By some cosmic twist of fate somehow the alchemical solution for what ails America has emerged from a very average American town. 

That's why I share this Little Book and the story of my hometown of Reading MA.

My father was a cop in our community for 37 years. The old guy always saw himself as a peace officer first and he helped to inspire and guide this amazing new enterprise.

*Operation Hummingbird* is how we bring peace to America, a country and a people that have lost sight of how to live in peace. 

This new enterprise is sacred to me.

It’s how I keep a promise I made to my father in the last year of his life when I promised him that this enterprise would help heal the relationship between cops and the communities they serve.

This story is where OUR national healing begins and it's The Place where we all begin to learn how to live more 'successful' and peaceful lives.

I was my mother’s caregiver for 11 years.

In the beginning that meant just being by her side helping her with the little things she was losing the ability to do on her own every day.

The final 3 years of her life she had lost the ability to do anything on her own but smile and breathe.

That’s when I began her around the clock care.

The whole experience was a devastating loss for my father.

For most of my life I had lived an “all about me” kind of life. And honestly, I wasn’t all that happy.

The happiest years of my life were the last 3 years of my parents' lives.

They passed 12 days apart in 2023.

Caring for both of them providing whatever care they needed was my honor and my privilege.

I’m sharing this with you now because America is in desperate need of the absolute best care that WE can give to her.

As a nation we tried “all about me” in the 25 years since 9.11 and I have never seen us so unhappy as a people.

Today I am asking everyone to try something different. 

The sharing of WISDOM from parents to children, from mentors to students, from “COACHES”... 

to the open minds of all kinds…

can be a truly priceless gift.

Shared wisdom can change everything for a person who never learned to believe in the idea that they are also ‘worthy’ of the good things in life.

BECAUSE… shared wisdom can help inspire the belief that the *special* that we respect and appreciate so much in others is within all of us… too.

SHARED WISDOM… is how talent is unlocked.

TODAY… we live in a complicated moment for our species and our planet.

There are no straight-line solutions or quick fixes but for the first time humanity now has the tech to begin to unlock the talent and goodness of every person on Earth.

I grew up in a town surrounded by lots of gifted teachers. One taught me to swim at the town pool. And there were coaches everywhere. More accurately there were parents who gave of themselves. Parents who shaped young minds beyond the children they raised.  

There were also amazing professional teachers.

One was a former Marine by the name of Mr. McHugh who founded my school’s American Heritage Club and passed on his love for America to every young mind that he could. 

And there was a high school chemistry teacher named Everett Blodgett who got into my business because he knew that he should. 

These are only a few of the gifted teachers that shaped my life. There were lots more. Everywhere I looked. I was lucky.  

I was also lucky to grow up in America where Our History… all of it… good and bad, became my greatest teacher.  

We spend a lot of time in America talking about what is wrong and not nearly enough time talking about what went right and HOW and WHY it went right.

It’s easy to tear things down.

It’s difficult to make things better.

If we want things to get better in America, we need to spend a lot more time thinking about and talking about and actually DOING the things that went right and a lot less time just tearing things down.

So… let me tell you about my hometown.

Reading Massachusetts.

Maybe there really is ‘something in the water’.

Probably not. More likely I see ‘magic’ everywhere I look in my hometown of Reading Massachusetts because I have taken the time to look VERY carefully at what it took for this modest, very average middle-class American town that I grew-up in to become an exceptional upper middle-class community.

I know. I know. I know.

For a lot of people this is a terrible thing.

Lots and lots of good people cannot afford to buy a house in the town they grew up in.

And countless teachers, firefighters, nurses, cops and town workers and other middle-class people are in the same boat.

But here’s what I see.

I see a “blueprint” for what it actually takes for ANY American community to rise.

I see good, honest people who stepped up and into valuable roles big and small and figured out how to unlock the talent and goodness of many of their citizens.

I see people who have shared themselves with others and in doing so have lifted up the people who lived all around them.

My Hometown is NOT perfect.

No place in America is.

