Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 44: Matt Jones; From Kansas Prairie To Coast Guard Storms

Transcript

Episode 44: Matt Jones; From Kansas Prairie To Coast Guard Storms · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  Douglas: Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:03
  Douglas: Today, my guest is Matt Jones, pastor at the Port Chiloku Bible Church.
• 0:08
  Douglas: Hey, Doug.
• 0:08
  Douglas: Welcome, Matt.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:10
  Douglas: Good to be here.
• 0:11
  Douglas: Thanks for joining us.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm batching it this week and I'd heard that you have food during these.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so Oh, really?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you've been misinformed.
• 0:19
  Douglas: You've been misinformed.
• 0:20
  Douglas: Ah, nice.
• 0:21
  Douglas: I've got a bottle of water for you, though.
• 0:23
  Douglas: It's about to extend our bud to the Lauz right now.
• 0:25
  Douglas: All right.
• 0:25
  Douglas: We're about ready.
• 0:26
  Douglas: We're going to try and figure out a fundraising kick here so we can up our game a little, but right now you get a free bottle of water if you're going to be able to do that.
• 0:33
  Douglas: Okay.
• 0:33
  Douglas: I'll take that.
• 0:34
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 0:35
  Douglas: And it's nice sunny day in Haynes, and you get to spend it inside with Sam and I.
• 0:40
  Douglas: Right.
• 0:41
  Douglas: And my, you know, I wouldn't want that instead of spending it outside in the sun.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: It is good.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, my I've been recovering from knee surgery, and so it's actually uh I've mowed the last three days a little bit.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was barking at me.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is a perfect uh it's a good spot to sit for three hours.
• 0:59
  Douglas: For force for two hours.
• 1:00
  Douglas: Forced well, it could be three.
• 1:02
  Douglas: You never know.
• 1:04
  Douglas: Forced knee relaxation.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, occupational therapy.
• 1:08
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:09
  Douglas: Your therapist will be happy with you that you're taking time off of your knee.
• 1:13
  Douglas: Thank you.
• 1:14
  Douglas: We're here to help, Matt.
• 1:15
  Douglas: Thanks.
• 1:16
  Douglas: So where does the Matt Jones story start?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh probably in Kansas.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was born in Kansas, and so 50 uh 56 years ago it started uh right there.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Bob Dole Country for Bob Dole Country.
• 1:30
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:31
  Douglas: Well farm?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: Grew up um grew up in farm country.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was all my folks were educators, um, grew up in southwest Kansas, a little town called Ulysses, that is actually uh an hour and a half west of Dodge City.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you think Dodge City was west, um it was not as far west as Ulysses.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of close to the end of the map.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it is flat uh agriculture land and uh spent pretty much the first 18 years there.
• 2:01
  Douglas: So what growing up, what were some of your interests?
• 2:03
  Douglas: Were you a big outdoors guy?
• 2:05
  Douglas: Were you more of a bookworm?
• 2:06
  Douglas: What was what was the younger Matt like?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: We um my dad uh was a football coach, and so from early on, uh especially with both of them being education, um the year rotated around school.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And dad being a football coach, I got to be the ball boy.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that was an amazing experience.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that I still, you know, now uh I'll be at a sporting event and see coaches or or people with their kids involved and just tell them that is uh you're making memories there.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because I still remember that.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh the the high school boys were very good to me and uh I got to run out and get the tea uh after the kickoffs and uh all kinds of good stuff.
• 2:49
  Douglas: And so do you have fonder memories of being a ball boy than playing football?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um no, I was not quite as invested as the ball boy.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: I you know it was still kind of T ball days where sometimes I had to be reminded uh, hey, we're having a kickoff now, you need to go get the tea.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: You need to go get the tea.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: I would start I would start uh digging in the grass or whatever, you know.
• 3:11
  Douglas: Well, yeah, it's what young boys do at that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and so so that was very good, and I would say that stayed with us.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um dad helped coach uh T ball.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um mom was always involved with uh school, and um we were very involved in church.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I think that that uh in life that was probably the between church and and sports was the big um focus and have continued to be an important part of life even now, and so it was good.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was very rural.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so um it was always I had my folks give me the choice.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I could uh had to do two sports a year or two activities, whatever those be.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and then during the summer, uh if you weren't uh lifting or uh involved in baseball or something like that, uh at the time uh you were working.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so from uh had a a paper boy job in fourth grade, uh that transition to uh uh helping a farmer in sixth grade and uh uh full time in the summer uh driving tractor and and wheat truck and so what were your your two sports for baseball and football then?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: My sports were no, they were uh football and wrestling.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Football and wrestling.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And and I did track also.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I participated in track.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was not a great uh uh it was more just uh the being out to to see people and hang out with the guys.
• 4:44
  Douglas: What size of school was it?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we caught it was about four hundred people in the whole school.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: The town the town was about thirty five hundred to four thousand.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was three and a half hours to the nearest airport.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was an hour to Walmart.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was it was rural, but you know, not any more rural than than Haynes is by any means.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: Any siblings?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Had one sister, Tammy, and she was six years older than me.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um promptly brought me home from the hospital and she pushed me down the uh driveway into the street in the in the carous carousel or the whatever you call that thing, the buggy, and uh lived through that.
• 5:26
  Douglas: And so as soon as she got home, she was wanting to send you on your way, huh?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: She was testing it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um and so we've you know, but no, she's good.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: My folks actually live, um, my folks live near her.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: They all retired from they stayed in Kansas for years and um since then retired down in Texas uh near a farm or a uh lake and um in enjoy, you know, not a lot of water in Kansas.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's what I was gonna wonder.
• 5:56
  Douglas: Did you right out of school, right out of high school, did you get into the Coast Guard?
• 6:00
  Douglas: I did.
• 6:01
  Douglas: Yes.
• 6:02
  Douglas: That that was a weird transition.
• 6:04
  Douglas: Kid from Kansas flat prairie land ends up going out on the ocean.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: How's that happening?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: How's that happen?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: That was not kind of what we had in mind.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we um probably in junior high, I'll say this just from the aspect of mentioning that I think a lot of times when what our family values are and where we take our kids to events and stuff like that, especially like in junior high and stuff, they they reflect on that and they find something they kind of like and they start gravitating towards some of that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how we went to Colorado Springs um on vacation, uh, see the Royal Gorge, stuff like that.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: But we were driving by the Academy, uh, the Air Force Academy, and they were having some type of uh uh national sporting event at the time, and so we stopped and looked at that for a couple hours, and um after that I wanted to to fly jets.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh so from then on all through high school focused on going to the Air Force Academy, um ended up getting an alternate nomination uh from Bob Dole.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um but as an alternate the Academy can pick um, they can select which alternates they want, and they want all uh fighter pilot qualified people because that's where they start weaning, you know, that's their job.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I had hay fever, and so I was not um I was not highly qualified medically, I was average qualified.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they can get an average qualified guy from a fighter guy who breaks his shoulder.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: They need that that highest tier.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh my football coach got a a postcard from the Coast Guard Academy that had a picture of a jet on it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um we looked up, we looked up in the Atlas.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: We had to get out the atlas to find Connecticut.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um had never been, you know, had never really had never been west of Missouri.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um uh looked up Connecticut, looked up what the Coast Guard was, uh still didn't understand it.
• 8:10
  Douglas: So you'd you'd been west of Missouri, you hadn't been east of Missouri because east of Missouri's up to the east there.
• 8:17
  Douglas: Right, right.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you they would teach me directions eventually.
• 8:22
  Douglas: Did you skip navigation at the beginning?
• 8:25
  Douglas: Well, that was my senior, it was my senior year.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Other things in mind.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, ended up going there.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one it went to the so got an appointment.
• 8:37
  Douglas: You were you were you thinking Coast Guard because they had the jet on there?
• 8:40
  Douglas: You're like, I might still be able to fly jets with these guys.
• 8:42
  Douglas: Yep.
• 8:43
  Douglas: Yeah, okay.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only reason.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only reason I did it.
• 8:46
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 8:47
  Douglas: Um and uh You didn't it didn't cross your mind that they've got a whole lot more boats than they got jets?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, not at all.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't didn't had no idea, had been to the ocean once in San Diego in sixth grade.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and um that was that was it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so got out there and then found out that the pilots have to swim extra.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um this self this issue of self-rescue, uh-huh, the plane goes down, you gotta figure out how to get out.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, back then they didn't have the movies like The Guardian and stuff where they they show them rolling over in this basket and being strapped in, and you gotta get yourself out of there.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I had flunked beginner swimming uh as a as a five-year-old and uh was traumatized ever since, and so I could swim, but not too good.
• 9:37
  Douglas: So the whole idea of being a pilot, um my freshman year, I had to uh But you hold on a sec, because the pilots have to swim more, but in the Coast Guard you still have to swim pass a swim test, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you do, but not uh the pilots had to do two swim tests.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Two swim tests?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: I had to do one.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and that one was my freshman year, and my my the assistant football coach happened to be my swim teacher.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so I got a D instead of an F in swimming.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um and and so I wasn't a great football player, um but it did at least uh it's helped me get through the swimming game.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: It kept me from being sent home.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh had I I had a backup plan.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna go to West Texas State and be a teacher and coach football.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um and and so I had a backup plan, but uh we didn't have to enact it.
• 10:40
  Douglas: So what what was it like going through the Coast Guard Academy?
• 10:45
  Douglas: That was you got through swimming, was the rest of it fairly easy?
• 10:50
  Douglas: Was it as rigorous as the other service academies?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's probably similar to the other service academies as far as the you know, the standards and the hazing and uh the hazing or the not hazing and that type of thing.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Normally those are kind of DOD-wide.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: It changes with the culture of leadership to a certain degree.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but mostly, you know, that's a cultural thing in our nation too, and in schools and just how people are treating each other.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I I think it i they probably all are much the same.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: The Coast Guard Academy obviously is the smallest out of all of them.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Your freshman year is like all the others, you spend the first uh your freshman year.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: As long as you're I I I was willing to be able to if you tell me what to do, I'll do it and you tell me to do 25 push-ups, I'll do 25 pushes.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't I didn't really have a hard time that freshman year.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: I I just shut up and listened.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the people who were if you wanted to push back, um that was a long year for those people.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: They they where they talk, you know, full metal jacket, you gotta break somebody down and then build them back up.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: The people you had to break down were those who were uh more about themselves um and and couldn't quite see the team part of it.
• 12:16
  Douglas: And so what percentage of that would you say of the class?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we started with 312 and we ended with 192.
• 12:25
  Douglas: Whoa.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we lost a third or so?
• 12:29
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 12:29
  Douglas: Wow.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it it was and you know, my first my first roommate um quit the second day.
• 12:37
  Douglas: Was that just your in your freshman year?
• 12:40
  Douglas: You lost a third, or was that over four years ago?
• 12:43
  Douglas: Over the four years, four years.
• 12:44
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 12:44
  Douglas: Your roommate quit the second day?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: My roommate quit the second day, yeah.
• 12:48
  Douglas: It was like I'm peace out, I'm done with this.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: He said uh he was like, I I'm only here because my mom and dad made me come.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm out of here.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he took a posting to the just Yep.
• 13:01
  Douglas: Wow.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: So uh nice, nice enough guy, but after seeing what it was about, he wasn't gonna do it.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and so my second roommate I wonder what that was like for him going home.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: That would have been a long ride.
• 13:15
  Douglas: I think that would have been a very long ride.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: But but maybe establish that relationship with his parents that might be a little more healthy.
• 13:23
  Douglas: And really, kudos for him, because if he was feeling that that's not what he wanted to do, if he could sense it that early, why waste anybody's time?
• 13:31
  Douglas: You bet move on to the next phase.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: You bet.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And there were so many different that first summer is kind of like our boot camp.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so just like you've seen on in movies and stuff, there are um there were mental health, you know, uh people would have hallucin.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when it got bad enough, w one of our one of our buddies had hallucinations and that type of thing, and and was there one afternoon and was and then we didn't see him after that, you know, um got sent home or and and then throughout the four years, but especially that freshman year, there's physical, um the physical part of it is uh demanding.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and so you're doing a lot of push-ups and you're doing a lot of running.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And and so if um if you get behind in that part, it can be um not only physically challenging, but then fitting in with the culture and um staying up to speed and uh you get on the bad side of some of the the leadership, it's hard to get back up you know, back on the horse, so to speak.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it was certainly that first year.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: It you go through um like the other places, you can't if you go on liberty, you can only go during certain hours on the weekend.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be in uniform the whole time.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um you sit square at the tables, you eat all of your all of your meals, you're sitting like this with your eyes in the boat, they call it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:58
  Douglas: Oh, okay.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you you uh I started I started at 172 pounds, um playing, haven't come out of Kansas playing linebacker, and uh I started the football season at the end of the summer at 149, and uh the football coach was not real happy with the looking at for the middle-town linebackers.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: So so uh like I said, uh the football didn't end up being what carried me, but it got me through swimming.
• 15:27
  Douglas: Get you through swimming.
