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Charge Forward Podcast
The Charge Forward Podcast: Dedicated to those who choose to Charge Forward into the Storm when hit with challenges. This is what makes them different and has lead to their success. When in doubt.... Charge Forward!
Charge Forward Podcast
Private Prisons = Public Crisis; Part 2 How one father is working to change Tennessee’s Prison Problem
From Tragedy to Advocacy: One Father's Mission to Reform Tennessee's Failing Prison System
What if the place meant to rehabilitate your loved one became the reason they never came home?
In Part 2 of our conversation with Tim Leeper, father and founder of Kylan’s Light, we dive deeper into the harsh realities of private prisons in Tennessee—and what it will take to change a system built on punishment, not progress.
🔒 Private facilities make up just 27% of Tennessee prisons—but are responsible for 63% of inmate deaths.
💔 Tim’s son Kylan was one of them.
Now, Tim is on a mission to make sure no other family suffers like his did.
This episode uncovers:
- 📊 5 urgent reforms needed in Tennessee’s correctional system
- 🧠 The deadly contradiction between survival and rehabilitation
- 💵 Why private prisons must go—and how profit is costing lives
- 👨👦 A grandfather’s vow to break the cycle for the next generation
- 🎥 An exclusive look at the upcoming Kylan’s Light documentary
This isn’t just a story of injustice—it’s a call to action. Tim’s journey from heartbreak to hope reminds us: the system may be broken, but it’s not beyond repair.
✊ It’s time we treat people as people—not profits.
Listen now and join the movement for meaningful prison reform.
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He will turn five in August, but he will never know his dad, he will never know how funny he was, he will never know the value that he probably would have placed in Private prison has outstayed its welcome in the state of Tennessee Private prisons. Their day has come and gone. They have been nothing but problems for our state.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I see that is especially in these private prisons, where the death rate is so much higher, the violence rate is so much higher is what do I expect out of that person if they have to become an animal in order to survive every time the door opens, how would I expect them to be assimilated or, better, to come back into society? I couldn't. I mean, if you just think, close your eyes and think about that for a moment where number one on minute one, you're told you need to buy or make a knife in order to make it to tomorrow and that same system is saying you'll need to be rehabilitated before you get out of here. You just said I had to become something worse than I was to get here in order to survive to tomorrow. That's insanity for them to think that that's going to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's fair. And I just I hurt for the families that are living this incarceration with their offenders, because they're having to bring it back home with them and they're having to make calls, just like this young lady who lived. I'll just share with you. She lived in old hickory, without using her name, but you know her, her brother was is in this private prison in tennessee somewhere. We'll we'll allow it to remain unnamed. She's a good person, she's, but. But she's hurting because the person she grew up with and spent Christmas morning with and went on family vacations with and did things, made a mistake in his life. He's never going to get back out, he's got a life sentence, but he's also not a monster and he did make a terrible mistake that can't be undone. But to listen to her story and realize that she and probably her husband are sharing in this incarceration experience, department of Corrections, you know, in some cases by you know by private prisons are making orphans out of these children.
Speaker 1:My grandson is now will grow up without a father, and that's. We haven't talked about baby Kylan, but he will. Now. My son had a child while he was incarcerated. We didn't know it until he was incarcerated, and so I have a grandson. His name is Kylan, also, just like my son, he will turn five in August, but he will never know his dad. He will never know how funny he was. He will never know the value that he probably would have placed into being a father. He never know the value that he would have lifted him up and we feel like that. He would have been a good dad because he saw I hope you know what a good dad you know did for his children.
Speaker 1:And when I talked to Kylan in the last couple of years, especially after baby Kylan was born, it was always a hopeful conversation like dad, where am I going to stay? I'm going to work at the roofing company, and so you're going to teach me how to do these things and I will learn it. He said. I will be a good learner, I'll be a fast learner. He said. But you know, I'm going to, I'm going to have some needs. I'm going to need a phone, I'm going to need a vehicle to get back and forth, he said, because I've got to be able to make a living. I don't have the money to buy a car right now, I don't have the money for insurance, and so we had a plan. We would plan what he did, where he was going to stay, um, where you know baby Kyle is going to live, and we would even talk about, you know, custody, you know if he has him and if she has him, how does that work.