This town rose BECAUSE The People of Reading accidentally discovered... 

The ‘magic’ Alchemy of Light.

It's time to share.

IT’S HARD TO LOOK AWAY. Turns out… heavy equipment like dump trucks full of sand and big earth moving plows do very little to prevent those multi-million-dollar homes from crashing into the sea when their foundation washes away.

WHAT WORKS… is planting beach grass. Lots of it. But not all in the same place.

NATURALLY… clusters of beach grass, when strategically placed allow individual pieces of sand to essentially ‘build on themselves’ over time.

That’s how erosion is slowed.

That’s how new ground is “Regenerated”.

In too many ways The Values and Institutions and Basic Goodness of America have been eroding since 9.11.

The foundation on which this great nation of ours sits is literally eroding.

BUILD AS BIG A MANSION AS YOU WANT… when the foundation goes, we all go into the sea… together.

*Operation Hummingbird* is a MASSIVE strategic enterprise designed to begin getting millions of Americans working on all of the things… big and small… that need to be done in 2026 and beyond to…

Help Save The American Dream.

Turns out ‘belief in The American Dream’ is like beach grass. It’s what holds the foundation of America together… naturally.

BEGINNING TODAY… we begin the process of regenerating America’s foundation… together.

Each new tech-driven and philosophy-driven ‘piece’ of this enterprise is like a strategically placed cluster of beach grass.

What we are building is NOT a quick fix. 

But it will work.

Just so you know...

The town of Reading is what a giant cluster of beautiful beach grass looks like and in this dark and difficult time for our nation, this story of My Hometown is a priceless reminder of how precious each person and each blade of grass can be.

Not too long ago my hometown rallied around A Wounded Turkey called “Limpy”.

Somehow, it became a thing and eventually made regional news.

For whatever reason it made lots of us feel good to rally around an injured underdog who still had a lot of fight left in him.

As fate would have it during my time as my mother’s Caregiver, I developed a repetitive stress injury in my left hip from all ‘the heavy lifting’ I was doing.

I’ve always been a proud guy. So, I don’t like it at all. 

But now I can see that I have become Reading’s second wounded Turkey to walk with a limp.

I just turned 60. So, that means I have lived long enough to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve seen enough of America’s better days to know in my heart that all this constantly expanding darkness, division, hate and war is NOT America’s everlasting new normal.

But I have also seen enough to know that it could become our new normal if The Good People of America fail to rise.

For two and a half decades our nation has ripped ourselves apart and used our modern tech to bring out the worst in each other.

Over that exact same time, I have been developing the ideas that it would take for us to use our TECH to bring out the best in everyone. 

Lots of people have tried and failed to “fix” America by focusing all our attention on everything that has gone wrong. I don’t believe we can fix much of anything that way.

I believe it’s more valuable in times like these to identify what went right and do a lot more of that. Do as much right as we can.

Today I want to say thank you.

To… Harry O., for pushing a young kid who couldn’t yet see his own potential.

Thank you, Mrs. M., for opening the eyes of “little Billy Keefe” to the idea that he could live a big life with lots of hard work and lots of competitive spirit.

Thank you to The Team… my friends, who pushed me to be better.

Thank you to The B’s, who brought Light and warm meals into our home year after year when my mother was sick, making sure my father and I never felt alone.

And thank you to every parent, coach, teacher, classmate, neighbor and friend who made Reading a place where the American Dream always felt real to me.

I was lucky to grow-up in Reading. I was lucky to grow-up in a place full of so many good people.

What I learned in My Hometown is about to change The World for the better.

On the surface Reading is just another suburban American town. It's not.

This is The Place where I watched people selflessly give of themselves. 

For the betterment of others.

It was great being on the receiving end of such attention and kindness, but what makes this experience so truly special and worth sharing during America250 is that I learned by watching firsthand how the act of sharing oneself…

changed for better the person who was doing the sharing.

Turns out sharing oneself is THE SECRET SAUCE to a life well lived.

The Reading generation before mine didn't come from the same privileged place that I come from. But they all shared the same dream.

