gas. I mean, we stopped using rocks to kill buffaloes back in caveman days when we figured out the bow and arrow. Now we progressed all the way to a rifle. We're not using as much oil and gas, because we figured out a way to harness the sun and the wind. Now, the fact is that, though, with the increase in the use of electricity, we need it all. I mean, it's not like one or the other. We need all the – the more energy we have in the marketplace, the lower it costs. That's better for people on fixed incomes, the elderly.

[0:38:55] KM: The solar panels can go into the electrical grid.

[0:38:58] TF: Oh, yeah.

[0:39:00] KM: So that we don't have to.

[0:39:01] TF: Sure. Yeah. They can either power your house, or they can power the grid, or they can power industrial operations.

[0:39:07] KM: What kind of car do you drive? How do you fuel your car?

[0:39:10] TF: I drive a Ford F-150 pickup truck.

[0:39:12] KM: Well, of course you do.

[0:39:14] TF: Well, but I've driven all kinds of different cars. I mean, I like to go hunting.

[0:39:18] KM: Oh, yeah. It's hard to get up.

[0:39:20] TF: Yeah. You can't really take a Honda Accord into the duck woods.

[0:39:24] KM: No. It's hard to get up. It's hard to find a charging station.

[0:39:28] TF: Yeah. But like I say, I am all for renewable energy. I think it's great, but just everyone has to understand that it's not a 100% clean and that's the way it's being sold. It's like, let's just be truthful, everyone.

[0:39:45] GM: That's the kicker, isn't it, though, is because you were you were talking about the lithium mines and Native Americans. It's like a social justice issue, because I feel like, in my media sphere, those things are all becoming more and more linked when we talk about things like renewable energy and moving into the future. It's like, there's always a give and take support way.

[0:40:04] TF: Yeah. Part of the issue also is that they consider that to be sacred land. The problem with that is that almost everything is considered sacred land. There's a cultural divide there. Spanning that is the trick.

[0:40:28] KM: In the beginning and the first thing you talked about history repeating itself, do you feel like we're repeating ourselves in history right now in any ways?

[0:40:37] TF: Yeah.

[0:40:36] KM: Which ways?

[0:40:37] TF: I don’t really want to go into deep – Well, I mean, I think that, again, these are my opinions and not necessarily those of the Democrat Gazette. I just see a lot of the politics these days, smacks of McCarthyism and 50s era. Just the rollback of a lot of labor thing. We settled a lot of the labor issues long, long time ago, child labor. We settled that a long time ago. It's one of the things that differentiates us from the rest of the world. Now we're rolling that back. Why?

[0:41:20] KM: We are?

[0:41:21] TF: Yeah.

[0:41:22] KM: What are we doing?

[0:41:23] TF: I mean, there are a number of states out there that are making it easier for a 14-year-old to go work in a meatpacking factory, or –

[0:41:33] GM: Work a night shift.

[0:41:34] TF: Factory and night shifts. I don’t want to go deep and to reach all of them.

[0:41:40] KM: How old were you and you got your first job?

[0:41:46] TF: Probably 15, working on a golf course. That's a whole different deal than working in a factory. It's a summertime deal.

[0:41:54] KM: I worked in a restaurant when I was 15.

[0:41:57] TF: Yeah. I mean, there are just a lot of things that seem like, where people are trying to thwart the progress that's been made. It's generally accepted. That is generally accepted by the vast majority of Americans, but the people in charge, because of the way we draw our congressional districts.

[0:42:22] KM: Is that ever going to get right?

[0:42:23] TF: I don't know. It's been a problem for –

[0:42:26] KM: About 10 years.

[0:42:28] TF: About 250. It's not just in America either. I mean, the people in charge are going to draw the lines that are the most favorable to them. So much so that the real contest is in the primary. When the real contest is in the primary, you're going to get the most extreme – the most extreme people go and vote the primary, so they're going to elect the most extreme candidates.

[0:42:54] KM: Yes. Why do extreme people go to their polls?

[0:42:57] TF: Because they're more passionate. But the result of all that is, no, not only is it a bad policy, but it's also, you got 40% of America that refuses to claim a political party, either Democrat, or Republican.

[0:43:14] KM: Well, I'm in the middle.

[0:43:15] TF: Well, I mean, I feel like, if I can anger – I would use different words if I wasn't on the radio. But if I can anger Democrats and Republicans in the same editorial, I've done my job.

[0:43:30] KM: I remember, I read in your bio, in 2004, you ran unsuccessfully as a state representative. You're endorsed by the Democrat Gazette that you now work for. You wrote, “This is when I realized, I was really neither a Democrat, or Republican. Too conservative to win the Democratic primary. Too liberal to be a Republican.” I thought, boy, is that not all of America?

[0:43:52] TF: Well, pretty much. It is now. I had no idea that at the time, the newspaper wars were going on and all that, and I had done some work for Walter Hussman on education reform. But the Democratic Gazette endorsed me in the Democratic primary. I had people who voted early for me, who were coming up to my mom after they got the endorsement, I got the endorsement. They were like going, “I hope, I didn't cast the wrong vote.” It's like, “What? It's a Democrat Gazette. I mean, it's the state newspaper. Why would you –” When I interviewed for the job, I was like, I said, “It's all said and done. I'd rather have the Democrat Gazette's endorsement than actually be a state representative. It's all good.”

