Driven By with Sam Coates
Driven By with Sam Coates
Sam Coates
JD LeHew: The Door Isn't Closed on America
1 hour 58 minutes Posted Oct 8, 2026 at 10:00 am.
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Show notes

Retired Marine Sergeant Major and Navy Cross recipient JD LeHew returns for his third conversation

on Driven By, five years after his first two. JD leads History Flight, the nonprofit that searches for,

recovers, and identifies America's missing service members; more than 81,000 are still unaccounted

for since World War II.

In 2022, JD asked a post office clerk why the POW/MIA flag wasn't flying. That five-minute

conversation led him to walk 3,365 miles from the deck of the USS Constitution in Boston to Newport,

Oregon. We talk about what he found on that road, from a farm family's midnight harvest in the

Midwest to a woman in Fredericksburg who said she had no connection to the military. We also get

into his 10-step rule for knowing when to leave the Marine Corps, why he chose to leave on one of his

best days, and the Fred Smith deal where missing his fundraising targets turned into a bigger check.