The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast Ep 069: Reinventing Yourself After Being Forced to Retire Due to Illness

 

 

Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome, everybody, to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith. Allow me introduce the Aroostook County potato to my Hancock County lobster, Curtis Worcester. How you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

All right. I'm doing well, Ben. Doing well. How are you?

Ben Smith:

Good. I thought you were going to take a little slight to being referred to a potato and then I get the lobster.

Curtis Worcester:

I know, I know. That's okay. I don't eat lobster, and we know this.

Ben Smith:

That's why I did that. I knew you're anti-seafood. Anything has to be on land, not off.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

I was like, if I'm going to choose a food, I better do something that is grown right in the ground.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

Right?

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

Well, so we've been covering lots of things. One thing that we wanted to cover, and I had the privilege of being introduced to today's guest, is this idea of we work, we're going along in our lives and sometimes, something happens to us medically. Sometimes, there's a shock and there is something that just causes our life to maybe just take a bit of a change, or a pause, or maybe a little bit of a time out. That's what we wanted to get to today, because disability is something that many Americans, especially younger people, think that can only affect the lives of other people. Right? "That's not going to be me."

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

"It's going to be somebody else out there," and tragically, thousands of young people are seriously injured or killed, often as a result of traumatic events. Many serious medical conditions such as cancer and mental illness ... We've covered mental illness a lot in this show, as talking about that, can affect the young as well as the elderly. The sobering fact for 20-year-olds is that more than one in four of them become disabled before reaching retirement age, and that's a Social Security Administration disability fact. From the State of Maine, because again, we got a little Maine focus here-

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

From congressional statistics in 2021 from SSA, is we in the State of Maine have 50,945 disabled workers that are currently receiving social security benefits. Nationally, as of June 2022, 12.3 Americans are disabled and receiving social security, supplemental social security income, or both, and according to the American Bar Association, over 5% of the workforce today is receiving SSI benefits.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Those are some statistics about becoming disabled, but what is life really like when that happens to us? How do we reinvent who we are, and what provides us purpose now that our life is changed due to a change in our health status? That is the purpose of today's show.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right. As you said, Ben, we have a great guest for today's show. Our next guest was a high school junior when his father, the radio newsman, asked him to babysit for his boss at the radio station. He assumed it was to babysit the boss' kids, but it was to run the actual news show. The radio station played the local church services from the previous week, and no one wanted the job, so from that-

Ben Smith:

Can you imagine? You're 17.

Curtis Worcester:

I know.

Ben Smith:

Oh my god, and someone say, "Here you go. Here's a radio show. Go knock yourself out."

Curtis Worcester:

I know.

Ben Smith:

Man.

Curtis Worcester:

I know. From that moment, our guest knew what he wanted to do as a career, and has been a broadcaster for 33 years. At the height of popularity for radio stations and DJs in the '70s and '80s, our guest blazed a trail for himself as "Kid" Curry. His iconic Bed Check segment helped propel him to star status in Miami, and it followed him during his over 20 year path to the dream job of major market program director. The perks of the job, including hanging out with musical legends, being invited to the White House, meeting Johnny U and a Watergate burglar. Traveling around the world to find the next number one song, and the best part, helping listeners in need.

Curtis Worcester:

Life was on track for our guest, but multiple sclerosis had other plans. Our guest dismissed the early signs of the disease and continued with his optimistic outlook until a fateful round of golf led to the diagnosis that halted a lifelong career and extinguished his dreams, but attitude is everything. We've had shows in our podcast series about attitude and gratitude. With the love and support of his incredible wife and her assurance of, "We got this, papi," our guest embraced his new challenge and shows us that life can be good even in the face of adversity.

Curtis Worcester:

After eight years of failing health, modern science gave him hope by halting the progression of the disease, and he's here to tell his story with us. At this time, please welcome Kim "Kid" Curry to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Kim, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Curtis and Ben, thank you very much. I appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, well we're excited to get to know you a little bit, Kim, and hear a little bit about, again, you have lots of really exciting things that you've done in your life. We want to hear all about that. Again, we really want to dig into this, hey, here's a moment where your health changes. How do you reinvent, and how do you realign some things in your life, and get through to the other side of that?

Ben Smith:

We want to talk about all that, but we always start our shows with getting to know you a little bit first, Kim. The first thing we'd love to hear about ... Again, we gave a little bit of the intro to you getting that first babysitting, I'm using air quotes, job, about becoming a radio broadcaster. Can you tell us a little bit about that life story and how you became a radio broadcaster, and leading into your career?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, what you mentioned, the radio station, there was only one in town. I lived in a very small town here in Colorado. In fact, it's the home of the Colorado State Penitentiary, not that that matters in this particular case. There was one radio station there. My father was a retired Navy veteran, spent 20 years in the Navy, and a Korean War veteran. He retired. His last station was in Pueblo, Colorado. His job was to be the recruiter for the Navy in Pueblo, which to me, I thought was always crazy because we're in the middle of the prairie in Pueblo. They were recruiting for the Navy.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Over the three years he was at that station, he interviewed kids from all around the region. When I finally went to go writing my memoir, I asked my mother, I said, "Mom, why did dad decide to move us to Cañon City?" which is a little town about 30 miles to the west of Pueblo, which is where he was stationed. My mom simply said, "Well, he always said the smartest kids come from Cañon," and so all the kids that were being interviewed to get into the Navy, he thought the smarter ones were from Cañon-

Ben Smith:

Interesting.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

... and that specific, that little town. You talked about me being 17 years old, having to play the God show on Sunday mornings. That was the radio station that none of my friends listened to. That radio station was designed for all of our parents, and believe me, even having a job there was a shot to my persona, but it did what mattered. The first time I heard my voice on the radio, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I had been a high school trumpet player. I was in the plays. I was Linus in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, so I had done acting and been on ... It was my thing. I could tell that entertainment, show business was what I wanted to do.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That got me started, and then two and a half years later, I had been to the University of Southern Colorado. At the time, it was called Southern Colorado State College. Now, it's a part of this Colorado State University System. It was in Pueblo, and I went there to major in music and to minor in broadcasting. When you're a little guy, a little boy, 17 years old, and you're on the radio, and girls are calling to hear their favorite songs, "Hey, DJ, could you play my song?" it was much more cool for me to be a DJ than it was to be a trumpet player in the college orchestra.

