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

[User] The news, when President Kennedy announced it. It seemed like a really revolutionary idea. And so why not?

[Assistant] Okay. And was there something specific that made you want to apply at that specific time in your life?

[User] Yeah, as I, as I said, the contrast between something that seemed very, potentially very useful for the United States and for other countries versus the Vietnam War, which seemed not useful at all.

[Assistant] So sort of a sharp contrast between war.

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, at that time, I was a believer in the idea of national service. And I still am, more strongly than ever. And the Peace Corps seemed to be an example of very, very positive national service.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And did you have a specific country or program in mind when you applied?


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

[User] Yeah, as I, as I said, the contrast between something that seemed very, potentially very useful for the United States and for other countries versus the Vietnam War, which seemed not useful at all.

[Assistant] So sort of a sharp contrast between war.

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, at that time, I was a believer in the idea of national service. And I still am, more strongly than ever. And the Peace Corps seemed to be an example of very, very positive national service.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And did you have a specific country or program in mind when you applied?

[User] I had no specific country or program. I did express in my application a preference for Latin America, because I thought that the language and cross-cultural skills that I learned in the Peace Corps for Latin America would be useful for me later on in life.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. So what was your reaction when you were accepted?


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

[User] Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, at that time, I was a believer in the idea of national service. And I still am, more strongly than ever. And the Peace Corps seemed to be an example of very, very positive national service.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And did you have a specific country or program in mind when you applied?

[User] I had no specific country or program. I did express in my application a preference for Latin America, because I thought that the language and cross-cultural skills that I learned in the Peace Corps for Latin America would be useful for me later on in life.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. So what was your reaction when you were accepted?

[User] I was really pleased. The first thing I did was I went to an atlas and I found out where Honduras was on the map. And then I found out, and I remember that one of the things in the packet that we were sent was the CIA country briefing for the year on Honduras. And I think, I think I started to study that almost as soon as I knew about the acceptance. Yeah.

[Assistant] And how did you prepare yourself and others for entering two years of service? So what did your friends and family say? Let's do that first.


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

[User] I was really pleased. The first thing I did was I went to an atlas and I found out where Honduras was on the map. And then I found out, and I remember that one of the things in the packet that we were sent was the CIA country briefing for the year on Honduras. And I think, I think I started to study that almost as soon as I knew about the acceptance. Yeah.

[Assistant] And how did you prepare yourself and others for entering two years of service? So what did your friends and family say? Let's do that first.

[User] I think, I think some of my friends thought it was a good decision. Some of them were a little bit amused.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] The, um, my family supported the decision. Um. The. I mean, I was an adult. I could, I could do what I wanted. I think that my friends and family thought it would be an interesting opportunity.

[Assistant] And aside from reading the atlas and the CIA report, how did you prepare yourself for entering the two years of service?


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

[User] I think, I think some of my friends thought it was a good decision. Some of them were a little bit amused.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] The, um, my family supported the decision. Um. The. I mean, I was an adult. I could, I could do what I wanted. I think that my friends and family thought it would be an interesting opportunity.

[Assistant] And aside from reading the atlas and the CIA report, how did you prepare yourself for entering the two years of service?

[User] It was, I didn't really have to do very much because my technical training was taken care of, A, B, because I had the engineering degree and a master's. And I did wonder a little bit about my Spanish competency and stuff, but there was really nothing I could do. And I assumed that the Peace Corps had a lot more experience than I did in teaching people what they needed. So I went in with a, with an open mind.

[Assistant] Did you have some Spanish beforehand?


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

[User] The, um, my family supported the decision. Um. The. I mean, I was an adult. I could, I could do what I wanted. I think that my friends and family thought it would be an interesting opportunity.

[Assistant] And aside from reading the atlas and the CIA report, how did you prepare yourself for entering the two years of service?

[User] It was, I didn't really have to do very much because my technical training was taken care of, A, B, because I had the engineering degree and a master's. And I did wonder a little bit about my Spanish competency and stuff, but there was really nothing I could do. And I assumed that the Peace Corps had a lot more experience than I did in teaching people what they needed. So I went in with a, with an open mind.

[Assistant] Did you have some Spanish beforehand?

[User] No, absolutely none. I knew buenos dias and that was it.

[Assistant] And you did say previously that you had stated that you wanted to go to Latin America?


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

[User] It was, I didn't really have to do very much because my technical training was taken care of, A, B, because I had the engineering degree and a master's. And I did wonder a little bit about my Spanish competency and stuff, but there was really nothing I could do. And I assumed that the Peace Corps had a lot more experience than I did in teaching people what they needed. So I went in with a, with an open mind.

[Assistant] Did you have some Spanish beforehand?

[User] No, absolutely none. I knew buenos dias and that was it.

[Assistant] And you did say previously that you had stated that you wanted to go to Latin America?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And because you thought it would be worthwhile experience for you in the future.


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

[User] No, absolutely none. I knew buenos dias and that was it.

[Assistant] And you did say previously that you had stated that you wanted to go to Latin America?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] And because you thought it would be worthwhile experience for you in the future.

[User] Relevant. Yes.

[Assistant] Yeah. And, um, and were you specifically invited to do a particular project?


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

[User] Relevant. Yes.

[Assistant] Yeah. And, um, and were you specifically invited to do a particular project?

[User] Yes. The, uh, SANAA, S-A-N-A-A, the Honduran government agency responsible for water supply and wastewater treatment systems throughout the country of Honduras, had asked for a civil engineer, which I was. My good fortune was that precisely at the time that I came, the agency SANAA had arrived and reached a tripartite agreement with Caritas, the Catholic relief agency in the United States, with the Honduran government and potentially with villages in Honduras to put in small gravity feed water systems to villages in Honduras that otherwise would not have been, um, would not have been able to be served by water systems and would not have had the political clout or the money to put in a traditional water system. And the way that the thing worked is Caritas donated PVC pipe.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User]
Okay. Well, the Honduran government put troops on the docks so that the pipe wouldn't disappear. They exempted it from import duties. SANAA, the government agency, agreed to do feasibility studies, site surveys, system design, and construction supervision of a system if it actually came to fruition. And the villages agreed to donate about $1,500 at that time, the equivalent of about $1,500, for some metal pipe that was used in specific parts of the system, some materials, bricks, reinforcing bars, concrete for water storage tank, and also to donate unskilled labor to dig and fill a trench, join sections of PVC pipe together and such like, basically put in some sweat equity.

And the, I have no idea what the genesis was for that tripartite agreement, but it was wonderful because it meant that instead of putting in a couple of hundred meters of water line or sewer line in front of a Honduran congressman's house, just in return for political support, they could actually go out and help improve the, um, the lives of small villages in many different ways.

[Assistant] That's a great explanation. So I want to talk a little bit about training and preparation. So where and how were you trained to prepare for your assignment?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. Okay. So what did you do during your vacation time?

[User] During my vacation time, I traveled into Latin America. Different countries. Yeah. Got with another, another volunteer, a couple of other volunteers and just went.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] Very broadening. South America on $5 a day. Tica Bus.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah. And then what were your relationships with in- country nationals?


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

[User] Oh, yes. It took about a year before I felt reasonably comfortable. And I think my language capability continued to improve after that first year.

[Assistant] So it was greatest in the first year.

[User] Yeah, yeah. The improvement.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] I think, I think that the, what the initial language training that we had and the, was gave us the basics. I, I didn't really feel comfortable until, um, until about a year in country.

[Assistant] Yeah. Did your role change over time with SANAA?


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

[User] Yeah, yeah. The improvement.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] I think, I think that the, what the initial language training that we had and the, was gave us the basics. I, I didn't really feel comfortable until, um, until about a year in country.

[Assistant] Yeah. Did your role change over time with SANAA?

[User] I think my role stayed about the same, although as, as my colleagues realized that I was, that I was more than sort of an interesting curiosity who might be useful to them, but they didn't have to pay for. As they realized that I could actually do the kind of work that they were doing as well, and that I, um, reacted sort of the same way that they'd seen other human beings react in comparable situations, that they felt more comfortable with me. And I got better at understanding some of the, some of the nuances of situations that they, that they found themselves in. How the bureaucracy worked that, that they were, within SANAA.

[Assistant] So you, so I'm hearing maybe you understood their lives more just as they understood your life more.


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

[User] I think, I think that the, what the initial language training that we had and the, was gave us the basics. I, I didn't really feel comfortable until, um, until about a year in country.

[Assistant] Yeah. Did your role change over time with SANAA?

[User] I think my role stayed about the same, although as, as my colleagues realized that I was, that I was more than sort of an interesting curiosity who might be useful to them, but they didn't have to pay for. As they realized that I could actually do the kind of work that they were doing as well, and that I, um, reacted sort of the same way that they'd seen other human beings react in comparable situations, that they felt more comfortable with me. And I got better at understanding some of the, some of the nuances of situations that they, that they found themselves in. How the bureaucracy worked that, that they were, within SANAA.

[Assistant] So you, so I'm hearing maybe you understood their lives more just as they understood your life more.

[User] Absolutely. I, I was introduced formally and informally to what their lives were like.