[0:44:42] KM: When did you marry?

[0:44:45] TF: ’96.

[0:44:46] KM: Where were you working at that time?

[0:44:48] TF: I was at the energy department. We got married in D.C.

[0:44:53] KM: Oh, okay. You thought one of your businesses you ended up, or one of the companies you were working for got sold to Boone Pickens, I think you said.

[0:45:01] TF: Yeah. It was a company called Blue Energy. That's who I was talking about when – we provided the liquefied natural gas for the Houston Metro, the Houston transit operation, and the compressed natural gas for the Fort Worth T. Then whoever the bowler. We were in Colorado and Texas. I was able to convince my boss, who's still a good friend of mine, that living in Little Rock was close enough. At that time, it was cost about $15 to fly back and forth between Little Rock and Dallas. I was able to live here, but worked down in Texas all up.

[0:45:42] KM: Do you think while you were doing all that, you were going to end up rich? You're like, “I'm in the right business doing the right thing. I’m on my way.”

[0:45:47] TF: I was rich for a while. Not so much anymore. A divorce will do that to you. I will say, as far as career is concerned, I've really – I'm not just sucking up to my bosses here who might listen to this, but I mean, I've never been happier with doing what I do when I walk into the office and do what I do and leave. I mean, that timeframe of being in the office. I write at home, too. But when I'm in the office, I mean, my boss gets out of my way and lets me do what I do. If he likes it, he'll publish it. If he doesn't, he won't.

[0:46:32] KM: I love it.

[0:46:33] TF: Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's a good setup.

[0:46:35] KM: This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Tommy Foltz, Jack of all trades, currently, he's a –

[0:46:42] TF: Master of none.

[0:46:45] KM: Oh, I left that point out. I don't know about that. You're pretty good at writing. Currently, he is an editorial writer for the Democrat Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still to come, surviving liver failure, and Tommy shares the heartbreak of his son's suicide and how he healed and learned to live with it.

You ready? You're listening Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with a writer, a businessman, a politician, a dad, and a survivor, Mr. Tommy Foltz. Before the break, we talked about his entrepreneurialship and how he started businesses in the oil and gas business. We talked about clean energy. He's a smart guy. If you're just tuning in, I highly recommend you go back and listen to the rest. Listen to the front of the show. I think I learned some stuff.

It's a parents' worth's nightmare. I want to tell our listeners that you wrote me and said, “I want to talk about this. I want to share what I know.” You're paying forward what you've learned. You just, last week, I read your article where you wrote about it. It's a parent’s worst nightmare. His son dies of suicide in March of 2014. He starts a blog. Talk about posting on Facebook, how it happened. Give us some statistics. Are there warning signs?

[0:48:02] TF: Oh, yeah. There are definitely warning signs. We had them. I had two twin boys. I will say, and this is just a – just the way life is. One of my sons just graduated from the University of Arkansas. He took a job in Dallas. He is as well-adjusted as any kid I've ever seen. Love him to death. We've got a great relationship. He just –

[0:48:39] KM: How old was he when his brother passed?

[0:48:41] TF: They were 13.

[0:48:43] KM: It's a critical age, too.

[0:48:46] TF: Yeah. In fact, when I was – I guess, what I haven't really talked about is that I actually wrote a book about this and I have not published. We can get into the why I didn't a little bit later, but in doing some of the research, statistically speaking, I was probably one of five dads in Arkansas that year that who lost a 10 to 14-year-old to suicide. That alone is makes you feel a little bit lonely. But my son, Will, had – we don't really and never really will know exactly what was wrong.

[0:49:32] KM: No note?

[0:49:34] TF: Yeah, there was a note. Yeah. I'm not –

[0:49:38] KM: No, I'm sorry.

[0:49:41] TF: I won't say what the rest of the note said, but it was all very nice to everyone he addressed, but he addressed it to me saying, “Dad, I love you a lot.” That a lot for a 13-year-old to me was, wow, we're good with each other. But anyway, so he had been in therapy. We tried medication. I mean, yes, of course it was a shock, but it was not – we knew it was a possibility. As a lot of suicide victims seem to be getting better, once they've made the choice that they have come to peace with what they're going to do, and it's just a matter of when they're going to do it. It just happened that the opportunity presented itself at my house. I was the first one to him. I mean, it was over before I got to him.

I had a great relationship with him. I mean, it was exceedingly difficult. I tried to stay as absolutely positive as I could. As I said on the Foltz Forward blog, I tried to make everything look, the traffic doesn't stop. How do you get up in the morning, you set the alarm clock. People will feel sorry for you, up to a point. If you're showing people that you are trying to get over it, and not over it, and I don't want to say past it, because I never want to be over it. I'm not now. I don't think I ever will be. You have to understand that it's not all about you all the time, and that the world's going to keep moving with, or without you. That was my mentality with the Foltz Forward blog.