Speaker 1:And so, but that planning in those conversations that we had, that's hope, that's hope and that, allowed, it's also a release. It lets your mind float away just for 30 minutes and not be in a prison cell, because now you're dreaming and you're planning things that are outside of that prison, and so you're forward looking. And that was I realize now that that was his escape. That was his way of just just just taking a break from the reality and the anxiety of the day and saying, ok, just for 30 minutes I'm free and I'm looking for my apartment, I'm looking for my condo, I'm looking for whatever it is and I'm hopeful. And so that's what kept him going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and obviously we never talked about this, but I think one of the most important things that we as fathers do is we teach our children to pray, and one of the things that is just part of our prayer every single night is that God provides hope for those who have lost hope, Because in my, in my opinion, that's the worst thing that can happen to somebody. Obviously there are worse things, but that hope has got to be what drives people, and if you don't have it, you don't have a window to something else, then it's just despair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Bible says that hope deferred makes the heart sick, and so I I've always known that actually it was a Dave Ramsey kind of turned me on to that, even though I'd read my Bible, you know. But Colin and I talked about those things and we talked about, you know, faith and we talked about how to live his faith as best he could where he was, and you know it was hard and he would even say sometimes he said, dad, he said this place is so dark, it's so black. He said some of the people here are so evil. He said that I feel like that god is not even here in this place because of some of the things that he had witnessed and and saw happen. That wasn't everybody.
Speaker 1:There's also people trying to escape that. There's people that want more for themselves. They're also trying to get back to a family. They're also trying to get back to a career and they might not have a wife waiting for them when they get back, but they've at least got hope and freedom and they can eat where they want to eat. But you know you're talking about guys that you take every decision away from them. They don't, they're not allowed to do anything without permission, you know. And so now, all of a sudden, they've got to learn to make decisions again, and so that is a process that we have to be a little more patient with, um, even into our parole system.
Speaker 1:Because parole and probation, because you know, we have these high level of expectations sometimes of these guys and we have to meet people. You know, just like, in our faith, we have to meet people where they are. Well, we have to meet these, these ex-spenders, where they are and they're trying to create a new life, and let's help them. Let's don't cripple them by piling on more and more burdens that are unrealistic. You know when they, when you come out of prison, you should have a fully functional driver's license pending your test. Now you need to pass your driver's test, right, the driving portion of it but you should have that to be able to work. You know they're asking you to come out and you've got these classes You've got to attend. You got to parole here or probation You've got to come to every month. You've got to do these. Well, how are you supposed to get a job where you have to take all the time off of these things? That's why people typically don't want to hire people like that because they come with a lot of baggage.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, even to you know, one of the things I wasn't aware of is, you know, it's also, I don't say a racket, it's, it's real ugly when somebody does get out.
Speaker 2:Not only do you have all those things, but you know, let's just say you go to, your family doesn't want you at home, or you're not allowed to go home yet and you're in this halfway house type situation, situation. Many of those things, it's my understanding and I it's not all of them, but it's my understanding that a vast majority of them are. You know, these guys have got to pay 800 to a thousand dollars a month and they're sharing a bedroom with somebody and there's five, 10, 12 guys in the same house and we're talking about a thousand square foot, 1200 square foot house, and so they're about a thousand square foot, 1200 square foot house, and so they're really it's really kind of prison again, because they don't, they don't know the guy that they're, they're paired up with. Is he going to, is he going to do something in the middle of the night? Well, who knows? You know, hopefully everybody's on on their way up, but I mean what an almost impossible situation they're in even when they get out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's tough and, again, I'm not the guy who makes passes for people, but I'm also, you know, the longer I've lived the on the side until I built it up big enough to where I could start my own company and I just didn't mind the hard work. I had, you know, two children at the time and we were just trying to find a way to pay our bills and that was something I really enjoyed and love to do, and so that comes with the. You know, business ownership, as you know, it comes with multitude of problems in itself and maybe that's not for everybody. That's the path that I chose because it made sense for me and I gravitated towards that. But you can be successful by finding your way post incarceration. I mean, be a good number two guy for, for for a good owner, you know that will take care of you, do you work hard for him and you do good work for him, he will typically take, he or she will typically take care of you.
