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

[User] Suffice it to say that we had our wedding party at the ambassador's house because he had fallen for her because she had been an actress in Oklahoma, Laurie, and she'd overcome the ambassador. So he gave us to the party at the ambassador. It also happened that we, in fact, weren't married because the American chargé at the time didn't know U.S. law. U.S. law states you have to be married by a country official, a country in which you reside. He didn't know that. So there were about twenty couples married at that time who turned out not to married.

[Assistant] But the embassy is an American, embassies are always considered the property of.

[User] We weren’t married at the embassy. We just had the party there. OK, so so it turned out that when we were back to train volunteers later on, we found out we weren't married at that time. My my living lady friend kept saying, what are we going to get married? So we're pretty busy now let's wait until we finally went to a police station and with my friend Dr. Intisar’s help, who was translator, we got married by the police department and of course I had to give a bride price. And so I offered twenty dollars.

[Assistant] She still married you for that little money?

[User] The policeman looked at me and said, twenty dollars. That's not very much. I said we know each other. Anyway.

[Assistant] Ok, so after that diversion so talk a little bit about the middle school where you taught or Baghlan. What is Baghlan like?


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

[User] We weren’t married at the embassy. We just had the party there. OK, so so it turned out that when we were back to train volunteers later on, we found out we weren't married at that time. My my living lady friend kept saying, what are we going to get married? So we're pretty busy now let's wait until we finally went to a police station and with my friend Dr. Intisar’s help, who was translator, we got married by the police department and of course I had to give a bride price. And so I offered twenty dollars.

[Assistant] She still married you for that little money?

[User] The policeman looked at me and said, twenty dollars. That's not very much. I said we know each other. Anyway.

[Assistant] Ok, so after that diversion so talk a little bit about the middle school where you taught or Baghlan. What is Baghlan like?

[User] Baghlan was small, was a large town, not a city on the way to Kunduz, which is the northernmost city in Afghanistan. And it was primarily agriculture at that time, and this was an agricultural school that I taught at and I had to, I watched the Afghan teachers, how they disciplined the kids and and they they were harsh and how they discipline the kids. And I said, well, you know, I don't know why you're doing that. And I said, well, the kids won't learn unless they're listening and they won't listen if they're talking and you don't.

[Assistant] But they used to switch.


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

[User] The Columbia University Education Division had been for some years producing textbooks in Afghanistan, in Kabul, and they were distributed throughout the country. They're pretty, pretty good textbooks. I've been taught to teach English and in certain ways in training, which were reasonably successful. And so we use those books and and the aural-oral method, since there were 40 to 50 kids in every classroom, the oral method or the repeat after me in ingroup form was the best method to use at that time. Certainly you couldn't use individual attention.

[Assistant] Did you get to know any of the kids?

[User] To to know any of them? Oh, well, since they were ten, eight, nine, 10, 11. They weren't they were kids.

[Assistant] They were kids. Was it a boarding school?

[User] No, that came from the surrounding area. There were also nurses, volunteer nurses in the town. And but it was there. We didn't have a big presence. We were we were kind of isolated up there. But that was fine. We were part of the town.

[Assistant] And did you become friends with any of the teachers there?


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

[User] To to know any of them? Oh, well, since they were ten, eight, nine, 10, 11. They weren't they were kids.

[Assistant] They were kids. Was it a boarding school?

[User] No, that came from the surrounding area. There were also nurses, volunteer nurses in the town. And but it was there. We didn't have a big presence. We were we were kind of isolated up there. But that was fine. We were part of the town.

[Assistant] And did you become friends with any of the teachers there?

[User] Yeah, we became friends with some of the teachers. The guy who worked with for me in Kabul came up with me to to bottom. And I was began to be a gardener there. And I wanted to it was hard to get fresh, fresh vegetables. So I took some manure that was being sold. I bought some manure and put it on my garden. And this fellow came back who was who is a joker. He was he was always making jokes. And he looked at what I done and he said, did you pay for that? I said, Sure. How much did you pay? Five hundred Afghani or something. And he said only foreigners would pay for shit in Afghanistan. That's the only thing we have a lot of.

[Assistant] So I was a married volunteer, and I've always questioned how different the experiences of a married volunteer and an unmarried volunteering since you were both. And you reflect a little bit about that.


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

[User] No, that came from the surrounding area. There were also nurses, volunteer nurses in the town. And but it was there. We didn't have a big presence. We were we were kind of isolated up there. But that was fine. We were part of the town.

[Assistant] And did you become friends with any of the teachers there?

[User] Yeah, we became friends with some of the teachers. The guy who worked with for me in Kabul came up with me to to bottom. And I was began to be a gardener there. And I wanted to it was hard to get fresh, fresh vegetables. So I took some manure that was being sold. I bought some manure and put it on my garden. And this fellow came back who was who is a joker. He was he was always making jokes. And he looked at what I done and he said, did you pay for that? I said, Sure. How much did you pay? Five hundred Afghani or something. And he said only foreigners would pay for shit in Afghanistan. That's the only thing we have a lot of.

[Assistant] So I was a married volunteer, and I've always questioned how different the experiences of a married volunteer and an unmarried volunteering since you were both. And you reflect a little bit about that.

[User] Well, very much different, because as an unmarried volunteer, Afghans would ask, where is your family? How come they let you come so far alone? It doesn't make any sense to us. Again, this individual group difference where you were individuals from a family weren't really thought to be ready for any kind of independent living, maybe ever, really, because they lived in large compounds and so on and they weren't expected to leave town and so on. So this idea of somebody coming this far alone was strange. But as a married unit, you had a bit more of legitimacy in the cultural context and people could situate you in their own cultural and cultural approaches.

[Assistant] So did you travel around Afghanistan?


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

[User] Well, very much different, because as an unmarried volunteer, Afghans would ask, where is your family? How come they let you come so far alone? It doesn't make any sense to us. Again, this individual group difference where you were individuals from a family weren't really thought to be ready for any kind of independent living, maybe ever, really, because they lived in large compounds and so on and they weren't expected to leave town and so on. So this idea of somebody coming this far alone was strange. But as a married unit, you had a bit more of legitimacy in the cultural context and people could situate you in their own cultural and cultural approaches.

[Assistant] So did you travel around Afghanistan?

[User] I didn't. I did most of my traveling around Afghanistan after my Peace Corps service was done. My then wife went to Iraq to teach English for six months. And for six months, I became a staff member, kind of a writer around the country. So I travel all over the place, through the. I remember once carrying a heavy, heavy load from the U.S. embassy up to a volunteer in the north. And we were in a half ton pickup or two ton pickup. And every day the roads were just atrocious, just full of the potholes that could swallow you. And. And then when it rained, of course, we could go anywhere. And we broke a spring in the truck every 50 miles. We did just break. And so we'd go to the next town and there would always be a blacksmith because there were blacksmiths in every town. So he just

[Assistant] To fix those.

[User] He’d fix this and we’d go another 50 miles and find another blacksmith and so on.

[Assistant] And you are teaching you were helping with teaching?


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

[User] I didn't. I did most of my traveling around Afghanistan after my Peace Corps service was done. My then wife went to Iraq to teach English for six months. And for six months, I became a staff member, kind of a writer around the country. So I travel all over the place, through the. I remember once carrying a heavy, heavy load from the U.S. embassy up to a volunteer in the north. And we were in a half ton pickup or two ton pickup. And every day the roads were just atrocious, just full of the potholes that could swallow you. And. And then when it rained, of course, we could go anywhere. And we broke a spring in the truck every 50 miles. We did just break. And so we'd go to the next town and there would always be a blacksmith because there were blacksmiths in every town. So he just

[Assistant] To fix those.

[User] He’d fix this and we’d go another 50 miles and find another blacksmith and so on.

[Assistant] And you are teaching you were helping with teaching?

[User] No, at that point I was I was carrying mail and money and packages to volunteers when we reached the volunteer in the far north with these five heavy cases of material from the embassy. We brought them into his home and somehow he managed to finagle a refrigerator. You had a refrigerator. And I said, what? What in the heck is in these boxes? He said, well, let's open them and find out. Well, it turns out he had a girlfriend in the embassy and she was sending him cartons of beer. I have to confess that I was rather happy. So even though it was technically illegal.

[Assistant] So you carted all that beer?


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

[User] Yeah, and then made the circle right around Afghanistan and went to Mazar-i-Sharif and then Maymana and Herat and then Kandahar and then down below Kandahar into the desert where I got stuck. We got it was a trackless desert. So you sort of had to point your way towards the direction you went. And we got into a dry riverbed and got stuck at noon in the desert, the dusty Hollywood, which was called the empty desert. And there was a a guy who was an evaluator from the University of Texas who was with me. And the driver of the truck was an Afghan. And he and I just lifted the back end of that truck because we knew we'd be dead in about what we didn't. Yeah, well, so lift it up. Well, I mean, the desert would have killed us. It was lifted up, got to where we're going. And so it was was a very interesting trip to see the whole country. The groups I trained later that we trained later at the Center for Research and Education were vaccinated smallpox vaccinations in Afghanistan as a film made out of that that time. Now they went everywhere because they vaccinated every human being in the country. They were remarkable people. Of all the Peace Corps volunteers I've never known or heard of, those were the ones who did the most. They just went everywhere by jeep, by horse, by camel, by mule, by whatever, by walking. And they were all women. They're all women. Because men couldn't vaccinate women, but women could vaccinate men and women.

