[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I had a Chinese assistant who was very good, very ambitious, young fellow. After the completion of our survey, I recommended him for a Fulbright scholarship, which he got. He went to the University of Hawaii, eventually got a PhD. Then he went back and headed up an agriculture college.

[Assistant] Have you had any contact with him since then?

[User] Not directly. I'm aware of what work that he has been doing in Malaysia. He's aware of some of the subsequent work that I have done. But we haven't gotten down, sat together and compared notes on previous years.

[Assistant] Are there any other events from the first year that come to mind?

[User]
Well, uh, as I mentioned, Raub was a fairly pleasant place to live. Uh, occasionally dignitaries would come to town. Vice Prime Minister came to town, Tumrasa, at one time. And so all the government officers were lined up to meet him, myself included. So it was, uh, an interesting experience.

Uh, I arranged for a helicopter to land on town green one time. The Royal Malaysian Air Force would sometimes provide helicopters to soil surveyors who wanted to get a bird's eye view of the area that they're going into before they actually do that. I remember hearing that that was possible, so I requested that be done. And so this Royal Malaysian Army helicopter, uh, came swooping into town. All the kids came running, uh, to the town square where they play rugby and cricket. And my status in town went up when they saw that I ran to get on and then after a few hours of flying around, it brought me back and I got off. It was an interesting experience.

[Assistant] Besides being an interesting experience, uh, was it helpful to you in your job to do that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not directly. I'm aware of what work that he has been doing in Malaysia. He's aware of some of the subsequent work that I have done. But we haven't gotten down, sat together and compared notes on previous years.

[Assistant] Are there any other events from the first year that come to mind?

[User]
Well, uh, as I mentioned, Raub was a fairly pleasant place to live. Uh, occasionally dignitaries would come to town. Vice Prime Minister came to town, Tumrasa, at one time. And so all the government officers were lined up to meet him, myself included. So it was, uh, an interesting experience.

Uh, I arranged for a helicopter to land on town green one time. The Royal Malaysian Air Force would sometimes provide helicopters to soil surveyors who wanted to get a bird's eye view of the area that they're going into before they actually do that. I remember hearing that that was possible, so I requested that be done. And so this Royal Malaysian Army helicopter, uh, came swooping into town. All the kids came running, uh, to the town square where they play rugby and cricket. And my status in town went up when they saw that I ran to get on and then after a few hours of flying around, it brought me back and I got off. It was an interesting experience.

[Assistant] Besides being an interesting experience, uh, was it helpful to you in your job to do that?

[User] I could have, I could have done my job without doing that. But on the other hand, it was, it's, uh, it's nice to have that opportunity. Remember that my assignment was a little different than most Peace Corps assignments, in the sense that I had at my disposal a Land Rover and an office and as many casual laborers as I wanted to hire. There was a fair amount of work in keeping track of all the expenditures, gasoline, things of that sort. But it also provided a great deal of mobility in terms of getting around. I remember driving the Land Rover one Christmas to Penang to meet other Peace Corps volunteers.

[Assistant] How far away was that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I could have, I could have done my job without doing that. But on the other hand, it was, it's, uh, it's nice to have that opportunity. Remember that my assignment was a little different than most Peace Corps assignments, in the sense that I had at my disposal a Land Rover and an office and as many casual laborers as I wanted to hire. There was a fair amount of work in keeping track of all the expenditures, gasoline, things of that sort. But it also provided a great deal of mobility in terms of getting around. I remember driving the Land Rover one Christmas to Penang to meet other Peace Corps volunteers.

[Assistant] How far away was that?

[User] That was about, uh, again, it was probably about 50 or 60 miles, but it was through the mountains, so it would take 3 or 4 hours to go.

[Assistant] Now, you mentioned with some of the local breweries that some of the truck drivers would end up going off the mountain. Was it a little bit dangerous driving around there with some of these drivers on the road?

[User] Well, yeah. Although you, if you're used to mountain driving or you get used to mountain driving, I don't think it's any danger, more dangerous than driving in traffic in Kuala Lumpur, in fact, I think of that as being more dangerous. I was in a big old diesel Land Rover and when they saw this Westerner driving a Land Rover, these little mini cars gave me plenty of room.

[Assistant] And were there many mini, heh, many mini cars?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was about, uh, again, it was probably about 50 or 60 miles, but it was through the mountains, so it would take 3 or 4 hours to go.

[Assistant] Now, you mentioned with some of the local breweries that some of the truck drivers would end up going off the mountain. Was it a little bit dangerous driving around there with some of these drivers on the road?

[User] Well, yeah. Although you, if you're used to mountain driving or you get used to mountain driving, I don't think it's any danger, more dangerous than driving in traffic in Kuala Lumpur, in fact, I think of that as being more dangerous. I was in a big old diesel Land Rover and when they saw this Westerner driving a Land Rover, these little mini cars gave me plenty of room.

[Assistant] And were there many mini, heh, many mini cars?

[User] There were in Kuala Lumpur. There were quite a few.

[Assistant] How about out where you were, were there much?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, yeah. Although you, if you're used to mountain driving or you get used to mountain driving, I don't think it's any danger, more dangerous than driving in traffic in Kuala Lumpur, in fact, I think of that as being more dangerous. I was in a big old diesel Land Rover and when they saw this Westerner driving a Land Rover, these little mini cars gave me plenty of room.

[Assistant] And were there many mini, heh, many mini cars?

[User] There were in Kuala Lumpur. There were quite a few.

[Assistant] How about out where you were, were there much?

[User] Not much. I mean, there's not certainly, wasn't certainly much traffic.

[Assistant] So you would drive yourself, you didn't have a driver particularly? Or both?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] There were in Kuala Lumpur. There were quite a few.

[Assistant] How about out where you were, were there much?

[User] Not much. I mean, there's not certainly, wasn't certainly much traffic.

[Assistant] So you would drive yourself, you didn't have a driver particularly? Or both?

[User] We did have a driver, for example, when we would send laborers to go into the jungle to cut through the jungle. We had a driver take those people to a point where they'd be dropped. He dropped them off. If they were coming out on the road where they could be picked up. But I drove myself to, say, meetings down in Kuala Lumpur or any other occasion where I needed to get from A to B.

[Assistant] How about, uh, any vacations or other travel you did while you were over there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not much. I mean, there's not certainly, wasn't certainly much traffic.

[Assistant] So you would drive yourself, you didn't have a driver particularly? Or both?

[User] We did have a driver, for example, when we would send laborers to go into the jungle to cut through the jungle. We had a driver take those people to a point where they'd be dropped. He dropped them off. If they were coming out on the road where they could be picked up. But I drove myself to, say, meetings down in Kuala Lumpur or any other occasion where I needed to get from A to B.

[Assistant] How about, uh, any vacations or other travel you did while you were over there?

[User]
Well, the Peace Corps offered a, uh, vacation allowance, which you could only collect if you took a vacation. Malaysia was kind of nice in the sense that allowance was generally a little bit higher than the neighboring countries because the standard of living was a bit higher. So myself and two other surveyors, actually four surveyors, Peace Corps volunteers, and I, uh, bought an airline ticket for what was called the Great Circle Tour, where the plane would take off from Kuala Lumpur. Fly us to Bangkok, then fly us to Hong Kong, fly us to Manila. And then to Jesselton, which is called Kota Kinabalu now. Then Kuching, Singapore, and back to Kuala Lumpur for less than what we could get in terms of our allowance.

So in addition to traveling to each of those cities and sampling the beer in each of those cities, we took the train from Bangkok to Angkor Wat, which was an interesting experience, in part because all U.S. diplomatic relations with Cambodia had ceased at that time. So if we had gotten into trouble, we would have really been in trouble. But it was, it was an interesting experience.

[Assistant] Talk a little bit about that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Second year changed in part because there were other volunteers that came to town, three or four teachers. And so, um, holidays, and there were a lot of holidays because you had Christian holidays, you had Malay Islamic holidays, and you had Hindu holidays because a portion of the population was [inaudible]. So that having other Americans there and nearby was a pleasant experience. We would get together for holidays, have a picnic or have a meal. That I didn't have the first year that I was there. So long range.

[Assistant] And so, again, that shift felt better having others around, other Americans in there. I almost wonder if you were the Lone Ranger. Well, that's kind of almost an elite position in a sense.

[User] Well, yeah, I remember, uh, the couple showing up in Raub and actually starting to work. Uh, maybe I was out in the jungle and coming back and sort of finding them there. I had no idea that they were going to be there, but it was certainly pleasant. Nice to have.

[Assistant] And so did your work change much at all during the second year or?

[User] No. It was hectic, just kind of finishing everything up at the end of the second year, the end of this survey, and getting the maps drawn and getting the report written. So as I mentioned, there was a lot of paperwork associated. And then shutting down the office and sending equipment off to other surveying offices in other parts of the country.