• 15:30
  Douglas: Wow.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um the uh the rest of the time, you know, my the hardest year for me was my sophomore year.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're a junior and senior, you take on leadership roles.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Your sophomore year, you're you're watching.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: You've just been a freshman.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so you're you're you're you're out of that.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're supposed to be there for those freshmen to talk to a little bit, but not necessarily fraternize with.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So they can ask you some advice on, hey, how did you deal with this, this, and another.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: But you're not supervising them, and yet you're not being run hard like the the freshmen are.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a chance to get your grades back up.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Freshman year, your grades aren't real well.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, a a chance to think about academics, a chance to recover physically, um, a chance to as you're becoming more of an athlete, probably.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I struggled because I was seeing uh good kids, uh uh good kids as freshmen be mistreated by people that kinda had a power trip as juniors and seniors.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh again, as a as a freshman myself, I just shut up and do it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, okay, well, you're not gonna you're not gonna run me off.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can t holler at me or whatever you want to do.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just put up with it and sooner or later you'll be gone.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: But then seeing that imp imp uh uh put on to other people um from the juniors and seniors while I was a sophomore was just demoralizing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I I just didn't like it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to be in that.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had a hard time visioning myself far enough ahead the next year where okay, when I get to that position, I won't be that way, and I'll try to make it better uh for those that I'm supervising.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I just about quit my sophomore year, and that was my hardest time at the academy.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I uh hurt my ankle, so my my se the end of my sophomore year playing football was over, um uh finished with an ankle injury, and there wasn't gonna be any more football.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just sm too small to uh, you know, 100 at that point I was back up to 170, but that's too small to play linebacker.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you've seen me referee, so you know I'm slow, so I wasn't gonna move to cornerback.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so they uh so I was gonna quit and and I went home at Christmas and uh my folks said go back and um the the football program they invited me to come back as an assistant coach uh if I wasn't gonna play.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so I went home at Christmas and told my dad I'm gonna quit the academy and go to West Texas State and and coach football and teach.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, go back, they'll at least you'll have another year paid for.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Smart dad.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and if you like coaching, then you can quit and you'll only have one year left to get your degree.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh went back and uh liked it more being able to influence that leadership style amongst uh the the people that were that I was responsible for and uh loved coaching.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um best job I've ever had.
• 18:52
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 18:53
  Douglas: So what when you were going to school there, what were you studying?
• 18:56
  Douglas: What was your major or whatever that you were trying to do?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was a government major.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Government major.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Government major, and and people.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: What the hell do you learn as a government major?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: What's that?
• 19:07
  Douglas: What do you learn as a government major?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: History.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh mainly it's a it's a history degree.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, the academies are designed, it's you only can get a bachelor of science.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh a government degree and a management degree were for the people that those are pretty Bachelor of Arts deals anywhere else.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and everybody knew that.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh if you came in with an ACT that was at my level, um you knew that you were coming, you were smart enough, but you were probably the token kid from Kansas.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's a part of DEI.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was the Kansas kid at the Coast Guard Academy.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because I, you know, I just I was smart because I would work hard and study and memorize.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was not smart because I just had a high IQ.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: And some of the some of the kids at the academy are just uh brilliant.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh which gets back into the leadership thing.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: You get some of them that are brilliant and don't know how to work, translate that into working with people and and can be a nightmare.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: But then you get the the handful of the guys that really succeed that you really want to see be the admirals later on, are those that they're smart as a whip, but they also know how to work with people.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I could work with people, but I was not that smart.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So government was my uh the first summer they test you on calculus, and it was pretty easy for me to see that I was gonna be a government major.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh welcome.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well we'll teach you some basics.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it was uh a lot more writing and history and uh that type of thing.
• 20:56
  Douglas: So did you, while you're at the academy on one of your summers or one of your breaks, do they send you onto ships?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:04
  Douglas: What what was your first time going onto a ship and what kind of ship was it?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um the first the first assignment, I'll tell you what, the the first, the second day at the academy, you simulate being on a ship by going down to a dock and they have scaffolding stacked too high, and you go up on the scaffolding and they tell you whenever we go on the ship, if you have to abandon ship, when you jump off, you need to you need to cross your legs and cross your arms, because if you come down flailing, you're gonna get uh uh a water enema, basically.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's not very fun for people.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so you cross your legs and they teach you how to jump in.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I jumped in and did it all right.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: What they didn't say was don't drink the water.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I'm so you're saying they need to be very specific in instructions for that, right?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I like I said, my
• 22:08
  Douglas: Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to drink the swimming pool, but the lake's probably fine.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I took a big gulp of water and it was salt water.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I had never, you know, I'd been in, like I said, San Diego once as a kid, and we didn't I didn't drink the water.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so my first kind of ship simulation experience was, yeah, when you jump overboard, you're in salt water most of the time with Coast Guard.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So uh then our first boats that we were on were small 12-foot sailboats that summer.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we would um, those of us that were on the football team and were there more for football than we were sailing, uh, we would intentionally flip the dinghy, uh, the 12-foot dinghy.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: We would we would do what we had to for about five or ten minutes.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was hot, it's Connecticut, summertime, it's humid.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: We would flip them over so that we could spend the next hour pretending to try to turn it back up.
• 23:06
  Douglas: Turn it back up, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you're in the water where it's cooler and kick our water, kick the water and kind of play around.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so what uh a dinghy, a 12-foot dinghy was my first command.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you and you probably flipped it over.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: Abused it, yes.
• 23:21
  Douglas: Do you think there was anybody that was going like, we can't have this guy in command of a ship, they can roll this sinker at the way.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: They did.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere along the line, they figured that out.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: I figured that that was not a good idea.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then we would so starting off with that, did you learn to sail though?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we did we did.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and and so I joke around about it, but you did learn to sail, and and they taught you um they they taught you sailing and and the principles of sailing that very much relate into the um relate into the idea of of uh water sportsmanship, um uh water navigation, um, all of these these ideas that um like if you're splitting wood, um you can learn to split wood by hand or you can just do it with the wood splitter.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you learn by hand, you learn a lot more about the grain of the wood and where the wood's gonna fly it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: So learning to be around the water via sailboat um and and canoe and kayak and that type of thing uh uh was a good, you know.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: They they uh they've been doing it for a while and knew what they were doing.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they trained us on the small ones first, and then we graduated up to some 22-footers.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then later that freshman year, we would go on a uh uh old Navy tugs that were assigned to the uh academy.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: They had four or five of them, and those were the first powered ones that you used.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh at the end of your freshman year, you'd go on the Eagle, and uh the Eagle was a 375 or so foot um sail ship.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um sail ship so oh wow, three hundred and some feet long?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh uh a bark, it had been built in Germany in World War II.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um the pinnett, I forget it's 170 feet high or something like that, and big, full.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: When you think of uh Pirates of the Caribbean, this was a full-sized, um full-sized three masses.
• 25:28
  Douglas: So you guys went you guys went out on the ocean with that?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we sailed my my e they had different phases that they would break the cadets up into.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: And my uh my first phase was from uh New London, Connecticut to Cork, Ireland.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And seriously, you went across the Atlantic in that?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:47
  Douglas: Your fresh end of your freshman year.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: What was that like?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was it was uh some sometimes were very good, sometimes we're not as good.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: The good it was um it was the first time I there were probably five times in the coast of grid that I thought I might die.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of them on the eagle.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the first one was on the eagle, uh going up.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: So the the sails and that type of thing are very powerful.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this thing's the you know, it's it's big.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh if the weather picks up and you don't catch it in time, you have to go up and bend what we call bend sail.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that is you uh you collect the sails and um instead of flying the sail, you you put it onto the mast and tie it down.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And um and and so I I uh we got in a storm one night close to Ireland and uh there were six of us, I think, on watch, and a junior and then uh sophomore, and then a few of us freshmen, and uh the junior and the sophomore were supposed to go up, and the sophomore said, I'm not going.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the junior said, Okay, Jones, come on.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh so we went, and that was the first time I thought that you you how far up in the air?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: How far up this hundred, hundred and twenty feet?
• 27:13
  Douglas: Um what kind of harness do you have?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: You have a you have a uh you have a harness on with a clip, and they and they say one hand for you, one hand for the ship.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so the idea was being you would clip in the the mast um is this you know six to eight inch steel pipe, and then it's got a uh small quarter inch um rod welded to the top of it.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so you would the idea was you would clip your clip your clip and then grab chunks of sail and hoist them up.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, the ship is going like this.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, they they um they lose somebody probably every fifteen to twenty years somebody dies.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not uh it's not unheard of.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because you have to you have to unclip to keep moving.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, you get you've got to work the entire sale, and there's three or four rows of sales, and um, and so somebody's gotta do it.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was good for me.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: It teaches you to kind of face you know, that was the first time I'd faced that level of of um fear, and and and that's why you're doing the training, and that's why they make you do it.
• 28:29
  Douglas: How how long did it take you to get from Connecticut to Ireland?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: 18 days.
• 28:34
  Douglas: 18 days.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:35
  Douglas: That seems fast.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: They well, we it was had a motor, it like most sailboats, it's got a motor on it.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: You guys cheated.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Auxiliary power.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sometimes, sometimes.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: We did have you had to also navigate by star.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: You did uh celestial navigation.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a a a chart that you know it also there were professional crew on board also.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um so they had a they had a electronic navigation, which back then wasn't GPS yet, it was still Loran, which could be off quite a ways.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and then we had to do celestial nav.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I and I didn't I was not a great celestial nav guy.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the guys on the football team, we were all in phase one, and uh we just had a lot of varied interests, and a lot of them weren't focused on celestial navigation on celestial navigation, especially once we got to Ireland, um, and they let us out for a few hours and uh we saw what there was to enjoy in this other side of the world.
• 29:42
  Douglas: Um you're not you're not insinuating you might have had a few beers when you guys made it.
• 29:46
  Douglas: We might.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: I did not like the the heavy, thick uh Guinness and that type of thing.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: That wasn't for you?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um no, it was not for me.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: But the the the the towns were wonderful, they they welcomed us.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and so the uh so I made it through Cork.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: We sailed from Cork over to London, and by the time we got to London, my my uh my celestial navigation uh academic standards caught up to me, and uh instead of getting two days out in London, I got one.
• 30:20
  Douglas: Also being poor at celestial navigation came back to haunt you.
• 30:24
  Douglas: It did.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: It did.
• 30:25
  Douglas: So it's uh they they flat out told you because you you didn't do well in celestial navigation, you only get one day, or you're yeah, oh yeah.
• 30:33
  Douglas: You're they're they're very upfront on that.
• 30:36
  Douglas: Oh yeah.
• 30:37
  Douglas: Okay.
• 30:37
  Douglas: Oh yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's no doubt in your mind the reason why you were only getting one day.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I hadn't finished it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I didn't finish it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't up to I hadn't passed it, it wasn't up to standard, um, and and it wasn't gonna get any better.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we were leaving after after London, we were flying back home to go on to our next assignments.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, and and so they they and uh you know, rightfully so.
• 31:06
  Douglas: That was accountability, I I I knew, and um and the So while everybody else is in London, were you down like in the stu in the study hall working on your celestial navigation all day?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think summer school.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and and not only one of the football team.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think maybe the quarterback, maybe the quarterback and a couple of the pretty boy uh defensive backs that was the smart guys.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um they probably figured it out.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: They figured it out and and were a little a little more uh in tune.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but the what was go ahead.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: The the um the Eagle was a really neat experience.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: They had a tall ship, every in New York they have a big tall ship parade where they bring these training vessels from all over the world to do it.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my year we didn't get to do that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um but a neat program, and they and so all variety of countries that train their mariner uh uh officers use uh sailing ships, and and it was good.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was very different in that constantly being healed over, those that are used to sailing.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, on most military ships, the more junior you are, you uh you're stacked in bunks that are anywhere from three to five high.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: So you had a uh your bunk for that 18 days, plus going to London was another five or six.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So for a month you're in a you know, maybe twenty-four inch by twenty-four inch space is what you have that's yours.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's uh uh you know, maybe six and a half feet long.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so and and then when the ship's heeled over, uh, there's a uh there's two bunks beside each other, and then they're four or five high.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's um kind of like a wire mesh in between them.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you'd be you'd be healed over, mashed over, and there's you and there's your buddy next to you with the the wire mesh in between you.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And man, it stunk.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember if we did it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: I I I on the the entire time on Eagle, I don't know if we did laundry.
• 33:18
  Douglas: That's what's going on next to you.
• 33:20
  Douglas: They have all did they have laundry facilities on the boat?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think they probably did, but I really don't remember.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: What I do know is the entire freshman year, um laundry was a uh an issue.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's hard from the beginning.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Just you weren't doing it, or you didn't have the time to do it.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: No, you didn't have the time to do it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was the okay, if I have a choice between memorizing this so that when I get asked, I don't have to get do more push-ups or going down and and uh washing my shorts and undies.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm I'm doing this.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: I can my buddies everybody else stinks, so I can stink too.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: So and then they tell you to bring But they didn't have wash machines?
• 34:02
  Douglas: You had to hand wash everything?
• 34:03
  Douglas: No, you could So you didn't realize you could put the stuff in there and you could sit there and you could memorize it while your laundry's doing?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but there's you had maybe ten machines for 312 hours.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: I gotcha, yeah.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and you had you know uh two hours on the weekend.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like so it's funny that in quarters.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if you couldn't get quarters, there was no coin machine.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: So if you didn't think ahead and get quarters down at the exchange while you were on Liberty the week ahead of time, now you got no money.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so it's funny when um Haley Haley Boron that went to the Air Force Academy, um, when we moved here, I gave her quarters um so that she could wash.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: She and her family said, What's your advice?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Take I said, I don't even know you guys very well, but my advice is very personal.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: Take extra underwear and uh a bunch of quarters, and here's your first roll.