[Assistant] So we could vaccinate men. That's interesting.

[User] Yeah, so anyway,

[Assistant] Ok, so you you did your wife work while you were still a volunteer?

[User] Yes, she was still.

[Assistant] She was still a volunteer.


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

[User] Yes, she was still.

[Assistant] She was still a volunteer.

[User] She was also teaching.

[Assistant] Also teaching.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you were assigned together.


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

[User] She was also teaching.

[Assistant] Also teaching.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you were assigned together.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] OK, so you you've worked a staff for a while in in Afghanistan. And then did you get home or what have you?


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

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] So you were assigned together.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] OK, so you you've worked a staff for a while in in Afghanistan. And then did you get home or what have you?

[User] That that all that set me on my lifetime work? If before I had a tendency towards that set and I came back work in the Peace Corps as a regional training officer, training volunteers for all over the Middle East and spent a lot of time traveling in Northern Africa and other places. Then when they closed the Peace Corps training office is when I joined the Center for Research and Education and began training volunteers through the Center for Research and Education trained thousands and thousands and some of the

[Assistant] So basically it was just outsourced. The training needs to be done by Peace Corps and then they used contractors?


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

[User] Right.

[Assistant] OK, so you you've worked a staff for a while in in Afghanistan. And then did you get home or what have you?

[User] That that all that set me on my lifetime work? If before I had a tendency towards that set and I came back work in the Peace Corps as a regional training officer, training volunteers for all over the Middle East and spent a lot of time traveling in Northern Africa and other places. Then when they closed the Peace Corps training office is when I joined the Center for Research and Education and began training volunteers through the Center for Research and Education trained thousands and thousands and some of the

[Assistant] So basically it was just outsourced. The training needs to be done by Peace Corps and then they used contractors?

[User] Well, I think they use, with the exception of Puerto Rico, I believe they use contractors everywhere from the beginning.

[Assistant] But you said you were in the training office?


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

[User] So well, the training office when it existed was to supervise the contract trainers.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] And so we did the training for some of the vaccinators who went to Afghanistan. And we put them in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado on reservations on Native American land. And they went around doing health work with those groups. And that was good training for them. There was it's hard to find rougher country than Afghanistan, but that comes close so that I did for a number of years, went back and got a degree in international education from University of Massachusetts, worked with Bob Steiner for a while with this language program. But Snyder was the Peace Corps director that I knew when I first met, when I went to Afghanistan as a volunteer. So we started a company and this company did training, language training. And then I decided it would make sense for me to resume my work in the cross-cultural field. And because I'd done all the early cultural work in the Peace Corps and I knew that American businesses needed the same, a similar kind of training for them to be able to effectively work and market in other countries. And somehow that worked. That company that I set up in 1986 when I tap in Princeton, New Jersey, exists now to this day after having worked with all kinds of the larger companies, I worked for JMJ for 25 years as a consultant and and that in a way that got me into developing an application in which you could look at your own cultural proclivities and compare them with cultural dimensions of people from all over the world and therefore get a head start on knowing what the likely differences and similarities were that you had with other people from other cultures. And that was that was a application that we just sold to a group in Singapore. And then I also started developing something called a global team process questionnaire, which came out of my experience working in the Peace Corps and other places and

[Assistant] Global team

[User] Processes questionnaire. And that

[Assistant] What does that mean?


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

[User] I think I was never I never taught in this country in a public school, but I taught hundreds, maybe thousands of American executives of the importance of understanding the culture of the, of the place they are going to and also international executives coming to the U.S., but there's the strange American story, how we would welcome them with open arms for three days and then forget them, expect them to sink or swim. It's a wonderful story. Yeah. And and, of course, I have to train a lot of Peace Corps volunteers. So I think there was a dispersion of that third goal into American corporate life. I mean, the old days, we were the ugly Americans, I guess more so than ever now, but within a different way. And and I think I think a lot of folks learned from that, from using the tools that we developed, like the application. I mean, most Americans didn't know they have the camera cultures with them. They have no idea what it is. And but when you show them these five or six cultural dimensions, they begin to say, oh, what do you mean, you could do it differently? Or, you know, we believe in a kind of equality, but in other places they may not or may have a different sense of what's equal, so on, so forth. So I think I hope I spread a few seeds, but the big angry ocean and

[Assistant] Well, everybody just does what they can.

[User] Everybody does what they can. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. Any other any other stories you'd like to tell that I didn't, that my questions didn't trigger.

[User] No, I think you I think we've

[Assistant] Covered the territory?


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

[User] Everybody does what they can. Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. Any other any other stories you'd like to tell that I didn't, that my questions didn't trigger.

[User] No, I think you I think we've

[Assistant] Covered the territory?

[User] We've bored future generations to death.

[Assistant] No, I don't think so. I thought it was very insightful. So thank you so much for the interview.


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

[User] We pretty much used a cookie cutter during the second competition, namely the same approach from the first. We used basically the same team, and we actually streamlined it a little bit. Fewer people, but we pretty much the same process. It worked really well. In fact we did it in record time. If you look at the Announcement of COTS 2, it was very similar to COTS 1. We were really pleased with how well the first round went. By keeping the same people, including Alan Marty, we were able to execute the second round of competition really quickly.\n\n In both COTS rounds, since we weren’t under the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, we could pick and choose what elements of a traditional procurement we wanted to have. We chose to go into a bunker, we chose to follow certain Source [Evaluation] Board-like procedures.

[Assistant] The other thing that we understand you worked on—NASA also had partnerships with other companies through unfunded Space Act Agreements. Can you talk a little bit about your involvement with those aspects of the COTS program?

[User] I negotiated all the unfunded Space Act Agreements that we had. There were five partners, most of which had competed for the funded round. They wanted to stay in the game using their own money, and have some technical interchange with us. They still had milestones, they still were developing a launch vehicle, but they didn’t have our money.\n\n They knew that coming out of the COTS program there’d be a separate competition under the FAR for CRS. They wanted to compete in that. In fact one did quite well in that competition it turned out. They didn’t win, but they came very close.

[Assistant] Was the process for selecting them similar to the funded agreements?

[User] To become an unfunded partner, a company must have been developing a capability to carry cargo to low-Earth orbit. We knew all the companies and all were players in the ecosystem.

[Assistant] Was there any limit to the number of companies NASA could work with under that unfunded agreement?


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

[User] I negotiated all the unfunded Space Act Agreements that we had. There were five partners, most of which had competed for the funded round. They wanted to stay in the game using their own money, and have some technical interchange with us. They still had milestones, they still were developing a launch vehicle, but they didn’t have our money.\n\n They knew that coming out of the COTS program there’d be a separate competition under the FAR for CRS. They wanted to compete in that. In fact one did quite well in that competition it turned out. They didn’t win, but they came very close.

[Assistant] Was the process for selecting them similar to the funded agreements?

[User] To become an unfunded partner, a company must have been developing a capability to carry cargo to low-Earth orbit. We knew all the companies and all were players in the ecosystem.

[Assistant] Was there any limit to the number of companies NASA could work with under that unfunded agreement?

[User] Our help was limited by the technical resources that we had. They were each assigned to a project executive, so somebody was responsible for interfacing with each unfunded partner. Somebody answered the phone if they called and arranged for help. But if the help they needed was too extensive, noting that the funded partners had priority, then we placed limits to how much we free help we could give them. But I don’t recall it ever getting out of hand.

[Assistant] Was the help primarily in the form of phone calls, asking technical questions? Or were there a lot of onsite visits to those companies, or their representatives coming here to help them develop their vehicles?


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

[User] To become an unfunded partner, a company must have been developing a capability to carry cargo to low-Earth orbit. We knew all the companies and all were players in the ecosystem.

[Assistant] Was there any limit to the number of companies NASA could work with under that unfunded agreement?

[User] Our help was limited by the technical resources that we had. They were each assigned to a project executive, so somebody was responsible for interfacing with each unfunded partner. Somebody answered the phone if they called and arranged for help. But if the help they needed was too extensive, noting that the funded partners had priority, then we placed limits to how much we free help we could give them. But I don’t recall it ever getting out of hand.

[Assistant] Was the help primarily in the form of phone calls, asking technical questions? Or were there a lot of onsite visits to those companies, or their representatives coming here to help them develop their vehicles?

[User] I negotiated these agreements and got them approved. Then they were turned over to Mike [Michael J. Horkachuck] and Bruce [A. Manners] to manage. You might want to ask them how they went, but they were generally much lower key than the funded ones.

[Assistant] Did you have any role in writing the Space Act Agreements? Were the agreements similar to the funded ones, or just a loose collaboration?


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

[User] Our help was limited by the technical resources that we had. They were each assigned to a project executive, so somebody was responsible for interfacing with each unfunded partner. Somebody answered the phone if they called and arranged for help. But if the help they needed was too extensive, noting that the funded partners had priority, then we placed limits to how much we free help we could give them. But I don’t recall it ever getting out of hand.

