KET - Veterans, Military Affairs, & Public Protection - September 16th | Rep. Scott Sharp

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I got a question here for Mr. Nichols. Yes. Were you originally from Kentucky? I am not. I'm originally from a small town, Spartansburg, Pennsylvania, just outside of Erie. Where did you retire from? Fort Knox. Fort Knox. So you were in Kentucky. What convinced you to stay in Kentucky? The main thing that convinced me, number one, was low cost of living, competitive wages in the area, and I absolutely love the beauty of Kentucky. Originally being from Pennsylvania with the cold and snow, I joined the Army to get away from that, and I absolutely love it here. My daughter went to college in Wilmore at Asbury. My wife works on Fort Knox as a government civilian still today, and we very much wanted to make Kentucky our home, and I couldn't be more proud to be a Kentucky resident. So once you got here, you loved the area, you decided to stay, and that's, I think, what we need to do to target the veterans. It sounds like you guys might be doing that. Absolutely. I think the best thing to do is to just educate the population, the veteran population, about what Kentucky brings to the table. Even a lot of my friends who are still active duty or while I was active duty, they didn't know what Kentucky had to offer. Everybody always said, they didn't talk about Fort Knox, they didn't really talk about Fort Campbell, and I was like, this is kind of the hidden gem of the center of the Midwest out here, that it's a beautiful countryside. You got great things to do. The cities are beautiful. I couldn't ask for more. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your service, and I want to tell you guys as a group, I think you're doing a great job. I'm getting contacted from former friends of mine in the service asking me about different places in Kentucky and that, and so I think the word's getting out. You're doing a great job. Thank you, Mr. Chair.