[Assistant] Well, looking back over your time, were there any satisfactions or regrets that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, yeah, I remember, uh, the couple showing up in Raub and actually starting to work. Uh, maybe I was out in the jungle and coming back and sort of finding them there. I had no idea that they were going to be there, but it was certainly pleasant. Nice to have.

[Assistant] And so did your work change much at all during the second year or?

[User] No. It was hectic, just kind of finishing everything up at the end of the second year, the end of this survey, and getting the maps drawn and getting the report written. So as I mentioned, there was a lot of paperwork associated. And then shutting down the office and sending equipment off to other surveying offices in other parts of the country.

[Assistant] Well, looking back over your time, were there any satisfactions or regrets that?

[User] Well, certainly it was a very satisfying experience for me as an individual at that age, to be thrown into an environment where I was completely on my own, but where I had a whole host of resources with which to work. It gave me a sense of confidence that indeed I could, I could do that. And I would have 20 or 30 laborers working in the jungle at a time. I never had that many people working for me since. Uh, it was, uh, it was a time of personal growth and an opportunity to do what I had expected that I would do, and that is to in some sense test my own limits and working in that kind environment and environment that wasn't just.

[Assistant] Yeah, no, what kind of situation would it be where you'd have up to 30 laborers working for you?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. It was hectic, just kind of finishing everything up at the end of the second year, the end of this survey, and getting the maps drawn and getting the report written. So as I mentioned, there was a lot of paperwork associated. And then shutting down the office and sending equipment off to other surveying offices in other parts of the country.

[Assistant] Well, looking back over your time, were there any satisfactions or regrets that?

[User] Well, certainly it was a very satisfying experience for me as an individual at that age, to be thrown into an environment where I was completely on my own, but where I had a whole host of resources with which to work. It gave me a sense of confidence that indeed I could, I could do that. And I would have 20 or 30 laborers working in the jungle at a time. I never had that many people working for me since. Uh, it was, uh, it was a time of personal growth and an opportunity to do what I had expected that I would do, and that is to in some sense test my own limits and working in that kind environment and environment that wasn't just.

[Assistant] Yeah, no, what kind of situation would it be where you'd have up to 30 laborers working for you?

[User] Well, if I, if some were out cutting traverses, maybe I would have two teams of eight each and then I would go in on one of the lines with 8 or 10 people. Then of course I would have the boatman and the driver and the office boys and the others.

[Assistant] I guess part of the question is, has to do with pluses and minuses of, of work and relationships with the people in the country. Were there any pluses or minuses, that kind of thing, with those?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, certainly it was a very satisfying experience for me as an individual at that age, to be thrown into an environment where I was completely on my own, but where I had a whole host of resources with which to work. It gave me a sense of confidence that indeed I could, I could do that. And I would have 20 or 30 laborers working in the jungle at a time. I never had that many people working for me since. Uh, it was, uh, it was a time of personal growth and an opportunity to do what I had expected that I would do, and that is to in some sense test my own limits and working in that kind environment and environment that wasn't just.

[Assistant] Yeah, no, what kind of situation would it be where you'd have up to 30 laborers working for you?

[User] Well, if I, if some were out cutting traverses, maybe I would have two teams of eight each and then I would go in on one of the lines with 8 or 10 people. Then of course I would have the boatman and the driver and the office boys and the others.

[Assistant] I guess part of the question is, has to do with pluses and minuses of, of work and relationships with the people in the country. Were there any pluses or minuses, that kind of thing, with those?

[User] The minus was, of course, socially one of the things that was very clear, and I think what I learned about the Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me, that had developed a kind of a liaison with a young local girl, was that it was very, very difficult for locals to date Westerners. Uh, a young lady, uh, doing so would, uh, after the Westerner left, uh, none of the locals would ever date her again. And so it occurred to me that, in fact, I really did not want to look for a kind of a relationship with that would be potentially that, uh, that damaging.

[Assistant] How did you find out about that? [inaudible]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, if I, if some were out cutting traverses, maybe I would have two teams of eight each and then I would go in on one of the lines with 8 or 10 people. Then of course I would have the boatman and the driver and the office boys and the others.

[Assistant] I guess part of the question is, has to do with pluses and minuses of, of work and relationships with the people in the country. Were there any pluses or minuses, that kind of thing, with those?

[User] The minus was, of course, socially one of the things that was very clear, and I think what I learned about the Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me, that had developed a kind of a liaison with a young local girl, was that it was very, very difficult for locals to date Westerners. Uh, a young lady, uh, doing so would, uh, after the Westerner left, uh, none of the locals would ever date her again. And so it occurred to me that, in fact, I really did not want to look for a kind of a relationship with that would be potentially that, uh, that damaging.

[Assistant] How did you find out about that? [inaudible]

[User] Well, partly because, uh, again, there was this Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me. Things have not worked out. Secondly, the one of the teachers I mentioned, there was a single teacher, taught shop industrial arts in the local school, who did develop the liaison and eventually married one of the local girls. But it was very clear that her future was bleak if he'd leave her.

[Assistant] Okay. Then overall question here is to evaluate your service in light of the three goals of the Peace Corps. The first one, to provide technical assistance where requested. How would you evaluate your service within it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The minus was, of course, socially one of the things that was very clear, and I think what I learned about the Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me, that had developed a kind of a liaison with a young local girl, was that it was very, very difficult for locals to date Westerners. Uh, a young lady, uh, doing so would, uh, after the Westerner left, uh, none of the locals would ever date her again. And so it occurred to me that, in fact, I really did not want to look for a kind of a relationship with that would be potentially that, uh, that damaging.

[Assistant] How did you find out about that? [inaudible]

[User] Well, partly because, uh, again, there was this Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me. Things have not worked out. Secondly, the one of the teachers I mentioned, there was a single teacher, taught shop industrial arts in the local school, who did develop the liaison and eventually married one of the local girls. But it was very clear that her future was bleak if he'd leave her.

[Assistant] Okay. Then overall question here is to evaluate your service in light of the three goals of the Peace Corps. The first one, to provide technical assistance where requested. How would you evaluate your service within it?

[User] I certainly feel that I provided technical assistance. I was asked to do a technical job to create a map, and I accomplished that.

[Assistant] The second one, to help promote better understanding of Americans by people served.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, partly because, uh, again, there was this Peace Corps volunteer that had been there ahead of me. Things have not worked out. Secondly, the one of the teachers I mentioned, there was a single teacher, taught shop industrial arts in the local school, who did develop the liaison and eventually married one of the local girls. But it was very clear that her future was bleak if he'd leave her.

[Assistant] Okay. Then overall question here is to evaluate your service in light of the three goals of the Peace Corps. The first one, to provide technical assistance where requested. How would you evaluate your service within it?

[User] I certainly feel that I provided technical assistance. I was asked to do a technical job to create a map, and I accomplished that.

[Assistant] The second one, to help promote better understanding of Americans by people served.

[User] People that I interacted with, I think I developed a rapport with junior government officers. I think many of the people were puzzled as to why an American would come and work under those conditions, and not be paid. Of course, we'd get an allowance for that. That's, uh, or the only really rational thing was that I was a spy. They'd be convinced that either I was looking for gold in the hills, because Raub had been a mining town, or that I was spying. But nevertheless, at the end of two years, they thought that I was looking for gold, I had found it. If I was a spy, I was a good spy.

[Assistant] Okay, then for the third goal, to help promote better understanding of other peoples by Americans.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I certainly feel that I provided technical assistance. I was asked to do a technical job to create a map, and I accomplished that.

[Assistant] The second one, to help promote better understanding of Americans by people served.

[User] People that I interacted with, I think I developed a rapport with junior government officers. I think many of the people were puzzled as to why an American would come and work under those conditions, and not be paid. Of course, we'd get an allowance for that. That's, uh, or the only really rational thing was that I was a spy. They'd be convinced that either I was looking for gold in the hills, because Raub had been a mining town, or that I was spying. But nevertheless, at the end of two years, they thought that I was looking for gold, I had found it. If I was a spy, I was a good spy.

[Assistant] Okay, then for the third goal, to help promote better understanding of other peoples by Americans.

[User] Well, I certainly think that I came to appreciate the culture of the Malay and the Chinese and the Indian culture that I had contact with. It influenced me to go on to a career that involved international service and other countries. Five years in Nepal, two years in Bangladesh. A number of short-term projects in other parts of the world.

[Assistant] Well, say a little bit about that. What were some of the projects in these other countries? You were like five years in Nepal, did you say?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, I have found since then, one of the thoughts I've had since I left the space program—I say it in the book, too—is that something—I'm not a religious person, as I said—but something happened of the original seven guys, the only person that could have done Deke's job and would have been willing to do it was Deke Slayton, and yet he was the person that had this heart problem that forced him into doing it. Now, he might have done it even without a heart problem. He's the only one that had the ability and the dedication. There's no one [other] of those seven that could have ever done that job. And the number-two person that would probably qualify to do something like that was Al Shepard, and he had that inner ear problem that made him number two to Deke, and it came along later so that Deke was already ensconced as number one. It wasn't reversed.\n\n And it's like, how did that happen? How did it happen that two key people in our office had medical problems that made them go in the positions they were in, that they were really the only two people of those seven guys that could do it? None of the others, for a variety of reasons, would ever have been able to do it. Really a funny thing. And it's so wonderful that Al got well and got to go to the moon and Deke got enough well so that he got to fly in ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project]. So it was a funny thing there.

