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Richard Helppie
Hello. Welcome to The Common Bridge. I’m your host, Rich Helppie, and we’ve got a guest today, Mr. Chip Webster, who is the founder of Unity in Service, Inc. Now, for those of you that are regular listeners, readers and viewers of The Common Bridge, you know that we are trying to find common ground, common cause, common objectives, places we can work together, ignoring the political noise. In this great constitutional republic that we live in, we’ve been able to do that for literally centuries. Things seem a little chaotic, a little tough, right now, but today, we’ve got with us, Chip Webster, who’s going to talk to us today about what he does. Chip, welcome to The Common Bridge. Thank you so much for taking the time with us.
Chip Webster
Well, Rich, thanks for having me on. I’m anxious to have our conversation.
Richard Helppie
Well, great. The audience of The Common Bridge likes to know a little bit about our guests. So if you don’t mind, could you give us a little biographic information? Where did you start life? What’s been your career arc? What are you up to?
Chip Webster
Okay, started in California. Orange County was where I was born, and then got dragged, kicking and screaming to Chicago my senior year. Coming from Palm Springs it was quite a transition; Chicago was a little bit cooler than Palm Springs. Then ended up in college in Iowa and went to work for Sears. I wanted to be president of Sears, Roebuck and Company. At the time I joined them, they were two and a half times the size of the largest competitor and they really dominated retail. I found that corporate life wasn’t really my thing, did a couple of other corporate gigs and became more entrepreneurial. And it was in a period of transition that I got invited via a Vistage chair[person]. I don’t know if you are familiar with Vistage International, it’s the largest CEO organization in the world. We put together small groups of CEOs - 12 to 15 CEOs - that get together once a month and help each other build their businesses. Then the chairs do one-on-one meetings with them in between. So you become very intimately involved with these people’s businesses. I was a chair for 15 years. There are groups have been together for 50 years- that’s how long they hold together. Had a couple IPOs as a result of the group, and then had some nonprofits in the group. And then I retired and started thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up. COVID came, and we bought an RV and did five loops of the US in our RV, six month trips. It really became apparent to me that we’re pretty divided as a country. One of the highlights of my life was getting into the poet David White, and he used to say that the conversation is the relationship. I believe that’s true with couples, families, cities and countries, and right now, as a nation, we’re not having a conversation, we’re having a food fight, and I don’t believe that that’s sustainable.
Richard Helppie
Well, thinking about that travel, you said, we’re divided. Did you see it at the street level? I mean, I see the noise in the news and people writing stuff, trying to cause alarm. What did you see, face on?
Chip Webster
Well, let me do two different tracks. One is, you go to these RV parks and you get to know people and start talking to them. First of all, you talk about things like where did you get your tires and what RV parks to avoid, and that turns into what’s going on in the country. Every time it would get to a point where we’re not happy with the direction of the country, then I’d say, well, it’s our fault. And they’d look at me like I had two heads. But as you pointed out earlier, this is a democratic republic, and it is our fault. We have the government we deserve. And so from that I saw a disconnect with the reality that everybody has one vote, it’s up to us to use it. The other side was just seeing the litter along the roads and the way people don’t respect the country. I think a lot of people think they’re renting the country instead of buying it or owning it. An Air Force general once said, “Nobody ever washed a rent-a-car.” What broke my heart the most was being in California, my home state that I love, and I pull into a rest area and it would have a sign that said no littering. And literally, there would be litter piled up to the bottom of the sign, “No littering, $1,000 fine,” and I just needed to write something. And then, of course, if you watch the news - and I try to listen to all sorts of outlets ranging from Left to Right - they’re not really addressing the issues. They’re just talking about how the other person’s bad. And of course, we listened to the George Floyd and other horrible incidents in our history and so I just thought, we need to get together. Probably the crowning thing that has made me feel the best is I’m on the board of an organization called Tampa Bay Watch. It’s a fabulous organization that helps clean the bay and helps educate people about the bay. We have a great discovery center and eco-tours. The board is very diverse, and I’m chairman now, and one of my fellow board members - who’s probably never voted the way I have - said, what’s so neat about this is that we’re working on something bigger than ourselves, that we’re engaged in a project that doesn’t matter whether you’re Left or Right, it just matters that we’re making the bay better. And I think that’s what Unity in Service is about, a pathway to responsible citizenship. My book (Unity in Service: The Pathway to Responsible Citizenship) is to get people to think about how can they get engaged in the community. How can they break down these barriers, get out of the silos. COVID drove us into the silos even worse, and so it’s exacerbated this division.