• 35:03
  Douglas: In college, we had these little plastic chips that you had to buy.
• 35:06
  Douglas: You couldn't use c couldn't use quarters.
• 35:08
  Douglas: It's these little you'd have to get these things are stupid.
• 35:11
  Douglas: Yeah, it's yeah, it's little plastic tokens that you'd have to put in them.
• 35:15
  Douglas: Right.
• 35:16
  Douglas: So why can't we use quarters?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: The the uh yeah, it was it it was good.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of knew how to do my laundry, but not completely either.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so that probably didn't help.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you learned, and and after again, you're as a sophomore, you could do your laundry whenever you wanted.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Life got better.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Life got much better.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um my second, so that was the first summer.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: Get back to the eagle.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:43
  Douglas: Was looking back on that, yeah, you all you thought you were gonna die at one point, but I I'm just in awe.
• 35:50
  Douglas: I think that would just be a that would just be a really cool experience being out on the open sea, got this huge mast, these huge tails, heeled over, just cruising across the Atlantic.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, starting to do that.
• 36:03
  Douglas: Yeah, just thinking, dude, we're like Christopher Columbus and Roscoe da Gama, and I mean all these guys, they had smaller ships, they were wood and stuff, but that kind of ship only bigger.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and it was, it was an amazing, amazing several several things like that in my Coast Guard career were like, wow.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time, of course, as a as a um as a young man who um I I wasn't completely not mindful, but uh over the years it means more than than it did at the moment?
• 36:41
  Douglas: Much more.
• 36:41
  Douglas: Well, I think that's a good idea.
• 36:42
  Douglas: That's mostly because we get older.
• 36:44
  Douglas: Yeah, as you get older, there's things you're like, oh, I should have appreciated that more in the moment.
• 36:47
  Douglas: Absolutely.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: My uh my best friend was on the Eagle in New York a month or so ago, and um he he uh he he was with uh they were having that big sale fest.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the vice commandant of the Coast Guard right now, Tommy Allen, is was the uh he's the number two guy for the whole Coast Guard.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: And he played he played offensive line or defense offensive line when we were playing football.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: He was two years ahead of us.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and um, and so he met Mike and they got to go on the Eagle and look around back, you know, nice sent me some pictures.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh I don't miss it.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and some of our class loved it.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was all, you know, they really gravitated towards it.
• 37:30
  Douglas: And and um But I and I'm thinking too is a kid from Kansas, like you go to the Coast Guard and a year later you're on this giant sailing ship going from Connecticut to Ireland.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:44
  Douglas: That uh talk about fish out of the water kind of thing.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was having um I was having a good time with my buddies playing football and just trying to stay alive and under the radar from the the the push-ups and and the hazing and um that type of thing that uh you didn't want to you didn't want any more of it than you had to take.
• 38:10
  Douglas: So your your summer, so you do that, is that the spring or beginning of summer after your freshman year that you take the email?
• 38:18
  Douglas: End of freshman year.
• 38:19
  Douglas: So what do you get any time off then to go home or are you right back into training for the next year?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Every summer you get three weeks.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so each each year, no matter what year, you get three weeks, and the rest of the time they send you to different programs.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh one year in a program, um, I was uh in Boston for two weeks at a small boat station.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: That was amazing.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Stationed at the north that was when I was a sophomore.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh north up on the north end, little Italy.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we could walk down into the restaurants and everything, and completely peaceful.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: You could be out at midnight walking in um in Little Italy, uh grandmas and grandpas sitting there uh in old chairs, chit-chatting, kids running around in the street, completely safe.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um you got out of little you got out of uh the north end uh and you were in the city.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was a little more dicey.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: But we go to the uh go to the uh Red Sox games um and uh pay three dollars for a a seat and and if they knew you were military, they'd tell you, okay, your seat's up high, but let us know after the first inning, we'll take you down below and put you in a good seat.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh as a sophomore, that was that was amazing.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: Going out to Boston Light and working uh working some search and rescue cases, first ones were were there in Boston Harbor, and so um, and each summer it was different like that.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so being with the football program, we would report in a little early to to work two a days and start the season.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: But um uh the other summer uh uh I spent before my senior year was uh in Puerto Rico on a 110-foot uh boat, and that was probably the the uh the most uh complete indoctrination, you know, when we talk about the idea of the eagle and those things being training.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um as a junior going into your senior year, they're looking at it as okay, this is our last chance to kind of kind of break you in before you go off and are an officer and have some degree of authority, and uh, we need to teach you before you do that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so 110 out of Puerto Rico was by that time I'd figured out I was not interested in taking more swim tests and being a pilot.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: And uh and so I wanted to go into law enforcement.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: So uh the 110 in Puerto Rico was kind of aligned with giving me a view uh of of what I might be doing in the future.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was awesome.
• 40:58
  Douglas: So when you say get into law enforcement, what kind of law enforcement are you talking about?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: For the Coast Guard.
• 41:05
  Douglas: For the Coast Guard is as far as drug interdiction, things like that.
• 41:09
  Douglas: Is that what you're looking at?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: That was my interest.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: There are other, you know, every every Coast Guard unit has a degree of of enforcement and maritime enforcement.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: In Alaska, the guys were doing more fisheries um and that type of thing.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and um, you know, back then when I was doing this, uh uh George Bush uh was the uh George Bush senior was the president.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Things were just uh really heating up down in the interdiction world.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: We were starting to send teams down into um uh South America um that would be actually in the in the field working with the DEA and um and then try to flush uh flush the the carriers out so that uh we knew where they were gonna be and have intel so that we could do the interdiction.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was what that was what I was thinking.
• 42:02
  Douglas: But you that's what you're so is that when you when you graduated, is that where you started?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: It is, yeah.
• 42:08
  Douglas: Where where was your first duty station after graduation?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Panama City, Florida.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was that must have been rough, man.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: That was hard.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: That must have been really tough for you.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep, yeah.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I feel bad for you.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: I will say I was the lowest, uh I was the lowest member of my class to get a cutter in Florida.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and so uh I had that uh I had that that uh barely came through by the uh nick of my teeth.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: There were other uh you know, there were other guys, the ships out of Portsmouth uh would would sail out of Portsmouth, out of Norfolk, and come down and do enforcement in the Caribbean doing the same work, but to do it out of uh Panama City had its own.
• 42:54
  Douglas: So those when you get when you get stationed after you graduate, is a lot of that based on your class rank on where you go?
• 43:00
  Douglas: All of it.
• 43:00
  Douglas: All of it's based on so do you they have, I'm guessing, so you have a hundred just say you got a hundred people graduating and they've got a hundred slots.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do you get to pick where you're gonna go or or do you rank where you want, or do they just you rank where you want, and detailers take that and compare where your rank with what you've asked for and see how that's matched up with everyone else.
• 43:25
  Douglas: And and and where your duties what what job you're gonna have, kind of thing?
• 43:31
  Douglas: Yep.
• 43:31
  Douglas: Okay.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it also depends on the first when you get to your unit, like in mind, there were four of us that were assigned to the Cutter Courageous out of Panama City.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and those four we had different aptitude.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of 'em knew he wanted to go to flight school.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so, um, coming out of the academy, you we ought to do two years at sea first, back then, no longer now.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: But um he was just there to punch the ticket, do a good job and go to flight school.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and he was he was the sharpest out of all of us.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and so he um you know, the role that you play on the ship initially um was kind of the you you met with the leadership and they talked to what you were wanting to do, and my uh and and so my I was able to to go into law enforcement because I advocated for it more than the other uh guys.
• 44:27
  Douglas: So you're on this cutter, freshly out of the academy.
• 44:31
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 44:32
  Douglas: What what is your role as far as law enforcement on the cutter?
• 44:36
  Douglas: Are you processing evidence?
• 44:38
  Douglas: Are you telling them I mean what what does that role look like for you on a day-to-day basis?
• 44:43
  Douglas: What kind of stuff are you doing?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, your first job on the cutter is to be law enforcement, is one of um, you know, six, seven, eight, nine missions that the cutter does.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so your first job is to be a navigation officer, uh to be an officer of the deck.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you were trained to run the deck.
• 45:00
  Douglas: The guy that barely passed celestial navigation, how they're putting you in charge of navigation.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we they had they had brand, so I could use uh and it took me a little it took me a while to qualify too.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I caught on.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't drive the boat well.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know the boats have a uh the they the idea of uh the feeling the boat and seamanship and seaman's eye and set and drift and some of those things that come from just being around the water.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um it took me so I had to go to uh I had to go to extra class in Norfolk, where they taught you ship handling skills as the as the boat as the captain of the boat, um not I shouldn't say as the captain, but as so as the officer of the deck, you were responsible for driving the ship.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you had a helmsman that was steering.
• 45:56
  Douglas: Did you ever get to run the wheel?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, those were the well, you did when you were training a little bit.
• 46:02
  Douglas: When you're training, but when you got to the bigger one, you were telling somebody else what to do?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it sucks.
• 46:08
  Douglas: I mean, I can understand that, but it'd be kind of cool to drive the boat.
• 46:13
  Douglas: It's easier.
• 46:13
  Douglas: I mean, you got it, you got you got this big boat, and it'd be kind of cool to be like the guy with the throttle and everything instead of just telling somebody to use the throttle.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:21
  Douglas: It's kind of like having a Ferrari and sitting in the passenger seat and go go faster.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's funny because on all of the Coast Guard marketing material, they show you the little boat where you're the guy driving the boat.
• 46:34
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: Our freshman year, they told us that's not gonna be you.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, wait a minute.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so and that, and you were always envious.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: I remember BM3 Chason Dahlstrom was our small boat coxswain.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so up on the bridge, I was the OD, and so I would, you know, I I would tell him, steer, steer course 180, and 180I, sir, and he we'd steer 180.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was a a navigator, a quartermaster in the back doing the chart, and then there are a couple guys on the lookout, and um, and then the engine room had their own watch.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: But when uh when you got on the small boat, BM3, he had the he had it all.
• 47:20
  Douglas: He had so based on what you're saying, so you have a navigator that's telling you where you're gonna go.
• 47:28
  Douglas: Does he tell you what heading, and then you tell the guy that's running the ship to to tell the heading?
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_02: He he tells you his recommend he recommends to you, and then you have to use that.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_02: You verify that with the chart or okay I verify that he's using the chart, I'm using the chart and the radar, yeah, and what my lookouts are telling me, okay, and what the helmsman is telling me the the current is doing to the helm.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm kind of taking all of those feeds, okay, combining them with what the engine room is telling me the engines are doing, and deciding this is what I need to do.
• 48:10
  Douglas: Okay.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's why on a larger ship, I mean it's just like one of the a cruise ship pulling in or anything where it's not, you know, on a on a smaller boat or even um on on most of the 50, 60 foot fishing boats, you kind of are still going to be able to get the bigger.
• 48:28
  Douglas: You're pretty much in control of the hole by feel and everything.
• 48:30
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so just on a bigger ship you lose the uh I I guess you could do that, but it's uh it's more efficient and safe if you have a team doing that.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: And where where it was important for us to operate that way was you would you weren't just navigating, but you would be doing that and add, you know, 300 migrants in the water around you, or do that and add a law enforcement target that you're boarding and putting people onto, or do that and add, you know, and so it it necessitated uh a team effort.
• 49:10
  Douglas: Now, do they have systems then or even now where a lot of that is you're still learning to do it manually and listen to all these people, but it's all in a computer that the computer's like, okay, when wind's this direction, seas are going this direction, the engines are in this, this is the heading we need, hit it on autopilot, and away we go.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Those in a in I would say probably the year 2000 to 2005, the Coast Guard modernization started coming into line with that.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: The helicopters and the um uh the planes, you know, um they had that kind of autopilot systems um in the in the 80s, 90s.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the ships did not have that degree of automation until then.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: And and um they started the ones that started with that were the aides to navigation, uh the buoy tenders, because they're working in shoal water all the time.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and um and so they were the first ones that had the uh ability that uh we were we were I was a white hole sailor instead of a black hole sailor, and uh the black hole guys could push the button and it would maintain itself right there.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: We we were jealous of that.
• 50:25
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 50:26
  Douglas: So what's the difference between a white hole and black hole?
• 50:30
  Douglas: A black hole is the maintenance one?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: A black hole's a maintenance boat, and they'll do a little bit, that's their primary focus.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they'll do a little bit of uh search and rescue, a little bit of law enforcement, but those are side duties to what they were doing.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's their their primary mission.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: Where a white hull uh doesn't do any aid navigation work, they go out on a patrol, uh, usually with one primary mission and two or three side missions that as they become, you know, as they pop up, they'll address them.
• 51:03
  Douglas: So in Panama City, when you're heading out, are you heading out for a week, two weeks, a couple days?
• 51:08
  Douglas: Depends.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: We'd go six weeks, six weeks out on the ideal on that cutter.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was a uh 210-foot boat, had a crew of about 83, um, and we would go out for six weeks and be back in for six weeks was the uh the ideal rotation.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: They did have a laundry.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: Did and and uh uh and you'd learn to use it by then?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: By then I was what 22, 23 years old, and I learned to do my laundry.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do your laundry?