[Assistant] Was the help primarily in the form of phone calls, asking technical questions? Or were there a lot of onsite visits to those companies, or their representatives coming here to help them develop their vehicles?

[User] I negotiated these agreements and got them approved. Then they were turned over to Mike [Michael J. Horkachuck] and Bruce [A. Manners] to manage. You might want to ask them how they went, but they were generally much lower key than the funded ones.

[Assistant] Did you have any role in writing the Space Act Agreements? Were the agreements similar to the funded ones, or just a loose collaboration?

[User] They were patterned, if I recall, a lot on the funded ones. Since we weren’t putting money in, there were a lot of clauses that didn’t apply. We also used Space Act Agreement Maker, or SAAM, which is a tool that the Center has to get boilerplate language.

[Assistant] The other aspect of your work in the COTS program has been working with support contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton [Inc.] to help evaluate some of the companies’ milestones. Can you talk a little bit about working with them and what their role was in supporting COTS?


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

[User] That’s a good question. A year and a half had expired. Markets change, particularly financial markets. Technologies change. So we decided to put out a new Announcement. Some companies sent a similar proposal as they sent before, while others changed theirs. We also had some completely new participants. We believe that this was the most fair approach.

[Assistant] What were some of the questions that the companies asked you during these rounds of evaluations? Maybe were there some questions they asked that surprised you? Or were you pretty much prepared for whatever they were asking?

[User] We were doing the asking. I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t allow questions, but they were under the spotlight.

[Assistant] I’m just curious if they asked how much oversight you were going to have, in the sense of if you saw them getting overwhelmed or they were struggling to meet their milestones, there might have been suggestions or recommendations from NASA. Were they very receptive of the help that you were offering? Or did they want to be given the time to figure this out on their own because it’s their product and their company?

[User] We seldom initiated help; we generally waited for them to ask. During major design reviews, when you write a comment on a design, a formal comment to be dispositioned by a board, in essence that’s help too. It says, “We don’t think your design is going to work,” or, “It doesn’t meet a requirement.” That’s help.\n\n We had insight, not oversight. Even though we were small, each of the project executives had a deputy. They would go to many partner meetings and reviews and were generally welcome to sit in. We would get a lot of insight that way. If we saw a problem coming and we thought we had some advice, I doubt we would just hide it. Bruce and Mike could give you a better handle on that.

[Assistant] You were helping to put the concepts in place originally—do you feel, as you’ve come through these last six years, that you truly were partners in this effort? Or did you find that NASA was in somewhat of a traditional role of overseer and provider of funds?


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

[User] I recall that I, I had an interest in reading, in books quite a bit. As a kid I think I had wide ranging interests. I liked, I liked science fiction. I liked history. That was not the major thing at that point, but I liked stories about people. I remember reading about sort of fictional stories about children in China Town at that point, and that, that kind of was fascinating to me how people who grew up in a different culture. Different traditions, creating different mindsets, and how they thought differently, and so I was intrigued by that. But I was also, I also grew up, I think, through high school thinking that I was going to go into science. I was very interested in biology and zoology, and maybe underwater sea, oceanography, things like that.

[Assistant] What informed that, would you say?

[User] Science was intriguing, and it was kind of dynamic. Maybe I had some really good science teachers in junior high and high school that I recall who inspired us. I think biology, going through junior college, is where I thought I was going to go, to study biology. But I think I didn’t do that well in some of the practical exams, where they stick pins in creatures all around the room, and you have to identify the organs. I don’t think I did too well in that, so I kind of fell back to history. That was good.

[Assistant] Yeah. But those Cousteau films are fantastic, aren’t they?

[User] Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fascinated.

[Assistant] Of course, one can approach them historically. That’s the beauty of history, I think.


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

[User] Science was intriguing, and it was kind of dynamic. Maybe I had some really good science teachers in junior high and high school that I recall who inspired us. I think biology, going through junior college, is where I thought I was going to go, to study biology. But I think I didn’t do that well in some of the practical exams, where they stick pins in creatures all around the room, and you have to identify the organs. I don’t think I did too well in that, so I kind of fell back to history. That was good.

[Assistant] Yeah. But those Cousteau films are fantastic, aren’t they?

[User] Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fascinated.

[Assistant] Of course, one can approach them historically. That’s the beauty of history, I think.

[User] Yeah, it touches everything.

[Assistant] I guess you went to high school in San Francisco?


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

[User] Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fascinated.

[Assistant] Of course, one can approach them historically. That’s the beauty of history, I think.

[User] Yeah, it touches everything.

[Assistant] I guess you went to high school in San Francisco?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Which high school?


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

[User] Yeah, it touches everything.

[Assistant] I guess you went to high school in San Francisco?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Which high school?

[User] Lowell High School. I was fortunate to get into that school because it was a college prep school. You had to have a pretty good GPA to get in. I guess it was not highly selective, but it was a notch above the other high schools, in that the teachers had a better class of students to work with, better prepared, and they could teach to them, and give them more challenging stuff, and more activities. I think that school is still in existence, and has been around since the 1890s or early 1900s.

[Assistant] Wow. So you made the decision then to attend San Francisco State, and this must have been in the 1970s?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Which high school?

[User] Lowell High School. I was fortunate to get into that school because it was a college prep school. You had to have a pretty good GPA to get in. I guess it was not highly selective, but it was a notch above the other high schools, in that the teachers had a better class of students to work with, better prepared, and they could teach to them, and give them more challenging stuff, and more activities. I think that school is still in existence, and has been around since the 1890s or early 1900s.

[Assistant] Wow. So you made the decision then to attend San Francisco State, and this must have been in the 1970s?

[User] Around ‘68. I actually went to City College of San Francisco, which is a two year school, and then transferred to San Francisco State.

[Assistant] Could you talk about a little bit about the milieu, and your involvement with it in San Francisco in 1968?


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

[User] Lowell High School. I was fortunate to get into that school because it was a college prep school. You had to have a pretty good GPA to get in. I guess it was not highly selective, but it was a notch above the other high schools, in that the teachers had a better class of students to work with, better prepared, and they could teach to them, and give them more challenging stuff, and more activities. I think that school is still in existence, and has been around since the 1890s or early 1900s.

[Assistant] Wow. So you made the decision then to attend San Francisco State, and this must have been in the 1970s?

[User] Around ‘68. I actually went to City College of San Francisco, which is a two year school, and then transferred to San Francisco State.

[Assistant] Could you talk about a little bit about the milieu, and your involvement with it in San Francisco in 1968?

[User] [Laughter].

[Assistant] I mean, how can we not talk a little bit about that?


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

[User] Around ‘68. I actually went to City College of San Francisco, which is a two year school, and then transferred to San Francisco State.

[Assistant] Could you talk about a little bit about the milieu, and your involvement with it in San Francisco in 1968?

[User] [Laughter].

[Assistant] I mean, how can we not talk a little bit about that?

[User] Yeah, I think about that sometimes. I was pretty young, and the whole counterculture movement was coming along, and overwhelming everybody. I remember visiting the Haight-Ashbury, and just a lot of colorful people in costumes, and it was a real cultural revolution, and just the excitement and music and ideas. You couldn’t really go down the Haight very easily. There were thousands of tourists, and they had to reroute the bus lines along that street because the buses couldn’t navigate. There were just a lot of people gawking. So it was an exciting time. I didn’t get involved that heavily in the counterculture. I was surely influenced by it, in terms of thinking, and ideas, and the anti- war movement eventually, and the literature. I had friends whose parents were distraught because a couple of those friends sort of disappeared into that culture, and who knows what happened to them. But it was fascinating. But also the city, of course, has a real innovative and liberal spirit about it. People are very open and creative in every way, and I think I was always attracted to that. In San Francisco State, we had classes that were devoted to the literature of the counterculture movement. The new poetry, the new novels. So they tried to adapt to that, and dig into it.

[Assistant] Did you enter Junior College or San Francisco State knowing that you were going to do history specifically, or you talk about literature a lot, so did you have a wider focus in the humanities? What were your intellectual kind of attractions?


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

[User] When I started junior college, at City College of San Francisco, I was most attracted to biology. But I did really enjoy my literature classes. I had several interests. I can recall we had some good instructors at that junior college, who really excited us about literature, and about science. But also I can recall anthropology. That was a real eye-opener for me because the premise of anthropology is that you become immersed in another culture. We had a teacher named Mr. Manlove, of all things, Manlove symbolizing loving mankind. Anyway, he did his research in the Philippines with a primitive tribe. That was very fascinating to me. So, while I was loving science and such things as organic chemistry and biology, and advanced calculus—I mean that was fascinating to me—I wasn’t the best, but it fascinated me. I was also fascinated by the softer sciences, I guess you could say, like anthropology. And literature, just studying, we read case studies, studies of the Cheyenne Indians, who were people who went and lived with tribes and studied their culture, their language, their traditions. So, I think I was a real student in that I was fascinated by it all. That’s what college is about.

[Assistant] You transferred to San Francisco State, and what was your degree?

[User] Eventually at San Francisco State I had a B.A. in History.