[0:52:00] KM: Where were you working at the time?

[0:52:03] TF: BHP Billiton.

[0:52:04] KM: Were you married?

[0:52:06] TF: No, we were divorced. We've been divorced about a year at that point.

[0:52:11] KM: But he was staying at your house?

[0:52:13] TF: Well, I mean, we shared custody. I mean, she was the primary caregiver, but I mean, I had my kids every weekend. I mean, BHP expected me to be in the office Monday morning at 8, Friday afternoon at five. I had an apartment down there, and I had a house here. Every single weekend, I came back, because I love my kids. I wanted to be part of their lives. This was right at the end of – it was on a Sunday afternoon, right at the end of a ski trip during spring break, and which we had had a great time. He had gotten in trouble before that. There was questions whether or not we were going to do the trip, because he was in trouble, so why take him skiing?

[0:53:01] KM: He's a 13-year-old. Aren't they all in trouble?

[0:53:03] TF: Yeah. There's two things to that. One is that you can't punish Davis for that. We didn't take the ski trip.

[0:53:11] KM: That’s your other son.

[0:53:12] TF: Yeah, my other son. He didn't do anything wrong, so he deserves a ski trip. The other is, how much worse will it make it if we didn't go on the trip? Like I said, we had a great time. We always had a great time together.

[0:53:32] KM: Does suicide run in your family, or mental health problems?

[0:53:36] TF: Not that I know of.

[0:53:37] KM: When you hear people talk about on TV about, because your son, I think, shot himself, right?

[0:53:42] TF: Yeah.

[0:53:44] KM: When you hear people talk on TV about mental health and gun control and passing inspections and stuff, to whether they can buy guns, do you think that has any relevance at all? Would that work at all? Or does it stigmatize mental health? People are like, “Oh. Well, I don't want to get help. I don't want to tell people I need help, because then I can't – And I’ll be blackmailed. Black bald.”

[0:54:12] TF: I mean, we've only got it. I know we're probably bumping up against an hour here. That's a 24-hour podcast. But I think that anybody who goes in to a school, or sets up outside of school and just starts indiscriminately firing, I think we can all agree, has got mental challenges.

[0:54:32] KM: Yes.

[0:54:33] TF: I mean, that much. I mean, I have guns. I'm a hunter. I'm not anti-gun at all. I don't understand why we can't do simple things. I mean, for instance – It didn't work in my case. All my guns were locked up. The key to my gun locker was on my key chain, which is normally in Houston. They just happened to be out that day, on the coffee table. My son, he obviously had a plan.

[0:55:19] KM: Yeah. Sounds like it.

[0:55:22] TF: He saw those keys and he went and unlocked the locker and the rest is history. That's what I said in that piece that I wrote earlier this week is that it's not about anti-gunnist, but lock up your guns. But understand that a key, a gun locker is like a locked closet. That you also might want to do gun locks. Even if you have a perfectly well-adjusted situation, with perfectly well-adjusted kids, lock up your guns. That's not anti-gun. That's just saying, that's just pro safety.

[0:56:03] KM: Yeah.

[0:56:05] TF: Now, I will say, if you didn't have the gun available ability that we do have, I mean, how many people are going to run into a school and start stabbing people and how successful would they be?

[0:56:23] KM: One, I mean, you wouldn't die from it. Get it in the arms.

[0:56:26] GM: Exactly.

[0:56:27] TF: Well, I mean, it has happened, but not anywhere close to the level. I mean, there've been more school shootings, or mass shootings than there have been days in 2023.

[0:56:38] KM: Oh.

[0:56:40] TF: Yeah. I mean, and we hear about the big ones, but they're – it happens all the time. I mean, the answers – I mean, the red flag laws. That's a good start. Red flag laws came from suicide prevention.

[0:56:58] KM: Describe a red flag law.

[0:56:59] TF: Well, it's like, if you're posting something on social media that is racist, or I'm going to do this, whatever. When somebody tells you they're going to do something, you need to listen to them. If you're throwing that stuff out on social media, then somebody should be able to say, “Hey, Mr. Policeman. Look at this guy's social media posts.” Because how many times have we seen in the aftermath of one of these shootings that, well, yeah, there was – there's all these incendiary comments on social media. It's like, how long is it going to take for somebody to do something? There's some out there who are just like, “Well, this just happens.”

[0:57:45] KM: I grew up with guns, and my father was a hunter, my husband's a hunter. We grew up with guns, but we didn't have automatic weapons. I mean, I don't understand why we have to have these military weapons in homes. Hunters don't hunt with them. It tears your meat up.

[0:58:01] TF: Well, that's another compliment. I mean, I've shot an AR-15 before.

[0:58:06] KM: Well, I have, too, actually. That's why I know, we don't need them.

[0:58:13] TF: Well, yeah. It's like, talking about how much damage they do. Well, that's an ammunition issue. It's not the gun. I mean, that's obviously very related, but let's not say that the gun –

[0:58:25] KM: It fires really rapid though. It can shoot a lot of people, no matter what size the bullet is.