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:35
  Douglas: I'm sure everybody else on the boat appreciated that.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was still it was different.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: We had a helicopter deck.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we did not have a hanger for the helicopter, and so our helicopter had to deal with weather all the time.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh my primary job was driving the boat for a uh you we typically stood uh one and three was our watch, so I would stand watch for four hours, I'd be off for eight hours, I'd stand watch for four hours, I'd be off for eight hours.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: And during the uh eight hours at night, you'd sleep or try to.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um during the eight hours in the day, you were working your other collateral duties.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so law enforcement was my primary collateral duty.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if we came up on a boat that we were gonna board, then I would do that.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um various other collateral duties, landing the helicopter, the the uh wearing the yellow shirt and guiding the hilo in was one of them.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that was kind of a a crazy experience.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um but the you would ask about the law enforcement.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: My first I went on one patrol for a few weeks, and then they flew me off in the middle of the patrol to go to uh specialized law enforcement school that's the Coast Guard's law enforcement academy, kind of like uh kind of like in Sitka for Alaska.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Coast Guard maintains an academy.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: At that time it was in Yorktown, Virginia.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh went to that for four or five weeks and then came back, and at that point you're still uh you're still breaking in.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: You go you take that book knowledge and put it to work in the field uh with a boarding officer overseeing you.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: So for the first probably three months um you're training under somebody, and after that then you're you're qualified to to lead the uh you know four to six person um boarding team that goes over and does the you got you got to go in those fast boats, you just you didn't get to drive it.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: They would take us in the big boat over to that.
• 53:37
  Douglas: Did you ever just like tell the guys like listen on the way back and I just take Did you get to ever do that?
• 53:42
  Douglas: Or were they just always no?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: They they knew That just seems so wrong.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they knew, dude, you stick it to me on the bridge.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um you you know, I'm asking to go play jokes and wake my buddy up with some you know practical joke and you tell me not to in the middle of the night, or um, you know, they they're the said yes once in a while.
• 54:04
  Douglas: Maybe you would have gotten to drive the boat, Matt.
• 54:06
  Douglas: You you well, maybe, maybe I might not have been good for your career, but you would have gotten to drive the boat.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: They they did um getting your coffee, they're the ones that went and got your coffee.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you definitely were respectful enough to know that when your coffee was being brought back to you, it wasn't going to be doctored up too crazily.
• 54:26
  Douglas: Some of the some of the boat I'm I'm envious because some of those boats that they have, those rigid inflatables.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those are fun.
• 54:33
  Douglas: Those things are badass.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and a lot of those came post-9-11.
• 54:38
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so as I was older, more senior in my career, uh, I got to go on.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: They would let me drive the boat then.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: As you're the more mature you were to your twenties and stuff.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we can trust them now.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but they're also hard to drive.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: The the bigger they get, the fancier they get, the trim tabs, and the um, yeah, kind of kind of neat uh but that's a cool thing that all the enlisted guys get to do and and different specialties, even in that, with the boatswain rating, the guys that ride the ones that flip over and come back, um, or the guys that are doing the agent navigation, or the guys that are doing the security, uh, port security ops and that type of thing.
• 55:22
  Douglas: Um several years ago, I don't know, it must have been like 20 years ago, they had to they had a fleet like three or four, just fast as all get out, and they're just like spinning circles and everything.
• 55:33
  Douglas: I can't remember what they're doing some training here with them.
• 55:36
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 55:36
  Douglas: And someone would come in the store, and I'll like, dude, your boat's like, oh, just come down the harbor this time, we'll give you a ride.
• 55:42
  Douglas: Every time I went down there, they're never there.
• 55:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:44
  Douglas: Fuck you, lions, suckers.
• 55:46
  Douglas: I thought there should have been some kind of better moral compass for Coast Guard officers to lie like that.
• 55:52
  Douglas: Exactly.
• 55:53
  Douglas: Well, I'm still upset at the Coast Guard that I didn't get to ride in one, although I probably would have puked over the side with the things they were.
• 56:00
  Douglas: If if I'd gone out watching some of the and they did some of the things I saw them do, yeah, I most certainly would have been puking over the side.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot of force, there's a lot of they throw you the in those style of boats, it it uh the chine hits the water and jerks the direction.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you typically they steer it like that, so it will hit and turn.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: And um the the ones that are more like a pig, the ones that roll over and are in itself right, they're designed to go out in the storm, so you look like you're a you know, you look pretty macho, um but they roll that that that buoyancy that they have.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the only time let me make sure that I'm not a historian.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think the only time that I actually got physically sick and puked was on a 44-foot roller uh out of out of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it just because it's just going back and forth.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's not gonna kill you, you can roll over, but it w it waddles.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's like riding on a duck.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so those fast I like that better than how long are you based out of Florida.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: On the courageous, yeah.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: We were there for two years.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: My first year, um I uh contacted my wife Nancy out of uh I called her out of Guantamo Bay, Cuba.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: We had been working uh migrants and um had had worked some pretty serious cases.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: Those were that was a hard working immigration is a hard thing, um both physically and mentally.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um went overboard in the middle of the night one night working a migrant case.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: You went overboard?
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so as a non as not a great swimmer, that was exciting.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_02: But also just the the uh off of Haiti, uh those boats sink frequently, and so standing by after 100, 150 people have perished.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh geez.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um standing by for that and and um that type of stuff.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: So so that first year we were in Guantamo Bay, and I called Nancy uh and uh chatted with her, and we had been buddies for a long time.
• 58:24
  Douglas: Um is she from the same place in Kansas?
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: She grew up two hours away from me, and we met at a youth leadership program.
• 58:32
  Douglas: Okay, and so what age were you guys when you met?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: 16.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sixteen sophomores in high school.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I wanted to be more than friends, and she loved me like a brother.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh been there.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's I think it's the same still now.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but somehow, some somehow we've managed to have a family out of it and hold them together.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_02: But um that that so the first year in Panama City uh was single, uh running with the boys and and managed to live through it.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_02: But um uh that's that's a tough town as a single guy to stay focused and not get fired.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um then visited with Nancy out of Cuba, she came down spring break.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: We started dating, so the second year got married, and um, and that certainly changed life and and changed some of the directions.
• 59:26
  Douglas: You you were able to change from was it because you called from Cuba or you're living in Florida that you were able to change her mind there?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: She came down, she came down, she was a graduate student uh in Oklahoma and said, and I said that I would uh pay her way down.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um what I didn't know did you say you were gonna pay her way back?
• 59:48
  Douglas: Or you just paid her way down?
• 59:49
  Douglas: No, well.
• 59:50
  Douglas: So this is a one-way thing to do.
• 59:51
  Douglas: We have to step down there.
• 59:53
  Douglas: Okay.
• 59:53
  Douglas: She was getting away.
• 59:54
  Douglas: I'm just checking because that's kind of deceivious, man.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it was a little, it was unintentionally deceivious.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: I had uh I had had a little, I had run into a little problem in Porta Plata Dominican Republic.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: And uh this was before I was a pastor, mind you.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um somehow I sidearmed a bottle of El Presidente beer through the back window of a Liberty van.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it cost me uh all the money that I had to get out of Porta Plata with my hide and my career.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: My my captain said if he didn't hear about it, I didn't hear about it.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: So so you know in the course of why were you sidearming beer through the window of uh one of my yeah, well, one of those enlisted guys that worked for me, uh we were going back to the ship early because the smart guy, the pilot that was my classmate, yeah, he told me it was time for me to go home.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and um And you and you figured that was a good idea.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_02: The enlisted guys that worked for me um called me a name that described going home early.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't I didn't like being called that, and so uh so I thought, you know, in my state at the time, thought that would be a good idea.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um so I did that, and then this had all been we were blowing off steam after working these migrant cases.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_02: We are coming back and run into a a good-sized storm um just before we get home, and worked a SAR case with a sailboat, like 80 knot winds, 20 foot seas.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh geez um pretty good storm.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, okay.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: That that was kind of my Jonah moment.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I need to I need to to to come around.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: I had been I grew up raised in the church and and um and had gone to college and and just kind of gone uh haywire uh a little bit, having fun.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so that was kind of my wake-up call.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: Caught into port to went to buy a ticket for Nancy to come down and uh didn't have enough money to pay for the airplane ticket.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I did have enough money to pay for a ticket on Greyhound.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so I bought her a ticket on the uh Greyhound bus.
• 1:02:19
  Douglas: She came to vi she got on a Greyhound bus to come visit you from Oklahoma?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: From Tallaqu, Oklahoma, from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_02: From Muskogee, Oklahoma.
• 1:02:29
  Douglas: How did you convince her to get on a Greyhound bus instead of a flight to come all the way down to visit you?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's all at that point.
• 1:02:37
  Douglas: That's some pretty good work on your behalf.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: She thought she would meet one of my buddies.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: She thought, well, he's an officer.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, she was a grad student in spring break painting her rent house.
• 1:02:51
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, do I want to do that or go to Panama City?
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_02: Panama Florida.
• 1:02:55
  Douglas: Yeah, and I got somebody, it's a greyhound, but it's a ticket to Panama City.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when I first offered, it wasn't a greyhound.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: I just said, I'll get you there.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Okay.
• 1:03:03
  Douglas: So then How long a ride is that?
• 1:03:06
  Douglas: How many, how many hours did she spend on that greyhound?
• 1:03:09
  Douglas: At least 16.
• 1:03:11
  Douglas: She she actually, and and and I had kind of I've always thought she put up a little with a lot with you, Madden.
• 1:03:16
  Douglas: This is raising it to a whole new level.
• 1:03:18
  Douglas: I gotta tell you.
• 1:03:20
  Douglas: I have to commend Nancy on this for.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: I had they were coming through Pensacola, and I had told her if you get to Pensacola and just have had enough, let me know, and I'll come pick you up.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: She got off in Pensacola.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: That was kind of a we've still got this thing called insincere offering.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, I was just being nice.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: And um so yeah, she got off as soon as she could.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um and by day three, we had gotten through that awkwardness, and and she figured out my other buddies uh weren't gonna cut the mustard.
• 1:03:55
  Douglas: Weren't gonna cut the mustard, and she's like, Well, I guess I guess this mad guy is worth the trip.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: So she finished that semester and moved to Panama City.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the second year, second year was in Panama City, um, and uh and we we uh finished our that was a courageous tour.
• 1:04:13
  Douglas: And um how did how did life change for you being in the Coast Guard, going out on these trips and having a wife at home?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: Dramatically.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_02: Dramatically.
• 1:04:24
  Douglas: I wanted um so the culture because then you're gone six weeks at a time, and she's back there by herself for six weeks.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: And she was working, uh, we were both young, double income, no kids, life was good.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but I was sappy and young married and certainly didn't want to go out.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: I viewed and still, you know, it's interesting, one of the things it did to me is I viewed we were doing narcotics patrols, and I viewed it as I have to leave my wife in order to to go do this because people are using drugs.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_02: If if there wasn't this demand for drugs, then I wouldn't have to be we would have gone anyway, but it it's still today I struggle even, you know, like marijuana at the time was something we were uh interdicting.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: And and so still today I find myself um struggling with some of that internal um b because of I I had to leave my new bride uh for six weeks at a time.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was very different.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: It made it to where at the end of that tour you can you go to the the the assignment officers in Washington DC and ask for what you're gonna do the next assignment.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you start that about six months early, and and I asked to go to the academy and teach.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the second time where that uh that academic track record came around to uh came around to bite me.
• 1:05:52
  Douglas: What exactly do you think you're gonna teach?
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I had uh I was Is not at the top of my class.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: They they would like instructors to be uh academically proficient for some reason.
• 1:06:09
  Douglas: What?
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: What nonsense is that?
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_02: I I told them I have practical skills.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: And um they were looking for people that were sharp and practical.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_02: So didn't get to uh didn't go to the academy.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't get to go to the academy.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so then uh second choice was to go to a law enforcement detachment.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's that was what uh next two years.
• 1:06:34
  Douglas: That was in New Orleans, um which was a great uh You might not have gotten what you wanted, but I mean Panama City and then New Orleans, yeah, those can't be very far from the top of prime Coast Guard postings.
• 1:06:52
  Douglas: I mean those are some pretty good places to be.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: They're good for good for young people.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, New Orleans brings its own New Orleans was a an interesting place place to commute to.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, for you know, being six years out of Southwest Kansas at that point, never being in a city, uh driving it was crazy.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: Dramatically different for you.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_02: Dramatically different.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_02: And and driving through the Coast Guard base was not in uh it was in what they call the ninth ward.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was in a a challenged part of town.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it was it was very good for me um having grown up really sheltered in southwest Kansas.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was actually a very good cultural um experience for me to be in New Orleans.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_02: And not just from being in the city, but then being out in the outlying areas.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: We would we would go down and work operations all the way from Appalachia Cola, Florida, to uh Bayula Battery, Alabama, to uh down in Venice, uh, Louisiana, um over in the Lochs, uh outside of Lafayette, south of Lafayette, and um over into uh South Texas working uh uh turtle excluder devices on shrimp boats.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was a it was a neat cultural.
• 1:08:19
  Douglas: So what what ship were you on there?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: So as a detachment, we were a specialized team.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um we we were a seven-person team, and I was the officer in charge.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_02: I had uh six enlisted guys, and um all we did was law enforcement, and so we would we would deploy onto whatever ship was gonna carry us to do the mission.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_02: So um so we would go on uh uh often m half of our job was going on deploying on a Navy ship.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_02: That Navy ship would go down to the Caribbean and it would work just like a Coast Guard cutter.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: We would find a boat that we felt like fit a drug target, um, and the the we would lower the co the uh Navy ensign.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: We'd raise the Coast Guard ensign so that the posse, not posse comitatis, but some of the related rules in regards to um the DOD versus the Coast Guard being able to enforce uh national law, federal law versus international law.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so for that two or three hour time period, it became a Coast Guard cutter instead of a Navy ship.