[Assistant] Did you have a specific topic for your thesis?

[User] No, there was no thesis at the B.A. level, but it was American History pretty much.

[Assistant] Alright, so you land at…early 1970s, you graduated from college. What did you do after that?


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

[User] Eventually at San Francisco State I had a B.A. in History.

[Assistant] Did you have a specific topic for your thesis?

[User] No, there was no thesis at the B.A. level, but it was American History pretty much.

[Assistant] Alright, so you land at…early 1970s, you graduated from college. What did you do after that?

[User] Well, I actually stayed at San Francisco State and got a teaching credential. I wanted to teach.

[Assistant] This is a common thread throughout many of the people I’ve spoken to.


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

[User] No, there was no thesis at the B.A. level, but it was American History pretty much.

[Assistant] Alright, so you land at…early 1970s, you graduated from college. What did you do after that?

[User] Well, I actually stayed at San Francisco State and got a teaching credential. I wanted to teach.

[Assistant] This is a common thread throughout many of the people I’ve spoken to.

[User] [Laughter]. Yeah. Well, that’s what I thought I wanted to do, teach high school or junior high, something like that, so I got a California teaching credential. Didn’t have any luck at that point. I did land a job at a boys’ home about 60 miles north of San Francisco, and I actually lived in the home. I was the teacher. These kids were wards of the court and they lived there. We had about six counselors who helped with all the other duties. I had a little schoolhouse on the premises, which was pretty rough because some of these kids were emotionally disturbed, and they were all ages from 10 through 18, all in the same room. I had to devise all kinds of lesson plans for them. It was quite a scene, but you do the best you can. Some of these kids were eventually farmed out, or placed in Special Ed courses in public schools. But it was good experience. I did that for about two to three years. And then I worked in the private sector, in miscellaneous jobs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Sales jobs, things like that. Then, I decided I had to really follow what I wanted to do and I reapplied to the M.A. program at State in History.

[Assistant] OK, so that would have been the mid-‘70s by then?


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

[User] Well, I actually stayed at San Francisco State and got a teaching credential. I wanted to teach.

[Assistant] This is a common thread throughout many of the people I’ve spoken to.

[User] [Laughter]. Yeah. Well, that’s what I thought I wanted to do, teach high school or junior high, something like that, so I got a California teaching credential. Didn’t have any luck at that point. I did land a job at a boys’ home about 60 miles north of San Francisco, and I actually lived in the home. I was the teacher. These kids were wards of the court and they lived there. We had about six counselors who helped with all the other duties. I had a little schoolhouse on the premises, which was pretty rough because some of these kids were emotionally disturbed, and they were all ages from 10 through 18, all in the same room. I had to devise all kinds of lesson plans for them. It was quite a scene, but you do the best you can. Some of these kids were eventually farmed out, or placed in Special Ed courses in public schools. But it was good experience. I did that for about two to three years. And then I worked in the private sector, in miscellaneous jobs. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Sales jobs, things like that. Then, I decided I had to really follow what I wanted to do and I reapplied to the M.A. program at State in History.

[Assistant] OK, so that would have been the mid-‘70s by then?

[User] There was a gap in time where I was working at private businesses at that point, about 1984 or so when I applied for the M.A.

[Assistant] And what was different at that point, going back to the Master’s degree at State?


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

[User] I didn’t think about that.

[Assistant] No.

[User] I didn’t think about that. I just thought this was a very tumultuous time, and I was, I was very sympathetic but a little bit on the hesitant side, like, like some people, I guess, I was concerned about the, to what degree I would get involved. I was concerned about my safety. I didn’t want to get hurt. So I was involved but not in an extreme way. I remember, of course at that point, just before that it was People’s Park Movement thing at Berkley just across the Bay and Mario Savio was the leader of that and I remember reading a lot about him, and he, he in the subsequent years came to San Francisco State and as a student in science, I believe. So we were, we were reading about these things, we were following it, and we were, it was very divisive. But I think we were living in the present pretty much.

[Assistant] Okay, so, so, sorry, you’re back. It’s 1984 or so and you’re in the Master’s program. You wrote a, did you write a thesis for your Master’s?

[User] Uh, no [phonetic].

[Assistant] Or, or do you have a particular, again, sorry, you said it was social, cultural history.


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

[User] I didn’t think about that. I just thought this was a very tumultuous time, and I was, I was very sympathetic but a little bit on the hesitant side, like, like some people, I guess, I was concerned about the, to what degree I would get involved. I was concerned about my safety. I didn’t want to get hurt. So I was involved but not in an extreme way. I remember, of course at that point, just before that it was People’s Park Movement thing at Berkley just across the Bay and Mario Savio was the leader of that and I remember reading a lot about him, and he, he in the subsequent years came to San Francisco State and as a student in science, I believe. So we were, we were reading about these things, we were following it, and we were, it was very divisive. But I think we were living in the present pretty much.

[Assistant] Okay, so, so, sorry, you’re back. It’s 1984 or so and you’re in the Master’s program. You wrote a, did you write a thesis for your Master’s?

[User] Uh, no [phonetic].

[Assistant] Or, or do you have a particular, again, sorry, you said it was social, cultural history.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] How did you decide you wanted to go to Maryland, and specifically to study what?


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

[User] Uh, no [phonetic].

[Assistant] Or, or do you have a particular, again, sorry, you said it was social, cultural history.

[User] Right.

[Assistant] How did you decide you wanted to go to Maryland, and specifically to study what?

[User] I got the M.A. at State, and at that point, I think I decided that I wanted to teach college, and to have a better rate of success, you need to get a doctorate. So, it was a question at that point, my fellow students at the M.A. program said, “No, this is it, I can’t undertake the doctoral program because you’re going to face about seven years of study and probably poverty as well. I had a family, I already had my oldest son at that point, a wife and son, when I graduated with my M.A. in 1987. When talking with fellow grad students, I was one of the few, I think, who wanted to go on. I applied to UCLA and to Maryland. We came to Maryland for a couple reasons. My wife’s parents were here, and that could be some support. Also, Maryland had a very strong Colonial America, American, Early American program, and that was my major interest at that point. It was very good, very strong, with some good people, and that’s why we came here—

[Assistant] You said that there was an intermittent program where you’d work. Where did you work? This would’ve been around the time of the building of Archives II?


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

[User] Right.

[Assistant] How did you decide you wanted to go to Maryland, and specifically to study what?

[User] I got the M.A. at State, and at that point, I think I decided that I wanted to teach college, and to have a better rate of success, you need to get a doctorate. So, it was a question at that point, my fellow students at the M.A. program said, “No, this is it, I can’t undertake the doctoral program because you’re going to face about seven years of study and probably poverty as well. I had a family, I already had my oldest son at that point, a wife and son, when I graduated with my M.A. in 1987. When talking with fellow grad students, I was one of the few, I think, who wanted to go on. I applied to UCLA and to Maryland. We came to Maryland for a couple reasons. My wife’s parents were here, and that could be some support. Also, Maryland had a very strong Colonial America, American, Early American program, and that was my major interest at that point. It was very good, very strong, with some good people, and that’s why we came here—

[Assistant] You said that there was an intermittent program where you’d work. Where did you work? This would’ve been around the time of the building of Archives II?

[User] Earlier. Earlier. I don’t have the exact year in my mind, at the beginning. I think it was probably in the late 90s, mid-90s. I started at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. about 1991, as an intermittent, maybe my third or fourth year at Maryland.

[Assistant] What did you undertake as an intermittent?


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

[User] I think it came later. I can’t give you an exact date. I would say it was probably in the early 2000s. It started with only a few computers, and they might have the information on a CD, so you would check out that CD, go over to a computer and put it in. They didn’t have the information programmed in the computer or hardwired to an outside mainframe or something, that way at the beginning. You would have to check out the CD. But I think it gradually built up, and even today it’s not entirely computerized. The Microfilm Research Room has shrunken quite a bit. It’s in a different location, but they still have the films, and some of the things you’d do, you would use ancestry.com and fold3.com. Those were the two private firms that have digitized, scanned a lot of microfilm. You can use those resources free at the Archives if you come in. I think that’s true of any Archives or regional facility, whereas if you’re at home, you have to subscribe. It’s a great resource. I think computerization took a little longer to hit the Research Room. I should say another thing that really revolutionized genealogy, and a lot of people have talked about this, is the phenomena of the TV program Roots. Before that, not as many people were doing genealogy. Roots was such a big thing, especially for African-American genealogy, that we had thousands and thousands more people coming to the Archives nationwide to do their family research. It was a big turning point.

[Assistant] And this was when?

[User] I think it must have been in the late ‘70s. I can’t give you the exact date.

[Assistant] So throughout the 1990s, you were in the Microfilm Room?

[User] Until about 1995. Then, I applied for a permanent job with the General Unit, where I stayed from about 1995 to 2015.

[Assistant] You got your dissertation in 1995, is that right?


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

[User] I think it must have been in the late ‘70s. I can’t give you the exact date.

[Assistant] So throughout the 1990s, you were in the Microfilm Room?

[User] Until about 1995. Then, I applied for a permanent job with the General Unit, where I stayed from about 1995 to 2015.