They wanted their children to have it better than they did.

So, without being asked they gave of themselves. They did more than was done for them when they were growing up. And they did it for the sake of the entire community.

They did what they did for children and families that were not their own.

To 'them' that was The American Way.

Today we live in a "Me First" America. 

And we can all see we aren't the good people we once were. 

My hometown shared The Power of Light with me. 

"The Power of Light" is the exact medicine Humanity needs most right now.

The old guy was a true peace officer. 

He walked the streets of Reading Square while most people were asleep and worked countless snow-loader details on freezing cold nights and he always did his best to call everyone by name. 

His superpowers? 

He de-escalated situations.

He made people smile.

He was trusted and respected.

He was Strong, Smart and Kind.

And he did his best to bring out the best in people.

"Billy if you go out looking for a fight... you will always find one". 

I will never forget those words of wisdom that he delivered to me when I was 20 yrs old at the exact moment, he knew I needed to hear them the most. 

"Don't let the bastards get to you". He said that all the time.

"Go slow, just take it easy" he said that all the time too. 

My father knew how to live in peace and how to stand strong when it was time for that too.

America has lost sight of how to live in peace. And all this fighting and unrest and this nonstop nonsense... today... makes this an America that The Old Guy would not recognize.

He would not be happy with ‘our new normal’. 

So... why are we?

As fate would have it, my father was with me, often right by my side while I put lots of pieces together for this new enterprise that will help bring peace to America with a new media company called Freice Media and a tech startup called The Dream Feeder and a philosophical solution called Strategic Equality.

My father was proud to serve the community where he lived. Being a cop was a good job for him and for his family.

Being a cop was his American Dream.

So, it broke his heart when the relationship soured so much between Law Enforcement and so many people across America. 

He knew well the complicated history of American policing, but he also knew much better than most, the very important role cops play in every community in America.

What I have built and share with you today is how we scale my father’s wisdom and begin to bring peace to every community in America.

What I have built and share with you today is a very, very important part of my father’s legacy. 

Sadly, he passed in 2023... before this was complete. But he saw enough of it along the way to know how important it would be. 

Today… I thank God for that.  

“You walk onto that field like you own the Goddamn place”.   

That’s what my father would say before every game that I played right up until his last breath, even when he knew ‘the game’ I had chosen to play since 9.12.2001 literally meant the difference between life and death.  

I share this with you today, because while my father didn’t have the language of ‘equality’ that I do, he did his best to make sure that I never saw myself as ‘less’ than anyone… 

even if I obviously was not quite good enough at the time.  

NO ONE IS PERFECT… ABSOLUTELY… NO ONE.  

So... want for and give to your children more than was given to you as a child and your world will become a much better place over time. 

Give less to your children than what was given to you and one way or another there will be Hell to pay- for your children maybe, but definitely for you.  

That’s just one of the many life lessons I learned by watching my parents.  

I intend to DO my best to share them all before I pass on. 

Two Reading MA men have emerged to tell their stories.

One a war hero and legendary track and field coach and the other a hero cop.

In their own ways each has lived valuable lives and their stories needed to be told.

https://halcroftfilm.com

https://richardchase.org

Yes. Their bravery and accomplishments are worthy of praise.

That’s NOT why I am writing about them today.

To me it isn’t the stories of bravery and accomplishment that impress me most.

What matters to me is how each man was brought low by the lasting trauma of their experiences and both decided to share their story in a way that will help others who have been brought low too.

After 25 years of endless darkness, division, hate and war…

countless Souls ‘have been through Hell’.

Ravaged by The Darkness of it all. Crushed in their own way by all of the trauma.

The Good News is a magnificent regeneration of human spirit is now well underway.

People everywhere are answering the call.

Deciding to make the most of their lives. Deciding to share how they overcame all the traumas.

Hal Croft and Richard Chase are part of this regeneration. 

Countless Souls have been battered and bruised and broken and traumatized in horrific ways big and small and they have begun to rise.

To share their stories.

Share their wisdom.