Ben Smith:

I can imagine why, yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

For the two years that I was there studying in the broadcasting classes, I was really turned on by the research that we did, listening to radio stations all around the country trying to decipher what made better Top 40 stations than other Top 40 stations. Why was it so good in New York that WABC was so strong? Why was it in LA, where KHJ, why were they the heroes? Why were they the leading station? In that research, we stumbled onto some radio stations in Miami, Florida. There were two FM radio stations that were battling. Now, I don't know. You guys probably aren't even old enough to remember this, but there was a time when there was really not even any current music on FM radio. The only thing people listened to was AM radio.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

The FM radio was for the hippies. They'd get on the radio and they'd play all these songs in a row, and then they'd go, "Well, and then before that we heard, and before that we heard ..." It was really, really laid back. There came a time when Top 40 radio went from being on the AM dial, the WABCs, the KHJs, the bigger AM stations in America, and that format went to the FM dial. Now, the FM dial, it's a very clean frequency. You listen to it. You know that AM radio is scratchy. FM sounds very, very clear.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It was a new thing in the business, in the early '70s, to take Top 40 music and put it on FM radio stations. One of the early ratings battles in America was between these two radio stations in Miami. When I was in college, we would sit there, people, they would record the radio stations and send them around to all the radio station, college stations and things. We would all listen to them and break them apart, but Miami was different. It's different in general.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

All of us who've been there know. Miami's not like everyplace else. Very, very Latin American-leaning. Well, at the time though, you got to remember, in the '70s, the big boatlift hadn't happened. I mean, the escape from Cuba didn't really happen until much later in the '80s. When I got there in the '70s, it was very, very much Miami Vice. Now, I'm sure you might have seen the movie, but the TV show-

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

... was the real thing. I mean, it was really, it was hardcore. I'm a little radio guy. My first full-time job is in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm there for six months, and I start sending out audition tapes, and I get a job offer in Miami. Within six months of leaving my college, I was in Miami playing real radio on what, at that time, was the biggest FM radio battle on Top 40 in America.

Ben Smith:

Very cool.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That's really where my career started, and it's where my career ended, and we can get into that whenever you're ready.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, well, I guess, what I'd like to hear a little bit about, Kim, is what was the progression of, "Hey, this is what I want to get into," was becoming a broadcaster, and being on the radio, being a DJ, and that. What was the progression of, is that the pinnacle and you go, "That's what I really want to do"? Or, "Hey, this is where I'm going in my career," and it continues to build skills, and develops, and becomes more of a market leader? Where does that go?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, when I got into the business, there was, remember, only actually four television networks, including PBS, CBS, ABC, and NBC, and then PBS. You didn't have all this other input, all this other media coming at you from all these different directions. In those days, radio was at the bottom of the entertainment totem pole. You could be a radio DJ, you could be on TV, or you could be doing movies. DJ was at the bottom of the list, but remember, there was a time when all the movie stars were first radio DJs. Look at Ronald Reagan, all the old guys who ended up ... Burns and Allen, that was a radio show before it became a TV show, so it was a natural progression.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I wanted to be in show business and I was on the radio, so my intent, eventually, was to become a radio programmer. That means I was not just a DJ. I was going to be able to design the radio station and try to win ratings with my ideas and then eventually, make it to television, but of course, the radio career goes up and down. I ended up in Miami at three of the most influential stations in Miami over the first 10 years of my career. The first place I went to was called 96X. That was the number two station in that one one-two battle I was telling you about.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

The number one radio station was called Y-100. When I say these names, I guarantee you there are people going to be watching this and go, "I know that," because these stations have been long-time, historic stations in South Florida. For the first 10 years I was in Miami, I worked for the three primary Top 40 stations. I got my education from two very smart radio program directors, and I left Miami to go to San Antonio to be a program director at KTSA. Once again, people who know San Antonio, when you say KTSA, they'll say, "Oh, yes. I know that," because it was a legendary station for many, many decades back when AM was strong.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I bounced around. After I left San Antonio, I went up to Washington, D.C. Then I was in Baltimore. Then I went back to Miami, so my radio career went like this, all around the country. I learned a lot. I enjoyed the show business part of it. Got to meet all sorts of incredible people, had all sorts of incredible experiences. Through that time, through these years, through the 20 years before my MS really kicked in, when I realized something was wrong, I was having exacerbations. I thought, at one time, I had been bitten by fire ants-

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

... because my vision started to dim. My arms started to really hurt. My hand curled up, and then it stopped. Then life went on. I thought, oh, I'd been stung by a killer bee. One time, I thought, "Why am I acting like this? Why don't my feet feel normal?" My toes would curl up. I thought, "Well, I must have been bit by a killer bee." Then there was one time, the one time that's actually in my memoir that's one of my favorite stories. I was in Washington, D.C. You mentioned earlier about a segment on my show called Bed Check.

Ben Smith:

Mm-hmm.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, I was the nighttime radio DJ, so my job was to gather all the high school to middle school kids. That was my ratings source, so I was always at high schools. I was always at career days, and things like that at schools. I had this segment for the last five minutes of my radio show. It was called Bed Check, and I'd let people call in and say whatever they wanted. They could make a joke about a teacher. They could rip on their friend. They could sing if they wanted to, whatever they wanted to do. I would fire back some sort of smart-A, DJ remark.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

This was a very big segment for the markets that I was in. In Washington, D.C., it became political. Instead of it being a little high school kid thing, I was getting political comments, and having parties go at each other, and saying things. I just thought that was funny, and then really helped me expand my entertainment. I became really funny at that point, many people say, because it gave me fodder, really good fodder.

Ben Smith:

Sure, yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I had this one guy call me and he said, "Hey, my name's Frank the framer. I'm over here at the White House, and the President's in here listening to Bed check right now, and he thinks you're funny." Because this was a feature, and I thought people were just calling and making stuff up, I'm, "Ha, ha, ha," and I went to the next call. Well, this continued to happen for the next two or three weeks. This guy, Frank the framer, on the phone here. "President was just in my office." He says, "He thinks you're funny." I'm, "Yeah, okay, sure."

Kim "Kid" Curry:

After it happened four or five times, I really started to wonder, so when he called, I stopped the show, took him off, and I said, "Hello. Who are you and what are you saying?" He said, "Well, I am Frank the framer. I am the guy who does all the maintenance on the frames in the White House. Somebody has to maintain the frames at the White House, and that's my job. I'm in the Secret Service, that's what I do. The President is often down in my shop, and he listens to your Bed Check. He loves your show."