[Assistant] You got your dissertation in 1995, is that right?

[User] No, end of 1994.

[Assistant] So you must’ve made the decision that you were not going to teach, you wanted to stay at the Archives, is that right?


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

[User] I’m trying to remember. An earlier one was NWCD. NW was Records Management, so we were, in a sense, part of the whole Records, Holding and Records Branch, which was an odd fit for an editorial and publishing unit. But we published a lot of their books and things. So it was NWCD, and I’ve forgotten some of the other ones, but the last was SCP, part of Communications, which was probably a better fit in some ways.

[Assistant] Did Communications exist before, for public outreach and to promote the Archives and its mission?

[User] Right. I think in the late 1990s, early 2000s, there was a unit called NPOL, N Policy, under the Archivist. They did things like the all-out Archives communication, they formulated the Archives Strategic Plan, things like that. So, in a reorganization, the administrators move the units around to however they feel the units can best serve their respective purpose, or their mission has changed, their concept of what the Archives should be doing, I assume.

[Assistant] Were you involved with…I guess you’d been working with Jim [Worsham] for a while. Was there anybody else that you worked with?

[User] Well Jim, I don’t know the exact year, I think he came along in 2004, something like that. Before that, Mary Ryan was the Managing Editor. It was Mary, myself, and another writer-editor named Maureen MacDonald, and a previous woman who had resigned, or she’d left about 1996, 1997. So it was Mary and a couple of us producing Prologue until about 2004. Then, the administration decided they wanted to upgrade Prologue, and they brought in Jim as the overall editor. Then, the magazine was redesigned somewhat, and the content was changed. I remember originally, before the change, it was a documented journal, heavily footnoted. They did away with that, so at the end of the articles you would have a note that in a very general sense talked about the sources that were used. A more popular format.

[Assistant] So it may have been a shift in targeted audience, from generally historians to the wider public?


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

[User] Arlene A. Brown.

[Assistant] Okay. State your affiliation to the Archives.

[User] I am a volunteer and have been for almost 25 years.

[Assistant] Tell me a little bit about what you did before you started volunteering at the Archives that kind of led to you ending up here.

[User] Well, I retired from the federal government in 1988 and my last position was the Deputy Director of Contract Pricing at Headquarters NASA. Before that, I worked as a civilian in Air Force procurement, both here in Washington and for about 15 years before that at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

[Assistant] Okay. So those positions don't seem at all related to Archives.


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

[User] I am a volunteer and have been for almost 25 years.

[Assistant] Tell me a little bit about what you did before you started volunteering at the Archives that kind of led to you ending up here.

[User] Well, I retired from the federal government in 1988 and my last position was the Deputy Director of Contract Pricing at Headquarters NASA. Before that, I worked as a civilian in Air Force procurement, both here in Washington and for about 15 years before that at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

[Assistant] Okay. So those positions don't seem at all related to Archives.

[User] No.

[Assistant] What made you decide to come here and start doing volunteer work here?


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

[User] Well, I retired from the federal government in 1988 and my last position was the Deputy Director of Contract Pricing at Headquarters NASA. Before that, I worked as a civilian in Air Force procurement, both here in Washington and for about 15 years before that at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

[Assistant] Okay. So those positions don't seem at all related to Archives.

[User] No.

[Assistant] What made you decide to come here and start doing volunteer work here?

[User] Well, to begin with, my major in college was political science with a minor in economics, so I was definitely interested in government and history even before this. When I retired, I was widowed and after a couple of years, I began to look for something to do. And as far as I remember, I think I contacted the Archives. I also contacted the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History and the reason I ended up volunteering here and not at the Smithsonian is their training class did not begin until January and ours here at the Archives began in October. So basically, because I liked the earlier, once I had made up my mind I wanted to do something, I chose the Archives because the training was faster and earlier. [LAUGHTER]

[Assistant] How long was the training?


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

[User] No.

[Assistant] What made you decide to come here and start doing volunteer work here?

[User] Well, to begin with, my major in college was political science with a minor in economics, so I was definitely interested in government and history even before this. When I retired, I was widowed and after a couple of years, I began to look for something to do. And as far as I remember, I think I contacted the Archives. I also contacted the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History and the reason I ended up volunteering here and not at the Smithsonian is their training class did not begin until January and ours here at the Archives began in October. So basically, because I liked the earlier, once I had made up my mind I wanted to do something, I chose the Archives because the training was faster and earlier. [LAUGHTER]

[Assistant] How long was the training?

[User] At that time, I don't know what it would be today, but we spent five weeks, five hours a day on I believe every Tuesday and Thursday. I'm trying to remember, but I believe that was ten hours a week for five weeks. Specifically I was training as a docent. Interestingly, the man I married I met in training, although it was docent training, he has never done that volunteer duty as far as I know, but he was in that training class and it was directed at those of us who were interested in becoming docents.

[Assistant] So what kind of things did you learn in the docent class to prepare you for being a docent?


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

[User] Yeah. Well, I think I learned a little bit of history that I might not have known before, but we concentrated on the organization and administration of the National Archives, as I recall, plus a couple of human interest stories, believe it or not, that would help us keep the tourists interested and happy. So I think those were the principal things, at least I remember. It's a long time ago. I know you're supposed to remember in old age those things that happened a long time ago and forget what happened yesterday, but I find it works just the opposite. So the volunteer coordinator at the time led those classes. Her name was Pat Eames, a wonderful woman, very, very knowledgeable and a great teacher. So that's what I remember.

[Assistant] So do you remember what kind of human interest stories they told you at the time?

[User] Oh yes. I remember, and I cannot think of his name, but there was a gentleman who was the first Black doctor in one of the military services, I hope it was the army. I think it was the army, and his adventures. He was a very interesting man and I believe it was mainly in Civil War times and I found it [CHUCKLES] I don't remember all the details, but I remember thinking it was very, very interesting and that would be one example of sort of having a story up your sleeve to share with tourists if you, as I did, eventually become a docent.

[Assistant] And did they give you this example because they had documents from this person?

[User] Yes. They did have documents. I remember another thing. They distributed, of course, copies, but the police reports from April of 1865 detailing from the police's viewpoint the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and I thought that was sort of exciting. I really was not that familiar with what was in the National Archives at the time, and so I found jeez, something like a police report from April of 1865, I found very interesting.

[Assistant] So as a docent, do you remember how things worked when you first started being a docent?


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

[User] Oh golly. Oh golly. Well, just today, I had two young men from Taiwan plus a couple and their grandchild from Alaska, believe it or not. And the mother, the woman from Alaska at one point said to me, "Oh, I'm so glad we had the tour. I'm learning so much more than if I had just walked it myself." And that makes you feel good. It makes me feel very good.

[Assistant] So the best part is being able to get the feedback from the people?

[User] Yes, yes, and giving, I think. As I say, I am now remarried, but as sure, when I was living alone, it was nice to come to the Archives and meet people every week, and that's what I'm basically doing. And since I'm so excited and enthused about American history, to sort of pass on, if I can, that enthusiasm. Maybe I, who knows, go overboard, but I enjoy it.

[Assistant] Okay. So as a docent, you deal pretty much always with the public.

[User] Yes. That's pretty much what I have done. Now, when you talk to my husband, as a staff aide, and I think that's more Gene, more my husband, quiet and he can go off in the stacks and be so happy just researching. But I have always, for 25 years, been a docent and I think my two basic joys are really meeting the people and at least hopefully inspiring them, if that's a good word, and getting their enthusiasm up about American history, so.

[Assistant] So you see that museum as an important part of the Archives because it informs people.


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

[User] Yes, yes, and giving, I think. As I say, I am now remarried, but as sure, when I was living alone, it was nice to come to the Archives and meet people every week, and that's what I'm basically doing. And since I'm so excited and enthused about American history, to sort of pass on, if I can, that enthusiasm. Maybe I, who knows, go overboard, but I enjoy it.

[Assistant] Okay. So as a docent, you deal pretty much always with the public.

[User] Yes. That's pretty much what I have done. Now, when you talk to my husband, as a staff aide, and I think that's more Gene, more my husband, quiet and he can go off in the stacks and be so happy just researching. But I have always, for 25 years, been a docent and I think my two basic joys are really meeting the people and at least hopefully inspiring them, if that's a good word, and getting their enthusiasm up about American history, so.

[Assistant] So you see that museum as an important part of the Archives because it informs people.

[User] Well, you know, I don't know. When we think about it there, really, when I started, I think we probably have tripled the number, if not more, the numbers of people who now visit as a tourist spot the National Archives because of the new exhibits and in fact, many people just come by themselves. I know you can spend hours just going. Usually, almost everything is well-discussed and you don't really need a guided tour to enjoy what's available now. And compared to what we had before, so much depended, I think, on the docent before to make it interesting and educational and fun. Now it's not so much the docent, although I'd like to think so [LAUGHS], that makes it an interesting experience.

[Assistant] Is there anything else that you'd like to say about your time here that we haven't gone over?