To help others. Just to help others.

By sharing better ideas, ways and means.

They rise. Because “they” have learned things.

Important things. 

The type of wisdom that can help make all our lives better.

No matter where I go, I will always be a son of Reading… a special place that taught me how to become Strong, Smart and Kind and how to become a Better Citizen. 

Reading Pop Warner and Little League helped me find my strength and become another RMHS football captain. But what brings me to you today was Parker Jr. High’s American Heritage Club. 

On Flag Day 1980, as Heritage Club president I gave a speech to the town of Reading in front of the old library… with then Congressman Ed Markey… and it marked me. 

I became a Patriotic American. 

Fast forward to 2008 when my Mental Health Initiative for college students failed…  

I moved back Home. 

When my mother got sick… and I became her caregiver… that was when I discovered how important it is to be more than just strong and smart. It’s important to be kind. 

Back in Reading with my parents again I realized that the last thing America needed was another 'political solution' and that what America needed most was millions and millions of Better Citizens who were Strong, Smart and Kind. 

So, I began crafting this new enterprise that could do what no politician could do…  

Save The American Union and The American Dream in 2026 America and beyond by creating millions and millions of Better American Citizens. 

*Image: left to right, me, a former local official, Congressman Markey 

In the years before my father’s passing, he would often say “I have all this wisdom. What the hell am I going to do with it all?” And then I would always say “That’s what children are for.” And then we would laugh. And it always made me sad because I knew what he was thinking.

He wanted me to launch my tech startup before he was gone.

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t time. The tech wasn’t ready. The conditions weren’t right. And Humanity wasn’t prepared.

It’s called THE DREAM FEEDER. That’s the name of my startup. It’s how we upgrade Emotional Intelligence (EQ) at scale across The Human Race and redesign modern education for The Age of AI.

And change everything.

THE DREAM FEEDER will be the place where the best wisdom is shared.

I HAVE A DREAM… that together WE can use our modern tech to build something precious together and that this dream will become:

***OUR SHARED LEGACY***

Our Gift to all the people and generations who come next.

A way for everyone to make a dream come true.

A way to help make sure all of the people who follow us don’t make the same mistakes we have made.

Let us be the generation that builds a way to make a much better world for humanity.

Free from so many of the difficulties that have caused us so much grief.

Let this be OUR legacy.

http://TheDreamFeeder.com 

Something profound happened to me when I was a freshman in High School. The story about this experience never made it into my writing because it always felt a lot more like a “me” thing than an about everyone thing.

But what happened recently changed that.

I was relentlessly bullied back then. For approximately 6-8 weeks.

I couldn’t sleep. I was in constant fear. It was on my mind all the time.

My tormentor was a hockey player and a year older than me and for whatever reason he had it out for me. To the best of my knowledge there was no good reason. 

I’m still certain I had never done anything to him to warrant such abuse.

His name was literally a “dog's” name. As an adult I look back at the whole thing and figure that had to be a part of it. Going through life with a name like that must have been hard on him.

SO… recently I sent out what I thought at the time was a random Facebook “friend request” to a guy that lived down the street from me when I was a child. 

We never really knew each other.

He accepted my request and right away he sent me a direct message. 

“He” had lived a life to be proud of and suggested I check out in greater detail what he was working on.

I immediately told him I would.

Then he shared the words that blew my mind.

He said: Billy do you remember the fight you had when you were a freshman outside The Field House?

He then went on to say that he was there and not just as another spectator.

I was focused 100% on the fight in front of me. I had no idea what was happening around me.

Turns out… “He”… made it clear to all the other bullies that in no way was he going to let anyone step into the fight without going through him first.

We all have important moments in our life. Moments that define us. Those 6-8 weeks of being bullied is one of those moments for me.

I fought and won the good fight that day when I finally stood toe to toe with my tormentor.

Now, so many years later I cannot help but think about how different my life would have been if Richard Chase hadn’t stepped in to prevent the other bullies from jumping in to kick the shit out of me.

TODAY... I just wanted to say thanks!