• 1:09:31
  Douglas: And so just by changing out the ensign, you become a different ship.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_02: We literal uh you legally had to change, we would send messages to uh Geotif West, had been Jodif East had been set up by George Bush under his era.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um they were a combined services and agency uh headquarters.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: So you had everybody, you had reps in the room from all the military services, DEA, ATF, all of these, you know, they had a piece of the pie in the room in Key West.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_02: You were out in the field, you would call in and say, We're we think we need to do this boarding, and we would shift what they call tactical control and operational control from the Navy to the Coast Guard.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the Coast Guard rep in that room would say, Okay, Jones, your team runs the ship, go do the boarding.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_02: The captain of the ship still had, you know, was gonna I wasn't gonna tell him how to steer the boat or anything like that.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_02: He was a 05 or an 06, but it was legally a Coast Guard ship, and then I was responsible for the conduct of the boarding.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so my team would go over and do the boarding and come back.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that was about half the time of what we did.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Other time we'd fly, you know, when we weren't, we would be gone about six or eight weeks um doing that, and then we'd be home six or eight weeks, and we'd be doing training or doing local operations, doing local ops would be working with the DEA in downtown New Orleans, doing interdiction boardings on uh boats that were coming up the Mississippi or doing fisheries boardings out in the Gulf.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um and then they uh um twice went over to the Persian Gulf with that team um to do international uh embargo boardings were going on.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So wow it was a it was a great it was a good two years.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: It was operationally it was a good two years, uh, but it circled back around to that idea of how did life change.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um when we got married that second year on Courageous, my desire was to step out of that.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: I I I as a young man, we always called that stuff was the tip of the spear.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was those were great jobs.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: They were getting you chest candy, uh, you know, medals and that type of thing.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: It was a rush.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you missed your family, and and and in missing your family, then that dictated when you were in foreign port, your morals and scruples would be tested by where's your where's your honor gonna be.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so I I we had we had our first child.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_02: My second trip to the Persian Gulf, um, we we might you know came back and our first child didn't recognize me.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so those were that made me want to I still wanted to be operational, but it made me say, you know what, I I might not need to be in that part of enforcement uh anymore.
• 1:12:39
  Douglas: Uh-huh.
• 1:12:40
  Douglas: How long were you on those deployments to the Middle East?
• 1:12:43
  Douglas: How long was that?
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was supposed to be 75 days.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_02: It was set up as 75 days at a time, yeah.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that would fluctuate, you'd go 75 to 90 different different, you know, uh a plane bringing people over would break or uh an operation was going on.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_02: We got sent on my second trip down there.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_02: We uh we we ended up being taken out of the Persian Gulf Theater and sent down to Diego Garcia out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
• 1:13:14
  Douglas: Oh, really?
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um to board a uh NOAA ship.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what was NOAA doing wrong?
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:22
  Douglas: Or or were they get were they going somewhere where you were gonna be assisting them?
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, they were there were some issues on the chip.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_02: Issues on the chip.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's an interesting, that was an interesting, that was an interesting boarding.
• 1:13:37
  Douglas: Um I'm I'm guessing you can't get into that, so I won't push you on that.
• 1:13:40
  Douglas: But as you're so you're looking at this that not necessarily being tip of the spear, but you still want to be in the law enforcement.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:13:48
  Douglas: And also, how long when by going through the academy, how long had you signed up for what was your commitment to the Coast Guard coming out of the Academy?
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Five years.
• 1:13:58
  Douglas: Five years.
• 1:13:58
  Douglas: So now you're four years into that, trying to figure out what to do.
• 1:14:02
  Douglas: Are you thinking that you want to be more than five years in the Coast Guard?
• 1:14:07
  Douglas: Or are you Nancy at that time thinking, okay, let's get this next year and figure out where we want to go?
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_02: No, we we don't certainly don't have the vision of retirement, but we're like, well, we're having kids.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_02: The first one cost us$12, the second one cost us six.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_02: We're still having kids, maybe we should.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like they got a great insurance program.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um no, I I think I think we were getting paid.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, we were getting paid just enough.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they always say you spend what you make, you know, and we were getting paid just enough to be comfortable.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_02: She was able to stay home.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_02: My my first assignment um when she first got pregnant, um we we uh we called, I remember we called out of Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I called home and she told me she was pregnant, and um and and it was like, okay, what are we gonna do and how we're gonna do it?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, I I think I want to stay home.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're like, okay, we made the commitment that that's how we would start, and you know, whether it would stay that way or not.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so financially, it it as I promoted it was to where it would allow that to happen.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's that's why we stuck around.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there were a few times in the career where I looked at getting out a little more seriously, and uh each time just the the economics of it.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um sometimes the the satisfaction is much deeper looking back at it than it was at the time.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Than it was at the time.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um but but um they paid you just enough to keep you okay.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Keep you suckered in.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Suckered in.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we got this guy.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, but it did, and and it also, so we came coming out of that law enforcement.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_02: My second my second trip to the Persian Gulf was um enough it was edgy enough operationally, and they the the insurgents at the time were doing nuisance bombings, and so they would they uh we were based out of Bahrain, they would blow up the bathroom in a holiday-in motel in town, or um blow up something where Westerners were gonna be, and so just setting you off.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, you'd be sleeping at night and some car, you know, a taxi was just dropping off a few people from being out on the town, the taxi would take off and peel out, and you were bolt upright in bed.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_02: Umers was they blew the face off of Kobar Towers.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Saudi Arabia was just over the causeway where we would go over, and that's where we'd go over and get our uniforms and stuff when we checked in.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a year after or so that I came back that they they blew the face off of Kobar Towers and killed several Air Force people.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_02: So there were it was edgy enough where I was like, you know, um, I'm wanting to be home with my wife more, uh, and and my daughter didn't recognize me when I came back.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um started feeling some of the pressure being 24, 25 years old and being in charge of this seven-person team was very rewarding, but mentally uh was very taxing.
• 1:17:30
  Douglas: Did you when you got back from that and you're decided on the next thing, did you kind of let your the next level up?
• 1:17:37
  Douglas: Like, hey, I think I need to change in a different direction.
• 1:17:40
  Douglas: When you're in the military like that and you want to make a change, how easy is that for you to do that?
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_02: It it's it's so so.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_02: So the reason so I didn't go teach because my grades were so you know mediocre, but also because I was very successful in law enforcement on that first unit.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So they were like, well, you would be good at a lead at and so went the law enforcement detachment, sorry.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and so when they see you have that ability and that's your skill set, then the more you do that, the more locked in you are.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I jumped at that point.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_02: I went from uh I happened to um I happened to get in, uh I had a buddy from the Academy who was in New Orleans as a uh ship inspector, a vessel inspector, still out in the field inspecting ships and doing enforcement, but more as a code enforcement.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think of the guys that uh view safety inspections on fishing boats or the safety inspections on the cruise ships.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so he vouched for me and I was able to step over from law enforcement into that field.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't get that was not as glamorous as law enforcement.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_02: So when they had a law enforcement guy that had had the second tour that I did with the going over to the golf and stuff was high visibility.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_02: So having performed well in that, it made it uh for me to ask to go into that other more mundane field, they were happy to get me because that was more uh just it's still some big stuff, but it was uh less dynamic.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, if you can handle the dynamic of that, you can handle those checking the steering on a cruise ship.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_02: So um, and so it worked out, uh, started into that field in New Orleans.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's a much more of an academic load than the it's a physical, you're still inspecting ships, but you get into code of regulations, um, uh what uh how to set up different navigation systems on the ship, different officer ratings on the ship, um, different uh fire restrictions on the ship, um uh fire retardant issues.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's engineering officers and deck officers, and I was a deck, and so it that's what started uh and just being in New Orleans also, they didn't have to move me.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a cheap savings.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it allowed me to go from that operational law enforcement to operational vessel inspections that I would be in for the next um you know the rest of my career um but but field-wise for another six years until I worked up into leadership.
• 1:20:29
  Douglas: So where after New Orleans and where was the next spot?
• 1:20:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we were in New Orleans for three years doing the training for that, and that three-year cycle was when you're trained pretty thoroughly to be a vessel inspector.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and the nice thing about training is New Orleans is you see every kind of ship in the world.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_02: They got them all coming through there.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll see bulkers carrying wheat and tankers carrying chemicals and cruise ships and um uh U.S.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_02: flag and foreign flag and maritime issues of all kinds of different issues with sailors, and um and so the idea is they teach you to be an inspector so you know what it's supposed to be like on a day-to-day basis, and then as you do that for a couple tours, then you become an investigator so that when the ship has an accident, you can go look at the accident, investigation on scene, and say, this is what it looked like, should have looked like as an inspector, this is what happened, and so this is what we need to do to make it right.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Either, hey, we've got to change the way steering systems work on boats all over the US, or we've got to change the the buoyancy on some of these particular types of designs, or this officer was acting inappropriately and needs to have his license taken.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so did the three years of that in New Orleans, and then that brought us to uh Kodiak to our first uh uh in '99, came to Kodiak for our first assignment and uh was the uh what was that like from boy from Kansas coming to Alaska?
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was great.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was we really we didn't know what to expect.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_02: My poor wife thought, you know, she honestly didn't know if she thought it would be somewhere between an igloo and a shed.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um and she wasn't completely, we got to we got to Kodiak and we were in base housing.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it was it was uh the house had been built in the 50s, it was old World War II base, um uh Ride of Corner around the corner from Rosinky Sam.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and um but it but everybody was it was all the same.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_02: We were there were you know it seemed like there were 300 lieutenants, and and so we just meet you know, everybody was equal.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't have and we loved that.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it became and that kind of was our mindset for the rest of our time, even in Alaska today, is Alaska's this this setting of it makes it so that everybody has to help each other out to get through seasons and and culturally, so even though maybe you disagree with each other on some stuff, um, I can be I you know there's a leveling of the playing field by mother nature, and um, and it doesn't matter how nice your house is, when the landslide comes, it it may be wiped out along with the shack that your neighbor's living in.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so what we found was that spirit in Kodiak of Alaska making it a level playing field was very refreshing to us.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_02: It also, we had been in New Orleans raising little kids.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sunday afternoon meant, you know, you would go to church on Sunday and then you'd go eat out and go to the mall, shopping, spending money.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_02: It just wasn't a rewarding life cycle.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so we were looking uh for a change and needed change.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um we had uh working as a vessel inspector, I had I was exposed to uh a lot of different um environmental stuff like in shipyards and and some some uh environmental hazards.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we m so during that time we miscarried with our third child.
• 1:24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Whether that was related to any of that or not, uh it's hard telling.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'll what I do know is that I was more I was I was in more shipholds and more shipyards and more I was around more stuff, muck, than ever the rest of my career.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the one time out of six children we had, that's the one miscarriage we had.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So Kodiak, that's all to say.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Kodiak reset our marriage, it reset my career, and um and is what opened things up um in many ways.
• 1:25:01
  Douglas: So what were you on that?
• 1:25:04
  Douglas: Are you doing inspections, the same thing in Kodiak?
• 1:25:06
  Douglas: Is that mainly on the fishing fleet there then?
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that job changed a lot because it was a small, we went from New Orleans where there was a variety of shipping, big ships, to um the the only big ships were the uh uh a couple of the container ships coming in, the ferry testamina, occasionally a cruise ship, and then all fishing vessels.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_02: So they needed somebody who was uh a good enough inspector to do it by yourself, um, but then also transitioning into inspections and um and then able to lead it was a five-man shop, and so um they wanted somebody with kind of those that skill set.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so um we we fit that.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_02: I had been trying to go back to Panama City.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um that job uh we got an extension for a third year in New Orleans, um, and two weeks later that job in Panama City opened up and I was stuck in New Orleans, and um, and so it you know, I think honestly, I think it was an act of uh I I think it was in God's plan for us to come to Alaska, and um and we moved up there.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: It it um in New Orleans you would go out on cases, and I was just it was like I was a number.
• 1:26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Vessel inspector number 27, please go to inspect vessel number 480.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_02: It was all you didn't get to know people.
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um you got to Kodiak and it was personal.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um your kid's kindergarten teacher was the captain of the fishing boat that somebody got mashed on.
• 1:26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um the the crew that lost, you know, the crew that you had inspected their boat, um that boat's the one that's in trouble, and they're f they get called out at midnight and you get called at home that hey, we've got a case that's getting that's in the in the works.
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I was inspecting, but then I was also doing the investigations of fishing vessel accidents.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so the the bottom line was my purpose, the purpose that I had had when I was doing law enforcement, I lost that in New Orleans because I was just a number of inspecting barge holds and you know, just uh every day you were one of many.
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_02: I found that purpose again in Kodiak um by working alongside the smaller the fleet when I could know them more personally, and um and that changed my outlook long term on the career.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say that's when we decided um that we would stay in.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I still dabbled at getting out, interviewed for the FBI and got turned down right before nine eleven.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Kinda glad that I got turned down.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh uh my best friend from the Academy got picked up and just retired out of the FBI last year.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um so Kodiak was a neat, a neat experience.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um
• 1:28:00
  Douglas: And how long were you guys in Kodiak then?
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 1:28:03
  Douglas: How long were you in Kodiak?