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That was just something that just happened one time, and I felt that was kind of cool. It was actually just after Reagan's assassination attempt. Okay, so now we're going to forward. I left Washington, D.C., and I go up to Baltimore. I have a girlfriend. My girlfriend brings her grandmother into town. I tell her this story about, "Oh, yeah. The President listened to me when I was in Washington, D.C." She says, "Well, then you get to take me to the White House." I was like, "Oh. Shouldn't have brought that up." "Well, if you know somebody over there, you can take us." "Oh, okay." I picked up the phone, and remember, this was just a telephone conversation between me and Frank the farmer.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I didn't know if was real still.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I had to call the White House and I'm like, "Yeah, can I speak to Frank the framer?" They're like, "Oh, Frank, yeah. Hang on. He'll be right there." "Oh, man. There really is a Frank the framer." He gets on the phone and I tell him, "Frank ..." First, he was mad that I left Washington, D.C. He couldn't hear me when I was in Baltimore. I told him that, "My girlfriend's grandma's here. She wants to come and tour the White House. Can I get ..." He says, "Listen, just come on over. Whenever you want to come over, just tell them ... I'll let the Secret Service guy know when you're coming, and they'll all be ready for you. Just tell them, come and see Frank the framer, and you're in, no problem."

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I go to the White House, and I'm driving around the White House. Remember, it's just after the assassination attempt, but they had not shut down security at the White House. I'm going around and there are two or three different roads that head into the complex. I saw one that looked like it went right straight to the side of the building so I thought, "Well, okay. Here I go." I'm driving down there and right as I start in, it starts to happen. Men start coming out with guns drawn, rifles drawn. Now, what we know about multiple sclerosis, it is absolutely stress-affected. At that point, while I'm sitting there thinking, "Oh my gosh. Am I going the wrong way? Is this ..." Suddenly, I start losing vision in my right eye.

Ben Smith:

Oh my goodness.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

My right arm starts to curl up, and my legs seize, and they stick straight out, and I can hardly stop the car, and they're getting closer and closer. They're yelling, "Freeze, freeze." All I could think to do was open the door, and all I could do was fall out of the car.

Ben Smith:

Oh my goodness.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I fall out of the car and I'm yelling, "I'm here. It's Kid Curry. I'm here for Frank the framer." They're all like, "Hey, Kid, what's up?" That scared me to death. In fact, right now, as I'm telling you this story, my legs are seizing.

Ben Smith:

Man. Oh my goodness.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That's what happens with multiple sclerosis. It's an adrenaline thing. It's a stress thing. Through my life, I had these stress things that happened to me that were exacerbations of multiple sclerosis, so weave my whole radio career, the fun I was having, the ratings shares we were gaining, and through all that, every now and then, something like that would happen. Remember, there was a tsunami. It was somewhere around 2004. Really, the first tsunami we got to see on television because remember, we actually got to see parts of that world just be taken over by water, and people, animals, houses, just flung back in the tsunami. We'd never seen that before.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I was at my mother's house here in Colorado on vacation with my wife and my kids, and my mother starts looking at me and thinking there's ... "You look funny. What's wrong with your face?" I said, "Mom, it's just the tsunami. I'm on vacation. I have a stressful life. I'm trying to calm down." She says, "No, there's really something wrong with you. When you get back to Miami, I want you to go to the doctor."

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That was where the golf game came in. I was living across from the seventh hole on Don Shula's golf course in Miami. I would just walk out my front door and go play golf whenever I wanted to at night, and things like that. In fact, I was a member. I used to play all the time. I was just getting into the part of my golf game where I could actually play in front of people, and all of a sudden, man, I swung one time, it was a drive. It was on the second hole, and everything in my back just seized up. I had electrical charges going through my legs. That's what got me to the doctor, knowing that, yeah, my mom's right. There really is something wrong, but as is with multiple sclerosis, you are not diagnosed immediately. There are a variety of tests that go on for weeks and weeks. Probably six weeks of testing before the doctor finally decided what was going on.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I was at my corporate office over in Naples, Florida, which is on the other side of the coast of Miami on the Gulf of Mexico. It was 5:00, almost 5:00. I was in this meeting with all my corporate geniuses, and my phone rang. I picked it up, and it was my doctor. She says, "Listen, I think I've come up with a diagnosis. Can you talk?" I said, "Hang on a second." I got up from the meeting and went into another room, and the doctor says, "Well, you need to come in here on Monday because I'm going to diagnose you with multiple sclerosis. You need to come here on Monday so you and I can talk about the rest of your life."

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It was a shocking moment.

Curtis Worcester:

Sorry. From there, you're getting that diagnosis. Can you just talk about how that, and how it progressed into forcing you into retirement from your radio career? Because I think that, obviously, our throughway with this show is retirement and adapting to these changes, so can you just talk about that and how it really forced you there into retirement?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

By the time I was diagnosed, I'd been the program director of Power 96 for about nine years, and we had the highest ratings in the history of the station. It was really going well, and it wasn't really my genius. I was handed a big group of very smart broadcasters. I was just a different director. Same orchestra, different director, and it just worked out like crazy. Things were going very, very well for me right then, and so it was quite a shock. I can tell you that when I went back into the corporate office meeting, I said to them that I had just been diagnosed with MS, so I'm going home, backed up my bag, and got in my car.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, I said I was over in Naples, so that's a three-hour drive back to Miami. I got on the phone with my wife, and for those three hours, we discussed what I had never even thought of was multiple sclerosis. I had no clue, didn't know what it was, so she did the 2005 version of Google, and starts to read to me things that scared us both.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

We couldn't believe what we were reading. You can die from multiple sclerosis. The fact that it, at that time was coming on me very strong. Like I said, my mother had noticed it. Six months later, I'm having all these complications. My feet don't work right. My shoulder's in serious pain. The golf thing happens. All of a sudden, I could tell it was all exacerbations and coming down on me fast. I can tell you that it was a shocking conversation with my wife. When I got home, we knew that we had to go see the doctor on Monday.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I went into the office that day on Monday like a normal guy and just told them, "I've been diagnosed. I'm going to go see my doctor today, and I'll be back tomorrow to let you know what's going on." When I came back into the office, I had already decided that I was going to retire.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Because my doctor told me that what was happening to me ... MS is lesions. Lesions occur on the brain, they occur in the spine, and the neck. These lesions, depending on where they land, is how your body's affected by multiple sclerosis. My lesions in my neck and in my head affect my lower three-quarters of my legs. From my mid-thigh down, I can't feel anything. They seize all the time. My feet curl up, so it really depends on where the lesions happen in your system. I also had a lesion somewhere in the middle of my ... What do they call when you have ... Vertigo. Somewhere in the cortex of my brain, there was a vertigo problem.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It was tough, guys. I was a normal guy. I was playing basketball, full court basketball, golf, run the number one radio station in Miami, Florida. I had, my kids were mine. I was a single dad at the time. Everything was going very, very well for me, so I was ... Well, I was a single dad, and then I got married to my wonderful wife, and three years after we got married is when I got diagnosed. Things were going very, very well for me.