[0:58:31] TF: But it's not a machine gun.

[0:58:34] KM: Close enough. You're not going to hunt with it.

[0:58:37] TF: You can't. You hunt hogs with it. I mean, really –

[0:58:40] KM: Well, that's true.

[0:58:42] TF: See, and that's where Democrats got it so wrong is that they focus more on what the gun looks like, rather than what the capability is. Now that doesn't excuse Republicans for anything. But Democrats need to learn more about the issue before they really go down that road.

[0:59:02] KM: Well, I think I saw you write, or somebody in your paper wrote about how we care so much about the kids, and they're all talking about the kids with all of these transgenders. We're protecting the kids. We're protecting the kids. Then you see where all of America writes back and says, “Well, if you want to protect our kids, get some gun laws.”

[0:59:23] TF: Yeah. I don't understand. Well, I do understand it. I mean, the NRA is a very powerful lobbying group. One thing that people need to understand, too, is that this is a uniquely American issue.

[0:59:34] KM: Yes, it is.

[0:59:35] TF: It doesn't happen everywhere around the world. It is here.

[0:59:41] KM: But we're still the best country. Everybody's trying to get in here.

[0:59:44] TF: I'm with you.

[0:59:45] KM: If you open up the gates, everybody in the world would flood to America.

[0:59:49] TF: Don't get me wrong. I mean, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

[0:59:52] KM: I wouldn't either.

[0:59:57] TF: I don't know how much further you want to go on the – I mean –

[1:00:00] KM: What?

[1:00:00] TF: I’ll just say that my son's suicide in many ways, not the only way, but as I am – I'm the one responsible for my liver issues, that landed me in a hospital for eight days in Florida. All of it compounded itself. That was where when I wrote the book that I haven't published and I'm not sure I ever will, it was at a time where I knew that I wasn’t doing that great. I was thinking, how can I be with a straight face, say, “Here's how I handled it. You might want to handle it the same way.” Because it didn't lead me down the right road. Luckily, by the grace of God, I survived that. I'm healthier right now than I've probably been in 20 years.

[1:00:50] KM: You look great.

[1:00:50] TF: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

[1:00:55] KM: You seem happier, too, than you've had. Like I said.

[1:00:59] TF: Well, there' no question. I mean, I'm happier with the – I've had some very difficult soul-searching moments, where I've had to really pull myself out of the depths and with the help of people, like my sister, have really helped me get back on my feet. Then, to get this, to start working at the Democrat Gazette and being able to do what I do on a daily basis, it's really hard for me not to be happy right now.

[1:01:33] KM: If a parent is suffering that’s listening and says, “Yes, my son committed suicide.” I can think of a lot of people whose children have committed suicide, young adults or children. If they're suffering with that, is there a piece of advice that worked for you, that stays with you that you think about?

[1:01:52] TF: Well, I can tell you the best first thing is I would suggest getting professional help. I had some counseling after in the aftermath of it, but it wasn't – I didn't do it for very long, because – I mean, the way I didn't think I needed it. I thought I was doing just fine. I was for a long time. One of the people that – one of my counselors asked me in the immediate aftermath of this. He said, “Would you have a problem writing a letter to your son? Also, you might want to just describe the day, and do it in detail. Not for anybody else to see, but just for yourself.” I brought that assignment back in and he made me read it out loud.

[1:02:52] KM: Tough. Ooh, I bet that was tough.

[1:02:53] TF: It was, yeah. The idea is that when you go through a tragedy, whether it's a suicide, or any tragedy, you've got the tragedy swirling around in your head and it's getting in the way of any focus and ability to do anything else. Whereas, if you write it down, it's like, you file it away. Where you can access that, it's like a computer file. You can go back to it and look at it again. At the end of that, you close it up, put it back in the computer, and spend the rest of your day living like a normal person.

[1:03:37] KM: I've even heard of burning the letters. I mean, writing stuff that you're ashamed of. Maybe not that, but going out and even getting rid of something that's driving you nuts and then putting it on paper, like an ex-husband, or ex-wife. Writing it all down and going, “All right, I'm done with my ex-husband,” and then put it in the fire and be done with it.

[1:03:56] TF: Well, I mean, what it did for me was it just – that was a perfect assignment for me as a writer. He had no idea that I like to write.

[1:04:05] KM: He didn’t?

[1:04:06] TF: No. I mean –

[1:04:06] GM: Oh, wow.

[1:04:09] TF: At that time, nobody really knew I was a writer at heart.

[1:04:15] KM: Wow. I think you wrote speeches in Washington.

[1:04:17] TF: Well, I did. Yeah. I did –

[1:04:20] GM: But you weren’t writing much at that time, because you were working.

[1:04:22] TF: Right. I mean, the whole thing on Facebook happened just because I started writing and formatting it in a way that was short to the point, dot, dot, dot and making – trying to make it funny. People started expecting it.

[1:04:42] KM: We do.