• 1:28:04
  Douglas: Three years.
• 1:28:05
  Douglas: Three years.
• 1:28:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:28:06
  Douglas: And was Juno the next stop after Kodiak?
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Juno is the next stop.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_02: As an officer, you need some they want you to be administrator.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_02: In your rank at this time as Yeah, I had come up to Lieutenant Commander in 04 and I had never had a desk job.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's not uh that's unusual.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want a desk job.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_02: But um uh Ed Page, who run the Marine Exchange down in uh started the Marine Exchange later in Juneau, um he was the the chief of marine safety for the Coast Guard out of Juneau and um invited me to you know was like well if you gotta have a staff job either you know 50% chance you're going to DC.
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew I didn't want that.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And um and so he said, Well, if you like Alaska, come come to Juneau.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so what that's what we that's what we did.
• 1:28:58
  Douglas: And so what what was your staff job in June?
• 1:29:00
  Douglas: What were you doing there?
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_02: We were uh we basically were the um if you the Coast Guard breaks it operations into two pieces.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_02: You have a field unit, so this the captain that's in charge of Southeast Alaska.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in Southeast Alaska, he's running 13 different missions, everything from search and rescue to aids to navigation to law enforcement to um vessel inspections.
• 1:29:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so you had that field unit that's the the real command, but then at the headquarters level, both in DC and at the area headquarters, Juno, you had um area specific um uh people that would so I was the vessel inspections um liaison to those field units.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so when the field was doing had a particular issue, the captain of that unit might have been a search and rescue guy, but he's got a vessel inspection uh person working for him, and when they needed specific vessel inspection expertise, they would come to that office in Juneau.
• 1:30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_02: At that at that stage, I was no four.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't there were a few above me running that part.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_02: So so I guess if um yeah, it's kind of like you having this shop and you have clothing and you have sporting goods and you have fishing goods.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Fishing, guns, clothes.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Each of those would have a representative at the headquarters.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're running the shop, you're the daily encounter, but if you had an issue with guns, you would take your gun issue to Juneau.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and so I was the vessel inspections and investigations person at Juneau for that tour.
• 1:30:50
  Douglas: And how long were you in Juno then?
• 1:30:52
  Douglas: Four years.
• 1:30:52
  Douglas: And was that the is that when you retired?
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Or how no, that was um no, I I uh year-wise, that was oh two to 06.
• 1:31:04
  Douglas: Um when did you start refing?
• 1:31:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the next tour in Valdez.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_02: So you went from Juno to Valdez?
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_02: 2006.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_02: We uh 2006 we came up to rotate and uh again go back to DC and say where do you want to go?
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I had Valdez number one and Duluth number two.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then you list you have to list more.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Duluth?
• 1:31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Duluth.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Who wouldn't want to go to Duluth?
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever been there?
• 1:31:33
  Douglas: No, it seems like it'd be really cold though.
• 1:31:35
  Douglas: Yes.
• 1:31:36
  Douglas: But the Great Lakes would be pretty cool.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 1:31:39
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:31:40
  Douglas: So Valdez and Duluth.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Valdez and Duluth.
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so my a kid that I had, I said I coached at the academy.
• 1:31:48
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:31:48
  SPEAKER_02: A kid that I coached was my assignment officer by now.
• 1:31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And he uh he called and said, Hey, congratulations, I'm sending it to Duluth.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Why Duluth?
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_02: He said, because it's your number two pick.
• 1:32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, who's going to Valdez?
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, I don't know.
• 1:32:08
  SPEAKER_02: And and so we had a couple-day conversation.
• 1:32:12
  Douglas: You remember your buddy here.
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Come on now.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_02: He was actually, and he was right.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_02: He he said, so that first day, he said, if you don't go to Duluth, you're not gonna advance.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're looking for diversity.
• 1:32:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's a National Coast Guard, not an Alaskan Coast Guard.
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_02: He and he said, if you don't go to Duluth, you're not gonna pick up commander.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I said, Dave, you're wrong, and hung up.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh just like that?
• 1:32:40
  Douglas: He's like, You're wrong, and you hang up, you don't even leave them, don't let him have a response.
• 1:32:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was not it it was not a good day.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it was also Dave, and he and I we knew each other, and and um, so I knew we would come back to talk, but I I didn't want to hear it.
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I he he had told me he didn't know who was going to Valdez.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_02: I was a uh uh, you know, by this point I'd been in the field and in the headquarters in Alaska.
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_02: I knew what I was doing.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to go to Valdez because a volunteer pastor, uh a pastor of the Baptist Church in Valdez, volunteered at the Coast Guard base um as a chaplain.
• 1:33:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I had gone there, uh I had gone there during some crisis um helping out the unit.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because when you're the like I said, you're the gun guy and there's a gun problem at Ulridge, the gun guy comes to visit you.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_02: So when there's a field problem out in the out in the field and you're at headquarters, you go out.
• 1:33:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I had been there a few times and I had seen this this pastor volunteer as a chaplain working with the crew, and I was getting old enough at this point where I was uh paying more attention to people issues and and responsible more for them.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to go see how he did that.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_02: And and I liked his style.
• 1:33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I really wanted to go to Valdez.
• 1:34:03
  SPEAKER_02: And um so Dave and I talked the next day.
• 1:34:06
  SPEAKER_02: He and uh and he said, Um I think you'll make commander.
• 1:34:12
  SPEAKER_02: So you have oh oh one is the bottom and oh ten is the top, and uh O four is where I was at.
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, I think you'll make commander 05, but I don't think you'll make captain 06.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I agree with you.
• 1:34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Please send me to Valdez.
• 1:34:31
  SPEAKER_02: And he sent me to Valdez.
• 1:34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so Dave ended up being an admiral.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_02: He was a smart guy.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh again, back to the Academy days.
• 1:34:41
  SPEAKER_02: He was one of those smart, good-looking defensive backs.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, man, where did I strike out?
• 1:34:46
  SPEAKER_02: Genetics.
• 1:34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, did you make commander?
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_02: I made commander, yeah.
• 1:34:51
  SPEAKER_02: So so we'll get to the yeah, so we'll get to that.
• 1:34:53
  SPEAKER_02: I made commander and I didn't make captain.
• 1:34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't make it.
• 1:34:57
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:34:58
  Douglas: So with when you talk about this pastor in Valdez, yeah, and you're talking about more in the the how he treated people and that aspect, was there was there also an inkling that that might be a future for you at that time that you wanted to go down that road and maybe get become a pastor?
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_02: There was.
• 1:35:15
  SPEAKER_02: I had from high school, um, in high school, I felt that I had been encouraged by a few people to minister.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and in our church, they had a program where they taught us um to to give devotionals and to help out in the church.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had had done that since I was 13, 14 years old, um, and uh thought that might be the right thing to do, and yet flying planes sound a lot more fun.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um my dad pointed out that um if you're if you if you go to the military, you've got all these benefits, and you go be a pastor and you've got you know, kind of one long-term benefit, and that's it.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_02: And literally he was like, you go be a pastor, you know, and and and he's right, in many cases, still today, you you don't have health insurance, um, you you have to provide, you know, kind of like being an entrepreneur.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I had uh at that point in my life, I had felt two or three times a very strong calling to go be a pastor and to to get out and to go minister.
• 1:36:31
  Douglas: What what what was that like when you how you said you feel feel a calling?
• 1:36:36
  Douglas: Well what was going through your head, or how is how did that feeling manifest itself to you, Matt?
• 1:36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, usually it was you know being involved in people's lives and in Bible study, and um I would be working also, but being um in in those relationships and in the study and just seeking, you know, we all seek purpose and uh why we're here, uh you know, this feeling of why we're here and and just kind of uh I would also say kind of a gut feeling or or um a feeling in our soul.
• 1:37:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so there were two occasions where I just felt like, you know what, God made you where you have the ability to work in church.
• 1:37:23
  SPEAKER_02: The church, the people in the church taught you the Bible enough to where you know the word, and you're the more senior I got in the Coast Guard, I was dealing with personnel issues and seeing the train come off the tracks for people on a at least a weekly basis.
• 1:37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and these are good people.
• 1:37:46
  SPEAKER_02: These are these are people in the military who are have all the benefits and have uh uh decent pay and have a structured family and support.
• 1:37:54
  SPEAKER_02: They're in some challenging jobs, and and so I was witnessing in both my own life and in other people's lives um things be kind of crazy.
• 1:38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I would go into these Bible studies and work with in Kodiak.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_02: I started working with a couple of um uh officers that allowed themselves to be Christians in the workplace, not overzealous, but but to display a Christ-like demeanor and attitude in the workplace.
• 1:38:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um one of them was an incredible operator, uh Jimmy Ng.
• 1:38:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um Jimmy Yng was a uh naval uh an aviator that flew.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_02: There was a case out in the in the um uh grounds between out south of Cordova uh where uh a boat went down and uh uh they pulled they pulled two, I think two or three crewmen off.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_02: There was one heavier man who um uh was in the basket and fell out of the basket and was lost.
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um Jimmy was the third helicopter on scene.
• 1:39:08
  SPEAKER_02: The the first the first helicopter was a guy I knew that was a uh Machoist, um uh, you know, kind of kind of uh full of himself guy.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_02: And he came back from the first flight and said he literally um he poofed his britches.
• 1:39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um that the the the weather and the dynamics, he thought they were going in.
• 1:39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Second helicopter got out.
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they didn't soil themselves, but they came back and said it can't be done.
• 1:39:39
  SPEAKER_02: Jimmy got in the plane, flew out, and made it happen.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_02: So this was the guy, he was now a captain.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_02: I showed up in Kodiak as an 03 um in in my first, you know, kind of independent supervisor job, uh, way out in Alaska, away from family.
• 1:39:57
  SPEAKER_02: And this man showed me what it was like to be a Christian and to be a Coast Guard officer and to let them merge.
• 1:40:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, maybe I'm selling myself short and selling God short.
• 1:40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that calling would be was was sitting in my truck uh in the parking lot, um, just contemplating um and and feeling I didn't hear a voice or anything like that, but just feeling a a you know, a a presence in my in my soul um of you know I have a purpose for you and um is this what it is?
• 1:40:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt that three different times in the Coast Guard and all three times went back to my initial.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_02: I know you're there, God.
• 1:40:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I hear your calling.
• 1:40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I want to have life insurance for my kids and and want my wife to be able to stay home.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'll get back with you.
• 1:40:53
  Douglas: Didn't did Nancy have some wet sway in that at the same thing?
• 1:40:58
  Douglas: Like, hey, that's that's always gonna be there.
• 1:41:00
  Douglas: You can still do that later, but let's take care of a few things here first with the Coast Guard, like you're saying, to get things done up.
• 1:41:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think had I I I wasn't completely honest with her.
• 1:41:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think if I had told her all of that, she would have insisted that I get out right then.
• 1:41:15
  Douglas: Really?
• 1:41:16
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:41:18
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_02: She's in it as far as the ministry side.
• 1:41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um Nancy's Nancy's Nancy's got a lot better connection than I do.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_02: She's uh she's a good girl.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:41:33
  Douglas: So have you told her that that you'd have those thoughts before?
• 1:41:37
  Douglas: And or is is this gonna be the first time she's hearing this?
• 1:41:43
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so she knew, so we're going to Valdez, she was good, she loves Alaska.
• 1:41:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and uh and so from from the Kodiak, the first year, you know, PFD, always a big issue with military.
• 1:41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Do you file or not?
• 1:41:58
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_02: The first year she's like, I'm filing for the PFD because I'm staying in Alaska.
• 1:42:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, no way, I'm Kansan, they can't make me change my driver's license.
• 1:42:10
  SPEAKER_02: I always had, yeah, I was like, I'm going back to Kansas and gonna be a politician when I'm done.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, really, that was that was a goal at one point, you know.
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and um so so the bottom line is I did not file my first year.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Nancy and the kids got the PFD.
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:42:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the next year, I filed um and said, okay, I'll take it too.
• 1:42:33
  SPEAKER_02: But in the interim, we had failed, we had a$28 tax exemption for being Kansan, and that came up to the PFD folks, and so they came back and said, You're not getting the PFD.
• 1:42:49
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, the three that got it last year owe us five grand back.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, because you know, and and we had we had messed up the tax exempt, the$28 tax exempt.
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_02: That was an administrative oversight, but but I was I had been, we had all been very honest in Nancy saying he may go back south, but I'm staying in Alaska.
• 1:43:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm staying in Alaska, and she had been, you know, that was her gut feeling.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they asked for.
• 1:43:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no, I can't say that yet, so I'm not filing the first year, but the second year.
• 1:43:24
  Douglas: So then you had to pay it all back.
• 1:43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes, yes, we did.
• 1:43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that left, so we did not file, you know, we ended up uh, yeah, we didn't file again for a while.
• 1:43:36
  SPEAKER_02: I had a pretty bitter taste.
• 1:43:37
  SPEAKER_02: I I felt like they were calling me a liar.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt like we were being very honest with them.
• 1:43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I get it.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_02: Who wouldn't trade$28 for$5,000?
• 1:43:47
  Douglas: It's most people are gonna make that.
• 1:43:50
  Douglas: Most people are gonna make that switch.
• 1:43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um so the sorry, I'm kind of winding around.
• 1:43:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's fine.
• 1:43:59
  Douglas: So now you're I I'm just trying to figure out when this idea in the ministry, because you brought it up the one about these.