Ben Smith:

Kim, can I ask then, this whole ... Okay, so here we are. Jeez, we're top of the world. We're feeling, "Jeez, I'm active." You're having symptoms but you're dismissing them because, "Well, jeez, I've always top shape. I'm doing full court basketball. I'm playing 18 holes of golf. Come on. What's the problem here?" I could see where, all of a sudden, you get this diagnosis. You and your wife are reading this 2005 Ask Jeeves, or whatever it might be about what MS is and what that diagnosis really means.

Ben Smith:

Can you talk about maybe the day of, that week of where you're saying, hey, you walk in and you retire at that point? How did you take that diagnosis in terms of ... Because I could see where ... I know I'm not finishing my question just yet, but I could see where, in that moment, it's very easy to look at yourself in self-pity, and just wallows in the depths of it, and really just go to maybe the bad place. Hearing you talk, and hearing you even recount some of the things you've done, you have a lot of hope. You have a lot of optimism. You have a very positive attitude. How did you take that diagnosis, initially, especially as your health is changing, and how did you maintain an optimism that you could still live the life that you wanted or maybe even a different way?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, I can tell you that it was shocking and it angered me in the deep down of my soul. In fact, it was for eight years, I really didn't know if I was going to live. I was mad, and it was killing me. I was on steroid treatments to try to stop whatever lesions were appearing. I was taking experimental medicines. My wife and I ... My wife was doing everything she could to keep me above ground. She has never held back on making my life comfortable. I drive with hand controls, and that's where we're going to get into what it costs to be disabled in America.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

For eight years, I went from walking like a normal guy, to a cane, to crutches, and then to a wheelchair in about two years. Then it became desperate with the medicine they were trying to get me to take, and nothing was stopping, nothing was slowing anything down. I just kept getting worse and worse. Now, when I first got diagnosed, there were only four or five MS medicines, so the five years later, six years later, there were eight or nine medicines. Eight years into the progression ... You talk about, you asked about the mental state. I have kids. MS became the only thing I could think about. That's why I knew I had to retire from the radio business, because I lived and breathed radio.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Those who know "Kid" Curry and the people that I've worked for and with, I am of a breed unlike today's radio broadcasters. I lived and breathed it 24/7 because, guess what? Radio stations don't shut off, and when you're the guy in charge, that's your thing. Then when I got diagnosed, within 48 hours, I was no longer thinking about the radio station, and that shocked me. That's when I told my wife, "I don't even care what songs are playing," and that's not like me. "I don't care if they're even promoting things correctly." That's not like me, so I knew I was done because all I could think about was, what's going on and where is this going to end? Because it was all coming on real strong.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Then my wife and I, when I got diagnosed, I didn't realize that ... I was really concerned about income. I didn't know what was going to happen, but within the first week of me being diagnosed, the office manager that we had, her name was Phyllis, but you could call her Sergeant Phyllis, she ran the office. Phyllis came into me within the first couple of days after my resignation, in the office, tried to keep me on, no matter what. "We'll give you a different position." I was like, "No, I'm going." She said, "You don't know this, but you signed a long-term health, long-term insurance policy." I didn't know it. She had come into my office all the time telling me to sign things. I didn't know. I just had signed, apparently, a long-term health agreement, so my income was covered-

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

... and substantial, so we didn't, my wife and I ... That was off our table. We no longer had to worry about that. That really helped me but now, I'm still a dad. I have four children. That concerned me. There was a divide there. When I tell you that all I could think about was the MS, it broke me away from my kids some. I think my youngest daughter and I don't have a very ... Well, the same type of relationship I have with the others, because I was thinking too much about MS. I didn't really bond with her the way I wanted to.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It really affected me, but there came a time after eight years when my doctor finally said, "Look, there's a new medicine out. I want you to take it," and we talked about ... My wife does not hold back anything. When she found out that I had multiple sclerosis, she was like, "We're going to find the best doctors out there. We're going to figure this out." I had the best doctors in Miami. In fact, for the first two years after I retired in 2005, by the end of 2005, I had already moved out to Colorado to my hometown, very small, little Colorado town because I figured, if I'm going to go down, at least I've got friends I can call who can help. My high school buddies were still there, and my mom is still there.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Within six months of me retiring or leaving Power 96, I was out here in Colorado, so I no longer had to worry about my money because I had that covered. My kids, I was doing my best with them. My wife and I took our funds, all the money we made from the house in Miami on Don Shula's golf course, and invested. Then we started fixing and flipping. We started taking houses, and fixing and flipping. Even though I could not stand up, I was on the ground doing grout work on the floors of these houses. That got my wife started in the real estate business. She didn't like the way she was being treated by the real estate people that were selling us these homes, so she said, "I'm going to go out and get my license." She did, and within two years, was breaking real estate records per capita in our little town in Cañon City-

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

... which has then turned into her becoming an international business coach. This whole thing, at the very end of this conversation, I think I was looking over some of your notes, you wanted to know how ... Well, anyway, whatever. I think, now that I look back, I think having MS was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Although it was desperate at the time, when we changed the medicine eight years in, and the doctor insisted I take Vitamin D in excess. He believes that Vitamin D is a necessity for MS patients, so he changed my medicine. I started taking large doses of Vitamin D, and six months later, my condition leveled off and I stopped getting worse. Now, I haven't gotten any better, but I'm not getting any worse.

