and sam bowers, in addition to sam bowers, was arrested his right hand guy, devers nicks. when his family brought devers nicks in, it was like the most pitiful sight you've ever seen. they wheeled him in in the wheelchair, you see the tall green oxygen tank, the whole bit. and they wheel him up in front of the judge and he's like, i can't take more than a couple of steps without oxygen, judge. the judge says, i don't normally do this, i'm going to let you out without bond. a dozen days later, this is like a reporter's dream, this is where we caught him. [ laughter ] so he got arrested. yeah, he loved me. so, fast forward. sam bowers goes on trial and guess who's there to testify on his behalf but mr. golfer. and so devers nicks is talking to his lawyer. and i don't mean this as a cruel detail, but i'm going to tell you this anyway. i don't always tell this, but okay. so his lawyer is this really good criminal defense lawyer back in the 1960s. but by this point, the guy is in his 80s. it's great, it's great. but the reason for that detail will be more apparent later. and so

not surprisingly sam bowers was convicted august 21st, 1998. the thing is the hate that caused this, right, if we're really honest in this country, it's never gone away. it wasn't that just a few years ago, right, that a young man walked into this church in charleston and killed these nine beautiful people. and it wasn't that long ago, either, down in charlottesville, right, that we had happened what we had happen not that far from here. it's easy to think it's not that easy to happen around here, right? but myself i have had -- i have had my share of, you know, death threats and things like that, people sent pictures of me and my family and knew where we lived and things like that. sure, that's converting, you never want to hear things like that, but it led to an unexpected gift and that's the gift of living fearlessly. living fiercely is not about living without fear, it's about living fearlessly is living beyond fear, isn't it? it's about living for something greater than ourselves, right? to date now there have been 24 convictions in these