[Assistant] Sure is. You mentioned that you had been—I guess had been asked to serve with the crew, with Conrad's crew.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And I believe that was as a backup LM [Lunar Module] pilot for Apollo 9.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And did you then train with Jim [James A.] McDivitt's crew in preparation for the flight?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No. No. What we did, we finished it that way. This guy's name is Bill Anderson. So we'd get up there, we'd sit down there and look at it, then we'd get up there and we'd change it. Sometimes when you go for color variety it's great to have two people, because his idea of variety is different, and just the fact that we both did more variety is three times as much variety. So we usually had that. But sometimes we'd get down, we'd say, "The hand's too long," then we'd shorten the hand. Then we'd look at it, "It's too long," because you look at it at these funny angles and stuff.\n\n So we ended up really enjoying it, and we finished before the three days was up. We said, "You know, I don't think there's anything else we really have to do here. It looks good." Of course, we both learned how to work with each other. It was a lot of fun. We both like it.

[Assistant] Did anybody document you doing this? Were there people taking pictures or anything?

[User] I don't think so. His wife took a few. Yes, she's probably got some.

[Assistant] Because as you tell the story, I'm thinking, gee, I wish I had been there with a videocamera to videotape you guys.

[User] Oh, it'd be good. It'd be fun seeing us mess with that thing and trying to make the star or the reflection bigger or littler, you know, and you'd say—

[Assistant] A great documentary for PBS.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don't think so. His wife took a few. Yes, she's probably got some.

[Assistant] Because as you tell the story, I'm thinking, gee, I wish I had been there with a videocamera to videotape you guys.

[User] Oh, it'd be good. It'd be fun seeing us mess with that thing and trying to make the star or the reflection bigger or littler, you know, and you'd say—

[Assistant] A great documentary for PBS.

[User] They'd love it, because people don't know what artists are doing. They think they're just drawing it out through their head, but they're really not. They're doing it, and then you're redoing it, and then you're looking at it and say, "What's good? What's not good?" And it's only your judgment. I mean, there's nobody saying, "The feet are too big." I mean, this person says the feet are too big, and this person says, "I like them a little big." So there's no real laws.\n\n I used to compare it to fixing my car. You know, you replace the generator on your car. You get it on, you follow the book or someone tells you, you get it on, you start the car and look at the generator. Is it generating? That's it. Okay. Close it up. Let's go home. All right. You draw the generator, whatever, and you think, "Is that good enough?" One guy thinks it should be more blue, and the other guy thinks it's too big. So it's kind of a fun thing. It's a play-around thing.

[Assistant] What medium do you usually work with?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Hi Barbara.

[Assistant] Why don't we start by asking you what you're doing today?

[User] Well, I'm living in Goleta, California now, which is officially a city, a new city. And working at the University of California Santa Barbara campus as a kind of in-house journalist. I edit and write the staff and faculty newspaper, which is called 93106 after the zip code. Very imaginative. And this means that I'm essentially the chief cook and bottle washer for that little newspaper, which comes out once every two weeks during the school year. I sell ads so, you know, follow up with billing and as well as write and edit stories. And then I take other people's stories and edit them and do layout and make sure production works. So I do the whole schmear.

[Assistant] Now, for the record, would you mind just giving us your address here in Goleta?

[User] Right. It's [address].

[Assistant] Ok, good. Well, let's jump back a few years. Quite a few, as a matter of fact. When did you first hear about the Peace Corps? Can you do you remember? Is there a context?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I'm living in Goleta, California now, which is officially a city, a new city. And working at the University of California Santa Barbara campus as a kind of in-house journalist. I edit and write the staff and faculty newspaper, which is called 93106 after the zip code. Very imaginative. And this means that I'm essentially the chief cook and bottle washer for that little newspaper, which comes out once every two weeks during the school year. I sell ads so, you know, follow up with billing and as well as write and edit stories. And then I take other people's stories and edit them and do layout and make sure production works. So I do the whole schmear.

[Assistant] Now, for the record, would you mind just giving us your address here in Goleta?

[User] Right. It's [address].

[Assistant] Ok, good. Well, let's jump back a few years. Quite a few, as a matter of fact. When did you first hear about the Peace Corps? Can you do you remember? Is there a context?

[User] Yeah, there is. I was actually an undergraduate student at UCSB when Peace Corps was first announced. And I graduated in June of 64. But I, I was pretty certain after I'd say my sophomore year that I really wanted to consider Peace Corps. And I don't remember talking specifically to a recruiter, but I do remember gathering information from Peace Corps Washington in the early 60s. They probably didn't have much of a recruiter network. And then I applied and went through the procedures, which took several months, as I recall, not unlike today. And on April the 1st, 1964, I was invited to join a health community development training group for Brazil.

[Assistant] So you actually were invited before you had finished your college?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. It's [address].

[Assistant] Ok, good. Well, let's jump back a few years. Quite a few, as a matter of fact. When did you first hear about the Peace Corps? Can you do you remember? Is there a context?

[User] Yeah, there is. I was actually an undergraduate student at UCSB when Peace Corps was first announced. And I graduated in June of 64. But I, I was pretty certain after I'd say my sophomore year that I really wanted to consider Peace Corps. And I don't remember talking specifically to a recruiter, but I do remember gathering information from Peace Corps Washington in the early 60s. They probably didn't have much of a recruiter network. And then I applied and went through the procedures, which took several months, as I recall, not unlike today. And on April the 1st, 1964, I was invited to join a health community development training group for Brazil.

[Assistant] So you actually were invited before you had finished your college?

[User] Yes. But I was on track to graduate in June. Right. I think they knew that at that time. And, of course, that was the day that the regime was overthrown by the military in Brazil. So my mom did wonder if I really wanted to go to Brazil after that. But I don't think it's going to be a problem for the Peace Corps. Let us know.

[Assistant] Right. So what was the reaction of other friends and family?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We started out with like over a hundred. It was a pretty decent size group. And this wasn't the only one at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. There was an Indian group. There was also training just a few residence halls away from us. But I think in the end, what happened was part of our group. We've been training, all of us have been trained in health and community development. And part of our group was kind of taken aside and interviewed by another. Well, I don't know, actually, if it was a project director or somebody from Washington, but in any case, they were split off. There were about a dozen of them that end up going to the northeastern part of Brazil rather than the far western part, which at that time called Mato Grosso. We were going to be the first group of health volunteers in Mato Grosso. And we're supposed to be joined by another group of agricultural volunteers. And that did indeed happen. But by the time we got to Mato Grosso also, I think we were at 70 something, something like that.

[Assistant] Right. OK.

[User] So, you know, that's kind of a roundabout way of answering your question, but that's kind of why. And subsequently, people like Scott Ellinwood were part of that north-eastern group, I think. And so, you know, we didn't see them or didn't see much of them.

[Assistant] So now, after the training was over, you returned home?

[User] Yeah, there was a brief break, I think, to say goodbye and wrap up very last-minute things you had.

[Assistant] And do you remember the trip? Was there anything memorable about the trip itself?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So, you know, that's kind of a roundabout way of answering your question, but that's kind of why. And subsequently, people like Scott Ellinwood were part of that north-eastern group, I think. And so, you know, we didn't see them or didn't see much of them.

[Assistant] So now, after the training was over, you returned home?

[User] Yeah, there was a brief break, I think, to say goodbye and wrap up very last-minute things you had.

[Assistant] And do you remember the trip? Was there anything memorable about the trip itself?

[User] You're asking about what happened 40 something years ago. And I can't recall. Yeah, I think we went to Miami to fly from Miami to Brazil, and I'd never been in Miami before. I was given a little dose of humidity. What I should expect. I don't do well with humidity. They told me about this. And this is what it feels like now.

[Assistant] When you when you arrived in country.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, there was a brief break, I think, to say goodbye and wrap up very last-minute things you had.

[Assistant] And do you remember the trip? Was there anything memorable about the trip itself?

[User] You're asking about what happened 40 something years ago. And I can't recall. Yeah, I think we went to Miami to fly from Miami to Brazil, and I'd never been in Miami before. I was given a little dose of humidity. What I should expect. I don't do well with humidity. They told me about this. And this is what it feels like now.

[Assistant] When you when you arrived in country.

[User] In Rio.

[Assistant] Ok, you arrived in Rio. Any, you know, first impressions that loom large?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You're asking about what happened 40 something years ago. And I can't recall. Yeah, I think we went to Miami to fly from Miami to Brazil, and I'd never been in Miami before. I was given a little dose of humidity. What I should expect. I don't do well with humidity. They told me about this. And this is what it feels like now.

[Assistant] When you when you arrived in country.

[User] In Rio.