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

[User] Well, you know, I don't know. When we think about it there, really, when I started, I think we probably have tripled the number, if not more, the numbers of people who now visit as a tourist spot the National Archives because of the new exhibits and in fact, many people just come by themselves. I know you can spend hours just going. Usually, almost everything is well-discussed and you don't really need a guided tour to enjoy what's available now. And compared to what we had before, so much depended, I think, on the docent before to make it interesting and educational and fun. Now it's not so much the docent, although I'd like to think so [LAUGHS], that makes it an interesting experience.

[Assistant] Is there anything else that you'd like to say about your time here that we haven't gone over?

[User] No, I don't think so. I'm very happy, enjoyed it and I was just thinking today I met the new volunteer coordinator. I've been around so long, she is my third volunteer coordinator and I think the one before her was here at least a decade. And as I said, the woman originally here, Pat Eames, spelled, by the way, E-A-M-E-S, like the Eames chair. I think her husband was a journalist and she wrote some interesting books, but I really enjoyed it. I would miss it and I think, to be honest, I hope you're able to catch it from him. My husband is even more enthusiastic. He has had the fortune of researching some very interesting things and maybe he'll tell you about it, but I don't have anything else to say, but I obviously must enjoy it or I wouldn't be here all these years.

[Assistant] Yes. Well, thank you then.

[User] Well, thank you.

[Assistant] And that will be the end of the interview.


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

[User] Yes, that’s what we built it for. We built each one of those vehicles to fly 100 times. We knew it would probably fly four times that.

[Assistant] You were anticipating each Orbiter would fly between 400 and 500 times?

[User] No. We said we will design the machine to fly 100 times, then you need to recertify it. Take it apart. Now we also decided you need to take it apart after eight flights, look at certain level structure that you could see, etc. Then at the end of 100 flights we’d have to make some kind of new decision as to its capability and validity to fly, but I think probably because the way we did things in the system, it would probably fly 400 times. I can’t remember how I would convince you of that, but we did that in a probabilistic study.

[Assistant] That’s pretty amazing. I’ve heard some people from the Shuttle Program recently say that there was some discussion about recertifying the vehicles.

[User] That’s a requirement of the [Space Shuttle] Columbia [STS-107] Accident Review Board. That’s a rational thing to talk about, that’s what they probably should do. They would find that you can. That’s recertifying it. Now I think that would probably be the right thing to do.

[Assistant] Last time you had told us some wonderful anecdotes about the thermal protection system. I was curious if you could talk to us about some of the other systems or structure of the Orbiter. Things like the wing, the midfuselage, or other systems or subsystems that you had your hands in.


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

[User] No, they weren’t, thank God. That’s all we needed was another oar in the water. They were involved in the requirements, initially. We met with them all the way up to the Chief of Staff. We met with them when they were building the launch facilities out in California. If the Air Force was going to use it, they wanted to launch both from the Cape and Vandenberg [Air Force Base, California], so they were building what they called SLC6, Space Launch Complex 6, out in Vandenberg. Bob had people that were interfaced with the Air Force to build that facility. They built it, and then we never used it. A lot of money wasted there. They built a runway, launch tower, pad, rails to get it out there, and finished it, so we did have some meetings with them. That was with the Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

[Assistant] Let’s talk about the ALT flights. You had mentioned a few things already, but how did Johnson prepare for those flights? Obviously they were out at Edwards but there was some control in Mission Control.

[User] No, they didn’t have any control over here. They just monitored what was going on from a voice communication point of view and whatever telemetry we had coming down from it was also piped in here, but the operation was really run out of Edwards, just like the X-15 was. We used their control center, and their people were responsible for conducting the flight. Had a lot of arguments with Dave [David R.] Scott when he was out there. He wanted to be in charge. I said, “No, I’m in charge. You don’t like it, get out of here.”

[Assistant] What was his reaction to that?

[User] I think he took it to people above me, and they said, “Kraft is in charge.”

[Assistant] Were you out there for any of the flights?


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

[User] No, they didn’t have any control over here. They just monitored what was going on from a voice communication point of view and whatever telemetry we had coming down from it was also piped in here, but the operation was really run out of Edwards, just like the X-15 was. We used their control center, and their people were responsible for conducting the flight. Had a lot of arguments with Dave [David R.] Scott when he was out there. He wanted to be in charge. I said, “No, I’m in charge. You don’t like it, get out of here.”

[Assistant] What was his reaction to that?

[User] I think he took it to people above me, and they said, “Kraft is in charge.”

[Assistant] Were you out there for any of the flights?

[User] Yes, I was out there for all of them. I say that, maybe I wasn’t out there for the first one. I was out there with Fred Haise when Fred Haise made that landing, because I was standing there with Prince Charles [Prince of Wales].

[Assistant] Were you really?


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

[User] I think he took it to people above me, and they said, “Kraft is in charge.”

[Assistant] Were you out there for any of the flights?

[User] Yes, I was out there for all of them. I say that, maybe I wasn’t out there for the first one. I was out there with Fred Haise when Fred Haise made that landing, because I was standing there with Prince Charles [Prince of Wales].

[Assistant] Were you really?

[User] Yes. He had been here several days before. He’s a pilot, as you probably know. We put him in the trainer. He did what Fred Haise did, overcontrolled. He got a big bang out of that, because he could see it happening like I could. You didn’t have to tell me he was having trouble, because I could see that. I’ve been in that business a long time. I knew that he was having trouble and so did the Prince. He was laughing about it. “Oh, he’s having the same trouble that I had,” he said.

[Assistant] What did you learn from the tests?


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

[User] Yes, I was out there for all of them. I say that, maybe I wasn’t out there for the first one. I was out there with Fred Haise when Fred Haise made that landing, because I was standing there with Prince Charles [Prince of Wales].

[Assistant] Were you really?

[User] Yes. He had been here several days before. He’s a pilot, as you probably know. We put him in the trainer. He did what Fred Haise did, overcontrolled. He got a big bang out of that, because he could see it happening like I could. You didn’t have to tell me he was having trouble, because I could see that. I’ve been in that business a long time. I knew that he was having trouble and so did the Prince. He was laughing about it. “Oh, he’s having the same trouble that I had,” he said.

[Assistant] What did you learn from the tests?

[User] That you could do it. I don’t think there was any question we could do it, but it proved that we could do it. From a public affairs point of view, that was important. Prove that we could land it free fall, and that you could do it dead-stick, i.e., no power.

[Assistant] Did you have to make any modifications as a result of the tests?


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

[User] Yes. He had been here several days before. He’s a pilot, as you probably know. We put him in the trainer. He did what Fred Haise did, overcontrolled. He got a big bang out of that, because he could see it happening like I could. You didn’t have to tell me he was having trouble, because I could see that. I’ve been in that business a long time. I knew that he was having trouble and so did the Prince. He was laughing about it. “Oh, he’s having the same trouble that I had,” he said.

[Assistant] What did you learn from the tests?

[User] That you could do it. I don’t think there was any question we could do it, but it proved that we could do it. From a public affairs point of view, that was important. Prove that we could land it free fall, and that you could do it dead-stick, i.e., no power.

[Assistant] Did you have to make any modifications as a result of the tests?

[User] No. We’d already made those modifications I talked to you about relative to the control system. I don’t know why we did it that way in the first place. I’m sure there was some reason, but we had probably run it enough in the trainers to know that that was a pilot trap. We had modified it, so we knew they might have trouble with that. Shouldn’t have, but that’s one of those things, if you put it there you’re apt to get in trouble with it. You shouldn’t try to overcome those things with pilot skill.

[Assistant] Let’s talk about the first class of Shuttle astronauts that came in in ’78. What role did you play in selecting this new group of 35 astronauts?


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

[User] That’s what I thought the government wanted to do. That was my responsibility as a government agent to do that. It was. The government really told me—I don’t know who I would say that was, but I guess my bosses, who were Alan [M.] Lovelace and Bob Frosch, and their adviser, among others, was Jenkins. They told me, “Look, we want women, and we want some Black people here, and that’s what the government wants. We want to be an equal opportunity employer.” Frankly, I had no trouble whatsoever with that.

[Assistant] Were they happy with your list?

[User] Damn happy. I’m happy with the people we got, too. All three of the Black men were fine people in my mind. I thought they were well qualified. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think they were well qualified, but I thought all the women and the Black men that we picked were well qualified for the job. It turned out they were. After we got them here they were as good as anybody we’d ever had here.\n\n Now they—like the scientist astronauts we’d previously chosen—some of them couldn’t fly, so we taught them to fly. The category we put them in, they did not have to be pilots, but they had to fly. They had to travel in T-38s. They had to be trained in emergency procedures in flying in T-38s. Abbey was the head of Flight Crew, and he chose the crews that were going to fly, and I approved them. I turned some of them around.

[Assistant] Tell us about that decision to fly the first American woman Sally [K.] Ride, and then Guy [Guion S.] Bluford.

[User] That was my decision.

[Assistant] Would you tell us about that decision?


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

[User] That was my decision.

[Assistant] Would you tell us about that decision?