[1:04:43] TF: I'll tell you what's interesting, and then – Like I said, I've been doing this for years and years. But it's like, it used to be hog fans. I'd started out as hog fans. When I changed it to the Foltz report, I mean, my readership shot through the roof.

[1:05:02] KM: Then you had Foltz Forward blog, Foltz Report. Now you've got a book out called something else, or you didn't ever publish it, though.

[1:05:11] TF: I never published it.

[1:05:14] KM: But why do you keep changing your name all the time? Don't you know that you need to pick one marketing theme and stick with it?

[1:05:18] GM: She's about to give you a branding lesson.

[1:05:20] KM: I'm about to give you a branding lesson. It's driving me nuts. I can't even figure out what Foltz Forward. What's the other thing. Foltz Report.

[1:05:26] TF: Foltz Forward. I mean, my, the idea behind Foltz Forward at that time is that I didn't want to move on, but I wanted to move forward. Moving on has a negative connotation to it, that get past it. No big deal. Moving forward is just, this is going to be with me forever.

[1:05:48] KM: But I'm going to keep going.

[1:05:49] TF: But I'm going to keep moving forward. Because you know what? The world is moving forward. Like I said, the traffic doesn't stop. If you want to be in part of that traffic, then you're going to have to get back in the flow of it. That's just the way it is. The Foltz Report, it's truly more of a report about my thoughts on the razorbacks, for anybody who wants, who cares to hear them.

[1:06:16] KM: All right. This is the last break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Tommy Foltz, writer of the Democrat Gazette in Little Rock Arkansas. Still to come, act three, act four. I don't know what act we're on, depending on how you want to count it, Tommy's life, surviving liver failure. He's going to tell us about that. Again, depending on how you want to look at it, how this lucky, or unlucky guy came to be the editorial. Well, we've already done that one.

[1:06:43] TF: We can talk all about –

[1:06:45] KM: And again –

[1:06:46] GM: Cut that out, Tom.

[1:06:48] KM: All right. Cut all this out. I'm going to start over. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Tommy Foltz, writer of the Democrat Gazette in Little Rock Arkansas. Still to come, act three, maybe act four, depending on how you want to look at his life; surviving liver failure. We're talking about his eight days in Florida, and what he thinks is next act will be, because I know he's thinking, because he's always thinking. We'll be right back.

[BREAK]

[1:07:13] GM: Take a big stretch. Take a big gulp.

[1:07:15] KM: I'm going to take a big gulp.

[1:07:19] TF: Cold coffee. Better than no coffee.

[1:07:22] KM: Exactly. I could hang out with this guy all the time. He and I think constantly the same. I love everybody does, because that's why everybody reads stuff. They're like, “Yeah, that's what I was thinking.” Carry your –

[1:07:33] TF: Honesty.

[1:07:34] KM: Ain’t it a miracle? You know, these guys try to curb me all the time. I'm like, people don't want to hear fluff. They want to hear the truth. It's true. “Mom, you can't say that.” I’m like, “I don't care.”

[1:07:46] TF: Then again, not everybody needs to know everything that you're thinking.

[1:07:50] GM: Thank you. Thank you, Tommy.

[1:07:54] KM: Too late. All right. You're listening to Up in Your Business with me. I'm speaking today with a man of many talents. He is a writer, a businessman, a politician, a sports enthusiast, an entrepreneur, and a dad, and he's a survivor. Mr. Tommy Foltz. Boy, it's been fun to talk to you. All right, you went to the hospital. Eight days in the hospital, recovering from acute liver failure. Did you know it was coming? Were you down there partying in Florida, sitting on the beach and you had an attack? What happened?

[1:08:27] TF: Well, I didn't know that it was coming at the velocity that it did. There was a period of time there where I was –

[1:08:47] KM: Turning yellow?

[1:08:49] TF: Yeah. I mean, I truly did. I was jaundiced. My doctor here knew it. I mean, he saw me and he was like, “There's no doubt.” Whatever reason he said, “When you get back from Florida,” I was thinking, “Man, he should never have let me go to Florida.”

[1:09:11] KM: He's not your mother.

[1:09:13] TF: I did not take it anywhere nearly serious enough. We were down there. We went on a fishing trip. My son was with me and a few of his friends and I was – I was dating at the time. We went on a fishing trip and I really didn't feel good at all. I mean, just not myself. I mean, I couldn't even finish a beer.

[1:09:41] KM: Yeah, you were sick.

[1:09:43] TF: Yeah. Yeah. As soon as we got on the boat, of course, it's hot outside and they're down below. There's an air-conditioned cabin. I went straight down there and slept for the whole deal. I really don't know exactly. I mean, I know some of the things that happened from the time we got off the boat, until the time that I went to the hospital. I remember exactly right before, but then about the first two, or three days in the hospital, I don't. I remember hallucinations.

[1:10:20] KM: How did they know something was wrong with you?

[1:10:22] TF: Because I –

[1:10:22] KM: Couldn't get up.

[1:10:24] TF: I was making no sense.

[1:10:25] KM: Couldn't get up.