[Assistant] Ok, you arrived in Rio. Any, you know, first impressions that loom large?

[User] Well, we flew into the Rio airport, which is on an island right in Guanabara Bay. And so, as I recall, we could, we couldn't see Christ the Redeemer statue, but we certainly could see Sugarloaf on the super when we flew in. Those were great sights and just a beautiful location for our city. You know, it just tears my heart out to read about the pollution that's been going on. But yeah, it was all very exciting. We had about a week in Rio before we were, and we're mixed in with a bunch of other volunteers from different places.

[Assistant] How did you did your training continue in country?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yes. They had the Mato Grosso volunteers. And I think we may have not met them until we got to Mato Grosso, but they had the health volunteers that I was part of, and they had the agricultural volunteers that were all going to Mato Grosso, meet in Cuiaba. And some of our people from health and some of the people from Ag, so they must have been in Rio, were designated to drive Land Rovers across the country to Campo Grande then from Campo Grande north to Cuiaba, because those roads were the best that they could travel on. And they weren't always that great from what we heard.

But we all met in Cuiaba and in Cuiaba, we had almost another month of specialized health training. In the States, we'd learned general health concepts. We'd learned something about disease prevention, vaccination techniques, things like that. And in Cuiaba, we got the vocabulary that would go with our different jobs. The men were assigned to be sanitation helpers, was the translation. The women would be nurses’ helpers.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And so each group kind of got separate training on what kind of vocabulary they would be expected to use and to know. Plus, we built a privy. And that was one of the first times that we actually had done that as a Peace Corps trainee group, there in Cuiaba. And we met some of the people that would be part of the state health system that we might correspond with or have community.

[Assistant] You didn't live with families in those states, did you? As part of the training?

[User] Yeah. Thank you for reminding me. We had a host family.

[Assistant] You did have a host family?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And so each group kind of got separate training on what kind of vocabulary they would be expected to use and to know. Plus, we built a privy. And that was one of the first times that we actually had done that as a Peace Corps trainee group, there in Cuiaba. And we met some of the people that would be part of the state health system that we might correspond with or have community.

[Assistant] You didn't live with families in those states, did you? As part of the training?

[User] Yeah. Thank you for reminding me. We had a host family.

[Assistant] You did have a host family?

[User] Yeah. And I was paired up with another young man, I think, with this one family. And the father spoke some English and he wanted to practice his English. And we wanted to practice our Portuguese. So we basically, you could find somebody in the family who'd practice one or the other with.

[Assistant] And did your language skills begin to explode?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Explosion isn't quite the word I would use, but they did improve slightly, I think. And the father, fortunately for me I thought, was not bashful about correcting my grammar or misuse of vocabulary, which I always appreciated, really. But I think of my real language skills development as being in in the site.

[Assistant] Ok.

[User] When I was sent there. In Cuiaba, because we are the new group and the pioneer group really for health, we were considered kind of hybrid workers for the state health system.

[Assistant] Oh, OK.

[User] So they were going to and did assign the males and the females to state health posts. What we didn't know at the time and really should have been told was that this was part of a general housecleaning, that this new director of the state health system had already started before we got there. But some of us I heard from other people, not in my particular case, but some of us were seen as job takers because they had moved out the sanitation helper who had been there. And suddenly here was this North American, you know, with various levels of Portuguese comprehension. But in my particular case, I was assigned to a small town called Camapuã, which was more in the southern part of the state. It was about four hours by bus from Campo Grande, which was the largest city outside of Cuiaba. And today, in fact, the state's been split in half. So large. And Cuiaba as the capital, the northern what used to be the northern part of Mato Grosso. And there's a new state called Mato Grosso Dos Sul and Campo Grande is its capital.

[Assistant] Now, were you the first Peace Corps volunteer into that community?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. And for many of them, I was the first white person, they said, or first North American, and I was the only English speaker in the community.

[Assistant] Oh, OK.

[User] So for a month, I walked around with a Portuguese English dictionary in my hand. But, you know, I've said this to many people over the years, and especially to new trainees or to new would be volunteers. It really helped me become part of the community quicker. And it helped undermine the whole concept that some of them had of me being a spy or a CIA agent or something like that. I mean, Latin America in the ‘60s was being roiled by a lot of changes. There were, you know, very active communist parties in most countries. And there was a lot of agitation against America, but there was a lot of hope, a lot of feeling of goodwill toward John Kennedy and the children of Kennedy, as some of the Spanish speaking countries came to call the volunteers.

[Assistant] Ah.

[User] Not in Brazil, that that term didn't catch on as much as some of the Caribbean nations and some of the others. But even in my little town.

[Assistant] Let me think now. When did you actually go to Brazil? What month?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] So for a month, I walked around with a Portuguese English dictionary in my hand. But, you know, I've said this to many people over the years, and especially to new trainees or to new would be volunteers. It really helped me become part of the community quicker. And it helped undermine the whole concept that some of them had of me being a spy or a CIA agent or something like that. I mean, Latin America in the ‘60s was being roiled by a lot of changes. There were, you know, very active communist parties in most countries. And there was a lot of agitation against America, but there was a lot of hope, a lot of feeling of goodwill toward John Kennedy and the children of Kennedy, as some of the Spanish speaking countries came to call the volunteers.

[Assistant] Ah.

[User] Not in Brazil, that that term didn't catch on as much as some of the Caribbean nations and some of the others. But even in my little town.

[Assistant] Let me think now. When did you actually go to Brazil? What month?

[User] Well, you see, I started training in June of ‘64. It would have been September.

[Assistant] So you had just barely been there when Kennedy's death?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not in Brazil, that that term didn't catch on as much as some of the Caribbean nations and some of the others. But even in my little town.

[Assistant] Let me think now. When did you actually go to Brazil? What month?

[User] Well, you see, I started training in June of ‘64. It would have been September.

[Assistant] So you had just barely been there when Kennedy's death?

[User] It was less than a year after his death.

[Assistant] He died in November of ‘64.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, you see, I started training in June of ‘64. It would have been September.

[Assistant] So you had just barely been there when Kennedy's death?

[User] It was less than a year after his death.

[Assistant] He died in November of ‘64.

[User] Sixty three.

[Assistant] OK, yes, that's right.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Sixty three.

[Assistant] OK, yes, that's right.

[User] It was after. Yeah. And I can't recall because my decision to enter the Peace Corps had already been made before his assassination. And the only thing I can think of is that his assassination may have just firmed up my resolve that I was going to do this. But we didn't talk about that so much. I mean, a lot of us talk about why are you here? And some of them some of us mentioned Kennedy or trying to carry his legacy forward or whatever you want to say about. But most of us, I would say, just were there for self-exploration and trying to do a little something positive for the rest of the world.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] Maybe in that respect, you know, the ask not what you can do or what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I think we're still resonating. You know, my generation of volunteers. But it wasn't one of those things that we carried on our sleeves.

[Assistant] Right. Well, tell me about arriving at your job, at your assignment.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, because they weren't sure exactly when I was going to arrive. And also, they were going through what turned out to be a fairly regular period of turmoil in the health post. There was, as I mentioned earlier, no one in the sanitation helper position that I was coming in to fill. Fortunately for me. But there's also no doctor who is usually who is supposed to be in charge. They had two nurses, as they call them. The translation would be visiting nurses, I think, but there, from what I could determine there, their training was above what we consider an LPN, but not quite what we consider an RN.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And one of the two nurses had kind of taken over the role of acting health post director. And we were working through the grace of the local Catholic Church in what used to be the nunnery of the church. Uh, we didn't stay there very many months, but we did have, at least when I arrived, a place where they could put their meager stores and have some examining rooms and things like that. So, yeah, it was it was a I was I was told I was going to stay in the pension, a little inn. And where the bus stopped was just outside that that inn. And that was perfect for me. And the foreman wasn't angry with me, but he just scooped up the lime and put it back in with the dirt.

[Assistant] So you were told you were going to stay in the pension, but was that just for the first night or was that to be your?

[User] I wasn’t sure. And then I found out that all the other health care workers who didn't live either with a family or have a.

[Assistant] Ok, then we just flipped the tape, and I think you were saying that you had just discovered that the other health workers were also staying in the pension. Is that how you pronounce it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And one of the two nurses had kind of taken over the role of acting health post director. And we were working through the grace of the local Catholic Church in what used to be the nunnery of the church. Uh, we didn't stay there very many months, but we did have, at least when I arrived, a place where they could put their meager stores and have some examining rooms and things like that. So, yeah, it was it was a I was I was told I was going to stay in the pension, a little inn. And where the bus stopped was just outside that that inn. And that was perfect for me. And the foreman wasn't angry with me, but he just scooped up the lime and put it back in with the dirt.

[Assistant] So you were told you were going to stay in the pension, but was that just for the first night or was that to be your?

[User] I wasn’t sure. And then I found out that all the other health care workers who didn't live either with a family or have a.

[Assistant] Ok, then we just flipped the tape, and I think you were saying that you had just discovered that the other health workers were also staying in the pension. Is that how you pronounce it?