Ben Smith:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Then what happens, now this is where we talk about the transition. Now I've gone through I've left my job, I'm fighting this battle with a disease that might kill me. My wife and I are trying to restructure our financial lives and try to figure out our personal lives. Then suddenly, it all stopped and it was like, "Wait a minute. Now what? Now what? If I'm not going to die, if my condition, I've got no more lesions, I've got nothing else diagnosed in the last, since, I guess, '13, 2014, now what do I do?" That's when the whole thing had to change because I had been angry for so long that I had gone through all this. I had been ripped out of the job I love. My wife and I had to leave our wonderful home on the seventh hole of Don Shula's golf course. My radio career came to a screeching halt. Everything was drastic, it was terrible, and then suddenly, well, now what?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That's when I had to come up with something new. That's when I had to dig down and figure out what mattered to me. What mattered to me was telling my story, was telling my radio career story, the excitement, the fun we had. The great stories of all the crazy, nutty things I'd done. I wanted to tell the story about my diagnosis, and then I wanted to tell the story of what it's like to live with MS and that it costs to be disabled in America.

Ben Smith:

I want to ask the question to you about your relationship shock of hey ... Because I know what you're talking about with your wife getting into real estate here, but when does the relationship shock ... Like what happened to you is, here you are the breadwinner and you're career-focused, and this is who you are, and looking at your role with your wife and who does what in the household, can you talk a little bit about that conversation that you had between you and her?

Ben Smith:

How did you work to recompose what each of you were going to bring to that relationship table? Because I think that's a very important part of when any of us face what you faced, as this, hey, something completely chatters what we're doing on a daily basis and it can no longer be the way it was. It's going to have to be different. How did you and your wife approach that?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It is a continuing conversation. I can tell you that it is earth-shattering to have everything change like it did, and it can happen to anyone at any age. We had to go all the way to the point of, what can you do? What are you able to do without hurting yourself? I even tried ... Because I didn't want to stop. I still wanted to mow the yard. I still wanted to take care of the kids. I still wanted to play with the dog, but after falling 50 times, I was pretty much stuck in the wheelchair, so we had to go back and reconstruct our whole life because my wife was my date at the Grammys, and then suddenly, everything stopped and we had to put ourselves into a place where now, what are we going to do?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

She realized that, well, we realized we needed to have some sort of income besides my insurance payout because we had a future. Of course, that only lasted till I was 65. It lasted 15 years, and it was going to end, so that's when we thought that we probably ought to come up with something, and that's when she got into that real estate thing. I've always wanted to be involved and I think that's probably why I became a writer, because I wanted to find a source of income. I wanted to at least contribute some because I really can't do anything. I mean, I can go to Walmart and I can be a greeter, but I can only do it for about 10 minute before my leges start to seize out and I fall out of my chair, so there's really nothing I can do. We really had to restructure everything.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

There came a point when my wife, I'm telling you, I even suggested I go to therapy, but my wife just simply said to me, "You've got to stop being so mad about being in that wheelchair because it's not going to go away." To have her, now that she's an international business coach, she is deep. She gets stuff out of people. I don't need a therapist. My wife said the simple thing I needed to hear. "Stop being so mad about being there because it's not going to change. Let's figure out what you're going to do now."

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I think that's really what my whole purpose is. I have to figure out how to cook. I have to figure out how to clean. I have to figure out how to get from the bathroom to the toilet, I mean, the shower to the toilet. I have to figure these things out, so every day, my life is within inches. I live within inches. If something is a half an inch or an inch too far away than I'm normally used to grabbing, it can make me fall out of my chair, so we had to reevaluate everything. It hurt me, I'm telling you guys. It's the same thing that would happen to anybody else. If you're plugging along and then suddenly, you're not plugging along, you get mad about it.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Absolutely.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It angered me for a long, long time. Like I said, It's a continuing battle, because my wife still says to me, "Stop worrying about that. There's nothing you can do about that," and now, specifically, not that it matters, but we just purchased a 10.5-acre horse property, so I've got horses now.

Ben Smith:

Oh my goodness.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I've got a big John Deere tractor that I have to pull myself up on and drive around to groom the arena and stuff, so my job is to figure things out. I can guarantee you that it was very, very low for a long, long time. It was scary. Probably took me two years to then, after my condition leveled off, probably took me two years later to be able to say, "Okay. Now what? Now what? Now, let's go do something." Because I was in a flux, and finally, I thought, "Well, I'm going to go ahead and become a writer." That's when I actually hired a writing coach and learned all about it. She taught me how to read books, and those books taught me how to write. That's where I came up with what I do now. Like I said, I think it's really the only thing I can do that I can create income with, plus it gets a lot of this stuff out of me.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Guys, when you've had all these things, we talk about those eight years when my condition was going down, I spent a lot of time here reviewing my life. How I treated people, how I worked, and how I should have done things differently. Because I got a chance to review myself, because I was just sitting there for eight years waiting for it to come. I got a chance to really go back. When I tell you that I think MS was the best thing that happened to me, I really feel I'm a much better person now. I have much more patience with people. I'm much more sympathetic. I'm much more aware of what other people need because my life was "Kid" Curry the DJ, and it was a pretty strong life, and I got sucked into it.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, so Kid, I want to hone in something before we move on to your current work and your writing. I appreciate you going back and sharing that insight about you and your wife and the roles that you had to continually learn to adopt there. I want to focus on the diagnosis for a minute. We can imagine that receiving a diagnosis like you did, and you said the first thing your wife said was, "We're going to go find the best doctors. We're going to get ahead of this. We're going to do this."

Curtis Worcester:

What is that journey like, and how do you find someone? I know you've talked about the advances in medicine now, so especially at that time, what's that process like finding someone that really had the right recipe, if you will, to help with your condition and get you to that point where you are now, leveled off?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, finding the right people to take care of your situation is vital. As I said, my wife has not stepped back at all, trying to find the right people. In fact, I had gone to another doctor. She had researched everything and found one doctor, and then I went there one time and she said, "No, not this one. Let's go to the next one." What she found for me was, his name was Dr. Allen Bowling. Dr. Bowling writes books about multiple sclerosis and how to deal with your life. He believes in alternative medicines. He believes that you should go ahead and go through all sorts of therapies for your MS. Part of my MS, Curtis, I'm going to admit something to you right here, and you've probably noticed it already. It's hard for me to keep a line of straight thought, so if you'll ask that question again, I might answer it.

Curtis Worcester:

No, absolutely. Really, just about the process and the journey of really finding, or how did you find the best doctors for you in that time? What was that experience like for you?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That's all my wife. Like I said, she has made sure that I've got all the best doctors, I've got all the best therapists. I go to meetings, men over 50 with multiple sclerosis. We Zoom them now. I can tell you that the support system that I have is not normal. My wife ... Some people get diagnosed with a disease like this, and the relationship falls apart.

