Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Washington state refugee Steve Abramowicz in studio to discuss his move to Tennessee after his daughter’s private swim club went woke, allowing boys that identified as girls on their teams and in their locker rooms.
Leahy: In the studio, our good friend, new friend, Steve Abramowicz, a refugee from Washington State, a wealth manager who’s lived here now for, what, how many weeks?
Abramowicz: Ten weeks. I’m mad at you for taking me away from the Jackson Pride Festival. I had to choose between there or here, and I decided to come here. Just kidding.
Leahy: There we go. Let’s talk about what happened in Seattle. Your daughter was attending a public school, is that correct?
Abramowicz: No, she was in private school. It’s true, the swim club is a private swim club, family-owned as a matter of fact. There are about 16 of them in the league, and they’ve been around for 70 years. And ironically enough, one of the husband-and-wives that own one of them wanted to take down their scoreboard that’s been there for 70 years. We’re talking grandparents and great-grandparents, record holders, because they wanted it to be fair for boys, girls and others.
Leahy: So this is a private school and a private swim club.
Abramowicz: They’re not related. I should say that.
Leahy: Okay, but who came up with this idea of this inclusive ideology, these inclusive rules? The private swim club?
Abramowicz: That’s an irony of the whole thing. Fifteen years ago, the Washington Interscholastic Athletic League, or whatever it’s called – association, sorry – put a bylaw in that said that if you’re a boy and you think you’re a girl, you can swim in the same lane, it’s all good, whatever.
But nobody paid attention to it until this year when they created the task force for the Greater Seattle Summer Swim League, which is a rec league, by the way.
Leahy: The task force was, this was part of the overall school system, the interscholastic schools?
Abramowicz: It’s not school related. These are private clubs for swimming.
Leahy: So who came up with this rule?
Abramowicz: It’s complicated, I know.
Leahy: He said, if you’re a boy and you want to swim with the girls, you have to start your puberty blockers by 9. Is that rule right?
Abramowicz: So that was one he/her/him person who came up with it on the task force as a diversity, equity, and inclusion specialist, let’s just call them, who was with the Seattle Public Schools.
But the Greater Seattle Swim League has nothing to do with schools other than school-age kids, and the Washington Athletic thing has nothing to do with private clubs.
So they all kind of stuck their nose in it, and the boards of these clubs and the owners of these clubs, I guess, went with it.
Leahy: Okay, so your daughter was influenced because the board of the private club that she was swimming in said, we’re going to adopt these policies.
Abramowicz: We’re going to allow for the Gender Inclusion Task Force to come on the premises and interview children away from the earshot of coaches and parents, which is against the law – the bylaws, actually, of Seattle sports – and try to figure out if we have a trans issue in our schools. But in the meantime, they’re opening up the locker rooms to boys who say they’re girls. What could go wrong, right?
Leahy: Okay, so this happens in your private swim club.
Abramowicz: Five weeks ago this summer. This summer. This summer it just ended.
Leahy: So you look at this. Is that what prompted your desire to get out of Seattle?
Abramowicz: It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Knowing that my daughter couldn’t get to her senior year two years away and have that graduation, we said, well, our last vestige of joy in Seattle is over.
When we left King County. By the way, I said, we better not leave a toe in that county or it will break our hearts. And sure enough, it did.
Leahy: So let’s talk about how you decided where to move to.
Abramowicz: Well, I’m just a concerned dad, and so at the same time …
Leahy: You’re living in Snohomish County at this time?
Abramowicz: … it’s called Snohomish County.
Leahy: That’s where you live. It’s north of Seattle.
Abramowicz: It’s the county north of Seattle.
Leahy: And your private swim club adopts these crazy, inclusive rules and it makes it impossible for your daughter.
Abramowicz: And so did the Catholic high school that we transferred from, and so did the Catholic K-12.
Leahy: So they’ve all gone crazy.
Abramowicz: It’s been a progression. And we left King County, which is not actually named after Martin Luther King Jr. It’s named after Rutherford B. King, who died on election eve in a stupor, frozen to death in D.C., but they hide it by being woke.
And so this is the same thing that has to do with their schools, whether it be a Catholic school or a public school. Public school is way worse, of course. And we just saw the sign of the times as we raised our children from zero.
My son is 18. So for 18 years, seeing this wave just come and come and finally crest, and unfortunately, my daughter being two years younger, we just couldn’t abide.
Leahy: So there you are. You are in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle. You got these egregious rules that will make it impossible for your daughter to compete in swimming, which she loves. You start looking around the country for someplace to move. What were your criteria?
Abramowicz: So, there’s some God in this. We were looking for a college for my son – who, like I said, is two years older – back when he was, say, 16, 17. And we took him everywhere. We took him to my alma mater, L.A.
We took him to Montana, Boise, and Idaho. We took him to the SEC schools, Baylor, LSU, Auburn, Alabama, Florida, et cetera, et cetera, even Georgetown and the rest. So we looked everywhere, and we found Tennessee and fell in love with it. Now, the irony here is he chose a school that’s none of those, but that’s okay.
Leahy: Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. A great school.
Abramowicz: He’s a freshman now at Grand Canyon.
Leahy: But in this trip, you were traveling through Tennessee, through the south. And you get to Tennessee, and you say, this is God’s country. Right?
Abramowicz: This is God’s country. I went home. I looked at the voter rolls. I saw that in 2000 when the country was tied, Bush versus Gore, it has now become 60-40 in the last election. And then my state went the other way, 40-60 for the guy who’s there now.
So even with all that we know, and they even went for Reagan back in the day, so things change, and that’s okay. I got to admit, for the 15, or 16 years I was in Washington, it was amazing. It’s also God’s country. America is God’s country.
We had beautiful weather, beautiful mountains, beautiful outdoor activities, and beautiful people. It’s just great. But it went bad about two years ago in a hurry, and some people would say, oh, it’s because of Trump. And I’d say, no, it’s because of some other things that have been going on for us.
Leahy: How did you choose Nashville, Tennessee, then? What was the process?
Abramowicz: Not to be snobbish or anything, but I had bought a house under construction that was going to be a rental. And when my daughter got accepted into her school, we said …
Leahy: A private school here in Middle Tennessee?
Abramowicz: Exactly. I said why don’t we make this house in Washington our rental? I can still do the newspaper online. I can still do the podcast over Zoom, et cetera. I don’t have to go to the studio.
Let’s do that for her last two years because they are not like this. They’re not going to do this. They’re not going to mask-mandate. They’re not going to vaccine-mandate. They’re not going to let boys in the girls’ locker room, although the Catholic school that we left did.
But that’s a different story. So that was ironic. We said, let’s do this. And then it turns out that one of my mentors grew up about a block and a half away from where I live now. So I think there’s God involved a little.
Leahy: So, a little providential.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Swim Team” by cottonbro.