[Assistant] That's good. That's helpful. Um. What do you think were your main accomplishments?


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

[User] I think my role stayed about the same, although as, as my colleagues realized that I was, that I was more than sort of an interesting curiosity who might be useful to them, but they didn't have to pay for. As they realized that I could actually do the kind of work that they were doing as well, and that I, um, reacted sort of the same way that they'd seen other human beings react in comparable situations, that they felt more comfortable with me. And I got better at understanding some of the, some of the nuances of situations that they, that they found themselves in. How the bureaucracy worked that, that they were, within SANAA.

[Assistant] So you, so I'm hearing maybe you understood their lives more just as they understood your life more.

[User] Absolutely. I, I was introduced formally and informally to what their lives were like.

[Assistant] That's good. That's helpful. Um. What do you think were your main accomplishments?

[User] Wow. Um, being.

[Assistant] Just the top five.


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

[User] Absolutely. I, I was introduced formally and informally to what their lives were like.

[Assistant] That's good. That's helpful. Um. What do you think were your main accomplishments?

[User] Wow. Um, being.

[Assistant] Just the top five.

[User] Being part, I, well, the top one, I would say being part of an organizational effort to, by SANAA, to bring clean water and all of the concomitant benefits of clean water to people who otherwise would never have had a chance at it. So it was a, it was definitely a team effort. But I was able to help that team in some ways that maybe would have been more difficult for a young, a young Honduran engineer, okay? Because I came in with no preconceptions about how the water system ought to work in the village or how people would be able to contribute or whether the, whether the tripartite agreement would work. I didn't have any history with SANAA.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Any regrets?


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

[User] But it's absolutely, absolutely life changing.

[Assistant] So there are three goals of Peace Corps, in case you may not remember. A is to provide technical assistance where requested. B is to promote better understanding of Americans. And C is to promote better understanding of other people by Americans. So in terms of providing technical, so how do you assess your service, let's say, in terms of providing technical assistance when requested or where requested? I've heard a lot so.

[User] To summarize, I. SANAA, the Honduran government agency for water supply and wastewater treatment, asked for specific technical assistance from a civil engineer. And I think I gave that to them in spades.

[Assistant] Okay. And then to promote better understanding of America, Americans.

[User] Well, I, uh. I worked, laughed, played, wept, hugged Hondurans. What they saw was pretty much what they got. And they, uh, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't make any enemies. And I think I made some friends that I still, I still stay in touch with, folks at that time older than I. Some of whom are no longer with us. Folks my own age and villagers that are now probably, were my age and now are probably dead. Yes. We shared a lot.

[Assistant] Good. Good. And to promote better understanding of other people by Americans?


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

[User] To summarize, I. SANAA, the Honduran government agency for water supply and wastewater treatment, asked for specific technical assistance from a civil engineer. And I think I gave that to them in spades.

[Assistant] Okay. And then to promote better understanding of America, Americans.

[User] Well, I, uh. I worked, laughed, played, wept, hugged Hondurans. What they saw was pretty much what they got. And they, uh, to the best of my knowledge, I didn't make any enemies. And I think I made some friends that I still, I still stay in touch with, folks at that time older than I. Some of whom are no longer with us. Folks my own age and villagers that are now probably, were my age and now are probably dead. Yes. We shared a lot.

[Assistant] Good. Good. And to promote better understanding of other people by Americans?

[User] Well, I understood Hondurans much better by the time I had left. And I, whenever I've had the chance, I try to explain some of what I saw through my eyes to my compatriots who might not have the same point of view or might not understand actions by people, people living at the very edge of existence with a, with a safety factor only slightly greater than one. You know, why they make the decisions they do, rather than why don't they? Why don't they just get smart and do it the way we do here in the U.S.?

[Assistant] So through the years, have you continued to have any involvement with your country of service or contact with people from that country? Some of this you answered maybe. Any continuing and then any continuing Peace Corps involvement or other third goal activities such as explaining understanding of other people by Americans?


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

[User] Well, I understood Hondurans much better by the time I had left. And I, whenever I've had the chance, I try to explain some of what I saw through my eyes to my compatriots who might not have the same point of view or might not understand actions by people, people living at the very edge of existence with a, with a safety factor only slightly greater than one. You know, why they make the decisions they do, rather than why don't they? Why don't they just get smart and do it the way we do here in the U.S.?

[Assistant] So through the years, have you continued to have any involvement with your country of service or contact with people from that country? Some of this you answered maybe. Any continuing and then any continuing Peace Corps involvement or other third goal activities such as explaining understanding of other people by Americans?

[User] I've had no, no formal continued relationship with the Peace Corps. I worked professionally, short courses, workshops with, um, universities and other institutions in many different Latin American countries, including Honduras. I was last in Honduras in 2014 doing a, uh, a masonry course. One week for professors and then the second week for students, with the professors helping me teach the students so that each one teach one sort of thing. A good model. And I felt very, very pleased to borrow it from the Peace Corps. And, yes, I still stay in touch with people whose friendships I've made over the years.

[Assistant] And so you, I think you've said this before, but the effect of Peace Corps on your life?

[User] Defining, the defining experience of my life. If I were to look back at one thing that I would certainly do again, I certainly would recommend to anybody else, it would be, it would be Peace Corps. It was changed my life in many, many ways. Practically all of them positive.

[Assistant] Great. Is there anything else you'd like to add?


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

[User] I've had no, no formal continued relationship with the Peace Corps. I worked professionally, short courses, workshops with, um, universities and other institutions in many different Latin American countries, including Honduras. I was last in Honduras in 2014 doing a, uh, a masonry course. One week for professors and then the second week for students, with the professors helping me teach the students so that each one teach one sort of thing. A good model. And I felt very, very pleased to borrow it from the Peace Corps. And, yes, I still stay in touch with people whose friendships I've made over the years.

[Assistant] And so you, I think you've said this before, but the effect of Peace Corps on your life?

[User] Defining, the defining experience of my life. If I were to look back at one thing that I would certainly do again, I certainly would recommend to anybody else, it would be, it would be Peace Corps. It was changed my life in many, many ways. Practically all of them positive.

[Assistant] Great. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

[User] I would like to thank you for the opportunity to do this in addition or above and beyond just talking to a recorder, okay, this is probably the longest chance that the two of us have had to talk, okay, one on one.

[Assistant] So it's, so it's been mentioned, you know, you could just read this to yourself and talk into a tape recorder. And so we were kind of toying with like, okay, so what does it mean to have an interview as opposed to just read yourself the outline?


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

[User] No. Well, yes, you had to explain what it is you would do. Then there was a committee that would decide whether that was worth doing, and whether you were the person that should do it. Were you good enough? The people who were the chemical analysts were actually given some unknown samples to analyze, and if their analyses didn’t come up to snuff, they didn’t get samples. So they were tested. There were people who did experiments on samples rather than do analyses, and basically they got samples by reputation, by their proven publication record. Fundamentally, you would submit a proposal, you would propose what kinds of analyses or what kind of studies you wanted to do, and then an august committee would evaluate these proposals and decide which ones would be approved.

[Assistant] Were you ever on that committee?

[User] No. I was too much of a novice at that time. Years later, yes, but not in that first decade.

[Assistant] Of those fifty or sixty rocks that were collected for Apollo 12, how many of them were selected to be examined by PIs? Were all of them sent out, or were there a certain [number]?

[User] All of them were studied by some people. Everybody didn’t study every sample. One investigator might get five or six pieces, five or six samples, or eight or ten, but nobody would get fifty or sixty samples from that many different rocks. Some of these analyses take a lot of time and effort, so they can only do a half a dozen samples a year. Some of the kinds of studies were very tedious, long, drawn-out procedures, and when you’re doing complicated isotopic age dating, sometimes it can take a couple of months to do one sample.

[Assistant] Is there anything in particular you learned from the Apollo 12 mission that you didn’t already know from the Apollo 11 landing?


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

[User] No. I was too much of a novice at that time. Years later, yes, but not in that first decade.

[Assistant] Of those fifty or sixty rocks that were collected for Apollo 12, how many of them were selected to be examined by PIs? Were all of them sent out, or were there a certain [number]?

[User] All of them were studied by some people. Everybody didn’t study every sample. One investigator might get five or six pieces, five or six samples, or eight or ten, but nobody would get fifty or sixty samples from that many different rocks. Some of these analyses take a lot of time and effort, so they can only do a half a dozen samples a year. Some of the kinds of studies were very tedious, long, drawn-out procedures, and when you’re doing complicated isotopic age dating, sometimes it can take a couple of months to do one sample.

[Assistant] Is there anything in particular you learned from the Apollo 12 mission that you didn’t already know from the Apollo 11 landing?

[User] We learned new things on every mission, certainly. [Apollo] 11 and 12 were a long ways from each other. If you look at the Moon, we see one side of the Moon, and Apollo 11 was very much near the eastern limb or terminator, and 12 was as far west as we went. They were probably the two most farthest apart missions, and they collected very different kinds of rocks. We were looking at two areas of the Moon that were father apart than any of the other sites. There was basaltic rocks, igneous basaltic rocks, but very different ones. They weren’t similar at all. So yes, we did, certainly.