Curtis Worcester:

For sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Then, suddenly, you can be all by yourself. I see gentlemen that I see every week on my meetings, or every month in the meetings that are by themselves and have been abandoned by family and friends, and so I am extremely fortunate to have a wife who has decided that she will hold back nothing for my comfort. That's the first thing. You need a support team.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It's not easy sometimes. In fact, that worried me in the beginning. I was like, "She's not sticking around for me. I'm falling apart," but my wife is Cuban and that changes that scenario. My wife, she'll cut you. That's how I'm surviving the way I do. She went in and did the research, and found the doctors, and made the phone calls because you have to be proactive, guys. You know this. You can't just take the first doctor you find. You got to make sure they're aligned with your beliefs and with your direction because not all ... Every disease, everyone has something and it's all different, so you have to find the right people to deal with your situation, and my wife was adamant.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I'd been through three or four different therapy sessions with three or four different therapy places, and then finally, she's just, "No, we're not going back. We're not going back." She'll find the right place and then that's where I go. You need to be proactive and my luck is that my wife is adamant about making sure I suffer none.

Ben Smith:

Kim, I got to jump in because it just sounds like you have the secret weapon of all secret weapons here with a wife who is just a persistent bulldog for you. Not only just advocate for you, but also to you. It sounds like when you were down in the dumps, and you're angry, and you're really upset about where you are in life, and she's not, she's encouraging in a positive way of like, "You need to get over yourself. You need to look at the positive and the life that's half full and not half empty."

Ben Smith:

I want to make the observation to underline that because that's a big deal, and I don't think everybody has that. The fact of being able to go, "I have a lot of me to give," and that's an important thing that if we are our last day on Earth, or we are one year old or one day old, that we all have to have that, so I really applaud that. I want to ask about your book, Come Get Me Mother, I'm Through! You write, "It costs to be disabled in America." I know you referenced that a little bit just a minute ago. Can you talk about what you mean by it costs to be disabled in America?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

My father was, in the 1970s, in a head-on collision with a tractor trailer and his little car, and he banged his knees in the dashboard. 20 years later, they ended up amputating his legs because he got ... Well, back then in the '80s, I don't know if you guys remember this, but there was a thing called the flesh-eating disease. They didn't know what it was. It was the flesh-eating disease, and you could over-antibiotic a part of the body and it would begin to fight against, so the flesh-eating disease. My father eventually got the flesh-eating disease in his knees and they amputated his legs.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, that was my first dealing with anyone of any disability, and it really bothered me how people would treat him. They'd park real close to his van. Go into a restaurant, and they would seat him way off in the corner. It used to really bug me. I never thought I'd ever end up in a wheelchair, for God sakes. I was like, "Whoa, really?" It really made me, at that time, it made me more aware of how it's not easy to be disabled in the first place. Then, fast forward to me ending up in a wheelchair. Now, they give you a wheelchair in your insurance. I have one wheelchair. It's a motorized wheelchair, and I use that to get around in my house.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

In order for me to get that to go to my car, I have to have a vehicle that will take that wheelchair. It's a big, motorized wheelchair, so they don't give you anything for that. If you want to take your wheelchair with you, you have to buy the lift that goes on the back of the car, and that's how you take your ... Or, you go out and you buy another wheelchair, a portable wheelchair. Not like the big one, but you pay for that out of your pocket. I have the wheelchair that the insurance company gives me, and then I've got another wheelchair behind me here that I use to roll around on the third floor of my house. I have another wheelchair in my car that's a portable wheelchair, but if I couldn't afford those portable wheelchairs, and if I couldn't afford a lift with my wheelchair, I couldn't go anywhere. Your insurance does not pay for that.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, I drive. I drive with hand controls. Now, there's a great story in my book, Come Get Me Mother, I'm Through!, about this crazy thing. I went to go be tested to drive with hand controls, and nobody at the DMV knew what I was talking about. "What? What do you mean, be tested for hand controls?" I had to go to another town where they had someone who was qualified to give a hand control driving test but that person, when I went to them, they didn't know how to do it. They had to look it up. They found the person that was supposed to be in charge, but because nobody ever goes, because it costs too much to buy hand controls, nobody ever gets tested. It took me probably three or four trips back and forth to the DMV just to get someone to test me for hand controls.

Ben Smith:

Which is amazing in the first place. It's like here you are with mobility issues, and then they make you do three or four trips, come get a test.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Oh, yeah. Come back. Oh, yeah, come back. Come back. You have to come back. It's like, "What?" Just crazy. Then you have to remember that you have to learn how to use that equipment, and you have to go find the doctor's office that will teach you how to do that, once again, not covered by your insurance. You have to pay for those things, and then they get you in the car. They teach you how to do it, and then you've got to go out and buy the equipment, have that installed in your car. Then you drive around before you even get tested because you have to drive the car to the DMV.

Ben Smith:

Sure, right.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Crazy.

Ben Smith:

Exactly, yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I'm doing it. It is such, it's a cluster, man. It is embarrassing and it's, once again, a prime example of it just costs to be disabled in America, and nobody understands unless you're in it.

Curtis Worcester:

Mm-hmm.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

In order to get into my home, I have a lift that gets me from the ground floor into the kitchen floor. In order for me to get into my backyard, I have another lift that gets me from the kitchen floor down to the backyard. None of that is paid for. We pay for that, and once again, this is my wife deciding that her husband's not going to suffer and has me covered at every angle, but it costs to be disabled in America. Otherwise, I'd be sitting in my home vegging out, and I would be doing nothing, being no good for anybody.