[1:10:26] TF: Yeah. My only request was – it wasn't a request. It was a demand. I said, “Just no ambulance. Just take me.” I mean, my girl that I was seeing at the time, who deserves some of the credit for me being alive, as does my son. I was just babbling on about nothing and saying some really stupid things. She said, “You know, Davis, why don’t you come in here and talk to your dad? I think he needs to go to the hospital.” He talked to me for a couple of minutes and said, “He needs to go to the hospital.” I got phenomenal care down there. By luck would have it, somebody who was trained at UAMS.

[1:11:17] KM: We're lucky to UAMS.

[1:11:19] TF: Yes, we are. Without a question. The biggest thing was that it was like, you can never drink again. I'm like, “What?”

[1:11:34] KM: I don't want to live.

[1:11:36] TF: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't quite that bad. People pat me on the back all the time for it's been over three years now to not have a drink. They pat me on the back and I just say, and I appreciate it when they do. I have to remind them that my alternative is death. I love living too much.

[1:11:59] KM: There's a lot of people that don't choose life.

[1:12:01] GM: Well, I was about to say. Yeah.

[1:12:04] TF: Yeah, I know. I know.

[1:12:05] KM: Did you go to AA?

[1:12:06] TF: No, I never have.

[1:12:08] KM: Oh, you're missing out on something absolutely wonderful.

[1:12:11] GM: We're all part of the club here at Flag and Banner.

[1:12:14] KM: Yeah, there's a lot of us here at Flag and Banner.

[1:12:17] TF: I don't have a thing in the world against that, or Al-Anon, or any of those – I mean, I think they're all very positive. I just haven't felt I've had the need.

[1:12:26] KM: Arkansas has the ninth largest AA family in the world.

[1:12:32] TF: Really?

[1:12:32] GM: It’s interesting, and you know that.

[1:12:33] KM: Club 99 at Rotary is Club 99. It's the 99th largest Rotary in the world. AA has the ninth largest. If you want to make some good connections, go to AA. You will –

[1:12:47] GM: Yeah. Also, that.

[1:12:48] TF: Yeah, well.

[1:12:48] GM: Never mind support. Just good connections.

[1:12:50] KM: I’m telling you, it’s the social of being up there.

[1:12:54] TF: Well, I mean, I will say, yeah.

[1:12:55] KM: All the fun people are dry alcoholics. I mean, Tommy is a good example. My husband is a good example.

[1:13:01] GM: Sure.

[1:13:02] KM: My daughter is another good example. My other son's a good example. Half of the family. We get together, half the family drinks, half the family's teatope.

[1:13:09] TF: Yeah. Well, I mean one of my buddies who – I mean, it was a Brad Bernie. Grady knows him. He's like, “Man, Foltz. You're the first person I've ever seen that didn't have to go through rehab to quit drinking.” I was like, I consider myself lucky and I'll knock on wood that I don't really have the desire.

[1:13:35] KM: You did detox though in a hospital.

[1:13:36] TF: Yes. Yes.

[1:13:37] KM: That is where is that – that very first week or so is the hardest and scariest and where an alcoholic could die.

[1:13:46] TF: Yeah. I was close. I mean, the woman that I was with was – they thought that she was my wife. They said, “You need to prepare yourself that there's about a 10% chance of him leaving here alive.”

[1:14:01] KM: That's small.

[1:14:01] TF: Mm-hmm.

[1:14:03] KM: Did you have to have a transplant, or anything?

[1:14:05] TF: No. I mean, they expect a full recovery, the whole thing. I got to say, too, that you know what? It feels good to feel good. I'd love to have a beer on the golf course, sunny afternoon, but it's just, I can't. That's okay. It ain't the end of the world.

[1:14:37] KM: I bet your son's proud of you.

[1:14:38] TF: I hope he is. I'm proud of him. There's no doubt about that.

[1:14:42] KM: You seem to be a speed writer and a reader. You write constantly. I have a feeling you have notepads everywhere in your house with stuff written on them all over the place.

[1:14:51] TF: It's all in here.

[1:14:53] KM: He's pointing to his head. This is the radio, Tom.

[1:14:56] TF: Oh, yeah. That's true.

[1:14:56] GM: It's YouTube, but it’s fine.

[1:14:58] TF: Well, for the benefit of the people in the room, I –

[1:15:00] GM: That's right.

[1:15:03] KM: You do a lot of research.

[1:15:05] TF: Well, I do. Yeah. I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I am intellectually curious. I want to know what is driving what. I made a call yesterday about a company that they recycle oil down at smack over. The article I read on it, it was like, didn't say where they source the oil from. I'm like, I know the readers want to know, because I want to know. Where do they get the oil? Is that oil coming from –

[1:15:48] KM: El Dorado?

[1:15:50] TF: Yeah, is it coming from right around South Arkansas that's used, farming oil, or – Just little things like that. Those little things really inform an editorial, or an article of any kind. I mean, I feel like, I want to educate people through these things that are right. I want to at least make it readable enough that they want to –

[1:16:24] KM: Finish it.

[1:16:25] TF: - finish the article.