Speaker 1:And what I have found, just to back up from what I just said, there's three drivers that drive recidivism, for people continue to going back in and out of prison as like a revolving door, and the three drivers are this you have to have employment, gainful employment, you have to have transportation and you have to have housing. And so we've got to find ways. And there are some places out there, like Project Return in Nashville. I visited them. I love what they do. They're very helpful. They're down really close to downtown, close to Trevecca actually, project Return is a great organization that helps people kind of get on their feet. But you know, sometimes the housing is harder, sometimes the transportation is harder. The employment is probably the easier of the things up and find some low-cost vehicles for people who have proven that they are worthy and they've got a track record of a couple of months doing the right thing and they just need that little extra help. And even if it's just kind of a payment plan, a low payment plan for those guys to say, okay, I've got this $4,000 vehicle and you know what we'll do is we'll give it to you for $2,000, but we'll, we'll do a payment plan for this and we'll write up a contract just like it would, something to that effect that we could give them a low bar of ownership for that. And then, and then the housing is the next piece.
Speaker 1:You know, I know that men of valor has a uh a program and they've got an Antioch.
Speaker 1:I know it's over a 60 bed facility out there, but that's a one year program where you come, it's kind of like you're, you're de-escalating, I guess, like some of our soldiers have to come back and de-escalate from a war zone to go back into civilian society.
Speaker 1:It's the same thing for them because, honestly, they're de-escalating from a lot of PTSD, probably because they're in survival mode and they've had to assimilate to something they didn't want to be in order to survive. And so that process to walk out of that back into a normal place, where you can't just expect that person to walk back into a job interview and just to be to do the same as you and I would do, because we've been doing this for a long time. So that's right. The bar for reentry, you know, I just I would like to see more of a focus on some of these things. Again, there are other things that that nonprofits could focus on, but I love and I value when I see people who are taking the least of these that the Bible talks about and trying to find ways to help them have a different and better future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well, you know there's so many similarities between you know legally involved individuals and those that are in substance abuse. Legally involved individuals and those that are in substance abuse. And you know, I don't know if you know the guys over at hustle recovery. They do some fantastic work there. Uh, and I may misquote this, but I think I'm. I think I'm spot on here their recovery rate at um 18 months is four times the national average. So in national average, if you go through a treatment program at 18 months, I think it's less than 10% are still, you know, in recovery.
Speaker 2:Most have have gone back to you know whatever drug or substance that they were using and hustle recoveries in the high 40s.
Speaker 2:And they it's because they understand that the length of time that you are being supported or that you have accountability matters, and so they, if it's my understanding is correct, they touch base with them every single month and they do have a I think it's a six-month program where they get them those things.
Speaker 2:They um, they, um, they have, um, um, they have companies that that they can work for. On top of that, they, uh, they have a roof over their head through through that process, uh, even place to work out, Um, and then they also have ongoing meetings and they're getting them ready to go live on their own. They get them, uh, they, they work with a few auto suppliers, and so they do that, exactly that same thing, as they get them teed up for Well, once you complete this program, this amount of money is yours, and that sets you up to get a car and to be able to get back out on your own feet. And so why are we not doing the same thing with those who are legally involved in and you know, live through such a challenge?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love people who have found ways to help these people. Because it's messy and it's not clean, it's not, you know, it's. We all want to.
Speaker 1:You know, many times and I have also been this guy we want to say, well, yeah, if you just kind of would just do better and stop doing bad things, those things yeah, it's not always that easy and again it really sounds like I'm defending somebody, but I've just been more involved with individuals and understand the barrier for reentry, more involved with individuals and understand the barrier for reentry, and so I just want to make it attainable. You know, because they always taught you in school that to set measurable goals, goals that you can hit and achieve. Don't set these goals so high. You'll never reach them and you'll stop setting goals. And so take and set measurable goals that are attainable. And then you'll be surprised as you begin to check those boxes and hit those milestones. You begin to form a belief in your system that you can do those things. And so when people like this recovery program you just told me um, I love to hear things like that because it makes me realize, it makes me hopeful, uh, for other aspects of reentry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know Nick Heider, who owns this studio. One of my favorite things that he says is confidence is a skill that is learned and developed, and that's something that, whether you're recovering from addiction, whether you're recovering from being incarcerated, whether you're recovering from a bad relationship, whatever it is that you are currently going through it.