Ben Smith:

Mm-hmm, yeah. Can't participate, yep.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

No good for anybody, and so it's terrible. I'm a real advocate that we need to get a better healthcare system in this country. It's embarrassing that we're the richest country on the planet and we have the worst healthcare. It's embarrassing.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, yeah, no. I appreciate all that insight. I want to keep going now with your book because I know that was a little excerpt from one of them. I just want to talk about, generally, and you touched on it a little bit earlier before we backtracked a little bit, but what about, can you just talk about finding your purpose now that you've retired from the radio business? You've written multiple books here. You've got Bonnie's Law: The Return to Fairness. You've got Come Get Me Mother, I'm Through!, and The Death of Fairness. Is writing something that you've always wanted to do, or was that a pivot that you felt was obviously dealt to you? I know you talked about finding ways to stay busy and produce income. Can you just talk about that pivot from your life skills in the radio business to now being an author?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, first of all, I was really adamant about telling my story in the first place. I really didn't care to until I decided that people needed to read about my disability and how it costs to be disabled in America. That got me started into writing, but along that process, I'm a long-time radio broadcaster. My dad got me started in 1972, and so my dad and I have this real radio relationship, or we had. He's passed now. We had a real close relationship when it came to broadcasting. I go on to my radio career, and I'm going off to the big times to Miami and Washington, D.C. I'd come home on vacation, and my father would complain that all the friends he had at the radio station, it was only one radio station in my hometown, all his friends were being fired and they were being replaced by these syndicated talk shows.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

He believed those talk shows were negative and they were causing the town to fight. The were causing neighbors to not like neighbors. I would come home, and I didn't think much about it, "Dad, that's just what happens in broadcasting. Just, it's a new thing. It's syndication. That's just what happens," but it really affected my father. He didn't like the way that the radio station in itself, by itself because of the ownership's decision to play these particular shows, affected the town because everybody was listening to all of the propaganda being spewed and believing it, and it made, he thought, the town very negative.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, that story's always stuck in my head, and there's a reason for that. It happened because in 1987, President Reagan vetoed the Fairness in Broadcasting Act. Now, that Act included the Fairness Doctrine. Now, that Doctrine simply stated equal time for contrasting points of view. In other words, if you get on the radio or television in America and you lie, anybody, any citizen has the right to go to that TV station or that radio station and demand equal time to prove or dispel the lie. Equal time for contrasting points of view, so when you lose that rule, all you have now are pundits spewing lies without debate. That really has always stuck in my head. I've never liked it. I've always thought that. Because I'm a radio guy, I wanted ratings just like Rush Limbaugh. We all knew ... We were ratings guys, so my way of getting ratings was to come up with creative radio contests, and bits, and talk to people, and be very community-oriented.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Well, Mr. Limbaugh's idea, and I remember it distinctly, back in 1987, listening to the radio one day thinking, "This guy's lying and people are sucking it up because they don't know the truth and they believe this guy, and it's not going to be good." I believe that the decision by Ronald Reagan in 1987 to take out the Fairness Doctrine has really affected the society that we live in today. We're very divided. We've always been divided, but when someone can spew lies and disinformation over and over without any dispute, it's caused a problem in our country. That's where I wrote the book, The Death of Fairness. That's kind of the adult ... That's the first idea I had. That was because, I told that story in reference to my father. It was kind of like my dad was helping me tell that story.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

You know what I did? I took that book and I sent it to a company called TaleFlick. Now, TaleFlick reads books, and they go through and think, "Well, is there any possibility of this being a movie?" They write me back after reading my book, and they think, "Hey, this is a good idea. We don't talk about this in America. We need to, but it's not deep enough. You need to create more characters, more plot line," et cetera, et cetera. That was where I had the idea to rearrange the book into Bonnie's Law: The Return to Fairness. That's the third book.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, the reason I wrote that is because I really believe, and I'm hoping that some way, someday, some little kid picks up my book, Bonnie's Law: The Return to Fairness, reads it, and understands that we could go back to the days of the Fairness Doctrine, because it's just legislation. Every time the Fairness Doctrine comes up in Washington, D.C., one particular party who has benefited from lies and disinformation squelches the conversation. If there were enough people in the houses of Congress who believed in truth and the return to fairness, you could bring back the Fairness Doctrine, so I'm hoping, because it's not going to be anybody our age. Well, you guys are much younger than me. My age. It's going to take young people to fix these things we have in this country that continually ... I'm on the planet 66 years. We've been rolling the same dice for a long time, guys.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, sure.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

We need to come up with a better had. This is ridiculous. I believe it's only going to be the young people of America that are going to do it, and I'm hoping that some young person reads Bonnie's Law and says, "Hey, I could go do that."

Ben Smith:

Okay, so-

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Because you can.

Ben Smith:

A plug for all the listeners out there, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

Hand Bonnie's Law to some of the younger members of your family and let's try to get that going.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

As a matter of fact, today, I got a call from a professor friend of mine in New York City who just finished the book. She's going to recommend it to the school's library.

Ben Smith:

Nice.

Curtis Worcester:

Awesome.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

It's caught on, and again, with any luck, some little kid will go, "Wait a minute. We can go do this," because wouldn't that be nice if you could just debate the lie? That's all. You don't want to ... Reagan's idea was that the Fairness Doctrine took what was the opposite of the First Amendment. You should be able to say whatever you want to say. Well, you should be able to say whatever you want to say, but if you're lying, I should be able to say, "You're lying, and here's why." Okay? So that's all. I'm sorry. You could see, it's my thing.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, hey, well, I think that's what we wanted to get out of you today, Kim, is to find, hey, that there's things in our lives that we're very passionate about and even if we ... The form of which our purpose currently lies doesn't mean that that's what it always has to be, that there's things, and our values, and the things that we're passionate about. There's a lot of ways we could make impacts. There's a lot of ways we can continue to impress upon people our ideas and our thoughts.

Ben Smith:

That's really, I think, the biggest part. That's what I want to ask to you is, what advice would you give someone that is going through a sudden retirement due to a change in their health? Think back to you in that moment. If you were sitting here today, and you were able to give that advice to yourself, maybe the day two after getting the news and the diagnosis that you did, what would you give for advice?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I'm going to say the same thing that my father used to tell me, but it took me a long time to hear it again, but it's the truth. It ain't what happens to you, it's what you do about it, because everybody's got it. Everybody's got something, so regardless of what happens, what are you going to do? That's where I lead. That's where I live my life now because, what am I going to do to be able to get on the tractor because I've got to go out and groom the arena? It's not what happened to you. What are you going to do about it? Well, now I've got to figure out how to get on a zero turn lawn mower. Believe me, if OSHA saw we doing it, they wouldn't let me do it.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

What are you going to do about it? If something happens to you, and it happens to everyone, yes, the shock is hard to get over at times. It takes years for focus to come back, but remember, it ain't what happens to you, it's what you're going to do about it. Everybody has within themselves the power to have those answers. If you just quiet your mind long enough, you will find an answer, and hopefully, you can have people around you who encourage you to do the things that you want that will help you strive for your peace. I'm fortunate, man. My wife is my biggest advocate. I've got it and I know a lot of people don't, but we can only hope. I hope that people who are hearing this right now will understand that it is tough, but it ain't what happens to you, it's what you do about it.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

[inaudible 01:00:34]

Curtis Worcester:

I appreciate it. I like that a lot. We've reached the end of our show here. I have a final question for you. I'm actually going to Audible a little bit. I don't know if Ben knows where I'm going with this, but it's actually a two-part question because you teased something in the beginning of, I think it was even before we came on air, that I really want the answer to that we didn't ask in the beginning. Obviously, the name of our show is The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. I have two questions for you. One, and I'll start with the first one, which is the first part of our title, is retirement success. How will you define your retirement success as you continue to live through it?