[Assistant] I was looking at your biosheet the other day, and it said you were part of the Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team. Is that part of that group that you were telling me about?


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

[User] All of them were studied by some people. Everybody didn’t study every sample. One investigator might get five or six pieces, five or six samples, or eight or ten, but nobody would get fifty or sixty samples from that many different rocks. Some of these analyses take a lot of time and effort, so they can only do a half a dozen samples a year. Some of the kinds of studies were very tedious, long, drawn-out procedures, and when you’re doing complicated isotopic age dating, sometimes it can take a couple of months to do one sample.

[Assistant] Is there anything in particular you learned from the Apollo 12 mission that you didn’t already know from the Apollo 11 landing?

[User] We learned new things on every mission, certainly. [Apollo] 11 and 12 were a long ways from each other. If you look at the Moon, we see one side of the Moon, and Apollo 11 was very much near the eastern limb or terminator, and 12 was as far west as we went. They were probably the two most farthest apart missions, and they collected very different kinds of rocks. We were looking at two areas of the Moon that were father apart than any of the other sites. There was basaltic rocks, igneous basaltic rocks, but very different ones. They weren’t similar at all. So yes, we did, certainly.

[Assistant] I was looking at your biosheet the other day, and it said you were part of the Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team. Is that part of that group that you were telling me about?

[User] Yes, yes. The test director was part of that group; I was part of that group. I was not on 11, because I told you I was in Alaska when that happened. But from 12 through 17, I was on that group. That was the Preliminary Examination Team—no, you said LAP?

[Assistant] The Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team.


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

[User] Yes, yes. The test director was part of that group; I was part of that group. I was not on 11, because I told you I was in Alaska when that happened. But from 12 through 17, I was on that group. That was the Preliminary Examination Team—no, you said LAP?

[Assistant] The Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team.

[User] Yes. I was on that. There’s another group actually, LSAPT, Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team, the people who actually decided which scientists would get which samples. I was on that committee a couple of decades later, but not at that time. That was a heavy-duty responsibility, and they worked a lot of long hours too. There was a lot of people clamoring for their samples, and this committee was the one that made all the allocations, so their work was cut out for them as well. But they had to have the results of the PET examination before they could do their work, so it was important to get that catalogue out because that catalogue went to this committee, too. Then they would look at the requests from the scientists who had been pre-approved before the mission, and then they would decide who’s going to get what samples, what samples are more appropriate for this person’s kind of study or that person’s kind of study. They made those decisions.

[Assistant] Wow, it sounds like a lot of work.

[User] It was a lot of work. I mean those guys dedicated a lot of hours and a lot of time to that.

[Assistant] Yes. How many geologists were working onsite at that point?


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

[User] Yes. I was on that. There’s another group actually, LSAPT, Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team, the people who actually decided which scientists would get which samples. I was on that committee a couple of decades later, but not at that time. That was a heavy-duty responsibility, and they worked a lot of long hours too. There was a lot of people clamoring for their samples, and this committee was the one that made all the allocations, so their work was cut out for them as well. But they had to have the results of the PET examination before they could do their work, so it was important to get that catalogue out because that catalogue went to this committee, too. Then they would look at the requests from the scientists who had been pre-approved before the mission, and then they would decide who’s going to get what samples, what samples are more appropriate for this person’s kind of study or that person’s kind of study. They made those decisions.

[Assistant] Wow, it sounds like a lot of work.

[User] It was a lot of work. I mean those guys dedicated a lot of hours and a lot of time to that.

[Assistant] Yes. How many geologists were working onsite at that point?

[User] During the missions there was probably twenty or thirty, which was quite a large number. The number at MSC was about eight or nine that were permanently attached. I could give you an exact count, but it’s in that ballpark. Another twenty or twenty-five came in from the outside, not all at once necessarily, but over the years, at least that many were there, either on the allocation committee or on the PET team. People on the PET team were usually people who are used to describing rocks. That’s what they did as part of their science. A lot of the people who do nothing but analyze things weren’t as good as describing rocks because they hadn’t really done that as part of their routine kind of work. You chose people for the PET who made a profession of actually doing that.

[Assistant] Now I was reading in the ASK Magazine again, you had talked a little bit about the Lunar Database, and I was curious if you wanted to expand on that a little bit.


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

[User] It was a lot of work. I mean those guys dedicated a lot of hours and a lot of time to that.

[Assistant] Yes. How many geologists were working onsite at that point?

[User] During the missions there was probably twenty or thirty, which was quite a large number. The number at MSC was about eight or nine that were permanently attached. I could give you an exact count, but it’s in that ballpark. Another twenty or twenty-five came in from the outside, not all at once necessarily, but over the years, at least that many were there, either on the allocation committee or on the PET team. People on the PET team were usually people who are used to describing rocks. That’s what they did as part of their science. A lot of the people who do nothing but analyze things weren’t as good as describing rocks because they hadn’t really done that as part of their routine kind of work. You chose people for the PET who made a profession of actually doing that.

[Assistant] Now I was reading in the ASK Magazine again, you had talked a little bit about the Lunar Database, and I was curious if you wanted to expand on that a little bit.

[User] Well, the Lunar Database is an interesting story in databases. In 1969, databases were pretty much a program that was part of a big computer and were very big and cumbersome. You would enter data into a database like that using punch cards. You’ve probably never seen one of those.

[Assistant] I think I’ve seen them over onsite, but they’re clearing them out.


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

[User] It’s got to add up. There’s no missing sample here. That’s a sophisticated system, actually, to put that in computer language and have it all done in this complex way. Yes, the database has evolved tremendously, but because it was so simple in the first place, we don’t have records prior to 1980 in our database as to who had what samples, for example. That was just beyond the scope of the early databases. We just kept fundamental information. If you took this sample and split it into two, what were the two numbers, and what were the weights of the two samples? That was sort of the extent of the database.

[Assistant] So there’s no history of who had the rocks?

[User] It’s all paper. We’ve got all handwritten, records, but it’s not in the computer. If somebody had the time to sit down for maybe two or three years and enter all this information, do nothing but entering information into the computer, we could get it in there. But that’s what it would take. You’d probably have to put a couple of clerks to work for three or four years to do that.

[Assistant] How long did it take you to migrate the system?

[User] It took five full-time programmers fourteen months and close to a million dollars to do that, when you consider the work that went ahead of it, too. You had to kind of write a requirements document for what you wanted it to do, then you actually had to do it. I don't know, it was about $800,000, I guess, $850,000, something like that. It was all labor. You get salaries for five people for fourteen months. That adds up.

[Assistant] Well, we are talking about Moon rocks, pretty expensive stuff. In comparison to—


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

[User] Yes. Sure. Yes, you could just walk in. There was no barrier. You didn’t have to shower in, shower out. The barrier disappeared. You were just allowed to go in, in your street clothes, and work.

[Assistant] No bunny suits?

[User] Right. I’m trying to remember, actually. There were actually, well...

[Assistant] I see pictures of people in Building 31.

[User] I know. I’m trying to think. I actually don’t remember. If you look at the pictures from Apollo 15, for example—

[Assistant] That’s right, that photo we had of you.


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

[User] Right. I’m trying to remember, actually. There were actually, well...

[Assistant] I see pictures of people in Building 31.

[User] I know. I’m trying to think. I actually don’t remember. If you look at the pictures from Apollo 15, for example—

[Assistant] That’s right, that photo we had of you.

[User] It seems to me like I was wearing a normal shirt. We had on these hats, but I think we were wearing street clothes, as I remember. I’ll look at the picture again. I’m not even sure. It’s funny how some things you just don’t remember.

[Assistant] Well, it was over forty years ago.


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

[User] I know. I’m trying to think. I actually don’t remember. If you look at the pictures from Apollo 15, for example—

[Assistant] That’s right, that photo we had of you.

[User] It seems to me like I was wearing a normal shirt. We had on these hats, but I think we were wearing street clothes, as I remember. I’ll look at the picture again. I’m not even sure. It’s funny how some things you just don’t remember.

[Assistant] Well, it was over forty years ago.

[User] But it would be easy to look at some of the pictures and see what people were wearing, and I’ve got movies of people, so I’ll have to go back and look at the movie again. That’s one of the things I didn’t pay attention to. I was watching samples and watching them work with the samples, and didn’t pay attention to what they were wearing.

[Assistant] Did you change the way you handled the samples at all?


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

[User] Yes, yes. We can have links to the curation website. The only one that’s not on there yet is Apollo 12, interestingly enough. But it’s in the final stages of being ready to put on. I’m so busy right now I can’t order the last few photographs we need from the photo lab to finish up the catalogue. I’ve got to get that done. It just seems like I’ve got a million things to do.

[Assistant] Well, we’re happy you came to see us this afternoon, then.

[User] This is one of the million things. (laughter)

[Assistant] Other than describing and working on those catalogues, what else were you doing during the Apollo missions and crew training, of course?