Speaker 2:Everybody, everybody's going through something. Everybody watching right now is going through something and know somebody that's going through something. You've got to build your confidence that you can push forward, and that's built through hope. And if we take hope from people, then I mean, what else is there, uh? And in those places and I'm not saying much to your at your point, I'm not defending people for what, what they have done or what you know. I'm not giving anybody a pass, um, but much like you were talking about, um, uh, matthew Vogel, I mean, this guy's got four kids and he's ready to get home to his wife and all over the fact that you know he didn't want to get his parole delayed because he he said I can't go in into that cell with this person. He probably would have pushed back even harder, which would have then lost him his parole and he gets killed the day before he comes out. So now those, those, those kids don't have a father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I and I don't know what he did. I don't care what he did. The man served his time and and Should have gotten out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and it just highlights for me. You know, in reentry there has to be a level of we lean in, you lean in, we lean in and get you the tools that you need. We fight for these rehabilitative and educational processes. We fight for these rehabilitative and educational processes. We fight for reintegration planning to where we work with people in the area. You will be released into their communities to find employment, to find maybe houses of worship, to find mental health care and maybe a halfway house and whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:We lean in to get those in place for you. You lean in and engage and put your time and effort into being better, not necessarily only for yourself, but for your children. Sure, when we are put here and we have children, we have a responsibility to our children to protect them and provide for them while they are under our care and that never stops as a parent, as we know. But we have a responsibility for that. And so, for my people that are in prison and are soon to get out, my encouragement would be for them to do it for your children, do it for your family and and and in in the process, and by doing so you'll be doing it for yourself, and you would be surprised what that would do for your confidence.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. A lot can be derived from finding a reason to go do something, whatever that motivation is. What are some things? If you, if I said, tim, I need a top five list of things that absolutely need to change, what would you say?
Speaker 1:those are I would start by saying private prison has outstayed its welcome in the state of Tennessee. Private prisons, their day has come and gone. They have been nothing but problems for our state. They've been nothing but preventable deaths and destruction. They have damaged families generationally in some cases. That has to stop. Our state has to pull back from private prisons and we have to do the hard thing and hire force correctional officers and wardens that are in state run prisons.
Speaker 1:Guess what, If you change the culture and you make it a desirable place to go work when you're trying to lean in and help these people that are in our prison system, that changes the mindset of a prison guard. When he shows up, he has a purpose. Now it's not just to make sure somebody doesn't get out of a dog kennel, it's to make sure that they have a future and a hope, and so I hope that's. The first thing that changes is privatization. The second thing that we need to change is we need to have a rehabilitative plan for our inmates and offenders, and that rehabilitative plan can be different based on the criteria for why they are there. If they came in with substance abuse, trauma, fill in the blank let's customize a program for them for the time that they are going to be there. The third thing that I feel like needs to be changed and improved is our reintegration planning processes. Our reintegration to our communities is critical, and so we need to make sure that we have opportunities for housing and, if nothing else, we're supporting nonprofits that can also lean in to help with the state. So if we could empower some of them and possibly in some cases financially, because they can do a lot with a little versus state funding. You know, sometimes it becomes a real big issue to try to create that in a state agency.
Speaker 1:The fourth thing I feel like we need to do is we need to have more alternatives to prison. So for our young offenders, rather than throwing them into dog kennels with people who can sexually abuse them, extort them, potentially visit harm and violence on them, if we could have an opportunity like a. I have an idea for a prison filtration camp for lack of better words, and where we take people on diversion opportunities where they haven't gotten a lot of trouble, and it has to be a non-sexual and non-violent offense and anything 10 years or lower. We give them a two year sentence to this very low security facility. Where they go in they're in kind of dorm housing, if you will, and there's eight people to a place, but they have their own bathrooms, they have their own you know shower facilities, uh, where they don't have to share it with. You know 2000 men, Um, and they are tasked with with their own chores inside that area. Um, they probably are going to have jobs you know cutting the grass, that, you know weed eating, keeping the lawn up, you know working on maintenance on some of the HVACs, those things.