Richard Helppie
I had to stay home and watch TV, who knew? And look, I often say with my guests - when they tell me that the other is bad - I say, well, how many people do you personally know like that? They say, I can’t think of anybody. How do you know [they are bad]? I saw it on this program or I read this article. It’s like, oh, remember, those are the people that lied to you about this, this, this, this, and this, right? Well, yeah. And now you believe them? Why is that? Tell me, what does Unity in Service do? In a nutshell, what’s the mission?
Chip Webster
It’s a nonprofit, and we have three objectives. One is to get people to understand what a responsible citizen looks like - voting, being willing to support law and order. If you don’t have law and order, nothing else matters. The second is to get people to volunteer, like Habitat for Humanity, pick what you want to do. I do three nonprofits - of course, one was Unity in Service - and I’ve gotten to know some really interesting people. There’s all of that. It’s helped me understand people who look at things through a different lens. And then the last, which I think is most important - and I’ve been told it’s a long hike to - is universal service. You graduate from high school, turn 18, and you serve the country for a year in the CCC kind of projects, or you can go in the military and follow their model. But my model would just be a year where you get out of your hometown and go and work on projects. If you remember - are you familiar with the CCC?
Richard Helppie
Of course, yes, Civilian Conservation Corps at the end of the Depression.
Chip Webster
Right, in the ‘30s. We were out hiking in Boise, just west of Boise in Caldwell, Idaho. We were out walking around this reservoir that’s really cool. The reservoir allowed that particular valley to have crops, before that it was just arid. And we come to this little statue, and it says, “CCC 1936.” National parks, dams - the people who did that had sweat equity in the success of our country, and that’s what is so important in a democracy.
Richard Helppie
So the idea of Unity in Service would be a young person, presumably sometime after high school and probably for some period after, they will have a year of military service, could be something like Civilian Conservation Corps, could be the Peace Corps. Could be any of those things. But they will serve and the intent is for them to have the satisfaction of creating something and also mix with people from different regions, different backgrounds, get to know folks as human beings. I think there’s a lot of merit in that. Have you been able to do any pilots on this to see if it might work in today’s day and age?
Chip Webster
No. Of course, we have AmeriCorps that’s going on right now. It’s a federal program, and the challenge with AmeriCorps, from my perspective, is only one half of one percent of the kids that age are involved. So we’re not breaking down any barriers, we’re not moving any real dial. It has to be universal. I don’t know if you were old enough to live through the Vietnam War. I was draft age. And there’s a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival that we might remember, with the line: “It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son…”
Richard Helppie
“Fortunate Son.”
Chip Webster
Yeah, exactly. And that was a position that was taken by our government and the way we operated that I think helped divide us in a very deep level.
Richard Helppie
Here’s a music trivia from that era. Do you know the 2 + 2 = ? by Bob Seger System?
Chip Webster
I do not. I probably heard it, but don’t remember.
Richard Helppie
Should look that up. It was a regional hit. You may not have heard it in California, but talking about 2 + 2 = ? by Bob Seger - not Bob Seger in the Silver Bullet Band - the Bob Seger System. Same guy, very early on, truly a iconic songwriter and performer. Of course, we kept him to our self up here in the upper Midwest for a while before we decided to let him go out and entertain other people. [Laughter.] So there’s not been a pilot. How might a year of service come about? Is there a legislative agenda, or are there champions in a state, local or federal government that might be interested in bringing this forward?
Chip Webster
That’s my journey right now. I am.
Richard Helppie
Tell me a little bit about places that you’re getting support and places that you’re getting resistance, and you can name names.