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I am in a place now in my life that I never thought I would be. My encouragement to my wife for her to step ahead, take the things that she wants to do, and do them the way she wants to do them has been really a major factor in how well I'm doing right now.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

My wife is doing extremely well in this thing that she ... She's now an international business coach. She works for Keller Williams. She's really in tune, got like 40 clients around the world right now that she talks to once a week, so that and me being able to push her on. She has surpassed anything I imagined. First of all, when I met her, she was working for financial advisors and before that, was already working in family law.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I knew she was smart in the first place, but to run the "Kid" Curry show, as she used to call it, it's the "Kid" Curry show and it's hard, so she used to have to run my appointments, my shows. I had appearances. She ran all that, and then that all shifted and when she took over, when she finally got to do what she wanted to do, she has surpassed anything I would every imagine and it's why now I'm on my 10 and a half-acre horse ranch.

Curtis Worcester:

That's incredible.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

My success is my wife's success. Me being able to push her and let her know that, "No matter what, I know you can do this," has put us in a place that I could never imagine.

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I am very pleased. Again, having MS was probably a pretty good thing for me.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, no, I love that. That's a great answer. Now, my second question here is the second part of our show name, and it has to do with the State of Maine. I know you teased this, again, off-air to us. I want to ask, do you have any connections to the State of Maine? I know you said you're in Colorado right now, so I just wanted to turn that over for you.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

My father, of course, like I said, was a Navy veteran. He was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. He used to call them Uncle Ray and Aunt Ellie.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

I don't know if they were real aunt and uncle. I don't know that, but I remember that he would take us up to Bangor, or out to Maine, wherever it was on the coast there, and we would stay in these people's house. They lived right on the ocean. They would dig a hole in the sand and we would have crab boils, or boils, and they would boil seafood right there with lobster and stuff like that. I was probably three or four years old and man, it was cool. I'll never forget it. It's like everything I ever thought you could ever do and have fun, having lobster up in Maine.

Curtis Worcester:

There you go.

Ben Smith:

Perfect.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Now, my other connection, I was 17 years old, and as I said, I was a high school trumpet player. I wasn't the best, but I was pretty good. I was in an all-region high school band that traveled over to Europe at 17 years old in 1972. We flew out of Bangor, so we flew from here, from Denver out to Bangor, before we took off over to Europe. The interesting ... Now, on the way back, now remember, I'm 17. It's 1972. We stayed in a town that had no ... They only had toilets in the homes. They didn't have any other running water.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

We stayed in a town in Germany that had, there was a stream that went through town and they bordered the bottom of it, and that's where everybody took their baths was in this stream, so you'd be ... It was mountain cold water, and people were just bathing, and it was just crazy. Then we visited Dachau prison camp. I played at Berchtesgaden. When we come back from there, now I've been about a month in Europe. I come back, we land back in Bangor, and there's a picture on the front page of my hometown newspaper of me kissing the ground in Bangor, Maine. That's the picture that they took that ended up on the front page of my hometown newspaper.

Curtis Worcester:

That's incredible. I love that.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

That was my big Bangor moment.

Curtis Worcester:

All right.

Ben Smith:

Okay, well, you have a pretty relationship with us in Maine then.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

You bet.

Ben Smith:

I love it.

Curtis Worcester:

That's awesome.

Ben Smith:

Well, Kim, thank you so much for coming on our show. I just applaud everything that you're about. Your attitude, your resilience, just even hearing about the relationship with your wife and the teamwork that you guys have and working to do all the things you've done together. I think that's why you were successful before and also why she's successful now is you have each other's back. I think that's when we work with our clients, those are the types of things that we look to see, is those very strong bonds. I really think you shared a lot with us today about retirement success, about finding your own success, and reinventing yourself as something happens, so thank you so much.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

We will share a lot of your links in our show. We'll talk about that in our wrap up. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Gentlemen, I really enjoyed the conversation today and I hope we touch somebody somewhere along the line. You guys, be well and thanks again for your time. I appreciate it very much.

Curtis Worcester:

Take care, Kim. Bye-bye.

Kim "Kid" Curry:

Yes, sir. Bye.

Ben Smith:

Okay. When you have a moniker like "Kid" Curry, you got to be like a radio guy, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Got to be. You got to be.

Ben Smith:

Good to hear from Kim about, again, the career path and sudden health issue. Man, that sounds pretty scary as something just to go through. I know there's enough of us that know people that have MS or-

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

It's affected people lots of different ways, so again, I think it was really good to hear Kim's vulnerability and where he was. Also, just want to highlight the importance of a few things. One is advocating for your health.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

Going and checking and when something's not right, is going to-

Curtis Worcester:

Well, he talked about dismissing those symptoms. His mom told him to go get checked and he said, "What are you talking about? I'm fine," so yeah, 100%.

Ben Smith:

Advocacy's a big deal. Two is, I think, support groups around you. Right?-

Curtis Worcester:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

... is your wife, and your family, and your friends, and making sure that they know what you're going through and allowing them to be supportive. Hearing from his story, initially, is he's angry about where he is, and what happened to him. It even kind of harmed some of his kids' relationships, which I think is probably one of the last things we all want to do-

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Smith:

... when that's happening, so I think there's some really good lessons that he shared with us today. Again, I know, as a radio guy, interesting to hear some of the storytelling and a lot of the things that had happened to him as well.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

I know we would appreciate you checking out some of Kim's books as well, so we'll have links to them on Amazon to check out. I know he'd appreciate that as well, so we'll have links there. You can go to our website for this podcast. It's blog.guidancepointllc.com/69, because we're episode 69.

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

You can check out more of our episode, and show notes, and transcription, things like that will all be there for you to check out. Really appreciate you tuning in. On behalf of Curtis and myself and our Guidance Point team, thanks so much for checking out our podcast, and we'll catch you next time.