[1:16:27] KM: Then you said, you want to make them laugh.

[1:16:30] TF: Yes. Well, that's what I mean by make it readable enough. Like I said, you don't want to write a term paper. We all got through with that in college. You need to be able to – I like to, whenever possible, I want to use as many concrete examples as I can.

[1:16:52] KM: Right. What are you reading right now?

[1:16:57] TF: I mean, reading Killers of the Flower Moon.

[1:16:59] KM: What is that?

[1:17:01] TF: That's got to be a three and a half hour Martin Scorsese film in October, but it's about the Osage Indians, who somehow were able to retain their mineral rights in Oklahoma. At one point, back in the twenties and thirties, they were the richest people per capita of anyone in the world. But then, they started getting murdered. That's a grand conspiracy. I'm a little more than half way.

[1:17:30] KM: Is that written by David Grann?

[1:17:32] TF: Yeah.

[1:17:34] KM: I saw him talking about that on TV.

[1:17:35] TF: Yeah. He's got another book out, too.

[1:17:37] KM: Fascinating stuff.

[1:17:41] TF: Actually, it was recommended to me by a couple of friends of mine, because I had talked to them. I'd recommended a book called Empire of the Summer Moon, which is about –

[1:17:50] KM: That's him, too?

[1:17:51] TF: No. But it's about Quanah Parker, who we don't have time to discuss all of it. It's about the Comanche Indians and the time at the very end when everybody was being forced on the reservations. That's a book, but probably the best book I've ever read.

[1:18:12] KM: Which one?

[1:18:13] TF: Empire of the Summer Moon. It's about Texas and Cowboys and Indians and the Union army and savagery. I came away from that book thinking, I don't feel sorry for either side. I mean, the savagery on both sides was just horrible. But anyway, it's about the Native American deal. They had recommended this other book. I've usually got a couple of books –

[1:18:52] KM: By the bed.

[1:18:53] TF: - open, by the bed. I've got a copy of the U S constitution on my coffee table.

[1:19:02] KM: Have you read it?

[1:19:03] TF: No. Not the whole thing. I read the first amendment.

[1:19:07] KM: Oration of JFK.

[1:19:12] TF: Yeah. I mean –

[1:19:14] KM: Is that all of his speeches?

[1:19:15] TF: Oh, no, no.

[1:19:16] KM: It's just one?

[1:19:18] TF: No, no. That's –

[1:19:18] KM: What is that, ora – air that name of a book.

[1:19:22] TF: The book was called A Hero for our Time. But I just like the soaring rhetoric, the positive, the –

[1:19:30] KM: The way he writes speeches.

[1:19:32] TF: Well, yeah. The way and then the way he spoke. I mean, he was appealing to our better angels. I can't emphasize how important that is to the livelihood of, or to the psyche of the country. I mean, the last thing you want is somebody out there trying to divide. We can't be divided. That's what's been happening. Listen, I don't like the MAGA right. I don't like the Woke left.

[1:20:10] KM: I'm with you.

[1:20:10] TF: I mean, I don't want books banned, but I don't want them scrubbed either. I mean, there is value, in my opinion, there is value to reading a book the way it was written, when it was written.

[1:20:24] KM: At the time.

[1:20:25] TF: At the time. Because for one, it tells you how far we've come and maybe how far we still have to go.

[1:20:33] KM: If you don't know the history, like you said earlier, you repeat yourself. You've got to be, see it all.

[1:20:40] TF: I don't know how you want to use it. One of the things that got me out of my real funk was the poem Invictus. It's either Invicta, or Invictus. It's by Paul Hemsley. It is the poem that Nelson Mandela recited to himself every single day for 23, or 27 years, whatever it was in prison.

[1:21:08] GM: I think it is Invictus.

[1:21:09] TF: Invictus?

[1:21:10] GM: I think so.

[1:21:11] TF: Because the movie was Invicta, I think. The poem was Invictus. It's the last two lines are, “I'm the master of my fate, or the master of my soul and the captain of – or captain my soul, master of my fate.” It's when you're, you've got, you're in that bad spot and you're thinking, “Okay, I'm in the tunnel. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know it's not an oncoming train,” but you still got a ways to go. I read this poem one night. It's like, the train picked me up and just pulled me out to broad sunlight.

The reason it did is because that poem was written, the author of that poem wrote it while he was in the hospital after having a foot amputated, and facing the prospect of having his other foot, or other leg amputated. He ended up doing some experimental procedure and that didn't end up happening. I mean, the state of mind that he was in when he wrote that book is inspiring. I mean, that poem is inspiring to think, if he can stay that positive and believe in himself that much in that condition, that means something. They're not just pretty words. It means something.

That's a long way from talking about Mark Twain. Still, you read a Mark Twain book, or To Kill a Mockingbird, or something like that and you think, okay, it was written during a time when that's a history lesson, as much as it is anything else. I mean, don't scrub it. Don't. I mean, some of this stuff, Dr. Seuss. I mean, his estate is okay with scrubbing some of his books. It's like, come on.

[1:23:13] KM: Really?