Chip Webster
I haven’t gotten to that point. I’ve talked to General McChrystal, Stanley McChrystal, who tried for six or seven years to get a two year program going, and I think he got frustrated and gave up. I’ve spoken to a few other people in Washington. Right now, a former congressman and I are working on a paper for Braver Angels. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Braver Angels organization? (Richard Helppie: Yes.) If we get accepted, we will be presenting in June in Philadelphia to their national meeting, talking about universal service - the good, the bad and the ugly. But we don’t have the financial wherewithal to pay for a pilot. Because of my experience during the Vietnam War, I’m more inclined to say everybody has to serve, and if it’s just one or two or people who say, I’m going to be a doctor, so I don’t need to serve, or I’m going to be a pro-athlete, I don’t need to serve; in studying other countries in the world that have required military service where they let people off, it causes the same divide that we had in the 60s. So it seems to me, it needs to be something that would be legislated. The CCC was just a executive order by Roosevelt. This would take a much bigger ask. I know that several congressmen in the past - I don’t know if you remember Charlie Rangel - he tried to get it across the finish line. It’s never gotten out of committee.
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Richard Helppie
One of the things that I think would be the challenge would be this, Chip. Look, we were raised by the World War II generation and we all got our draft cards. It was an expectation that you were going to get the draft card, whether you liked it or not, that might tell you, “Greetings, this is where you need to report to.” Then they started giving the student deferments and the like. And by the end of the Vietnam War I know many that were given the choice: okay, got jail time for you or the Army. Of course, under the Nixon administration we ended the draft, and then now we have a generation where fewer people have been serving in the Peace Corps or the military and we don’t have this expectation of a draft. I’m trying to imagine our country today that says everybody, universally, whether you’re the clean cut young man from Utah or whether you’re a pink haired, tattooed person with a nose ring from an urban center in the northeast, y’all going and you’re going to work together. I wonder how we could get there. And I would also say, look, in our political climate, where’s the political wind behind that and how do we get that into the Overton window? I mean, I think it’s a good idea, but I have a different perspective from just time and grade on this planet.
Chip Webster
Sure. Well, I think we’ve probably been around similar decades. It’s a tough one, but here’s the bottom line. In 1964 77% of the Pew study - the survey - trusted the federal government. In 2025 - the most recent survey - it’s 17%. If you and I were running a business and we had that kind of result, we would either be shot, fired or bankrupt, or all the above.
Richard Helppie
Look, the company would be gone.
Chip Webster
Yeah.
Richard Helppie
But if you look at the divide between we, the people and our particular federal government, they are unresponsive. The whole game is to try to beat the other. And to your point about the break point when people quit trusting the government, a very wise man that I know, he said Vietnam was the first time we realized our government had been lying to us, that they weren’t telling us the truth. I worked with guys in factories that were telling me they were listening to the President saying, “We’ve stopped the bombing in Cambodia “- while they were sitting in Cambodia getting bombed. This degradation has been a long time coming. (Chip Webster: Yeah.) What can we show a young person to say, look, we think there’s a better future if we all go serve for a year. How do we get that into the public consciousness?
Chip Webster
Can I wander a little bit?
Richard Helppie
It’s your time do whatever you want to do. I’m a practical guy, and I love the idea. I’m interested in the attempts to do this. I’m just looking at what barriers have to be overcome to make this a reality.
Chip Webster
Us. Pogo was right. We found the enemy, and the enemy is us. I think it takes a long term campaign, and the first essence of it is - freedom isn’t free. People have to understand that in a democracy it is our responsibility. In the beginning of my book, I say something of the essence of that either the government serves you or we serve the government. And in a democracy, a Democratic Republican is supposed to be serving us, and I think we’ve drifted into where the government thinks we’re serving them. One of the chapters I talk about in the book is Alexander Tytler’s life cycles of a democracy. He said the last 200 years - this is in the mid 1700s - you fight for your freedom. You get your freedom from freedom. The way I interpret this work ethic is that you work hard and get abundance, and then you get abundance and you get wealth, and then people start getting selfish, then they start getting a little lazy, and then they expect others to take care of them - and you’re back in bondage.