[User] Well, he, with a number of astronauts, chose the first woman to fly. They brought that to me, and I said no. Not because I had anything particularly against her, but from what I knew personally their reasons for choosing that particular one were, in my mind, not quite valid, because I thought that there were particularly two others that I had observed personally that were equally qualified. The one they brought me, I really didn’t know as much as I knew about those two.\n\n Then he and two other astronauts lobbied me after that, but they went away, and put these other two women into the process so to speak, and came back and gave me the same one over again. On the basis of what Mr. Abbey said and what the two astronauts that were being used—[Robert L.] Crippen and somebody else—they lobbied the heck out of me for Sally Ride, so I said, “Well you guys know more about her than I do, and you’ve evaluated the situation. I trust your judgment.” That’s how I chose her.

[Assistant] What did they like about Sally? What were they telling you?

[User] They thought her performance, particularly in the control of the arm [Remote Manipulator System], which she was going to be responsible for, was outstanding. They thought she was the best. For me to override that would have been difficult. As far as I was concerned, I’m sure she was qualified to be an astronaut.

[Assistant] In her interview she did mention to us after she was picked she had a meeting with you in your office, and she thought that your message was very reassuring to her. Can you tell us about that conversation?


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

[User] That’s the reason spaceflight costs so much, isn’t it?

[Assistant] Do you think including women and minorities in the astronaut corps changed JSC or the astronaut corps in any way?

[User] It’s bound to have, but from a performance point of view, I don’t think so, no. No, I’ve never seen anything that would say that anybody that flew wasn’t as good as anybody else, particularly in the types of jobs that they have to do. They’re well trained. The training people, they’re the best in the world. The evidence is what they can do when they get up there. Have you ever been out to the swimming pool [Sonny Carter Training Facility Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory] and watched them do the training?

[Assistant] Oh yes.

[User] It’s fantastic. They’re throwing that away, that’s craziness. The training that you have to go through to do the jobs, whether what sex you are or what color you are doesn’t matter. They’re all very very capable people, very competent, smart, and very well motivated.

[Assistant] What involvement did you have in the designation of the payload specialist categories?


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

[User] It’s bound to have, but from a performance point of view, I don’t think so, no. No, I’ve never seen anything that would say that anybody that flew wasn’t as good as anybody else, particularly in the types of jobs that they have to do. They’re well trained. The training people, they’re the best in the world. The evidence is what they can do when they get up there. Have you ever been out to the swimming pool [Sonny Carter Training Facility Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory] and watched them do the training?

[Assistant] Oh yes.

[User] It’s fantastic. They’re throwing that away, that’s craziness. The training that you have to go through to do the jobs, whether what sex you are or what color you are doesn’t matter. They’re all very very capable people, very competent, smart, and very well motivated.

[Assistant] What involvement did you have in the designation of the payload specialist categories?

[User] Very little. I really didn’t. At the level I was at when I was the Director I had nothing to do with that.

[Assistant] You were more technical and institutional.


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

[User] It’s fantastic. They’re throwing that away, that’s craziness. The training that you have to go through to do the jobs, whether what sex you are or what color you are doesn’t matter. They’re all very very capable people, very competent, smart, and very well motivated.

[Assistant] What involvement did you have in the designation of the payload specialist categories?

[User] Very little. I really didn’t. At the level I was at when I was the Director I had nothing to do with that.

[Assistant] You were more technical and institutional.

[User] Yes. Now when I became the Deputy Director—I have to be careful how I say this. I had little to do with the selection of the crews that were going to fly. That was all left to Deke [Donald K.] Slayton and Bob Gilruth. I frankly didn’t know how they did it.\n\n The first thing I did when I became the deputy was go into Dr. Gilruth’s office and say, “I don’t like it. I want that to be a more democratic process, and I want people who are going to interface with those crews to know before they are selected who they are, and have a voice in saying they don’t want them. I’d like to hear it.” He said do it, so after I became deputy director we had a board of people representing the various organizations that were going to interface with the crews. Deke had to present the names of the people that were going to fly.

[Assistant] Is that a similar process you carried through for the first four Shuttle flights?


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

[User] Very little. I really didn’t. At the level I was at when I was the Director I had nothing to do with that.

[Assistant] You were more technical and institutional.

[User] Yes. Now when I became the Deputy Director—I have to be careful how I say this. I had little to do with the selection of the crews that were going to fly. That was all left to Deke [Donald K.] Slayton and Bob Gilruth. I frankly didn’t know how they did it.\n\n The first thing I did when I became the deputy was go into Dr. Gilruth’s office and say, “I don’t like it. I want that to be a more democratic process, and I want people who are going to interface with those crews to know before they are selected who they are, and have a voice in saying they don’t want them. I’d like to hear it.” He said do it, so after I became deputy director we had a board of people representing the various organizations that were going to interface with the crews. Deke had to present the names of the people that were going to fly.

[Assistant] Is that a similar process you carried through for the first four Shuttle flights?

[User] Yes, indeed it was.

[Assistant] Interesting. Had not known that.


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

[User] Yes. Now when I became the Deputy Director—I have to be careful how I say this. I had little to do with the selection of the crews that were going to fly. That was all left to Deke [Donald K.] Slayton and Bob Gilruth. I frankly didn’t know how they did it.\n\n The first thing I did when I became the deputy was go into Dr. Gilruth’s office and say, “I don’t like it. I want that to be a more democratic process, and I want people who are going to interface with those crews to know before they are selected who they are, and have a voice in saying they don’t want them. I’d like to hear it.” He said do it, so after I became deputy director we had a board of people representing the various organizations that were going to interface with the crews. Deke had to present the names of the people that were going to fly.

[Assistant] Is that a similar process you carried through for the first four Shuttle flights?

[User] Yes, indeed it was.

[Assistant] Interesting. Had not known that.

[User] Now I don’t know that they still do that. Just done while I was there. I always said, and I said in my book, I thought it was wrong to have an astronaut in charge of the astronauts. Now some of them are okay, some of them would be okay. I guess some of them would have performed a good job, but I thought it was in error to have an astronaut. That’s the reason as soon as I had the opportunity I put George Abbey in charge of it. I got rid of Slayton; I put him in another job.

[Assistant] What effect did that have on your relationship with Deke?


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

[User] Yes, indeed it was.

[Assistant] Interesting. Had not known that.

[User] Now I don’t know that they still do that. Just done while I was there. I always said, and I said in my book, I thought it was wrong to have an astronaut in charge of the astronauts. Now some of them are okay, some of them would be okay. I guess some of them would have performed a good job, but I thought it was in error to have an astronaut. That’s the reason as soon as I had the opportunity I put George Abbey in charge of it. I got rid of Slayton; I put him in another job.

[Assistant] What effect did that have on your relationship with Deke?

[User] He was one of my closest friends. That didn’t mean I liked everything he did, particularly his relationship with the Public Affairs Department. God, we would make agreements between what the astronauts were going to do and how they were going to interface with the crew and what their time would be devoted to Public Affairs, and that would be the call of the head of the Public Affairs Department. Invariably he would ignore that. I’d have to call him on the phone and say, “Look, this is the agreement, I want it done.” Same is true with the doctors. Many times I had to call Deke and say, “Dr. Berry is the head doctor in this group, you’re not.”

[Assistant] It’s interesting that you say that. I’ve seen some of the memos between him and Dr. Berry. They’re humorous, especially in relation to Skylab.


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

[User] Now I don’t know that they still do that. Just done while I was there. I always said, and I said in my book, I thought it was wrong to have an astronaut in charge of the astronauts. Now some of them are okay, some of them would be okay. I guess some of them would have performed a good job, but I thought it was in error to have an astronaut. That’s the reason as soon as I had the opportunity I put George Abbey in charge of it. I got rid of Slayton; I put him in another job.

[Assistant] What effect did that have on your relationship with Deke?

[User] He was one of my closest friends. That didn’t mean I liked everything he did, particularly his relationship with the Public Affairs Department. God, we would make agreements between what the astronauts were going to do and how they were going to interface with the crew and what their time would be devoted to Public Affairs, and that would be the call of the head of the Public Affairs Department. Invariably he would ignore that. I’d have to call him on the phone and say, “Look, this is the agreement, I want it done.” Same is true with the doctors. Many times I had to call Deke and say, “Dr. Berry is the head doctor in this group, you’re not.”

[Assistant] It’s interesting that you say that. I’ve seen some of the memos between him and Dr. Berry. They’re humorous, especially in relation to Skylab.

[User] Yes. I also called Dr. Berry up and said, “Stop running the organization. I’m in charge, you’re not.” You don’t see any memos on that.

[Assistant] I don’t think I’ve come across any of those.


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

[User] He was one of my closest friends. That didn’t mean I liked everything he did, particularly his relationship with the Public Affairs Department. God, we would make agreements between what the astronauts were going to do and how they were going to interface with the crew and what their time would be devoted to Public Affairs, and that would be the call of the head of the Public Affairs Department. Invariably he would ignore that. I’d have to call him on the phone and say, “Look, this is the agreement, I want it done.” Same is true with the doctors. Many times I had to call Deke and say, “Dr. Berry is the head doctor in this group, you’re not.”

[Assistant] It’s interesting that you say that. I’ve seen some of the memos between him and Dr. Berry. They’re humorous, especially in relation to Skylab.