Speaker 1:If we had a program like that and then we gave them the tools to deal and manage with their traumas, have a robust intake system, to where you say, okay, why are we here? And then address those things systematically in that two-year program. If after that two-year program, it is tracked and managed and you have done everything that you need to do and we see there's no need for you to go to prison, then we could, you know, have that, we could write that up for the judge and send that, you know, with our offenders back in front of the judge, and so they might turn a 10-year sentence into a two-year sentence with time served and learn a trade. Learn a trade, learn something and be a valuable member, become a better father during that process, because those are the classes we're talking about having. And so that's the fourth thing, have a prison filtration or prison alternative.
Speaker 1:And I would say the fifth thing that we need to do is we need to keep a sense of connectedness. You don't have the money to make calls home and so you just, you drift slowly, slowly, slowly, you drift away from what you know. Give them the opportunity to have calls, Give them the opportunity to have tablets Not every prison has tablets, Some do, but no private prisons that I know of do, no private prisons that I know of do and give them the opportunity to have that sense of connection with their families, because that fosters and creates and fosters hope that there can be something different in the future. And they can see their children at night and if they're going to the ballgame, guess what you can, you know, chime in and call in and watch them having it bad, you know, or whatever the thing is.
Speaker 2:Maybe the inspiration that they need in order to get out.
Speaker 1:To continue that change. And so just to recap those real quick we have to get out of incarceration, get out of privatization. Private prisons have long outlived their usefulness. We have to create rehabilitative opportunities. We have to create reintegration and robust reintegration planning. We need prison alternatives for our young offenders and we need to create that sense of connectedness to our families and cultivate that so that we don't lose that. And prison is not so so cold and it's not so destitute. It doesn't have to be that if we're going to be a department of corrections, then we should do things to correct versus just warehousing these people away from us to make us feel safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I think the undertone there is. Again, it's not a pass, but it is. The punishment needs to fit the crime, and not all crimes should be a death sentence by proxy of being in a private prison or for them having a lack of plan. You know, and again, this is not to say that there are not great correctional officers, that there's not great, uh, prison wardens, that there's not great people that are doing great work there. But you've also got to be very realistic and you've got to call the problems. You got to actually shed light on them and, uh, expose them for what they are and somebody has got to do the hard work to correct them.
Speaker 1:That's it and that's that's the work of the TDOC and it's, honestly the work of the commissioner.
Speaker 1:But the commissioner serves at the pleasure of the governor, and so we're going to need to have a governor come in to take notice that we have a broken prison system, and I'm hoping that our next governor that comes in can have that conversation about prison privatization, because it hasn't happened with any governor up to this point, from the day that it was installed around, you know, 1985, 1984, 85, 86.
Speaker 1:You know, and we went from a Republican governor to a Democratic governor, and so it's not a Democrat or Republican thing. What I have found is there's the appetite to rid our state of core civic and privatization, but nobody's quite found the way to do that yet, and so I'm hoping that our nonprofit Highlands Light can shed light on some of those things. Profit. Highlands Light can shed light on some of those things, give possible solutions and hopefully our legislators can continue the hard work and build on the momentum that we've built in this legislation for this death accountability legislation. Hopefully they can build on that momentum and we can incrementally begin to see core civic lose hold on the state of.
Speaker 2:Tennessee. I love that and correct me if I'm wrong, but that piece of legislation is in the governor's office currently.
Speaker 1:It is. It passed on Monday. So today is Friday. Yes, thursday Thursday yes, like I said, today's Thursday it's Friday. Yes, thursday, thursday.
Speaker 1:Yes, like I said, today's Thursday, and so we've had a couple of days. Typically it takes four or five days for it to get to the governor's desk, and then he has 10 business days to sign that into law, to not sign it into law and allow it to become law without his signature, or to veto it. Those are the three things that can happen, and so I would suspect that sometime around the first part of May, the first or second week of May, you know, we'll have our answer on what the governor is going to do with this legislation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so this episode may come out and post that. So let's just say hypothetically that all things go the right way and it is signed into law. What's the next step?
Speaker 1:So the next step is, you know, to allow that to take hold.