[User] Pension? Yeah. And it was just a one-story structure with little rooms. And it gave me a room to have a door that open to the street and plus the fact we had no ceilings, that you got air circulating, especially in hot nights into your room. And I had a I remember I had a mosquito netting that I used the Peace Corps supplied over my bed. And I also had I believe I brought this with me from Campo Grande, a little library of paperback books, which in those days was part of the equipping of a volunteer and a site. And I met the owner of the pension, a man of indeterminate age, but he looked as old as the hills, named Saturnino, and his wife, Virgilina, who actually ran the pension. She was kind of brusque large and very efficient and had a heart of gold.

[Assistant] So you lived there the whole time.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I wasn’t sure. And then I found out that all the other health care workers who didn't live either with a family or have a.

[Assistant] Ok, then we just flipped the tape, and I think you were saying that you had just discovered that the other health workers were also staying in the pension. Is that how you pronounce it?

[User] Pension? Yeah. And it was just a one-story structure with little rooms. And it gave me a room to have a door that open to the street and plus the fact we had no ceilings, that you got air circulating, especially in hot nights into your room. And I had a I remember I had a mosquito netting that I used the Peace Corps supplied over my bed. And I also had I believe I brought this with me from Campo Grande, a little library of paperback books, which in those days was part of the equipping of a volunteer and a site. And I met the owner of the pension, a man of indeterminate age, but he looked as old as the hills, named Saturnino, and his wife, Virgilina, who actually ran the pension. She was kind of brusque large and very efficient and had a heart of gold.

[Assistant] So you lived there the whole time.

[User] And I ended up living there for the better part of two years.

[Assistant] Where’d you take your meals?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Pension? Yeah. And it was just a one-story structure with little rooms. And it gave me a room to have a door that open to the street and plus the fact we had no ceilings, that you got air circulating, especially in hot nights into your room. And I had a I remember I had a mosquito netting that I used the Peace Corps supplied over my bed. And I also had I believe I brought this with me from Campo Grande, a little library of paperback books, which in those days was part of the equipping of a volunteer and a site. And I met the owner of the pension, a man of indeterminate age, but he looked as old as the hills, named Saturnino, and his wife, Virgilina, who actually ran the pension. She was kind of brusque large and very efficient and had a heart of gold.

[Assistant] So you lived there the whole time.

[User] And I ended up living there for the better part of two years.

[Assistant] Where’d you take your meals?

[User] With them. They had, in the pension, a little eating sala room, and they had the people who stayed there eight there for the most part. At least they had their dinners there, because when I had breakfast, every once in a while, there'd be somebody eating breakfast, but not always. And they had a little kerosene fueled refrigerator, which was fortunate for me because they didn't use it too often. But when I saw with the water situation was they used filtered water from the wells. But the well was below the privy at that time. And so that was one of the things that I knew from training was that a no-no and that I was supposed to try to help change. And actually, it turned out that my one of the nurses who was also working there had been working on them, too, for a couple of those type of features that needed to be changed and improve the health situation. Moving the privity was one of them. So between the two of us, we actually got that privy moved downstream.

[Assistant] Did you go to work right away?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Pretty much as I recall. I met the nurse who was in charge. And the other one, I think they're both. They were both staying at that pension. And they said, well, tomorrow we'll show you what the health post looks like. They weren't quite sure, you know, how I was supposed to work and how are they supposed to use me. Because my salary was, like most Peace Corps volunteers, the cost of living allowance that they gave us. I wasn't paid by the state of Mato Grosso, though. So I had this kind of outside independence, too, especially when after the first few months I found that my cost of living allowance was more than I needed to actually have a comfortable life there. And it turned out to be very helpful because we got some community development projects financed with that little extra margin, plus what I got paid for teaching English at a private school.

But that's another part of the story, the community development part. At the health post level, I was informed very quickly that they had no doctor. There was a visiting doctor from Sao Paulo, which was another large city on the coast of Brazil. He was considering moving here. But basically we saw no fewer than three legitimate doctors and one fraud come through our little town in the time I was there checking it out to see if there would be a possibility of enough income.

[Assistant] How big a community was this?

[User] My first community survey showed about two thousand people. And this was the county seat, the municipal, municipio, and it was the source of the it was very limited bureaucracy at that time. And it handled mostly an economy based on raising rice and growing cattle.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And there were a lot of large fazendas, or ranches, in the area. The mayor himself owned two of them, you know, and a number of the people who sat on the council for the county slash city were also ranchers.

[Assistant] Do the nurses provide clinical nursing care? Was there a clinic or was this more public health? What kinds of things they were working on?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My first community survey showed about two thousand people. And this was the county seat, the municipal, municipio, and it was the source of the it was very limited bureaucracy at that time. And it handled mostly an economy based on raising rice and growing cattle.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And there were a lot of large fazendas, or ranches, in the area. The mayor himself owned two of them, you know, and a number of the people who sat on the council for the county slash city were also ranchers.

[Assistant] Do the nurses provide clinical nursing care? Was there a clinic or was this more public health? What kinds of things they were working on?

[User] It was a combination of both, Barbara, because the nurses did tend to spend a fair amount of their time giving injections of very often just vitamins. Other times, they may have been treating small infections. You know, that sort of thing with antibiotics. But we didn't have much in the way of that. And most of it came out of a drug salesman's samples.

[Assistant] And there was no clinic other than what they provided. That was it for the community?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And there were a lot of large fazendas, or ranches, in the area. The mayor himself owned two of them, you know, and a number of the people who sat on the council for the county slash city were also ranchers.

[Assistant] Do the nurses provide clinical nursing care? Was there a clinic or was this more public health? What kinds of things they were working on?

[User] It was a combination of both, Barbara, because the nurses did tend to spend a fair amount of their time giving injections of very often just vitamins. Other times, they may have been treating small infections. You know, that sort of thing with antibiotics. But we didn't have much in the way of that. And most of it came out of a drug salesman's samples.

[Assistant] And there was no clinic other than what they provided. That was it for the community?

[User] That was it for the community.

[Assistant] And the nearest hospital, would have been?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That was it for the community.

[Assistant] And the nearest hospital, would have been?

[User] Plus the drugstore. You know, in Brazil, like many countries, the farmacia is not just a dispensary of prescription and non-prescription drugs, but also advice. And very often they gave injections too, something that bothered, I know, at least our lead nurse.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] So, yeah, in terms of health care, anything serious had to go south. There was nothing between us and Campo Grande.

[Assistant] So what did your role become as a health care volunteer?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Um, I think at first we tried to do it once a month or maybe more frequently, but pretty soon we were doing it every two to three weeks because we got more staff who helped write the articles.

[Assistant] Now, did they get paid or was this all volunteer?

[User] All volunteer. We started charging, though, for subscribers and we started charging for advertising. And I would, you know, cut the stencils very carefully to get the ads in. And some of the local merchants would subscribe to support the little paper. And we called it Okallaponence, the Camapuã post, you know, as the title of the paper. And people loved it. They took it to their hearts and they would send it, because a lot of them were migrants from the northeast or the south, west, southeast, northeast or southeast. And they'd send it to their families and friends, say look what we've got here.

[Assistant] Did it become a vehicle for health education?

[User] Yes. As a first, the first issue had a bit of front-page article about the yellow fever vaccination campaign. And we had the local dentist in town who had the most education. The most educated person in town was the dentist. He would do proofreading for us, capture the mistakes I was making or some of the others would make.

[Assistant] Ok, let's see if we can pick up where we left off on the last tape.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was gratifying to see it still there. And honestly doing quite well.

[Assistant] So you were a catalyst for a number of things, it sounds like. Are there any others?

[User] The newspaper died out after two years after I left. Dete carried it for a year, doing it the way we have it. And then and as far as I can tell, it continued to build up its reserves and then nobody wanted to take on the load. So the dentist took it over. And he always had grandiose plans. He took our money and he invested it in about three issues of the newspaper being printed by a real print shop.

[Assistant] That was it. Oh, dear.

[User] I have no idea what ever happened to the typewriter, but the little silkscreen stayed with Dete because that community support group I tried to get going, try to take over the paper, said, no, no, we're independent. We're not supposed to be beholden to you. You're supposed to help us. So they fell apart. Uh, but I think he kept it the uh, the silkscreen, because he was finishing up his fourth year and a little newspaper appeared at the school. Silkscreen. And they told me they sent me some copies, actually, and said the paper lives! So that was that was nice. But I really hadn't expected something as ambitious as that. You know, to have more than a limited impact. I was so happy that it helped get the maternity hospital going again.

[Assistant] Fabulous. Now, during the time you were in your little village, what contact did you have with either Peace Corps as an institution or other Peace Corps volunteers?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The newspaper died out after two years after I left. Dete carried it for a year, doing it the way we have it. And then and as far as I can tell, it continued to build up its reserves and then nobody wanted to take on the load. So the dentist took it over. And he always had grandiose plans. He took our money and he invested it in about three issues of the newspaper being printed by a real print shop.