[User] Well, I was doing crew training at the same time all this other stuff was going on. I worked with the 15 mission, and I did a little bit with 16 and 17, but not too much. I actually was building the laboratory that I came to NASA to build for the science I was going to be doing for the next thirty years or forty years, so when I wasn’t doing all those things, I was working on this laboratory, basically my science.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about that laboratory? You mentioned last time that it was an experimental petrology laboratory?


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

[User] This is one of the million things. (laughter)

[Assistant] Other than describing and working on those catalogues, what else were you doing during the Apollo missions and crew training, of course?

[User] Well, I was doing crew training at the same time all this other stuff was going on. I worked with the 15 mission, and I did a little bit with 16 and 17, but not too much. I actually was building the laboratory that I came to NASA to build for the science I was going to be doing for the next thirty years or forty years, so when I wasn’t doing all those things, I was working on this laboratory, basically my science.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about that laboratory? You mentioned last time that it was an experimental petrology laboratory?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that something NASA wanted or you convinced them to build?


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

[User] Well, I was doing crew training at the same time all this other stuff was going on. I worked with the 15 mission, and I did a little bit with 16 and 17, but not too much. I actually was building the laboratory that I came to NASA to build for the science I was going to be doing for the next thirty years or forty years, so when I wasn’t doing all those things, I was working on this laboratory, basically my science.

[Assistant] Why don’t you tell us about that laboratory? You mentioned last time that it was an experimental petrology laboratory?

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] Was that something NASA wanted or you convinced them to build?

[User] Well, it’s interesting. I think I told you how I came to come to NASA. Did I tell you that story?

[Assistant] With Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt? Yes.


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

[User] That kind of lab is never finished, but by ‘72 or ’73. The whole time I was here, I was working on it some. When I was training astronauts, not very much. But they had given me a couple of technicians, so I could give the technicians tasks, and they would do them while I was off training astronauts, so that was a big help.

[Assistant] Where is the lab located? I couldn’t find any information about it when I was searching for it.

[User] Most of the time I had it, it was over in Building 261. But in ‘94, the lab was moved over to Building 31. The experimental lab, the one that I built, I’m not working in it anymore. I’ve sort of turned it over to a younger guy. It’s still there, and it’s in Building 31, in a windowless portion of the building, the high bay.

[Assistant] I think I know where that is.

[User] If you go to the Ares website and look at the experimental petrology lab, they describe it.

[Assistant] I was looking at the Roundups in the news [clips].


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

[User] Most of the time I had it, it was over in Building 261. But in ‘94, the lab was moved over to Building 31. The experimental lab, the one that I built, I’m not working in it anymore. I’ve sort of turned it over to a younger guy. It’s still there, and it’s in Building 31, in a windowless portion of the building, the high bay.

[Assistant] I think I know where that is.

[User] If you go to the Ares website and look at the experimental petrology lab, they describe it.

[Assistant] I was looking at the Roundups in the news [clips].

[User] The website for our directorate.

[Assistant] Can you give us some description of what the specifications and requirements were for the laboratory?


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

[User] One of the early experiments that I did—which was really kind of neat—there was a particular basaltic rock on the Moon that had large pyroxene crystals, the technical term is phenocryst. Basaltic rocks are usually fairly fine grain, but sometimes they’ll have large crystals in them. This particular basalt from the Moon did have these large pyroxene crystals in a finer grain matrix of feldspar, and more of the same mineral, and maybe a little olivine. We actually duplicated that texture so well that you could look at our thin slice of the experiment and thin slice of the real thing and it was kind of hard to tell them apart. That was really neat. We were proud of that one. We were able to actually duplicate that texture very precisely and talk about the conditions under which those lavas came to the surface and how they crystallized.

[Assistant] Did you have any other researchers working with you in the laboratory that you created?

[User] Yes. I had, over the years, probably at least twenty or thirty post-doctoral fellows coming from universities that would come and spend a couple years here working. I had probably eight or ten graduate students. NASA had these cooperative agreements where NASA would pay for the graduate student to do their studies at a university, but they would come to NASA and work with me to do part of their thesis. So I had several students like that, too, over the years.

[Assistant] You had quite a bit of responsibility.

[User] It was almost like being a professor in a university without having to teach courses, because you had post-docs and you had students. I never had more than a couple at a time, which was nice. I wasn’t like a professor swamped with eight or ten students or something. At one point I had maybe four, a couple of students and two or three post-docs at one time. That was a lot.

[Assistant] Were you on their dissertation committees or thesis committees?


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

[User] Yes. I had, over the years, probably at least twenty or thirty post-doctoral fellows coming from universities that would come and spend a couple years here working. I had probably eight or ten graduate students. NASA had these cooperative agreements where NASA would pay for the graduate student to do their studies at a university, but they would come to NASA and work with me to do part of their thesis. So I had several students like that, too, over the years.

[Assistant] You had quite a bit of responsibility.

[User] It was almost like being a professor in a university without having to teach courses, because you had post-docs and you had students. I never had more than a couple at a time, which was nice. I wasn’t like a professor swamped with eight or ten students or something. At one point I had maybe four, a couple of students and two or three post-docs at one time. That was a lot.

[Assistant] Were you on their dissertation committees or thesis committees?

[User] Yes. I would often go to the universities and be part of their dissertation committees.

[Assistant] Did NASA encourage this type of relationship?


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

[User] It was almost like being a professor in a university without having to teach courses, because you had post-docs and you had students. I never had more than a couple at a time, which was nice. I wasn’t like a professor swamped with eight or ten students or something. At one point I had maybe four, a couple of students and two or three post-docs at one time. That was a lot.

[Assistant] Were you on their dissertation committees or thesis committees?

[User] Yes. I would often go to the universities and be part of their dissertation committees.

[Assistant] Did NASA encourage this type of relationship?

[User] Yes, yes they did. Very much. It was a NASA program that they funded, and it was for the NASA scientists to participate. NASA realized that the kind of synergy you get in a university where you have professors working with bright young students, how good that synergy is. They wanted to duplicate some of that synergy within NASA itself. So they created the mechanism by which scientists working at NASA could fund and bring in post-docs and students. So yes, it was very much encouraged, and it was a very good program. Still do it. It’s still a program.

[Assistant] It makes sense. Were there any other federal agencies that you may have worked with in conjunction with your laboratory?


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

[User] Yes. I would often go to the universities and be part of their dissertation committees.

[Assistant] Did NASA encourage this type of relationship?

[User] Yes, yes they did. Very much. It was a NASA program that they funded, and it was for the NASA scientists to participate. NASA realized that the kind of synergy you get in a university where you have professors working with bright young students, how good that synergy is. They wanted to duplicate some of that synergy within NASA itself. So they created the mechanism by which scientists working at NASA could fund and bring in post-docs and students. So yes, it was very much encouraged, and it was a very good program. Still do it. It’s still a program.

[Assistant] It makes sense. Were there any other federal agencies that you may have worked with in conjunction with your laboratory?

[User] Well, you work with the USGS a lot, but most of the people that I worked with were in the university community, almost exclusively. Other than the U.S. Geological Survey, which was really more during the training and working with the surface experiments, when we’re actually on the Moon, I was almost exclusively with universities and university professors and students. I can’t think of any. Yes, I was just basically university.

[Assistant] I noticed also on your biosheet that you mentioned that you were involved with the Geological Society of America’s Penrose Conference in 1976? Do you want to share the details of that?


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

[User] Yes. I don’t like to say that about myself, but some people have said that, yes.

[Assistant] I think that’s pretty neat.

[User] It is kind of neat. Before I did that sort of thing, nobody had ever really thought about that. When I did my PhD at Stanford [University, Stanford, California], I tried to convince a professor to let me do that, and this was a professor who did experimental work and was very world-famous for it. But he just looked at me and he said, “No, no, no, that’s not going to work.” Well, it did work, ultimately, but he didn’t let me do it. I did something else under him, but I got a lot of experience at doing experiments, which was very helpful. He wasn’t convinced it would work, but it did.

[Assistant] Well, I can see how it’s been so beneficial for so many researchers over the years.

[User] Yes. It’s kind of started a whole new area of ways to study things. Then the theoreticians get in and they can use some of this experimental data to then kind of make that step, to take a theoretical model and extend it beyond the parameters that you can do easily in a laboratory. But they can use the parameters that you get quantitatively in the laboratory, and then they can theoretically extend it further. It plays into a lot of different kinds of ways to study things.

[Assistant] One of the other items that I’ve picked up from your biography was you served on the NASA study of basaltic volcanism?


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

[User] Sure.

[Assistant] Let's start off by telling us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you got interested in joining the Peace Corps.

[User] Well, I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I joined the Air Force when I was 17, right out of high school. And I was in the Air Force when John Kennedy and Richard Nixon had their debates. And I really, of course, everyone liked John Kennedy and he was my first president that I voted for, I just turned 21. So that'll tell you how old I am. That was in 1960. And after he was elected, he started the Peace Corps. And I had just gotten out of the Air Force. I got out in December of 1960. And so I thought, that's a great idea. However, I was on my way to having three kids, so I got started early with children. So I had to wait till they were grown until I could retire, which I did. I went, after I got out of the Air Force, I went to work for U.S. Steel, and then I went to work for Southwestern Bell, AT&T, and I got an early retirement in 1992. I went back and I did some traveling. My wife had died in the meantime, and so I was kind of footloose. And I remembered after I did some college courses, I decided it was time to fulfill my dream of being a Peace Corps volunteer.