• 1:44:05
  SPEAKER_02: That had come from high school.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_02: From high school on.
• 1:44:07
  Douglas: That was that was kind of in the back of your mind.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_02: In the back of my mind.
• 1:44:10
  SPEAKER_02: That was my that I I had the bottom line was I had I have Shirley Brown was a woman um in my church growing up as a kid, and she was the only person that said you should go be a preacher when I was in high school.
• 1:44:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um did she tell you the reason why?
• 1:44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, not particularly.
• 1:44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Why why do you think it was?
• 1:44:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think I had the ability.
• 1:44:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think I had the ability and the aptitude to speak, and we were doing, we would do that.
• 1:44:41
  SPEAKER_02: We would go around to different small churches in western Kansas that didn't have a full-time pastor when their when their guy would take a vacation, we would fill in.
• 1:44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so we were doing that as a group.
• 1:44:53
  SPEAKER_02: There were four or five of us boys that would go, and one of you would lead singing, one of you would do the prayer, you know, and and so Shirley saw my involvement in that.
• 1:45:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think she knew she had been my fifth grade teacher.
• 1:45:06
  SPEAKER_02: She was close family friends, and um, and I think she knew my heart.
• 1:45:11
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:45:12
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I I and I think she knew what God's like.
• 1:45:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think she knew God's purpose.
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it just took me an extra 26 years to get there.
• 1:45:21
  Douglas: So you already said that you didn't really like studying, you know.
• 1:45:26
  Douglas: So some things come to us, some things come to us later in life than others, Matt.
• 1:45:29
  Douglas: And and I'm still trying to figure out what my purpose is, right?
• 1:45:32
  Douglas: Yeah, I'm still working on that.
• 1:45:35
  Douglas: I don't know if this is gonna be it or not, but I'm I'm I'm just trying whatever comes in front of me and see where it takes me.
• 1:45:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:45:42
  Douglas: So you get you get to Val Dease then, and were you making a conscious effort with this pastor that you talked about?
• 1:45:51
  Douglas: Were you trying to spend as much time with him and kind of pick his brain as you could?
• 1:45:55
  Douglas: Was that part of the plan?
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:45:57
  SPEAKER_02: I was second command um in Val.
• 1:46:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I went there, I was second command there.
• 1:46:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was a good career step, Coast Guard-wise, as far as the position.
• 1:46:06
  SPEAKER_02: I enjoyed it.
• 1:46:08
  SPEAKER_02: It was still in Alaska.
• 1:46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so all of those things fit.
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_02: But then I was also um working with Glenn, and that was the first time that I had grown up in the Church of Christ, which was, you know, a particular, you know, kind of they say it's not a denomination, but it it it you know, it's a style of church.
• 1:46:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was Southern Baptist, and the Church of Christ didn't have a preacher, it was just a very small church.
• 1:46:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I would preach every other week um there, but then on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, we'd go over to the Southern Baptist Church and go to their service, which was kind of unheard of.
• 1:46:47
  SPEAKER_02: If you're Church of Christ, you didn't go to Southern Baptist.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you were a Southern Baptist, you didn't go to Church of Christ.
• 1:46:52
  SPEAKER_02: The only time you got together was on prom night because neither one of you dated girls or did dance.
• 1:46:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you didn't dance, drink, or chew, and you didn't date girls that do.
• 1:47:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so uh a few times a year you could get together and be friends.
• 1:47:08
  SPEAKER_02: The rest of the time you were arguing over baptism or or whatever theological issue.
• 1:47:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the first um uh time that I had been exposed to that, and it was very refreshing and eye-opening, and um would would pave the career, pave the path for later for our coming to Haynes because we wanted out of that denomination that I've been preaching in.
• 1:47:34
  Douglas: So did you start what while you're in Valdez, did you start doing more theological studies at that time, or was that a constant throughout from high school on?
• 1:47:45
  Douglas: Were you constantly in the Bible and and doing those kind of studies, or did that up ramp up at certain point?
• 1:47:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing lay lay ministry in the church um after I cleaned up, you know, that five years I ran hard and did anything but church.
• 1:48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so after that, um uh yeah, was teaching, would would teach class at the local church, or became as I grew older, I I was a deacon at a couple different churches and um at and then in Valdez would speak and same thing within the Coast Guard.
• 1:48:18
  SPEAKER_02: If there was a Bible study um uh at the base or a Bible study on the ship, um I would I would participate or help lead it and had been doing that, got to Valdez and started taking a couple classes online um towards a uh uh a chaplain certificate or a master's degree in divinity.
• 1:48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um never ended up finishing that uh but took some classes and started thinking more of okay, when I retire, this might, you know, uh sooner or later, sooner or later I'm gonna have to address this calling that he keeps uh that he keeps bringing up.
• 1:48:54
  Douglas: He keeps beating me over the head with it, and sometime I need to answer.
• 1:48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:48:58
  SPEAKER_02: And Glenn introduced me.
• 1:48:59
  SPEAKER_02: He um so on the side, Glenn was the uh pastor, uh volunteer at the uh long-term care uh in Valdez.
• 1:49:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so he did that as part of his ministry, and he was getting ready to retire.
• 1:49:14
  SPEAKER_02: So his last year, two years, he started taking me and introducing me to that side of ministry, and I loved it working in the geriatric community.
• 1:49:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I loved it.
• 1:49:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so when he retired, I did that as a volunteer for a year with the uh hospital system there and long-term care uh before um before wrapping up in Valdez.
• 1:49:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and and Valdez was also a Valdez was a a a good place.
• 1:49:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was second command, so you're kind of the vice principal, so you're the personnel guy.
• 1:49:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so when people do crazy uh or people do great, it's your job to recognize the great and to to figure out okay, what are we gonna do with Crazy.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um and Valdez is a good spot for that.
• 1:50:04
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit more pronounced than the other places we were at in Alaska, I would say.
• 1:50:09
  SPEAKER_02: Kodiak had Kodiak Kodiak was just more of a physically physically dominant kind of place.
• 1:50:18
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't just rain, it poured kind of type place.
• 1:50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Southeast it mists, you know.
• 1:50:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's still bad, you know, it's still rainy weather, but Kodiak's like, I'm bringing it.
• 1:50:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so your personnel issues were similar in Kodiak.
• 1:50:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh he didn't just have a four-wheeler wreck.
• 1:50:36
  SPEAKER_02: He drove the four-wheeler off a stinking cliff and plummeted 150 feet to his death.
• 1:50:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:50:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um so Kodiak was this, you know, ster on steroids.
• 1:50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Valdez was just the amount of snow and a mix of young people.
• 1:50:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was post-9-11.
• 1:50:54
  SPEAKER_02: We had not only the the high visibility environmental responsibilities, but the security responsibilities at that point after 9-11.
• 1:51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so you had an additional large amount of young people, people 21 years old and younger, um, that were up here for the first time in their lives, and and still figured not just figuring out life, but now I'm in Alaska and I came from Virginia.
• 1:51:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so um as a dealing with personnel issues, um had a had a had an interesting impact on me in regards to looking long term at going into ministry.
• 1:51:37
  Douglas: And how long were you in Valdez and three years?
• 1:51:40
  Douglas: Three years?
• 1:51:41
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:51:41
  Douglas: And then was that the end of your career, or did you go back to June?
• 1:51:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh back to Juneau.
• 1:51:46
  SPEAKER_02: So uh so yeah, we went uh Valdez back to Juneau.
• 1:51:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was the second command in Valdez and went back to Juneau as the second command and so uh for Southeast Alaska.
• 1:51:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you have Juneau headquarters unit, which is the Admiral for all of Alaska, and you have uh the regional Southeast Unit.
• 1:52:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was went back as the deputy for Southeast Alaska.
• 1:52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Great job, worked all everything from uh law enforcement to and and I say worked, uh the crew working for me.
• 1:52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh all of the small, the one tins, uh the small boats, the I say small, the the cutters, the small cutters worked for us.
• 1:52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um probably had 150 people or so in the unit and um did search and rescue, vessel inspections, um, fisheries enforcement, all of it.
• 1:52:39
  Douglas: So what what years was that second tour in Juneau?
• 1:52:42
  SPEAKER_02: That second tour in Juneau was oh nine to um thirteen.
• 1:52:47
  Douglas: Were you reffing at that time?
• 1:52:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, started reffing in Valdez.
• 1:52:51
  Douglas: I thought so.
• 1:52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:52:53
  Douglas: I think that's the first time I saw you.
• 1:52:55
  Douglas: You were you were you were reffing at some junior high tournament or something down there.
• 1:52:58
  Douglas: Yes.
• 1:52:59
  Douglas: And I I I'm quite certain you got some calls wrong.
• 1:53:02
  Douglas: I didn't.
• 1:53:04
  Douglas: It's funny you mentioned that.
• 1:53:07
  Douglas: I mentioned it to you from the stand, probably.
• 1:53:10
  SPEAKER_02: I remember you, I remember Sarah.
• 1:53:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure you did.
• 1:53:14
  SPEAKER_02: I remember Sarah and the boys.
• 1:53:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah um the boys, so I it was my first my first time refining Juno was junior high in 09, and um the they had a a big tournament down there, and there were court after court after court.
• 1:53:32
  SPEAKER_02: There were like four courts in this gym.
• 1:53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and I remember Haynes, I remember the two boys being amazing, and I remember this tall, skinny lady, the coach, screaming at me.
• 1:53:46
  Douglas: I'm pretty certain at some of those tournaments her brother was in the stand screaming at you also.
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_02: Probably uh I I don't doubt that.
• 1:53:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that same year, uh that same year I kicked George Houston out of a game.
• 1:53:57
  SPEAKER_02: Did you?
• 1:53:58
  SPEAKER_02: So um, so uh I you at least didn't get kicked out.
• 1:54:01
  Douglas: Dang.
• 1:54:02
  Douglas: I didn't know.
• 1:54:03
  Douglas: I should have aspi I should have had aspirations for hire.
• 1:54:06
  SPEAKER_02: I uh yeah.
• 1:54:08
  Douglas: I've not been kicked out of a gym yet.
• 1:54:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:54:10
  Douglas: I still have time, but I held it over the years, so I well done.
• 1:54:15
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, so I reffed some of them.
• 1:54:18
  Douglas: They they've they stuck a mic in my face for a while, and I had to be careful.
• 1:54:22
  Douglas: I I wasn't always, but I had to be more careful with the microphone in front of me.
• 1:54:26
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't necessarily be mothers from Petersburg calling you.
• 1:54:30
  Douglas: I've I've I've called the school.
• 1:54:34
  Douglas: Didn't call me, but they called the school and it got back to me.
• 1:54:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:54:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you you probably both were right.
• 1:54:41
  SPEAKER_02: Seems like to some degree.
• 1:54:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's how those things usually work.
• 1:54:44
  Douglas: There there's there's that was one of the times when you you you have a lot of love for your alma mater and you you want the team to do well.
• 1:54:53
  Douglas: Yes.
• 1:54:54
  Douglas: And when it's not doing well, sometimes your mind goes places where it shouldn't go and probably said things that I shouldn't have said.
• 1:55:00
  Douglas: Okay.
• 1:55:01
  Douglas: Because it was I was just it was really disheartening at the end of that game on the way it turned out for Haynes.
• 1:55:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:55:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember that particular one.
• 1:55:10
  Douglas: I just I love broadcasting basketball.
• 1:55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:55:15
  Douglas: When my home team and kids that I've watched from a little kid, yeah, when watching them were just one first junior high tournament and stuff, you see them fifth, sixth graders or whatever, right?
• 1:55:26
  Douglas: And you're watching them play and they're not playing as well as you think they could, or that sucks.
• 1:55:33
  SPEAKER_02: Or it doesn't seem fair.
• 1:55:35
  SPEAKER_02: Or something doesn't seem fair.
• 1:55:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like on the referee side, we mess, I mean, it's not like we're pro-refs, and even pro-refs, we mess things up.
• 1:55:42
  Douglas: So when they mess it up after your kid has worked hard, that's and it's and I I I think it's beyond that, it's just you know there's in a small town like Haynes, there's gonna be cycles where you have a group of kids that really love the game and and want to participate in it.
• 1:56:02
  Douglas: They're gonna put the extra time into it.
• 1:56:04
  Douglas: And you can see it like this last year.
• 1:56:06
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 1:56:07
  Douglas: That that was one of those groups, and then you'll a couple years later, most of them just want to hang out with their friends, and you've got people that that's why they're there.
• 1:56:17
  Douglas: Is there if they didn't go out, they wouldn't have enough people for a team.
• 1:56:20
  Douglas: And you don't have that those strong personalities that help everybody else work along with it.
• 1:56:26
  Douglas: And it's like, should we just abandon the team for a couple years and then pick it up again when we got a group that's but you just see this ebb and flow.
• 1:56:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:56:36
  SPEAKER_02: On the performance side, and yet it being this the sportsmanship aspects of it and uh all of those everything.
• 1:56:45
  Douglas: So much that they learned besides that.
• 1:56:47
  Douglas: And and I think this gets back to my experience playing, so much of it was the expectations that how's the team gonna do this year?
• 1:56:58
  Douglas: Are you guys gonna go to state this year?
• 1:56:59
  Douglas: Are you guys gonna win?
• 1:57:00
  Douglas: And there's these huge expectations, and I found myself doing that on the radio with the kids.