Speaker 1:And so every year the commissioner of the Department of Correction in Tennessee issues what they call statistical abstract and it gives the death rates for all the prisons individually, and in those death rates that is how we determine whether we have double the death rates and we can pull people off of these private prisons.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you another thing, jim we have the opportunity this year as a sunset year for two of the private prisons, I believe Southwest and Trousdale-Turner. That means that the comptroller is currently doing an audit of those prisons and they're going to find deficiencies. They've never had a good audit yet at Trousdale and so every one is typically worse than the one before. They have them every three years and they will go in front of the GovOps committee to kind of share their concerns, especially people who have personal stories. And we want to touch them three different times before the session begins in 2026, so that when the vote comes, you know our goal is to have two or three thousand emails to individual members of that committee over that over the winter, so that when they come into session it's heavy on their mind like, hey, I'm not sure renewing this contract is the best thing for the people and our offenders of the state of Tennessee, sure.
Speaker 2:Well, because, at the end of the day, one the death rate is far too high. One the death rate is far too high to they're not putting a the effort or the systems in place in order to rehabilitate, to allow people to come out and be a positive influence or positive member of society. If we don't do either one of those things I mean, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, at some point we just have to say we're broken and we have to do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Somebody out there right now is you know they're a parent and their child is going through some tough stages in life and they don't know what to do next. If you could go back, if you could, if you could tell Tim something at, say, 14, 15 years old, what would be a piece of advice you give them?
Speaker 1:Talking about, for, for, for the people that, uh, for the kids that are kind of, you know, wayward from their parents and not doing what they need to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd say young person, do I'd say young person? Please just know that you don't have to experience the traumas of prison to learn the lesson. You will be wise if you would listen to the stories of people that have gone before you and hear the damage that's been done and the loss of life that's happened. We never think it's going to happen. My son never thought that he would die in prison. We don't think it's going to happen until it happens. And so it's not too late to make different decisions, find different friends. You're going to be the same person you are today. In five years, the only difference will be the books that you read and the people that you hang around, and so, if you've got friends that are maybe not the best influences, do the hard thing and find new friends.
Speaker 2:That's what I would say to a young person. Yeah, absolutely. What do you say to the parents?
Speaker 1:To the parents I say don't give up, don't quit. I know that it's tiresome, I know that it's. I know that it's tiresome, I know that it's stressful, it's anxiety. Written being a parent of a wayward child. There's not much worse than having a child that you've invested in and tried to teach and and give and still wisdom into, and they still don't pick it up. So don't quit, just keep doing the hard thing, keep having the conversation, love them, but love them with grace. You want your child to want to call you if they're in a bad situation at a party. You want your child to want to call you. You don't want them to be afraid to call you because you're going to get in trouble. You might not ever get that chance again, and so if they're faced with the decision on whether to call mom or dad, make yourself accessible to them and don't be so hard on them, because you never know if the call that they made to you could have saved their life 100%.
Speaker 2:This is a best practice provided by our very first guest that was on the Charge Forward podcast, so shout out to Bobby Hopkins.
Speaker 2:And he shared that not only with his son but also with some of his son's friends and neighbors.
Speaker 2:He shared with them that if they ever text him the letter X and I say X, it wasn't necessarily the letter X, it was just whatever letter that they had agreed upon and a location that he would come and get them. And his uh, his kind of theory on this was if I know, if I, if I'm let, given notice before something bad happens, I can help you. If it's after, I may not be able to help you. And he said so, no matter what, if you send me a text with an address and that letter, then I know that I'm coming to get you. And if it needs to be my fault, if I need to say, hey, we've got to get out of here because of X he's like, I will absolutely do that for you because I would rather you do that than put yourself in a worse situation. That's great advice. You know mentorship we've talked a little bit about it, whether that's in the prison system, with those that are never going to get out, but maybe have rehabilitated to some degree.
Speaker 1:What kind of a role. Who's been a great mentor in your life? I had a guy that was a mentor. He used to work at Cumberland Heights. His name was Carlton McGrew and I worked for him, uh, in West Nashville uh, my first job where I was in the roofing world and so he was a roofing contractor. He was a large commercial contractor. They had also a sheet metal division in his company, and so I learned a lot from him, you know. He taught me some things and he invested in me, and when I became a contractor, he wrote my letter to the contractors board. So he was very helpful, you know, and he's been there through all the things. You know. He's.
Speaker 1:He's watched, you know, my, my children be born, you know, from afar, and he's, you know, watched a marriage and 25 years later, a divorce, and now he's, no doubt, you know, saw that that I'm married again, and so he's he's seen a lot of things, but he's he's invested in me in those young years and, you know, kind of, to a degree, made me to believe that I could do do things that were beyond that.