[Assistant] So for all that time, over 30 years, 37 years, you.

[User] Still had it on my mind.

[Assistant] Still on your mind. That's amazing. So then how old were you when you applied in '97? You would have been?


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

[User] Still had it on my mind.

[Assistant] Still on your mind. That's amazing. So then how old were you when you applied in '97? You would have been?

[User] In '97, I was 57.

[Assistant] 57, OK.

[User] So it's easy for me to remember my years because they coincide with the year. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah, so I was 57, went to Nepal.

[Assistant] What did your family think about you joining up? What did your kids think?


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

[User] In '97, I was 57.

[Assistant] 57, OK.

[User] So it's easy for me to remember my years because they coincide with the year. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah, so I was 57, went to Nepal.

[Assistant] What did your family think about you joining up? What did your kids think?

[User] Well, I think the first one, Nepal, was kind of a shocker to them. But I'd been, since like I said, I retired in '92, so I'd been kind of floating around. So they were kind of used to me being on the move. They didn't, uh, they weren't really excited about me being gone for two years, which I wasn't, because my daughter, like I said, my wife had died and my daughter had some emotional problems, so I had to early term [terminate] in Nepal.

[Assistant] How long were you there before you?


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

[User] Well, I think the first one, Nepal, was kind of a shocker to them. But I'd been, since like I said, I retired in '92, so I'd been kind of floating around. So they were kind of used to me being on the move. They didn't, uh, they weren't really excited about me being gone for two years, which I wasn't, because my daughter, like I said, my wife had died and my daughter had some emotional problems, so I had to early term [terminate] in Nepal.

[Assistant] How long were you there before you?

[User] I was there about three months.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] She was, yeah, she was really in, um, after I left, she had no one to rely on.

[Assistant] So was that all training or did you actually start your job?


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

[User] I was there about three months.

[Assistant] Oh.

[User] She was, yeah, she was really in, um, after I left, she had no one to rely on.

[Assistant] So was that all training or did you actually start your job?

[User] It was all training. I finished up right before swearing in. I said, I got to go home.

[Assistant] Oh, that's too bad.


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

[User] She was, yeah, she was really in, um, after I left, she had no one to rely on.

[Assistant] So was that all training or did you actually start your job?

[User] It was all training. I finished up right before swearing in. I said, I got to go home.

[Assistant] Oh, that's too bad.

[User] And I was so reluctant. I wrote a nice letter about telling them it wasn't because of Peace Corps, it was because of family matters.

[Assistant] Yeah, well, that happens.


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

[User] It was all training. I finished up right before swearing in. I said, I got to go home.

[Assistant] Oh, that's too bad.

[User] And I was so reluctant. I wrote a nice letter about telling them it wasn't because of Peace Corps, it was because of family matters.

[Assistant] Yeah, well, that happens.

[User] Yeah. And it was one of those things and I've thought about this. Anyway, it was very distressful that I had to leave but.

[Assistant] Was that your first time overseas or your first time in Asia?


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

[User] Yeah. And it was one of those things and I've thought about this. Anyway, it was very distressful that I had to leave but.

[Assistant] Was that your first time overseas or your first time in Asia?

[User] No, I was in the Air Force.

[Assistant] Oh, right.

[User] Yeah. I had done some overseas stuff. I'd been through Europe and some other places, so.

[Assistant] But going to another country in Peace Corps was a little different than going in the Air Force, isn't it?


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

[User] Yeah. I had done some overseas stuff. I'd been through Europe and some other places, so.

[Assistant] But going to another country in Peace Corps was a little different than going in the Air Force, isn't it?

[User] Yeah, it was a little different. Yeah, actually, I really enjoyed the people in Nepal. They were great. The country is fantastic. It's beautiful. Very, very poor. But just incredible people. And I lived with a family, actually I lived with a Gurkha family in Nepal. And he had been, he retired from the British Army. The Gurkhas are the soldiers that guard the British embassies, as you probably know.

[Assistant] Right.

[User] And he was about I'd say five foot six and about five foot six wide. He was just solid, solid as a rock. In fact, he was the mayor of Pokhara and I was living with him. And it was my introduction to cricket, which I still don't understand totally, but it's a great. It was great. He had come to my room and he'd knock on the door and say, time for us to have a drink of Scotch and watch cricket. Great. So he was really a great guy. And then he had three little kids and his daughter would knock on my door every morning and say, your milk chai is ready. Super. Anyway, as I said, I was very reluctant to leave, but it was best for my daughter. And now she's, after a couple of years, she was doing fine so.

[Assistant] Oh good. That worked out. Any memorable experiences there in Nepal, before we move on to the next country?


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

[User] And he was about I'd say five foot six and about five foot six wide. He was just solid, solid as a rock. In fact, he was the mayor of Pokhara and I was living with him. And it was my introduction to cricket, which I still don't understand totally, but it's a great. It was great. He had come to my room and he'd knock on the door and say, time for us to have a drink of Scotch and watch cricket. Great. So he was really a great guy. And then he had three little kids and his daughter would knock on my door every morning and say, your milk chai is ready. Super. Anyway, as I said, I was very reluctant to leave, but it was best for my daughter. And now she's, after a couple of years, she was doing fine so.

[Assistant] Oh good. That worked out. Any memorable experiences there in Nepal, before we move on to the next country?

[User] Well, yeah, we did. We did hike the Annapurna Trail, not all the way, but we all know when we had time off in Pokhara, we would hike up the Annapurna Trail and see some really fantastic sights. I remember, we got there in February and it was overcast. You couldn't see the Himalayas. And then in, I guess it was March, the clouds cleared and it was, it's hard to describe.

[Assistant] Really.

[User] I mean, it's like, it's like trying to talk about the Grand Canyon. You've got to go see it and you've got to go see the Himalayas too. It's totally different from being able to, actually even different from looking at a photograph, seeing it in 3D with being right there. It's just fantastic. Anyway, that's about all I got for. The food was great. I got real vegetarian.

[Assistant] Yeah? Was it mostly vegetarian diet?


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

[User] Well, yeah, we did. We did hike the Annapurna Trail, not all the way, but we all know when we had time off in Pokhara, we would hike up the Annapurna Trail and see some really fantastic sights. I remember, we got there in February and it was overcast. You couldn't see the Himalayas. And then in, I guess it was March, the clouds cleared and it was, it's hard to describe.

[Assistant] Really.

[User] I mean, it's like, it's like trying to talk about the Grand Canyon. You've got to go see it and you've got to go see the Himalayas too. It's totally different from being able to, actually even different from looking at a photograph, seeing it in 3D with being right there. It's just fantastic. Anyway, that's about all I got for. The food was great. I got real vegetarian.

[Assistant] Yeah? Was it mostly vegetarian diet?

[User] Mostly.

[Assistant] And were you, what did your training consist of, was it Hindi language?


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

[User] Mostly.

[Assistant] And were you, what did your training consist of, was it Hindi language?

[User] Yeah. Yeah. And Sanskrit. Their alphabet is Sanskrit and the language is extremely difficult. But I did pick up some of it. I was going, I was doing pretty good.

[Assistant] Were you?

[User] Yeah, I was because I was only 57 at the time. So my brain was still working pretty good then.

[Assistant] And you lived with the family full time?


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

[User] Yeah. Yeah. And Sanskrit. Their alphabet is Sanskrit and the language is extremely difficult. But I did pick up some of it. I was going, I was doing pretty good.

[Assistant] Were you?

[User] Yeah, I was because I was only 57 at the time. So my brain was still working pretty good then.

[Assistant] And you lived with the family full time?

[User] Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] That's pretty, pretty good immersion there.


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

[User] Yeah, I was because I was only 57 at the time. So my brain was still working pretty good then.

[Assistant] And you lived with the family full time?

[User] Yeah. Yeah.

[Assistant] That's pretty, pretty good immersion there.

[User] Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Oh, we did go to a wedding which was, uh, the Gurkha took me there and his name was Sanjay of course. But yeah, we did go to a wedding. It was very interesting.

[Assistant] All right. So it must have been hard to leave. But then it was a few years later, about five years later, you decided?


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

[User] Yeah. Yeah, it was great. Oh, we did go to a wedding which was, uh, the Gurkha took me there and his name was Sanjay of course. But yeah, we did go to a wedding. It was very interesting.

[Assistant] All right. So it must have been hard to leave. But then it was a few years later, about five years later, you decided?

[User] Yeah. But after the Nepal experience, I did some consulting back with AT&T and did some traveling overseas, went to China and a few places like that. And then I decided it was time to do Peace Corps again and do it right. My daughter was fine, all my kids were doing good. So I actually applied for the Caribbean, Central or South America. And they said, how about Nepal? I mean, Ukraine. I said, sure, why not? So I always wanted to see if it was really an evil empire, as President Reagan had called it. So I went to, I went to Nepal.

[Assistant] Ukraine.