[1:23:14] TF: Yeah. I mean, most of –

[1:23:16] KM: How about Audubon? The Audubon Society.

[1:23:19] GM: Well, we just talked about this. Yeah.

[1:23:21] KM: Yeah. I mean, they're talking about changing the name. Thank goodness they did not change the name, because they found some letter that he wrote that was derogatory. I was like, “Come on. It was the time. Let’s just not.” I mean, I'm sure. I just said this the other day in a speech to Rotary. They were asking me about us quitting and selling, stopping selling the Confederate flag. I said, I didn't want to do it, because I don't know if people know this, but the Confederate flag was a veteran’s flag. The Bonnie Blue was the Confederate flag. The Confederate flag that we know that's been taken over by hate groups was adopted by the sons of the Confederacy as a veteran’s flag. When you saw it, it was a veteran’s flag.

I didn't like the Vietnam War. Doesn't mean I'm mad at the veterans. I was against stopping the Confederate flag, because it's a symbol for veterans. Men that may have done something in air, but never in doubt. They were honorable guys. But it got taken over by a hate group. It just became hard to do.

[1:24:22] TF: I also think that if you look at some – you may laugh that I even know what the name of the story is, but the Starbelly Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. It is all about not judging a book by its cover. It's like, the messages that come from Dr. Seuss far outweigh anything derogatory that he may have written at any time. Just like, Bill Fulbright. They're talking about taking his statue down at the University of Arkansas, because he never voted for the Civil Rights Act. If he had voted for the Civil Rights Act, he would have never been the first establishment politician to be against the Vietnam War. He would have never established the Fulbright Scholarships. He would have never been able to do all those things, including advising about four or five presidents on foreign relations. I mean, he would have never been able to accomplish all these great things if he had voted for the Civil Rights Act. Because if he had voted for the Civil Rights Act, he would have lost the next election.

[1:25:30] KM: You can't cherry pick little things, because times were different at different times.

[1:25:34] TF: You have to look at the body of work.

[1:25:36] KM: Yeah. That's what I was saying. Things were different at a different time. All right. This is the last question? What's next, Tommy? I know you've been thinking about it. What are you loving? What are you doing? What do you think about when you're not thinking about writing for the Gazette?

[1:25:50] TF: What's next is going back to the office and trying to write something for the Democrat Gazette. I mean, honestly –

[1:25:58] KM: You don't dream about something when you lay in bed at night? I dream about owning a farm, and riding around on a four-wheeler on a farm. That's what I dream about.

[1:26:08] GM: Yeah, baby.

[1:26:10] TF: Well, I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean –

[1:26:16] KM: You got a lot, probably. You’re a hunter. You probably want to just go find your little cat in the woods.

[1:26:22] TF: I'd love for something like long lost uncle to leave me a bunch of money, and I could get my own duck club and –

[1:26:29] KM: Oh, yeah. You're a duck hunter, aren't you?

[1:26:30] TF: Yeah, I don't really. Yeah. I've been deer hunting, but it's like standing in the wilderness with a loaded rifle.

[1:26:42] KM: Freezing your ass off.

[1:26:43] TF: That's it.

[1:26:44] GM: I think that’s why dad likes it though.

[1:26:47] KM: That is exactly what my husband loves.

[1:26:47] TF: I mean, listen, some people are built more for deer hunting. Some people are built more for duck hunting.

[1:26:53] KM: Yeah. He likes the solitude of deer hunting.

[1:26:56] TF: I like to be able to talk. You can do that when you're duck hunting, until the ducks come close.

[1:27:02] KM: All right. I wanted to say, thank you. I gave you a desk set. That is a Colorado flag for when you, because you loved it. From Colorado. That is a Washington DC flag, because you'll probably, you might end up back there.

[1:27:13] TF: Nah.

[1:27:14] KM: Of course, Arkansas and the US. That's your desk set for the Democrat Gazette.

[1:27:17] TF: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[1:27:19] KM: You’re so welcome.

[1:27:19] TF: I appreciate that.

[1:27:20] KM: I have enjoyed talking to you so much.

[1:27:22] TF: Well, I've enjoyed it, too.

[1:27:24] KM: I'll keep reading you.

[1:27:25] TF: Okay, I'll keep writing.

[1:27:26] KM: in closing to our listeners, I like to thank you for spending time with us. We hope you've heard, or learned something that's been inspiring, or enlightening and that it, whatever it is, will help you up your business, your independence, or your life. I'm Kerry McCoy, and I'll see you next time on Up in Your Business. Until then, be brave and keep it up.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[1:27:45] GM: You've been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. For links to resources you heard discussed on today's show, go to flagandbanner.com, select podcast, and choose today's guest. If you'd like to sponsor this show, or any show, email me, that's gray, G-R-A-Y@flagandbanner.com. All interviews are recorded and posted the following week. Stay informed of exciting upcoming guests by subscribing to our YouTube channel, or podcast, wherever you like to listen. Kerry's goal is simple. To help you live the American dream.

[END]

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Tommy FoltzEditorial Writer

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Tommy Foltz
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