Richard Helppie
I don’t think that’s wandering at all. I think that is where we’re at, which is the basis of the question. We’ve given into this victimhood Olympics: I am more downtrodden than you are, I deserve this or and that. Let’s take the horrors of slavery. I heard a person of a political persuasion saying we need to do reparations. And I said, fine, if you can find descendants of slaves, let’s talk about it. I have dead great uncles that are buried in southern battlefields, do we have to pay the reparations? For the first time in this guy’s life, he didn’t have anything to come back with. I only use that as an example of victimhood. In the history of our country, there have been two groups that have been legally allowed to discriminate against, and they are black people of African descent and women. We’ve taken strides to correct that. It’s not corrected, but we’re making progress on that. Again, it begs the question. I guess I should amplify that by saying now we get more and more and more people claiming they are a victim too, to where they come into the ultimate collision. For example, the last election in Boston for mayor, they didn’t know whether to say good, we had a minority elected as an Asian woman, or we had a privileged person elected because she’s Asian because Asians tend to do better academically. This is where we’re at. From these divisions, from these micro categories, how do we get people to say a better thing for us, instead of competing in the victimhood Olympics? How do we get them to say, I want to go spend a year doing something? How about the other end of the spectrum, people that are doing really well because of their ambition or maybe their inherited wealth, to get them to say, we’re going to do a year of service. How do we get there from here? Look, I want to assure you, I think it’s a great idea.
Chip Webster
Okay, no, no, no, I love it. I mean, this is where I’m spending my head time, a lot of it. No matter how hard we try, we cannot have a better past, and victimhood is about changing the past. So what we need is a long, I call it, ad campaign, PR campaign. It’s going to take a lot to, first of all, stop whining about the past. Where are we today, what do we know today, and what can we do tomorrow to not repeat that mistake. I can’t un-bury Wounded Knee, I can’t un-enslave slavery. Nobody can. What do we learn? Orwell talks about he who controls the past controls the future. What he was trying to say, in my opinion, was you have to learn from the past. These people who are tearing down statues and want to change, revision history are destroying us. We have to get a leader who says, here’s where we are, here’s where we need to go, here’s what we need to get there, and we’re all in this together - you and I need each other. What people don’t understand is this ecosystem - economic, social ecosystem - relies on us all contributing, and the more people we have that are not contributing, the less likely we are to survive. We are in a debt ratio that if we keep doing what we’re doing, our empire will fail. If you look at the failure of prior empires, many of them had to do with either over extension of military or debt. We’re working on both of those.
Richard Helppie
We had Professor Richard Leo Enos from Texas Christian University on a couple of times, and he says every empire that devalued their currency collapsed. We have done that.
Chip Webster
And we’re doing it with debt.
Richard Helppie
Indeed. We’re doing the exact same thing. Chip, tell us, as we come to our close here today, how do people get in touch with you and with Unity in Service? How do they reach you if they want to find out more about this, or perhaps support the organization?
Chip Webster
UnityinService.org is the website. Chip@UnityinService.org is my email. I’d love to hear from people.
Richard Helppie
I’m going to spell that out. It’s Unity in Service, UnityinService.org and it’s Chip@UnityinService.org to find out more about this. With our talk coming to a close today, what are some final words that you’d like to share with the listeners, readers and viewers of The Common Bridge?
Chip Webster
It starts with us. Each one of us is responsible for how we interact. One of the things I’ve noticed in my travels is that people are ignoring each other, not talking to each other. Can I read a short poem?
Richard Helppie
Please.
Chip Webster
It’s called “Micro Validations”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” — English proverb
Microclimates. Microbiomes. Microaggressions.
We live in a microclimate. Microbiomes live in us. Microaggressions are part of life.
What we need more of are micro validations — micro affirmations.
We become trapped in our silos. We become contemptuous of each other. Those who don’t agree with us — they must not be human.
Our country, our cities, our friends have become divided. We can’t keep distancing ourselves from each other.
“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall hang separately.” — Benjamin Franklin
Our children, our grandchildren, need us to hang together for their future. A healthy democracy requires its citizens to work together to remain free.
We need to see our interdependence and break down the barriers that divide us. We need each other.
Start with micro validations. Open the door for someone and say hello. Talk to your neighbors. Look people in the eye and acknowledge they exist. Reconnect with each other and reaffirm the humanness in everyone.
We have to start at our level, one on one. Neighbors now don’t trust each other. You look at all the studies — trust in organizations is all going down.
The only thing that can turn trust around is us, through micro validations and micro actions.
Richard Helppie
Love one another, love each other. With our guest today, Mr. Chip Webster, with a mission as the founder of Unity in Service Inc., this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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