[User] Ukraine! I'll get it straight here.

[Assistant] That's understandable. So you were willing to go anywhere then?


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

[User] Yeah. But after the Nepal experience, I did some consulting back with AT&T and did some traveling overseas, went to China and a few places like that. And then I decided it was time to do Peace Corps again and do it right. My daughter was fine, all my kids were doing good. So I actually applied for the Caribbean, Central or South America. And they said, how about Nepal? I mean, Ukraine. I said, sure, why not? So I always wanted to see if it was really an evil empire, as President Reagan had called it. So I went to, I went to Nepal.

[Assistant] Ukraine.

[User] Ukraine! I'll get it straight here.

[Assistant] That's understandable. So you were willing to go anywhere then?

[User] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Anything. Yeah, I was on my own and ready to go.

[Assistant] Was the application process any more difficult a second time, or were they understanding about the first time?


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

[User] Ukraine! I'll get it straight here.

[Assistant] That's understandable. So you were willing to go anywhere then?

[User] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Anything. Yeah, I was on my own and ready to go.

[Assistant] Was the application process any more difficult a second time, or were they understanding about the first time?

[User] Yeah. About a year. Just like the first time. Yeah.

[Assistant] And then so you applied for Ukraine and then your kids must have thought you were going crazy again.


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

[User] Yeah. Yeah, sure. Anything. Yeah, I was on my own and ready to go.

[Assistant] Was the application process any more difficult a second time, or were they understanding about the first time?

[User] Yeah. About a year. Just like the first time. Yeah.

[Assistant] And then so you applied for Ukraine and then your kids must have thought you were going crazy again.

[User] This time they, I had been, like I said, I'd been doing some consulting work for AT&T and so I'd been traveling a lot. So they were, uh, they weren't as reluctant as the first time.

[Assistant] And now what about your peers or your friends and so forth? What did they think about you doing this?


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

[User] This time they, I had been, like I said, I'd been doing some consulting work for AT&T and so I'd been traveling a lot. So they were, uh, they weren't as reluctant as the first time.

[Assistant] And now what about your peers or your friends and so forth? What did they think about you doing this?

[User] Well, they were kind of, I'd like to do that, but they never would have. So you know, we'd get a lot of that.

[Assistant] So supportive?

[User] Yeah, yeah.

[Assistant] And then did you, was your training in country for Ukraine?


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

[User] Yeah. All my training has been in country. Yeah. Yeah. So we trained in a small town called Zhytomyr that's just outside of Kyiv.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And it was the Russian language. And I had gotten survival skills at Russian language so, which I've forgotten most of it. But I pick up, I can remember. I hear a word, I know what it means. I was in, I was a community developer in Ukraine, and I went to work for the DPOUU, which was the Disabled People's Organization Union of Ukraine. And, great organization. There's like, at that time, they told me, and I have no reason to doubt it, that there were almost 600,000 disabled people in Ukraine. A lot of them were disabled from the Afghan war.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] There were several people there that had lost limbs and were disabled. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, all the social services had evaporated.

[Assistant] So these would have been Ukrainian soldiers that had been?


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

[User]
And we got, we were talking one day, and my plane. I was an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force and I was a crew chief on our planes were the C-121 Super Connie Radar Picket planes. They had ray domes on the back, on the top and the bottom, and they flew up and down the West Coast from the DEW Line, which was the Distant Early Warning Line in Canada down to Mexico and further on down than that. And we flew up and down the West Coast and we were. His plane was the version of the, Russian version of the B-29, which was a bomber. And he said, we would fly up towards your territory and then we'd veer off. I said, yeah, I know, we got you on radar there, buddy. I said, I'm glad you never crossed that line. He said, yeah, I am too. Anyway, actually he was disabled too. He had lost a leg in Afghanistan.

And then I got, I was working with the people there and my counterpart, he helped us get a, uh. Everything they did was manual recordkeeping. They had file cabinets out the kazoo and everything. It took them so much time to find a record and then try to get people in some kind of support. So I managed to get them some computers for their, uh, with the help of my counterpart, mostly with his help. But we got some computers to automate and put a database in so that they could access their records faster. And then after that, we got another grant for. They had, I think it was ten or 12, I can't remember right now, but ten or 12 remote locations. The headquarters in Kyiv, and then they had remote locations around the country.

[Assistant] So you lived in Kyiv?

[User] I lived in, yeah, I was the last. Actually at the time I was the last volunteer that they let serve in Kyiv, the Russian Kyiv.

[Assistant] Oh OK.

[User] They didn't let anybody else serve in Kyiv and put them out in the country like this.

[Assistant] So you were in an urban area and everybody else is out.


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

[User] Got to see a lot of it, yeah. Got to see a lot of Ukraine. It was a beautiful country. The people were great.

[Assistant] Now tell me a little more about your job as community development, but you're working for this agency that takes care of handicapped people. So were you, what did you actually do for them?

[User] I was working with them to help.

[Assistant] Develop facilities or?

[User] To help develop their ability to serve their people, their disabled counterpart or compadres. Yeah, their comrades.

[Assistant] Help get them better organized?


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

[User] I was working with them to help.

[Assistant] Develop facilities or?

[User] To help develop their ability to serve their people, their disabled counterpart or compadres. Yeah, their comrades.

[Assistant] Help get them better organized?

[User] Yeah, helping them get organized and helping them make better, faster ways to get information and get their people served and things. So it was my second. My first site was with an ecological organization. But the guy that, the country director, Karl Beck, said, this guy is a con man, at the ecological society.

[Assistant] The head of the agency?


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

[User] To help develop their ability to serve their people, their disabled counterpart or compadres. Yeah, their comrades.

[Assistant] Help get them better organized?

[User] Yeah, helping them get organized and helping them make better, faster ways to get information and get their people served and things. So it was my second. My first site was with an ecological organization. But the guy that, the country director, Karl Beck, said, this guy is a con man, at the ecological society.

[Assistant] The head of the agency?

[User] And I said, I agree. I was there about two days and I said, I agree with you. He said, let's go. Let's go find you something else to do. So that's when they got me to the job with DPOUU. Karl Beck was a great guy.

[Assistant] And were you the only volunteer in that organization?


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

[User] Yeah, helping them get organized and helping them make better, faster ways to get information and get their people served and things. So it was my second. My first site was with an ecological organization. But the guy that, the country director, Karl Beck, said, this guy is a con man, at the ecological society.

[Assistant] The head of the agency?

[User] And I said, I agree. I was there about two days and I said, I agree with you. He said, let's go. Let's go find you something else to do. So that's when they got me to the job with DPOUU. Karl Beck was a great guy.

[Assistant] And were you the only volunteer in that organization?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] The only Peace Corps volunteer assigned to it.


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

[User] And I said, I agree. I was there about two days and I said, I agree with you. He said, let's go. Let's go find you something else to do. So that's when they got me to the job with DPOUU. Karl Beck was a great guy.

[Assistant] And were you the only volunteer in that organization?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] The only Peace Corps volunteer assigned to it.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So all of your coworkers were Ukrainian?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] The only Peace Corps volunteer assigned to it.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So all of your coworkers were Ukrainian?

[User] All my coworkers were Russians or Ukrainians, yeah.

[Assistant] And you probably had to speak Russian. Did you get pretty fluent?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So all of your coworkers were Ukrainian?

[User] All my coworkers were Russians or Ukrainians, yeah.

[Assistant] And you probably had to speak Russian. Did you get pretty fluent?

[User] Ah, it was survival. I knew how to order food and I knew how to get a taxi.

[Assistant] But they knew English?


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

[User] Ah, it was survival. I knew how to order food and I knew how to get a taxi.

[Assistant] But they knew English?

[User] Oh, yeah, they knew English. Yeah, they were good. Yuri was my counterpart, Yuri Oblaginin. And he told me he learned how to. I said, how did you learn? His English was excellent. Then how did you learn to speak so well? And he said, well, I listened to Beatles records.

[Assistant] Ah.

[User] And I would ask my friends who spoke English and said, what is that? What does that mean? And they'd tell me, or my friends would tell me what they. And he said, I don't think so. He said, I'd investigate it and found out that they were wrong. And so he learned how to speak by listening to the Beatles.

[Assistant] No kidding. Yeah.


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

[User] Oh, yeah, they knew English. Yeah, they were good. Yuri was my counterpart, Yuri Oblaginin. And he told me he learned how to. I said, how did you learn? His English was excellent. Then how did you learn to speak so well? And he said, well, I listened to Beatles records.

[Assistant] Ah.

[User] And I would ask my friends who spoke English and said, what is that? What does that mean? And they'd tell me, or my friends would tell me what they. And he said, I don't think so. He said, I'd investigate it and found out that they were wrong. And so he learned how to speak by listening to the Beatles.

[Assistant] No kidding. Yeah.

[User] Right. Yeah.

[Assistant] All right. So what were your, what was your living situation like? Now you were in the city, so did you have pretty good living quarters?


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

[User] Right. Yeah.

[Assistant] All right. So what were your, what was your living situation like? Now you were in the city, so did you have pretty good living quarters?