[Assistant] That was it. Oh, dear.

[User] I have no idea what ever happened to the typewriter, but the little silkscreen stayed with Dete because that community support group I tried to get going, try to take over the paper, said, no, no, we're independent. We're not supposed to be beholden to you. You're supposed to help us. So they fell apart. Uh, but I think he kept it the uh, the silkscreen, because he was finishing up his fourth year and a little newspaper appeared at the school. Silkscreen. And they told me they sent me some copies, actually, and said the paper lives! So that was that was nice. But I really hadn't expected something as ambitious as that. You know, to have more than a limited impact. I was so happy that it helped get the maternity hospital going again.

[Assistant] Fabulous. Now, during the time you were in your little village, what contact did you have with either Peace Corps as an institution or other Peace Corps volunteers?

[User] Not much. We got visited twice in two years, I think. And once was by a Peace Corps volunteer leader, came up and joined us in a volleyball game for that. And then once one of the staff would go, they came up and gave me some seeds for a failed garden project. Not all of my initiatives came to fruition. And um, and then I was asked to help process our group out of Mato Grosso at the end of their two year term. But I had to go to Cuiaba to do that. And I actually welcomed that because I was chicken.

[Assistant] What do you mean?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not much. We got visited twice in two years, I think. And once was by a Peace Corps volunteer leader, came up and joined us in a volleyball game for that. And then once one of the staff would go, they came up and gave me some seeds for a failed garden project. Not all of my initiatives came to fruition. And um, and then I was asked to help process our group out of Mato Grosso at the end of their two year term. But I had to go to Cuiaba to do that. And I actually welcomed that because I was chicken.

[Assistant] What do you mean?

[User] Well, I had formed a lot of close relationships there in town, and I knew how hard it was going to be for me to say goodbye. Uh, especially if I told them two weeks ahead of time, Oh, looks like I'm going to have to go to Cuiaba and help out. And it would just be nonstop, you know, saudade, which is a wonderful Brazilian Portuguese term, I'm not even sure the Portuguese use it, but it means, it's a combination of being homesick, of missing something that hasn't even left. I mean, it would be one of these kind of catchall terms that you use because it fits so many different things, but doesn't have a really, really clear-cut meaning by itself. It's the context that makes it clear. And, you know, people would say they still did that. I mean, I told them two days or three days before I left that I was going to have to go. And the word just spread like wildfire. Yeah, little town. And people would come out and say, I know you haven't gone, but I still have saudade of you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I miss you, too. But it was it's more than just missing.

[Assistant] So it was pretty intense.

[User] It was it was intense few days. And they insisted on a farewell party at a private school. And the whole community came, you know, testimonial after testimonial about this young American.

[Assistant] So it's it sounds like you had a wonderful experience.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I had formed a lot of close relationships there in town, and I knew how hard it was going to be for me to say goodbye. Uh, especially if I told them two weeks ahead of time, Oh, looks like I'm going to have to go to Cuiaba and help out. And it would just be nonstop, you know, saudade, which is a wonderful Brazilian Portuguese term, I'm not even sure the Portuguese use it, but it means, it's a combination of being homesick, of missing something that hasn't even left. I mean, it would be one of these kind of catchall terms that you use because it fits so many different things, but doesn't have a really, really clear-cut meaning by itself. It's the context that makes it clear. And, you know, people would say they still did that. I mean, I told them two days or three days before I left that I was going to have to go. And the word just spread like wildfire. Yeah, little town. And people would come out and say, I know you haven't gone, but I still have saudade of you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I miss you, too. But it was it's more than just missing.

[Assistant] So it was pretty intense.

[User] It was it was intense few days. And they insisted on a farewell party at a private school. And the whole community came, you know, testimonial after testimonial about this young American.

[Assistant] So it's it sounds like you had a wonderful experience.

[User] I really did. Yeah, I felt like I accomplished something positive. I made a lot of good friends who shamefully I didn't keep in touch with.

[Assistant] You mentioned you'd been you were back about six or seven years after you finished. Have you been back since?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I trained a group right after I left Cuiaba after helping the. And I may have heard about it. I don't even remember how I first heard about this, but it could have been in Rio, it could have been in Cuiaba. But after I left my town, and we had at that time, no knowledge that there would be another Peace Corps volunteer coming and taking over that position I left vacant. But the idea, as always, as I understand Peace Corps, anyway, is to work yourself out of a job. And Dete was interested in the job and I said, go for it. You've got all you need and more. And that turned out to be very true because he did apply, he did get the training course that he had to get through, like I did in Cuiaba. And he came back to Camapuã with a wife who was a nurse. So he really brought some resources back to that I never could have.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And Dete was the sanitation worker for a while. And then I think he kind of assumed other responsibilities in the health post. And then his wife was part of that health post, too. And at some point in the six or seven years before he came back, he ran as the principal elementary school.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] And he became the local agricultural ranching co-op secretary treasurer. So he became a man of importance. I can tell you that community. And I think you just need somebody to believe in him, you know? Because he had the ambition. He had the smarts. And he had a winning personality once he got over his shyness.

[Assistant] That too must be gratifying. If he became the catalyst.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And Dete was the sanitation worker for a while. And then I think he kind of assumed other responsibilities in the health post. And then his wife was part of that health post, too. And at some point in the six or seven years before he came back, he ran as the principal elementary school.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] And he became the local agricultural ranching co-op secretary treasurer. So he became a man of importance. I can tell you that community. And I think you just need somebody to believe in him, you know? Because he had the ambition. He had the smarts. And he had a winning personality once he got over his shyness.

[Assistant] That too must be gratifying. If he became the catalyst.

[User] You know, I think he was my best project. But he also was my he, I was his project. Because without him, I couldn't have done some of those town meetings. No question about that. And there were other things that he helped out on, the paper. He understood that I didn't want to control the paper in perpetuity. I just wanted to get started and I wanted him and other Brazilians to take over. And they did, for enough months so that I could see that I could leave and it'd be in good hands.

[Assistant] You mentioned earlier that your living allowance was more than sufficient, that you were able to save for vacations. So where did you go? You took some vacations?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah. There are about three of us, I think, from Mato Grosso. And they used my newspaper as a language training aid. That was cool. And then they sent teams of two usually of the trainee volunteers into surrounding towns to accomplish certain things on the weekends, basically, and get them a little bit acculturated and practicing their Portuguese, etc. I could tell from the experience I had and what I heard from my fellow volunteers in Mato Grosso, that getting that language is so crucial to their effectiveness. And it's so hard when you're, as was the case, paired up with another English speaking volunteer. It's constant temptation to speak English rather than Portuguese and that slows your acquisition.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] So, you know, we warned them about this and they could see some of these things were happening. I remember one girl, I think she's from Minnesota, who liked culottes. And I said, Leslie, those are going to get you more attention than anything else you could possibly wear. So be aware of this. You know, when you go into your village, don't wear culottes right from the beginning. And she later wrote me one letter when she was said, you were so right.

[Assistant] So that was an enjoyable experience working with this training group?

[User] Yeah. And I think self selection works. If they've given enough time and information, they really can understand more what they're getting into. But it was a costly process. So I suspect that there weren't that many.

[Assistant] I'm not aware that that's become the norm in terms of training. Were there any disappointments in terms of your two years as a volunteer in Brazil?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I missed my girlfriend. I missed my family. But I had so many great people there that I was working so that I could go back to that University of Texas training group and say, these people are worth the effort.

[Assistant] Yeah. Now, when you returned to the United States. Did you have culture shock like I did?

[User] I had culture shock there. Yeah. Because I could see so much benefit in a slower pace of life and getting to know people and really not just being satisfied with a passing in the hallway. Hi, how are you doing? Fine, thank you. Okay. But you know, it also helped me appreciate individuals and individual. Both the role of individuals and the kind of hidden joys that individuals can bring to your life without you wanting or expecting it. And I still find that to be true.

[Assistant] Yeah. What did you do when you first came back to the United States?

[User] Well, I had a choice. I had tried and failed, talk about disappointment, here’s one, to pass the Foreign Service officer exam.

[Assistant] Which I understand was not easy.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And they said, let's see what we can do for you. And they came back a day later and said, we're sending you for interviews at Heidelburg. If they don't need a military journalist there, they always need a clerk typist. You know, you'll have a much better position for that. And I ended up spending 13 months in Heidelberg as a journalist. I got it back and I got a great job producing a little publication, not that much above the silkscreen, but a little bit better, in which I encouraged people to explore Germany, West Germany. And it was just a great thing. I was able to learn some German.

[Assistant] Super. I think you lucked out. Now, what has been your connection with the Peace Corps in the umpteen years?

[User] Yeah, well, I was one of the co-founders, I guess you could say, of this group here.

[Assistant] And we’re referring to the very active Santa Barbara Peace Corps Association. And you and I both have served on that board. But you've been at it much longer than I.