[User] Yes. I also called Dr. Berry up and said, “Stop running the organization. I’m in charge, you’re not.” You don’t see any memos on that.

[Assistant] I don’t think I’ve come across any of those.

[User] I did it. I used to give him a hard time because he was always wanting to be out in front of the press. I didn’t like that. We’re still the closest of friends, we still have dinner together every once in a while every two, three months.

[Assistant] That’s great. I just had a couple more questions for you. I was thinking about operations when I was putting together this list of topics. I was wondering how, if at all, Space Shuttle operations changed from the early human spaceflight programs. In your opinion has it changed from the plan, train, fly? Has it evolved?


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

[User] Yes. I also called Dr. Berry up and said, “Stop running the organization. I’m in charge, you’re not.” You don’t see any memos on that.

[Assistant] I don’t think I’ve come across any of those.

[User] I did it. I used to give him a hard time because he was always wanting to be out in front of the press. I didn’t like that. We’re still the closest of friends, we still have dinner together every once in a while every two, three months.

[Assistant] That’s great. I just had a couple more questions for you. I was thinking about operations when I was putting together this list of topics. I was wondering how, if at all, Space Shuttle operations changed from the early human spaceflight programs. In your opinion has it changed from the plan, train, fly? Has it evolved?

[User] Not while I was there, to my knowledge. I think the relationship between the flight director and the flight controllers, between the medical people and the astronauts, I think those relationships were very clearly known and spelled out about who was going to be in charge. I know since then that that’s not the case, because I’ve had a number of emails asking me how it was, what I thought, and what I thought they should do. There’s almost an insurrection on occasion between the flight crews and the flight directors. I don’t know how that happened.

[Assistant] The only other question I had for you is about our second Orbiter, which was Challenger. How closely were you following its assembly and its design?


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

[User] You mean the one that I wrote on the Shuttle? Be happy to do that.

[Assistant]
I think that could be interesting.

Be a good topic. By then you might have more to tell us about what life brings in the next round.

[User] Yes. I want wings on it. It’s hard to get. I don’t like water landings and parachutes. They’re too suspect. Gilruth said, “At least this plane is going to land in a dignified manner.” That’s what I like too, so I’m trying to influence that, but it may be too complicated. The biggest problem is, how do you abort off the pad? Tough to do.

[Assistant] You have plans to go to the last Shuttle launch?

[User] No, I might bring them bad luck. I’ve never seen a launch.

[Assistant]
That’s what I thought you had told me.

Really. You’ve never seen a launch?


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

[User] Yes. I want wings on it. It’s hard to get. I don’t like water landings and parachutes. They’re too suspect. Gilruth said, “At least this plane is going to land in a dignified manner.” That’s what I like too, so I’m trying to influence that, but it may be too complicated. The biggest problem is, how do you abort off the pad? Tough to do.

[Assistant] You have plans to go to the last Shuttle launch?

[User] No, I might bring them bad luck. I’ve never seen a launch.

[Assistant]
That’s what I thought you had told me.

Really. You’ve never seen a launch?

[User] Never seen a manned launch, never. Always from the [Mission] Control Center. I don’t want to go now.

[Assistant] Maybe you can just go back to the Control Center.


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

[User] No, I might bring them bad luck. I’ve never seen a launch.

[Assistant]
That’s what I thought you had told me.

Really. You’ve never seen a launch?

[User] Never seen a manned launch, never. Always from the [Mission] Control Center. I don’t want to go now.

[Assistant] Maybe you can just go back to the Control Center.

[User] Well, I’ll do that. I might do that, but I haven’t been back since they launched the Challenger. I was too sick. That was a terrible feeling.

[Assistant] We look forward to you coming back. See what it brings us next.


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

[User] Well, my dad was a postal clerk when I was very young, and I have one sister four years younger than I am. When we relocated out to St. John's County into a community called Palm Valley, it was in close proximity to a very affluent area called Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. And he had wanted to change careers and start a construction business, and he had a marvelous talent. They were educated as a contractor, but he just had an innate gift for knowing how to do an analysis of repair or figured out how to read blueprints. And he was in residential construction, repair and remodeling. He had a very, very good family business with my mother assisting and one of his sisters who had an accounting degree assisting with the books, and he was doing all the on- site work and bidding. And, you know, relations with the clients. Excellent business, always had more work than he could do and a great reputation and never advertised a lick, always word of mouth, and he really had a good business for his whole life.

[Assistant] So that changed the economic status of your family, then.

[User] Indeed, indeed. We went from, you know, fairly really not having much money to having enough money to pursue getting some horses for my sister, building some stables. We had a five acre piece of land as opposed to a lot in the city with a house on the lot. We had the five acre piece of land and room for stables and construction sheds and all kinds of storage areas that he was able to use in this construction business.

[Assistant] Ok, let's jump now to the University of Southern California. So you go there on a basketball scholarship?

[User] I actually I didn't. I had good grades out of high school. And the coaches were able to wrangle an academic scholarship out of the university called a trustee scholarship. So I went on a full academic scholarship with the understanding that I would play basketball.

[Assistant] And tell us about that.


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

[User] That was the year I, well, I think that was in '70. I went into VISTA, you know, shortly, I think in the fall of 1971.

[Assistant] And '71 was when you graduated from USC?

[User] Graduated in '71. I got married immediately after graduating and I got into VISTA, but my wife did not. But we, I did receive an offer from VISTA to work and go to training in Seattle, Washington, and I went out there and got my training. And my position with VISTA was working with a youth service bureau out of Lewiston, Idaho, which is right across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington. And the Youth Service Bureau was providing services to pre-delinquent youth. They were junior high age and more likely, some of them were likely to get into trouble, and there were some community based programs out of the old Community Action Program, was a package of community services. And the Youth Service Bureau was one of those.

[Assistant] And was your wife able to join you then at the VISTA?

[User] She, after I was accepted, we did a, you know, my first assignment and then she applied and was accepted to VISTA.

[Assistant] To VISTA. So then she was able to participate and live in the same place where you were at that point.


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

[User] Graduated in '71. I got married immediately after graduating and I got into VISTA, but my wife did not. But we, I did receive an offer from VISTA to work and go to training in Seattle, Washington, and I went out there and got my training. And my position with VISTA was working with a youth service bureau out of Lewiston, Idaho, which is right across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington. And the Youth Service Bureau was providing services to pre-delinquent youth. They were junior high age and more likely, some of them were likely to get into trouble, and there were some community based programs out of the old Community Action Program, was a package of community services. And the Youth Service Bureau was one of those.

[Assistant] And was your wife able to join you then at the VISTA?

[User] She, after I was accepted, we did a, you know, my first assignment and then she applied and was accepted to VISTA.

[Assistant] To VISTA. So then she was able to participate and live in the same place where you were at that point.

[User] Yes. Yes. Actually, it took a while for her to get accepted. But during her training, when she went to Seattle, she met another man and started an affair. And when I found when she came back and told me that she had fallen in love with this other man, well, we tried some counseling. But basically it was, that was the end of our marriage. It was only that one-year marriage, and we probably both got married too early and we didn't have any children. It was fairly low key on the separation and divorce. So we both, we each went our separate ways so.

[Assistant] And how long was your VISTA commitment?


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

[User] She, after I was accepted, we did a, you know, my first assignment and then she applied and was accepted to VISTA.

[Assistant] To VISTA. So then she was able to participate and live in the same place where you were at that point.

[User] Yes. Yes. Actually, it took a while for her to get accepted. But during her training, when she went to Seattle, she met another man and started an affair. And when I found when she came back and told me that she had fallen in love with this other man, well, we tried some counseling. But basically it was, that was the end of our marriage. It was only that one-year marriage, and we probably both got married too early and we didn't have any children. It was fairly low key on the separation and divorce. So we both, we each went our separate ways so.

[Assistant] And how long was your VISTA commitment?

[User] A year.

[Assistant] So you were there from then say fall of '71 to fall of '72?


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

[User] Yes. Yes. Actually, it took a while for her to get accepted. But during her training, when she went to Seattle, she met another man and started an affair. And when I found when she came back and told me that she had fallen in love with this other man, well, we tried some counseling. But basically it was, that was the end of our marriage. It was only that one-year marriage, and we probably both got married too early and we didn't have any children. It was fairly low key on the separation and divorce. So we both, we each went our separate ways so.

[Assistant] And how long was your VISTA commitment?

[User] A year.

[Assistant] So you were there from then say fall of '71 to fall of '72?

[User] I was. And during that time, I thought my volunteer service in VISTA had been rewarding. A couple of projects that were significant, got some funding for a program that Honda was running, that they donated a group of mini bikes to a community based program or a community leader would take these kids out on excursions on these mini bikes. And it just kind of a thing to work with the kids. So I got that funded and spun that off and then went to work on a drug education publication in the guise of a literary magazine that was funded through drug education money, a grant to a local mental health organization. So I was so satisfied with those achievements that I thought, I'd really like to go overseas, why don't I apply to the Peace Corps? So that's how I came up with the idea of joining the Peace Corps.

[Assistant] Ok, so you apply then, so that must have been, but that still must have taken you a while, right, to go through that application process?