[User] Yeah, I had an apartment. I lived with, in Zhytomyr I lived with a family. And then in Kyiv, I had an apartment. I lived in one of the old Soviet Union apartments. I'll say this for Khrushchev, he built a lot of apartments.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And from what I heard, no one was homeless during the Soviet Union. Everybody had a job, so they say, whether they worked or not was another matter. But everybody had a job and everybody had a place to live and everybody had health care. So. Of course, after the fall, none of that existed anymore.

[Assistant] Did you make friends in the community there?


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

[User] Yeah, I had an apartment. I lived with, in Zhytomyr I lived with a family. And then in Kyiv, I had an apartment. I lived in one of the old Soviet Union apartments. I'll say this for Khrushchev, he built a lot of apartments.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And from what I heard, no one was homeless during the Soviet Union. Everybody had a job, so they say, whether they worked or not was another matter. But everybody had a job and everybody had a place to live and everybody had health care. So. Of course, after the fall, none of that existed anymore.

[Assistant] Did you make friends in the community there?

[User] Oh, yeah.

[Assistant] Was your social circle mainly the people at work or did you also make friends with your neighbors?


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

[User] And from what I heard, no one was homeless during the Soviet Union. Everybody had a job, so they say, whether they worked or not was another matter. But everybody had a job and everybody had a place to live and everybody had health care. So. Of course, after the fall, none of that existed anymore.

[Assistant] Did you make friends in the community there?

[User] Oh, yeah.

[Assistant] Was your social circle mainly the people at work or did you also make friends with your neighbors?

[User] No, I had, yeah, I had friends with my neighbors. I had a, I had met a schoolteacher. And she had three jobs. She was, actually she had been a, she had a PhD in, uh, not geography, but, uh. Oil. She was an oil developer. So she worked for a university and a high school and the Air Force Academy. So I would, she would get me to come out and talk about various things, about the Peace Corps and other things that I had knowledge of.

[Assistant] She'd have you come into her classroom?


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

[User] Oh, yeah.

[Assistant] Was your social circle mainly the people at work or did you also make friends with your neighbors?

[User] No, I had, yeah, I had friends with my neighbors. I had a, I had met a schoolteacher. And she had three jobs. She was, actually she had been a, she had a PhD in, uh, not geography, but, uh. Oil. She was an oil developer. So she worked for a university and a high school and the Air Force Academy. So I would, she would get me to come out and talk about various things, about the Peace Corps and other things that I had knowledge of.

[Assistant] She'd have you come into her classroom?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And what age were the students? Were they high school?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And what age were the students? Were they high school?

[User] In the high school, they were high school students. At the geophysical university, they were graduate students. And then at the Air Force Academy, they were college students. It was. Actually the one I remember, the one speech or session I made at the Air Force Academy was about the trash, the way there's an incinerator that will burn trash, that will burn trash for a whole city I think. They use it in Brazil. And it would leave, um, it would generate electricity. So I had done a little research on it when I was in the States. And so I discussed that with the people at the Air Force unit, at the Air Force universe. They were very interested in it. It was a recycling type of facility that it never went anywhere, but they were interested in it anyway. They like to hear about stuff like that.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So these were educated and worldly people. Do you think you had some, um, that you affected their perceptions of America?


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

[User] In the high school, they were high school students. At the geophysical university, they were graduate students. And then at the Air Force Academy, they were college students. It was. Actually the one I remember, the one speech or session I made at the Air Force Academy was about the trash, the way there's an incinerator that will burn trash, that will burn trash for a whole city I think. They use it in Brazil. And it would leave, um, it would generate electricity. So I had done a little research on it when I was in the States. And so I discussed that with the people at the Air Force unit, at the Air Force universe. They were very interested in it. It was a recycling type of facility that it never went anywhere, but they were interested in it anyway. They like to hear about stuff like that.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So these were educated and worldly people. Do you think you had some, um, that you affected their perceptions of America?

[User] Yeah, I think so. They, uh. I was always getting invited to places. And actually I met the exclusion zone director of Chernobyl, and just happened to bump into him with a friend of mine. And they were always glad to have me come over and they were just great with me and we all got along great. They were always wanting to know about the United States and how we thought and everything. So, yeah, I think. I think I left, I hope I left a good impression.

[Assistant] And did you have any kind of preconceived notions about the Ukrainian or Russian people before you went there that might have changed after getting to know them?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So these were educated and worldly people. Do you think you had some, um, that you affected their perceptions of America?

[User] Yeah, I think so. They, uh. I was always getting invited to places. And actually I met the exclusion zone director of Chernobyl, and just happened to bump into him with a friend of mine. And they were always glad to have me come over and they were just great with me and we all got along great. They were always wanting to know about the United States and how we thought and everything. So, yeah, I think. I think I left, I hope I left a good impression.

[Assistant] And did you have any kind of preconceived notions about the Ukrainian or Russian people before you went there that might have changed after getting to know them?

[User] Well, I realized that it didn't take me long to figure it out, that the people are people, you know, Well, the interesting thing was, on each floor we stayed. Our initial location was at the Zhytomyr Hotel, which was the class hotel. However, we didn't have hot water. This was in February, so it was pretty cold. And on each floor they had an operator station. I'd plug in. And I'm thinking, if they want to listen to what you're doing, all they have to do is plug into your room, you know? There's no privacy if you're worried about that. I was never worried about it.

[Assistant] So they could be spying on you.


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

[User] Yeah, I think so. They, uh. I was always getting invited to places. And actually I met the exclusion zone director of Chernobyl, and just happened to bump into him with a friend of mine. And they were always glad to have me come over and they were just great with me and we all got along great. They were always wanting to know about the United States and how we thought and everything. So, yeah, I think. I think I left, I hope I left a good impression.

[Assistant] And did you have any kind of preconceived notions about the Ukrainian or Russian people before you went there that might have changed after getting to know them?

[User] Well, I realized that it didn't take me long to figure it out, that the people are people, you know, Well, the interesting thing was, on each floor we stayed. Our initial location was at the Zhytomyr Hotel, which was the class hotel. However, we didn't have hot water. This was in February, so it was pretty cold. And on each floor they had an operator station. I'd plug in. And I'm thinking, if they want to listen to what you're doing, all they have to do is plug into your room, you know? There's no privacy if you're worried about that. I was never worried about it.

[Assistant] So they could be spying on you.

[User] I didn't care. But, yeah, I could see that they were spied on, you know? And, you know, we heard about, you know, they didn't have much freedom and everything. And I talked to some people. This one, the mother of the lady I stayed with in Zhytomyr had been one of the slaves during the Nazis. Now they made reparations. The Germans made reparations to the people that they had enslaved in Poland and in Ukraine. And she had gotten $10,000 from Germany. And she said, that's more than I ever got from the Soviet Union. She was a.

[Assistant] You stayed with her during training, when you were in training?


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

[User] Well, I realized that it didn't take me long to figure it out, that the people are people, you know, Well, the interesting thing was, on each floor we stayed. Our initial location was at the Zhytomyr Hotel, which was the class hotel. However, we didn't have hot water. This was in February, so it was pretty cold. And on each floor they had an operator station. I'd plug in. And I'm thinking, if they want to listen to what you're doing, all they have to do is plug into your room, you know? There's no privacy if you're worried about that. I was never worried about it.

[Assistant] So they could be spying on you.

[User] I didn't care. But, yeah, I could see that they were spied on, you know? And, you know, we heard about, you know, they didn't have much freedom and everything. And I talked to some people. This one, the mother of the lady I stayed with in Zhytomyr had been one of the slaves during the Nazis. Now they made reparations. The Germans made reparations to the people that they had enslaved in Poland and in Ukraine. And she had gotten $10,000 from Germany. And she said, that's more than I ever got from the Soviet Union. She was a.

[Assistant] You stayed with her during training, when you were in training?

[User] Yeah, during training.

[Assistant] In Ukraine again, did you live with a family during your entire training?


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

[User] I didn't care. But, yeah, I could see that they were spied on, you know? And, you know, we heard about, you know, they didn't have much freedom and everything. And I talked to some people. This one, the mother of the lady I stayed with in Zhytomyr had been one of the slaves during the Nazis. Now they made reparations. The Germans made reparations to the people that they had enslaved in Poland and in Ukraine. And she had gotten $10,000 from Germany. And she said, that's more than I ever got from the Soviet Union. She was a.

[Assistant] You stayed with her during training, when you were in training?

[User] Yeah, during training.

[Assistant] In Ukraine again, did you live with a family during your entire training?

[User] No, no. I had my own apartment in Kyiv. I had my own.

[Assistant] But I mean during training?


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

[User] Yeah, during training.

[Assistant] In Ukraine again, did you live with a family during your entire training?

[User] No, no. I had my own apartment in Kyiv. I had my own.

[Assistant] But I mean during training?

[User] During training, I stayed with, I stayed with my friend Tamara. She was there.

[Assistant] So was each volunteer assigned to a family to stay with?


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

[User] No, no. I had my own apartment in Kyiv. I had my own.

[Assistant] But I mean during training?

[User] During training, I stayed with, I stayed with my friend Tamara. She was there.