Speaker 1:And I'll be honest with you, my current wife, she sees something in me that I don't always see myself and I'll be honest with you, my current wife. She sees something in me that I don't always see myself, and so that is Sue Ann Bone Leaper, and she's honestly, she's such a great joy to share my life with, because she just sees things that I don't see. And then I find out later that other people see those things too, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to start listening to everything that you're saying, because you're seeing things that other people are saying, but you're the ones that are, you're the person saying it to me, and so, honestly, my wife is one of those people. Um, even though she wasn't around, you know, for many of those younger years, she's I mean, she's even invested in me now, but that's, those are probably my two people that I would, I would share.
Speaker 2:That's huge. That's huge. And you know I don't know about you. When you know, when I was trying to find a spouse, I was. I was looking for a great teammate. And when I when I mean when I say that I was looking for somebody that was strong where I wasn't and I was strong where they weren't not somebody to drag along through life and not somebody to drag me along through life, but somebody to walk side by side with, yeah, no, that's it, that's what I have.
Speaker 1:I have a partner in everything that we do. You know we, you know we help each other out and you know, someday she picks up the share of the load as you know how that works in marriage and some days it's me. But it doesn't matter who it is, because neither of us is, it's really heavy lifting. It's just we do it because we love the other one and we value them so much and we defer to each other and so it's nice to have that in a partnership and that, you know, I would much rather see her, you know, do well than than I had myself many days. And she says she feels the same.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Well, you're cheering them on. It's selfish and unselfish at the same time, and that's really where I like, whether we're talking about in business or just anything in life. Like, if I can find a place where the most selfish thing I could possibly do is also the most selfless thing I could possibly do, then we're all winning and it just makes life fun. The right spouse just makes life fun. They certainly make it easier.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right, just makes life fun.
Speaker 2:They certainly make it easier. That's right. That's right. Uh, that often comes up in the podcast. Just, you know, um, life is easier with, with the right person. So, um, how does somebody find your organization? How do they get involved? Um, you know what? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Well, we're. We're still early on, but you know we're. We're at kylanslightorg we spell that for me, yeah, k-y-l-a-n-s light, l-i-g-h-t dot org, and so we have some of our videos on there. I've got some testimony where I'd spoken from a maybe a committee or subcommittee. Uh, while we're passing, you know our bill, um, but it also has, you know, access to our Tik TOK channel and everything is Kyle is like Tik TOK, um, instagram, facebook and um, you can engage with us.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you something I haven't said, but you know we're in the process. I haven't said it publicly, uh, but we're going to do a documentary and we're going to talk about the business practices, if you will, of private prison and what that looks like, and specifically, of course, civic, because they're the ones that allowed a very preventable death of my son to take place and they're also the ones that haven't taken accountability for that, and so I need my son's life reconciled and I also want his life to mean something for people that are incarcerated currently, and I want to help those people, and so I feel like a documentary is the next step, because, you know, people often say well, they're, you know they're, they're in prison. They probably deserve to be there. One, they're. They're a number of people that are wrongfully convicted, that are in prisons. That is a proven fact, yes. And two, that is somebody's child and somebody's grandson and somebody's uncle or father, and so they've made mistakes.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be judged. That is somebody's child and somebody's grandson and somebody's uncle or father, and so they've made mistakes. I don't want to be judged on the worst day of my life, and certainly I would say that the crime that they have committed does not have to define them for the rest of their lives. And so I would say have some compassion and empathy, if you can find it within yourself to do that, because there may come a day that you need compassion and empathy. And so you know, I would much rather be generous with my compassion and empathy than than than have it missing altogether. And so I would hope that people would see them as people and not just, not just in the confines of the crime that they committed. Sure, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Have you given any thought to how you want to be remembered?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually have. You know, I want people to remember me not as a roofing contractor. I want people to remember me as somebody who you know, is compassionate, empathetic to people and, you know, who always look for ways to help other people out. And so I feel like that when I get to the end of the way, you know, if I can hear God say, well done, good and faithful servant, that will be worth it all. But but I do it for more than that. You know we are here for a limited amount of time and I don't know how long God has given me, but I've asked him to give me more years to help as many people as I can help, and I mean that. I mean I literally have run my race in the business world and so I've done all that I care to do. I will still, you know, have ownership and own Timley Peroofing, but what I don't want to do is drive that. I'm not the least bit concerned with making us a 50 or a hundred million dollar company. I just, I just don't care that much. Sure, what I want to do is I want to help people in this space and I'll do this for the rest of my life in some way, in one way or the other. In whatever way I can affect change, wherever that be, I'll do that. If one day I had to run for political office to do that, to have a bigger voice, then I will do that.