[User] But inconsistently. And it was because there were too few of us doing too much at the beginning. Now, I'm sure you felt that here once by yourself. But it was such a relief to see new blood finally come in and take over from the old timers. I mean, Mike Marzola and Bill Dillon and Rose, yeah Rose too, we date back to that era. But there aren't many of us. Billy Brother, who you seldom see, but maybe once a year. You know, she helped out, too, in the beginning. And there were others that are still in this area.

[Assistant] But you're still you're still active in the group.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, well, I was one of the co-founders, I guess you could say, of this group here.

[Assistant] And we’re referring to the very active Santa Barbara Peace Corps Association. And you and I both have served on that board. But you've been at it much longer than I.

[User] But inconsistently. And it was because there were too few of us doing too much at the beginning. Now, I'm sure you felt that here once by yourself. But it was such a relief to see new blood finally come in and take over from the old timers. I mean, Mike Marzola and Bill Dillon and Rose, yeah Rose too, we date back to that era. But there aren't many of us. Billy Brother, who you seldom see, but maybe once a year. You know, she helped out, too, in the beginning. And there were others that are still in this area.

[Assistant] But you're still you're still active in the group.

[User] Yeah. Well, you know, I'm one of those that believes that once you're a Peace Corps volunteer, you’re always a Peace Corps volunteer. And I still find it a really worthwhile organization, despite its ups and downs. And I objected very strenuously to Mr. Vasquez as the director. I felt he was totally unqualified to be appointed. But I recognize the political realities. I mean, this is a political appointment, just as some of our country directors are. And so our ambassadors are, you know, and you get the good with the bad, and sometimes you're pleasantly surprised. Sargent Shriver was a political appointee, right? You couldn't have asked for a better salesman, and creator, I mean, the things that he fought for. Just amazing that some of them survived. Including the autonomy of the Peace Corps, which it lost for a while.

[Assistant] Yeah. Now, as we've gone through this interview, have I skipped over our probing any areas that you would like to be part of your Peace Corps history?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We talked early on about change a lot. We had a lot of change in the beginning. I would say probably two things. The most significant event no doubt was responding to being proposed to be cancelled in February 2010. Hopefully I will only live through one of those in my career, because that was very very hard individually and for the whole team to work through that. We talked about it the first time we were together.\n\n After that I would say second thing that surprised me, because I’d always come from mature programs, but when you’re early in the development stage, your program exists only on paper and on PowerPoint charts. It’s very easy to change, and it’s very easy to be critical of a PowerPoint chart. You have to be conscientious and focused to limit the change, because you can always go back and spend another couple months making a new set of charts. You have to be conscientious and transition your program from out of this paper stage into a detailed design phase and ultimately produce flight hardware. The early days where we were in a lot of that PowerPoint engineering was quite challenging, and we had to break through that.

[Assistant] What would you consider your most significant contribution?

[User] I would say there are probably two things that are memorable to me and important to me. First off, it was bringing a production schedule-focused emphasis to the program, especially on our way towards EFT-1, when we were really struggling getting parts to the Cape and building the vehicle for the first time.\n\n Secondly, I do remember early on I feel like I contributed in establishing this multicenter organization, because in the early days again to make those personal ties, to establish those business rhythms took effort. I think those are the things that I remember most about my tenure here on Orion.

[Assistant] Was there anything that we haven’t talked about that you wanted to mention? I imagine you have lots of stories and anecdotes. Any memories that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to?

[User] I’m sure I will think of something, but for now you’ve exhausted me. But if anything comes to me I can send you a note.

[Assistant] Okay. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Actually I was a little confused by that.

[Assistant] Sorry.

[User] No, not by what you said. But we actually changed a couple times.

[Assistant] Talk about that.

[User] Most of the pressure vessel is actually aluminum, but there were sections of it that were aluminum-lithium. We actually had a problem where we had welds. When we cracked the pressure vessel during the proof pressure tests on EFT [Exploration Flight Test]-1 one of the things that we didn’t model very well—we had different types of this aluminum alloy. They have slightly different properties. They were also welded together, so we didn’t properly account for some of the weld shrinkage. We didn’t properly account for I think it was strain capability of this particular alloy. It was a little weaker in one direction. Since we’re using different pieces in different areas, it actually caused us to not calculate correctly, and then it cracked during the proof pressure test. It was easy to fix, but it was a surprise.

[Assistant] I think this might be a good time if you want to stick your head out and just see if your folks are here.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. So when you tell people at JSC it’s family, they know what you mean. Choked up.

[Assistant] It’s okay. Through those 43 plus years there’s a lot of paths that you’ve crossed with people.

[User] Yes, that’s true.

[Assistant] A lot of good memories for you to think about.

[User] Yes there are.

[Assistant] They’re not over yet. They’re just going to be different.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that’s true.

[Assistant] A lot of good memories for you to think about.

[User] Yes there are.

[Assistant] They’re not over yet. They’re just going to be different.

[User] No. That’s really one of the blessings. I think I shouldn’t end without thanking Hamilton for the career that they gave me. I talk about individual bosses, which were all important. But it’s amazing to go through a career that’s more than four decades long with one company and be able to say that I couldn’t have been treated better. From the beginning to the end.

[Assistant] That’s amazing. Well, thanks for sharing your history and your thoughts with us. We appreciate it.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. And then the activities on campus were always either free or extremely reasonable; they were part of the student activity fund… So in general, with any of the free time that I had, I felt I was richer than I'd been before. [Laughter] So I really didn't feel deprived having to work through college.

[Assistant] At some point you changed from chemistry to math.

[User] Oh, yes. As a junior, I got into organic chemistry, and, oh, no. [Laughter] It just wasn't the chemistry for me. I finally sat down and took stock, and said, well, golly, I've got enough time in math, and I always had loved math. It was something that would never throw you a curve. Once you learned a particular part of math, it was yours, you know. So I thought, it's really silly of me to be putting in all these hours in lab, see, where for each hour that I would put in on math, I'd get credit for, but all the labs were three and four and five hours. I thought, "Boy, this is enough for me. I'm outta here." [Laughter] So I changed to math, and that was the right decision.

[Assistant] Were you one of the few women that were majoring in math at that time or were there other classmates of yours?

[User] No, it was more that there were fewer men, because it had been a women's college before this. I'd say in college it was more that there were too few men around, you see. So then I was quite lucky in that one of the graduate students, he'd just graduated from M.I.T. [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts], and, of course, I had looked over all of his application and so on. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Checked him out. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, it was more that there were fewer men, because it had been a women's college before this. I'd say in college it was more that there were too few men around, you see. So then I was quite lucky in that one of the graduate students, he'd just graduated from M.I.T. [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts], and, of course, I had looked over all of his application and so on. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Checked him out. [Laughter]

[User] Yes. But I didn't know exactly who he was. One day I was working around the chemistry department, I came across this person who was working on the first-aid kit. He was putting the red cross on the first-aid kit in the hall. I stopped and chatted with him, wanted to know what he was doing. Later on he said that I informed him that the cross that he painted was crooked and that he took the masking tape off too soon. [Laughter] But as you might know, we've been married for forty-five years now. He's been able to put up with it. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Maybe he agreed with you. Maybe it was. [Laughter]

[User] He was glad to get the attention, I think. Actually, he had come to Florida State, he had graduated from M.I.T. and it was pretty grueling activities that he'd been in, so he looked up and he'd seen that Florida State had been a woman's college and he decided, "Man, I can study and still have fun," you see. So in general, I said that I got two degrees from Florida State. I got my bachelor's and I got my "Mrs." degree. [Laughter]

[Assistant] What did you want to do with your math degree? Did you have any idea where you wanted to apply that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. By this time I had three children, so it was—

[Assistant] You were busy.

[User] I was busy. But before the second child was born, we got a live-in nanny, and that worked out quite well. Prior to that, my daughter had gone to a nursery right on the—it was one on the [Langley] Air Force base. So that was nice. She went with us when we went to work and came back with us.

[Assistant] Close by.

[User] Right. So all of that worked out great. But then with the second one, well, that was going to be too much, so we got somebody to stay with them. So she was with us for about ten years. In the wintertime, Grandmother would be down there, so we didn't feel that they were ever neglected. They always had plenty of people around.

[Assistant] You built an extended family.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I was busy. But before the second child was born, we got a live-in nanny, and that worked out quite well. Prior to that, my daughter had gone to a nursery right on the—it was one on the [Langley] Air Force base. So that was nice. She went with us when we went to work and came back with us.

[Assistant] Close by.

[User] Right. So all of that worked out great. But then with the second one, well, that was going to be too much, so we got somebody to stay with them. So she was with us for about ten years. In the wintertime, Grandmother would be down there, so we didn't feel that they were ever neglected. They always had plenty of people around.

[Assistant] You built an extended family.

[User] That's right. Then for a while we even had two—not while we were in Virginia, but later on sometimes we'd have two grandmothers. Sometimes that didn't work out just right. [Laughter]

[Assistant] A full house. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. So all of that worked out great. But then with the second one, well, that was going to be too much, so we got somebody to stay with them. So she was with us for about ten years. In the wintertime, Grandmother would be down there, so we didn't feel that they were ever neglected. They always had plenty of people around.