[Assistant] So was each volunteer assigned to a family to stay with?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So you didn't stay in a barracks or anything like that?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] So you didn't stay in a barracks or anything like that?

[User] No, no, no.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] Well, the only time we stayed together as a group was at the Zhytomyr Hotel. We were glad to get out of there. It was, well, actually, and I was lucky. The lady I'd stayed with, Tamara, she had a kalocka. A kalocka is a gas water heater. And when you turn the hot water on the water kicks on the kalocka and it heats the water up. So I got to take hot showers. So it was like, oh, what a change.

[Assistant] So OK, so it's like an instantaneous.


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

[User] No, no, no.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] Well, the only time we stayed together as a group was at the Zhytomyr Hotel. We were glad to get out of there. It was, well, actually, and I was lucky. The lady I'd stayed with, Tamara, she had a kalocka. A kalocka is a gas water heater. And when you turn the hot water on the water kicks on the kalocka and it heats the water up. So I got to take hot showers. So it was like, oh, what a change.

[Assistant] So OK, so it's like an instantaneous.

[User] It was like, ooh, I'm in heaven. So, you know, it didn't take you long to appreciate the amenities that you had in the States that you didn't, that you had lost. Yeah.

[Assistant] Now did you stay in Ukraine for the entire two years?


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

[User] Well, the only time we stayed together as a group was at the Zhytomyr Hotel. We were glad to get out of there. It was, well, actually, and I was lucky. The lady I'd stayed with, Tamara, she had a kalocka. A kalocka is a gas water heater. And when you turn the hot water on the water kicks on the kalocka and it heats the water up. So I got to take hot showers. So it was like, oh, what a change.

[Assistant] So OK, so it's like an instantaneous.

[User] It was like, ooh, I'm in heaven. So, you know, it didn't take you long to appreciate the amenities that you had in the States that you didn't, that you had lost. Yeah.

[Assistant] Now did you stay in Ukraine for the entire two years?

[User] Yep.

[Assistant] You completed your service there?


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

[User] It was like, ooh, I'm in heaven. So, you know, it didn't take you long to appreciate the amenities that you had in the States that you didn't, that you had lost. Yeah.

[Assistant] Now did you stay in Ukraine for the entire two years?

[User] Yep.

[Assistant] You completed your service there?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And did you extend?


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

[User] Yep.

[Assistant] You completed your service there?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And did you extend?

[User] No, no.

[Assistant] Did you think about extending?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] And did you extend?

[User] No, no.

[Assistant] Did you think about extending?

[User] My time was up. I said, it's time to go home. My kids were waiting for me.

[Assistant] But you must have made some lasting friendships.


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

[User] No, no.

[Assistant] Did you think about extending?

[User] My time was up. I said, it's time to go home. My kids were waiting for me.

[Assistant] But you must have made some lasting friendships.

[User] Oh, I still have friends over there. Yeah.

[Assistant] Still in touch with them?


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

[User] My time was up. I said, it's time to go home. My kids were waiting for me.

[Assistant] But you must have made some lasting friendships.

[User] Oh, I still have friends over there. Yeah.

[Assistant] Still in touch with them?

[User] Yeah, Yuri and Tamara and a couple of other people.

[Assistant] And have you been back to visit since?


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

[User] Oh, I still have friends over there. Yeah.

[Assistant] Still in touch with them?

[User] Yeah, Yuri and Tamara and a couple of other people.

[Assistant] And have you been back to visit since?

[User] Yeah, been back a couple of times.

[Assistant] So you completed two years there. And how did it feel when you left? Well, let me ask you. Do you feel like you had a lasting impact?


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

[User] Yeah, Yuri and Tamara and a couple of other people.

[Assistant] And have you been back to visit since?

[User] Yeah, been back a couple of times.

[Assistant] So you completed two years there. And how did it feel when you left? Well, let me ask you. Do you feel like you had a lasting impact?

[User] You know, I never. I never know. You know, they may have sold the computers the day I left, I don't know. But I think so. I think I feel good about it.

[Assistant] At least on a personal level. Maybe with your personal connections with people.


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

[User] Yeah, been back a couple of times.

[Assistant] So you completed two years there. And how did it feel when you left? Well, let me ask you. Do you feel like you had a lasting impact?

[User] You know, I never. I never know. You know, they may have sold the computers the day I left, I don't know. But I think so. I think I feel good about it.

[Assistant] At least on a personal level. Maybe with your personal connections with people.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Made a good impression then.


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

[User] You know, I never. I never know. You know, they may have sold the computers the day I left, I don't know. But I think so. I think I feel good about it.

[Assistant] At least on a personal level. Maybe with your personal connections with people.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Made a good impression then.

[User] Yeah. And right before I left, we set up. I got three grants for them and one of them was, the last one was for a computer training center to train some of the disabled people on how to do Microsoft Word and Office and things like that. So they were. I think they were, I think it had a little impact on them. You know, I don't think it changed the world over there, but it may have had a little impact on them, you know. At least I think I left them with a positive impression of Americans.

[Assistant] Yeah, that's the important thing. Was it a pretty big program over there? How many, do you know how many volunteers there were?


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

[User] There was, uh, I think at one time there was like 200 and, over 250 volunteers in country. So it's fairly good, fairly good sized. And USAID was over there. They were active. I got a couple of second, actually secondary jobs too. One of them was working with my friend at the university and the other one was I worked with USAID. I would go over and teach there. Most of their staff was Ukrainian.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] So they wanted to learn business English. And so I would go over on Thursdays and we'd have a couple of hour classes on business English.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] I retired, like I said, I retired from AT&T. I was a national account manager with AT&T, so I could explain things to them a little about business and how to write your letters and things like that. So they were very interested. Very smart people, very, very quick. And they all spoke English. Not perfect, but I left them with a Texas accent. So it was, that was my goal.

[Assistant] Good. OK. So then you finished there in, it would have been 2004 sometime?


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

[User] So they wanted to learn business English. And so I would go over on Thursdays and we'd have a couple of hour classes on business English.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] I retired, like I said, I retired from AT&T. I was a national account manager with AT&T, so I could explain things to them a little about business and how to write your letters and things like that. So they were very interested. Very smart people, very, very quick. And they all spoke English. Not perfect, but I left them with a Texas accent. So it was, that was my goal.

[Assistant] Good. OK. So then you finished there in, it would have been 2004 sometime?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. And you came back home.


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

[User] I retired, like I said, I retired from AT&T. I was a national account manager with AT&T, so I could explain things to them a little about business and how to write your letters and things like that. So they were very interested. Very smart people, very, very quick. And they all spoke English. Not perfect, but I left them with a Texas accent. So it was, that was my goal.

[Assistant] Good. OK. So then you finished there in, it would have been 2004 sometime?

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. And you came back home.

[User] Came back home, moved to Huntsville, Texas, built a house in a golfing community. Then got elected to city council there in 2000 and. Let's see, I was there two and a half years on city council, so I think it was 2008. Also, I started teaching ESL at the local library and did that for about. When I go back, I'll probably do it and still do it. So I've been doing it since I moved there.

[Assistant] So volunteering is kind of part of your makeup?


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. And you came back home.

[User] Came back home, moved to Huntsville, Texas, built a house in a golfing community. Then got elected to city council there in 2000 and. Let's see, I was there two and a half years on city council, so I think it was 2008. Also, I started teaching ESL at the local library and did that for about. When I go back, I'll probably do it and still do it. So I've been doing it since I moved there.

[Assistant] So volunteering is kind of part of your makeup?

[User] Yeah, you know, it gives me something to do. Keeps me off the street.

[Assistant] Do you think that the Peace Corps experience has something to do with that continued volunteering?


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

[User] Came back home, moved to Huntsville, Texas, built a house in a golfing community. Then got elected to city council there in 2000 and. Let's see, I was there two and a half years on city council, so I think it was 2008. Also, I started teaching ESL at the local library and did that for about. When I go back, I'll probably do it and still do it. So I've been doing it since I moved there.

[Assistant] So volunteering is kind of part of your makeup?

[User] Yeah, you know, it gives me something to do. Keeps me off the street.

[Assistant] Do you think that the Peace Corps experience has something to do with that continued volunteering?

[User] I'm sure it does. Yeah. You know, I taught. You know, I didn't just do my primary job in any of my countries. I always had a secondary position teaching English to somebody Yeah.

[Assistant] And what made you decide that you needed a third Peace Corps experience?


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

[User] Well, I was ready to go back right away. But my kids taught me out of it, so.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] So I finally in 2010, I got unelected to city council and so I said, well, since I'm not going to have to do this anymore, which was kind of it's like, you know, I liked doing it. But whenever I lost the election, I went over with some buddies, like actually four of us on city council when they, the clean sweep. They got rid of all four of us at-large candidates and we all went over to the Stardust Ballroom and had a beer. And I said, now I'm feeling pretty good. So I got rid of, you know, I hated to lose, but it was, you know, it was time to go. And that's when I decided to go to Honduras.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] I finally got to one of my, uh, I always put in for the Caribbean, Central America, or South America. And I got Honduras.

[Assistant] You finally got it.