Speaker 1:And I was talking to somebody not long after my son had died and he said, tim, I think what you need is a bigger microphone.
Speaker 1:He said, because you have a good story to tell.
Speaker 1:It's tragic, but you're taking it're taking it and using it, you know, for the better good, for the greater good, if you will. And but what I told him is this I said you know, this is how I channel my grief. This gives me purpose to to know that I can help somebody like that person, um, whose sister was trying to help that guy. It gives me the greatest sense of my purpose. That day was to make that phone call to her and try to find a way to help her through a process where there's not really much help. That gives me great joy to know that I can make an effect on a person who has a life sentence and who will never get out of prison but should see as a human soul and just like God sees him, he is a, he is a soul, and he still has value, no matter where he is, and sometimes we just have to bloom where we're planted, and so I want to be remembered for somebody who helps those, you know maybe, who can't help themselves.
Speaker 2:I'm writing that down because I've never heard anybody say bloom where they're planted. I love that. So at Kylan's Light do you guys operate on donations? I guess if somebody wanted to donate to that organization, what does that look?
Speaker 1:like. So, yes, at Kylan's Light we have a Donate Now button, and actually the website's very new, and so we're still getting it linked up. Hopefully, by the time this podcast comes out, we'll be able to have that done. But you know, we do operate on donations and you know there's a big budget for the documentary. But I know that I believe that God will provide that. He knows the things that have happened that are not right, and I don't think that he'll turn a blind eye forever, and I feel like that he will give us donors that will help us offset the cost of this.
Speaker 1:I'll fully plan on, you know, paying for a lot of this, but you, you have a nonprofit, a 501c3 in the state of Tennessee.
Speaker 1:33% of your funding has to come from the public, and so I at least need to raise 33% of that documentary, and that's a big number, but I think that we can do that. I believe that it will be provided for us. And so, yes, we do need funds, and we typically don't ask for those, because I've been waiting for the documentary to really hit and the trailer to hit to begin to ask for that, and at that point I just want people to see the value in this and maybe that would say, hey, I can see if this were my child or my niece or nephew or somebody in my Sunday school class as child or father. You know, I would want somebody to help them and so I'm going to pay it forward and help before it happens to me. You know that's what we're looking for and we're not looking for big, large donations. You'd be surprised if somebody, just you know, give $10, a quarter or something and those add up. Sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, good deal Well. Tim, thank you for coming in. Thank you for sharing your story. I know it's a tough one, but thank you for also being a beacon of light out there trying to shed light through your organization. Killian's Light, kylan's Light Is that right? K-y-l-a-n. Yep Kylan's Light, kylan's Yep, collins Light, collins Light In order to expose just how poorly run and when I say poorly run, I don't think that's the right word, because it is far more, far uglier than that and why private, private prisons in Tennessee is something that needs to be in the past and not in the future. No-transcript. Again, that's collinslightorg, and we'll also put some links up in the description.
Speaker 2:Inspire hope in someone's world, I don't care who it is. Make it your mission today, if you watch this podcast, to inspire hope in people's world, because somebody out there has is just on the edge of giving up, and maybe it's just that little spark that you give them that that brightens their day and maybe puts them on a better path. Until next time, I'm Jim Cripps with the Charge Forward podcast. Take care Team.
Speaker 2:Is Jim Cripps here with the charge forward podcast? I just want to tell you I love you, I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you for subscribing and sharing the charge forward podcast with people you know and you love, because that's what we're here for. We are here to share the amazing stories, the things that people have been through, the ways that they were able to improve their life, so that you can take little nuggets from theirs and help improve your story and be better tomorrow than you were today. I hope that this is the tool you needed at the right time and that you find value in the amazing guests that we bring each and every week. Thanks so much and don't forget new episodes drop every Thursday.