[Assistant] You built an extended family.

[User] That's right. Then for a while we even had two—not while we were in Virginia, but later on sometimes we'd have two grandmothers. Sometimes that didn't work out just right. [Laughter]

[Assistant] A full house. [Laughter]

[User] My mother was a very determined type, and we found it was better that she came in the summertime and Don's mother came in the wintertime.

[Assistant] Everybody got wiser as the children got older. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right. Then for a while we even had two—not while we were in Virginia, but later on sometimes we'd have two grandmothers. Sometimes that didn't work out just right. [Laughter]

[Assistant] A full house. [Laughter]

[User] My mother was a very determined type, and we found it was better that she came in the summertime and Don's mother came in the wintertime.

[Assistant] Everybody got wiser as the children got older. [Laughter]

[User] Yes. Don's father died while we were at Langley, still. But they had always lived in—after his father had retired from teaching high school, they lived in Maine. They would live in Maine in the summertime and St. Pete [St. Petersburg], Florida, in the wintertime. So after his dad died, then his mother would just come down to Virginia and stay with us. So it worked out pretty well.

[Assistant] What year did you move to Houston?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] My mother was a very determined type, and we found it was better that she came in the summertime and Don's mother came in the wintertime.

[Assistant] Everybody got wiser as the children got older. [Laughter]

[User] Yes. Don's father died while we were at Langley, still. But they had always lived in—after his father had retired from teaching high school, they lived in Maine. They would live in Maine in the summertime and St. Pete [St. Petersburg], Florida, in the wintertime. So after his dad died, then his mother would just come down to Virginia and stay with us. So it worked out pretty well.

[Assistant] What year did you move to Houston?

[User] We came down here in July of '62. As I say, everybody else in my group was already here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] They saved you a place.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes. Don's father died while we were at Langley, still. But they had always lived in—after his father had retired from teaching high school, they lived in Maine. They would live in Maine in the summertime and St. Pete [St. Petersburg], Florida, in the wintertime. So after his dad died, then his mother would just come down to Virginia and stay with us. So it worked out pretty well.

[Assistant] What year did you move to Houston?

[User] We came down here in July of '62. As I say, everybody else in my group was already here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] They saved you a place.

[User] They certainly did. In fact, one of the ladies that I worked with, she went over to Langley to do the same general type work I do. Her husband had worked with Sears. When he got a transfer down here, she came down. She came down about a number of months later. We were still at HPC. This was Mary [Shep] Burton. If you ever get a chance to interview her, she's an interesting person. She did stay mainly in the math aide-type work and then later on she went into office management and—I probably don't have the name of it right, but the office services for all of JSC [Johnson Space Center]. So she worked her way up in that type of management. But she always knew exactly what was going on. I really wish that you'd be able to interview her. She'd be good.

[Assistant] It must have made the move easier to know that you were moving to a job that you already had friends and your task were waiting for you to get there.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We came down here in July of '62. As I say, everybody else in my group was already here. [Laughter]

[Assistant] They saved you a place.

[User] They certainly did. In fact, one of the ladies that I worked with, she went over to Langley to do the same general type work I do. Her husband had worked with Sears. When he got a transfer down here, she came down. She came down about a number of months later. We were still at HPC. This was Mary [Shep] Burton. If you ever get a chance to interview her, she's an interesting person. She did stay mainly in the math aide-type work and then later on she went into office management and—I probably don't have the name of it right, but the office services for all of JSC [Johnson Space Center]. So she worked her way up in that type of management. But she always knew exactly what was going on. I really wish that you'd be able to interview her. She'd be good.

[Assistant] It must have made the move easier to know that you were moving to a job that you already had friends and your task were waiting for you to get there.

[User] Right. In fact, before I left Langley, well, I was saying to my husband, "I could do that kind of work. I'm doing the same type work those people are," you know. And he said, "Well, you really have to apply. You have to make out a Form 59 and apply." Good idea! [Laughter]

[Assistant] So simple but so good. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's right. You don't need to keep this, but they were like all men, they'd check their fly to make sure it was closed. I figured they were like any other men. [Laughter]

[Assistant] That's right.

[User] No wonder. They were faced with a woman coming down the stairs looking at them.

[Assistant] I'm sure there weren't too many women working at that time, so maybe they just didn't expect to meet anybody on the stairs.

[User] That's right. I would say it was about a ratio of maybe ten to one that way…

[Assistant] And did you feel that personally, that you were one of ten women in—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Let's see. I don't know as I—my husband brought that up. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Well, you'll have to bring that up with us now. We want to hear that story.

[User] I still don't tell people these days about it. They wanted to know what type of orbit we'd have to fly in order to come over the same spot every day, with the same lighting conditions. It was one that we told them…we could fly, because it was going to have to be one that compensated for the earth's motion around the sun. It turned out to be one that you had to have a—it was not a geosynchronous orbit, but it was a retrograde orbit, one that was more than 90 degrees in retrograde orbit, with exactly the right altitude so that you'd have the right period.\n\n …It was assigned to us, so we worked on it. So Ken [Kenneth A.] Young was my supervisor at the time, and we were saying, "What in the world will we call this thing?" So we decided that—we gave it a name and we called it the GOTSPOTEWILD orbit. It was going over the same spot on the earth with identical lighting daily. We decided, well, it looks German, so let's put a couple of umlauts on it. [Laughter] But we didn't get into trouble for it. I don't know why. It was just because we weren't going to use it. We knew we weren't going to use it.

[Assistant] But it goes right along with the rest of the acronyms. It definitely has its own meaning.

[User] Oh, we thought it was just great.

[Assistant] We do, too.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I still don't tell people these days about it. They wanted to know what type of orbit we'd have to fly in order to come over the same spot every day, with the same lighting conditions. It was one that we told them…we could fly, because it was going to have to be one that compensated for the earth's motion around the sun. It turned out to be one that you had to have a—it was not a geosynchronous orbit, but it was a retrograde orbit, one that was more than 90 degrees in retrograde orbit, with exactly the right altitude so that you'd have the right period.\n\n …It was assigned to us, so we worked on it. So Ken [Kenneth A.] Young was my supervisor at the time, and we were saying, "What in the world will we call this thing?" So we decided that—we gave it a name and we called it the GOTSPOTEWILD orbit. It was going over the same spot on the earth with identical lighting daily. We decided, well, it looks German, so let's put a couple of umlauts on it. [Laughter] But we didn't get into trouble for it. I don't know why. It was just because we weren't going to use it. We knew we weren't going to use it.

[Assistant] But it goes right along with the rest of the acronyms. It definitely has its own meaning.

[User] Oh, we thought it was just great.

[Assistant] We do, too.

[User] But we really didn't let that out as what it was. I don't remember ever really telling people what it was. I would give them the memo and show them, and if they were talking something about that type of orbit, well, I'd very seriously give them the name. "Johannes Götspötewild. You know, it's one of his orbits." [Laughter]

[Assistant] And no one questioned?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, we thought it was just great.

[Assistant] We do, too.

[User] But we really didn't let that out as what it was. I don't remember ever really telling people what it was. I would give them the memo and show them, and if they were talking something about that type of orbit, well, I'd very seriously give them the name. "Johannes Götspötewild. You know, it's one of his orbits." [Laughter]

[Assistant] And no one questioned?

[User] No.

[Assistant] What respect you had. [Laughter]


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But we really didn't let that out as what it was. I don't remember ever really telling people what it was. I would give them the memo and show them, and if they were talking something about that type of orbit, well, I'd very seriously give them the name. "Johannes Götspötewild. You know, it's one of his orbits." [Laughter]

[Assistant] And no one questioned?

[User] No.

[Assistant] What respect you had. [Laughter]

[User] They did. They were afraid to fool with me after a while.

[Assistant] That's a good respect to have, I think, especially in your environment. Things were going so fast every day that—


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] What respect you had. [Laughter]

[User] They did. They were afraid to fool with me after a while.

[Assistant] That's a good respect to have, I think, especially in your environment. Things were going so fast every day that—

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] —you moved from one task or project or doing many of them. Did you find, especially during the Mercury and Gemini days, did you find one to be more challenging than the other to accomplish in the time that was given you?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] They did. They were afraid to fool with me after a while.

[Assistant] That's a good respect to have, I think, especially in your environment. Things were going so fast every day that—

[User] That's right.

[Assistant] —you moved from one task or project or doing many of them. Did you find, especially during the Mercury and Gemini days, did you find one to be more challenging than the other to accomplish in the time that was given you?

[User] Not really. You just sort of felt you were in there grinding it out. The managers would try to give people work that they knew they were capable of doing, because they wanted it done. Then I would see it as the real work was being done many grade levels above me, you see, but I could observe what was going on. It was fascinating.

[Assistant] Did your work take you down to the Cape?