• 1:57:05
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 1:57:06
  Douglas: That at tournament, it's like, oh, such and such, man, if they just spend a little bit of time working on free throws, they're gonna be a lot better.
• 1:57:13
  Douglas: They spend this much, if they spend 10 minutes a day working on their dribbling, they're gonna be a lot better point guard next year.
• 1:57:19
  Douglas: They they probably don't care about being a better point guard next year.
• 1:57:22
  Douglas: They're out there because they're with their friends and they'd rather be doing ceramics or charcoal drawing, who knows what their interest is.
• 1:57:31
  Douglas: They're just trying to help their friends, and here I'm trying to, oh, they should do this, they should do this.
• 1:57:36
  Douglas: It's like that's some of the stuff that I hated as a kid when people were putting that pressure on me, and here I was doing it on the radio to them.
• 1:57:43
  Douglas: And so that's why I was like, you know what?
• 1:57:45
  Douglas: I'm peace out, I'm done.
• 1:57:47
  Douglas: Yeah, I'm not gonna continue doing that.
• 1:57:49
  Douglas: And now, if the team's not playing that well or I'm getting frustrated during the game, I go home.
• 1:57:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:57:57
  Douglas: I just walk, I just I'll like, all right, I'm done for today.
• 1:58:01
  Douglas: I'll come back tomorrow.
• 1:58:02
  Douglas: But right now I'm but when you're on the radio, you kind of got to finish the game.
• 1:58:07
  Douglas: It's right there.
• 1:58:08
  Douglas: Otherwise, Sam's up there videotaping it, and all of a sudden nobody's talking.
• 1:58:11
  Douglas: Right.
• 1:58:12
  Douglas: And people on the radio at the other end are like, okay, this is there a technical issue?
• 1:58:16
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:58:16
  Douglas: Like, yeah, our answer just got up and he has had enough.
• 1:58:19
  Douglas: He has had enough.
• 1:58:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's an awesome opportunity, though, as far as making us moderate ourselves.
• 1:58:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I feel like that in ministry is is I have wanted to quit being a minister, and and I feel like this entire time, from back in high school all the way through, even up until about two years ago, um, I I kicked and bucked and was like, okay, God, I'll I'll I'll make a deal with you.
• 1:58:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll keep doing this.
• 1:58:48
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like I I consistently find I'm a better man when I'm ministering because than I would be when I'm not.
• 1:58:56
  SPEAKER_02: And like you're saying, being a you're on the radio, I have to work my way through this.
• 1:59:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I've got to, I've got to, I've got to make myself stay self- have some self-control.
• 1:59:10
  Douglas: And and part of the reason you know you you won't see me usually sitting down at a game.
• 1:59:16
  Douglas: I stand behind the scores bench.
• 1:59:18
  Douglas: I do that on purpose.
• 1:59:20
  Douglas: Because if I'm sitting in the bleachers and I think you missed a call, I'm gonna yell at you about it.
• 1:59:26
  Douglas: If I'm standing behind the scores bench, that comes from the scores area, that's not appropriate.
• 1:59:30
  Douglas: Yes, so it's kind of my own way of a little self-restraint there because I know if if Matt or Michael or Stuart or Tyler, whoever had you guys missed a call.
• 1:59:41
  Douglas: My my first thing is they they don't realize it, and they're just looking for me to help them realize their mistake.
• 1:59:48
  Douglas: There you go.
• 1:59:49
  Douglas: So that's that's exactly what they're thinking of.
• 1:59:51
  Douglas: I wonder if Doug thought that I got this right.
• 1:59:55
  Douglas: Obviously, I need to let you know that, but and sometimes we should.
• 1:59:59
  Douglas: Sometimes we do need to know that.
• 2:00:01
  Douglas: But I I think the way I do it now, I don't know, you can tell me if this, but I'll approach you guys between games or something like that.
• 2:00:10
  Douglas: Hey, what what did you guys see on that?
• 2:00:13
  Douglas: Because I saw this and this, and it didn't look like what you guys called.
• 2:00:16
  Douglas: And sometimes you guys are like, Yeah, I think we kicked that one.
• 2:00:19
  Douglas: Right.
• 2:00:20
  Douglas: We probably screwed that up.
• 2:00:21
  Douglas: Or you guys say, Well, the rule book says this, and I was like, Oh, well, yeah, that was a change from last year.
• 2:00:25
  Douglas: I forgot about that.
• 2:00:26
  Douglas: And just to have a conversation like that, I feel is probably better than me sitting in the stands yelling at you.
• 2:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: No, I mean, nobody reacts well to that type of thing, usually.
• 2:00:41
  Douglas: Some people, you know, some people might it it's only taken me 56 years to figure this out.
• 2:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:00:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and and here I'm reffing, and you make a bet.
• 2:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: Mike Gainey.
• 2:00:52
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, Mike had a call on Isaac a couple years ago that I didn't like, and we got back in the room and I was a little more vocal than I should have been.
• 2:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how unprofessional is that?
• 2:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: Were you reffing the game with him?
• 2:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, well.
• 2:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh boy, I wait until your dog's got the ball.
• 2:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and I, you know, and afterwards you feel awful, but certainly the the uh I think officiating more than any other thing I've done invites that idea of self-analysis and not just self-analysis, but critical analysis with the crew.
• 2:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: And when done well, it builds you up.
• 2:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: When done poorly, it it tears that organization apart.
• 2:01:39
  SPEAKER_02: And there are some Haynes is fortunate with officials right now.
• 2:01:43
  SPEAKER_02: There are places in Alaska that don't have very many officials right now, and it's partially because of the way that dialogue has happened over the years.
• 2:01:55
  SPEAKER_02: If it's always critical, if it's oh you know, where you say you ask, what did you see on that?
• 2:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, it's different asking what did you see, and then and you know the answer you're you're driving to, and it's just being passive aggressive.
• 2:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: Where if you say, What did you see, and I tell you in there in your eye, oh okay, well that makes sense.
• 2:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: That type of stuff really can make for a great group of refs.
• 2:02:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I've been in some lockers where uh it's it's it's just uh they're more they're they eat their young, basically.
• 2:02:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and the Bible talks about that.
• 2:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you're you you keep bickering at each other, you're gonna tear each other apart.
• 2:02:35
  Douglas: Well, the the thing I like about you guys now too is you're so supportive of each other that when you guys are between games or when you go back at halftime, you guys are doing a critical analysis of where you're at, and you're having some of these same discussions as a crew.
• 2:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:02:51
  Douglas: When I first started reffing, there was none of that.
• 2:02:54
  Douglas: It was kind of like a hey make bag, everybody else just leaves, and it's like, yeah, you get to deal with that.
• 2:02:58
  Douglas: And the the study and things like that just wasn't there.
• 2:03:04
  Douglas: And uh that's kind of one of the reasons I quit doing it, is I I wanted to get better, but I I didn't really f have that those mentors around me to really help push me in that direction.
• 2:03:15
  Douglas: So I figured I'd get into coaching instead.
• 2:03:18
  Douglas: And yeah, then uh I was like, yeah, this is a bad move.
• 2:03:21
  Douglas: I need to do something else.
• 2:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: The kids were great.
• 2:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're emotionally invested.
• 2:03:26
  Douglas: Well, you get yeah, you're emotionally invested in the kids are great, but not all the parents are.
• 2:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 2:03:32
  Douglas: Some not all parents have a realistic expectation of the skill set of their children.
• 2:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: You bet.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and different reasons for coming into it.
• 2:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: And um you know, I think the state associations are all very different.
• 2:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: And when I went down and worked in Kansas for two years after retiring from the Coast Guard, they were very organized.
• 2:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: And who attended some training, went to a uh went to a camp in at KU that was very good for a week.
• 2:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and so I came up here from having done that experience, came to Haynes, and it was pretty informal the first year.
• 2:04:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then um we started talking about some of this stuff.
• 2:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and Mike Gainey and then uh Keith Noorr from Fairbanks came down and he and Mike got to be buddies.
• 2:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I credit, you know, I I had seen the different styles of officiating from Valdez to Juneau to Kansas.
• 2:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: In Kansas, you work all over a region.
• 2:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd work a hundred games a year in probably 15 different towns.
• 2:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and you were working with a different crew most nights.
• 2:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: So I came here and was just like my main job is preaching as a ref, I love it, but I'm just gonna absorb into try to see what how the local guys do it.
• 2:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I give a lot of credit to Mike Ganey because his uh that second year, him working with Keith and hitting off and saying, you know what, let's take this.
• 2:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: Can we do some of the studying some of the students?
• 2:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: He's done a great job.
• 2:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: I would agree with you.
• 2:05:08
  Douglas: Michael's been huge on that.
• 2:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, and the personalities allow that they match up, and and so um he and then Hannah, and then the guys that still come in and help and backfill, you know, whether you're always still on that list.
• 2:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: Tyler's come back and good luck getting me on the court again.
• 2:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: Don Don Nash, Don Nash was kind of approaching retirement and still had some some input in there for a couple years.
• 2:05:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Stuart, um, Jesse, um, Coleman, you know, they are all um spirited, impassioned people, but but open to dialogue.
• 2:05:46
  SPEAKER_02: And man, that's fun.
• 2:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a neat spot to be in.
• 2:05:52
  Douglas: Well, you guys got a good crew there.
• 2:05:53
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:05:54
  Douglas: So after June, you went I didn't know you went to Kansas for a couple years.
• 2:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we got to Juneau.
• 2:05:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was uh second command of Southeast Alaska, and then the last um the last assignment I moved up to the Admiral staff um uh which was the 06 job.
• 2:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: So back to where that my football buddy said you're not gonna make cat.
• 2:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I I got moved into the captain job and thought I would make captain as a result of that, hoped, um, but knew we'd stayed in Alaska our last 15 years of our career.
• 2:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh and and uh didn't have a graduate degree.
• 2:06:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that uh uh I had done a exchange with the Marine Highway System where I worked for them for six months.
• 2:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was c a kind of a professional development thing that we do, um where as an inspector you learn what it's like to have the shoe on the other foot.
• 2:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: That was very good.
• 2:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: But it so the bottom line is I got in, I was the chief of marine safety for all of Alaska, um but still didn't pick up that 06 promotion.
• 2:06:57
  SPEAKER_02: Had the chance to stay and get uh picked up one more time.
• 2:07:01
  SPEAKER_02: But during that time, Katie, our oldest daughter, uh Katie Russell now that lives here, uh she was had gone off as a freshman and run uh cross-country at Oklahoma Christian University.
• 2:07:13
  SPEAKER_02: I took vacation and went down and watched her run one week, came back, um, was trying to work through the investigation on the uh kullock, um, the uh oil rig that uh ran aground, uh broke free from broke free from the tug and then drifted onto a native burial ground in Kodiak.
• 2:07:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I inherited that investigation during my as the chief of marine safety and uh said, you know what?
• 2:07:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm I think I'm done.
• 2:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm done.
• 2:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so we finished up that investigation that year.
• 2:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and at the same time, we're looking for a job in uh in preaching new no doubt in my mind.
• 2:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I didn't have any doubt at that point what I was gonna do.
• 2:08:03
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh a job preaching in our old uh denomination opened up 30 minutes from Nancy's dad uh in Kansas.
• 2:08:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was just uh, okay, that's where we're supposed to be.
• 2:08:16
  SPEAKER_02: And went um and it uh went great for two years, but um we wanted a bit more our theology had changed and was a little bit more broad, like the church here that uh at Port Chilcoot's non-denominational.
• 2:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: And even the Presbyterian church here, all of the churches, they they've got their title, but they're really kind of community churches.
• 2:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: They're not quite so stovepiped.
• 2:08:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um I like that about ministry in Alaska.
• 2:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we got invited to Echo Ranch and and then that led to coming to Haynes a couple years after that.
• 2:08:52
  Douglas: Okay.
• 2:08:53
  Douglas: And here since been here since 2019.
• 2:08:58
  Douglas: 2019.
• 2:08:59
  Douglas: Okay.
• 2:09:01
  SPEAKER_02: They uh yeah, it's been great.
• 2:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: The church has been good to us and stay a while longer.
• 2:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, my my daughter's moved here.
• 2:09:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh had and I've dating a guy, and they he just bought land.
• 2:09:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh uh so far um it's looking like I might not have a choice.
• 2:09:18
  Douglas: Got those grandbabies, good luck getting Nancy to leave grandbabies going anywhere.
• 2:09:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh and so and I and I think you know, from a ministry perspective, it's where you know, maybe I said no, and yet he knew you don't need a uh you don't need a theological, you don't need somebody speaking Greek to preach at a church in Haynes.
• 2:09:42
  SPEAKER_02: You need people that can maybe you can go back and reference the Greek and be professional, but you know how to relate to people in the in the Alaska setting.
• 2:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I think God knew what he was doing in prepping us during that time to bring us here.
• 2:09:58
  SPEAKER_02: My f my five some of my some of my better ministry is is comes from the idea of grace and having second chances and that five years that I was running hard, uh putting bottles through you know bus windows and that type of thing.
• 2:10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um gives me a a much better sense of of uh empathy um when it comes to preaching some of that stuff.
• 2:10:26
  Douglas: I I think that's an important thing that when you've when you live some of the things that you're talking about, it carries a little bit more weight when somebody uh when you're when you're counseling others that are going through hard times when you can write with your own hard times.
• 2:10:41
  SPEAKER_02: It does and and that helped, you know, in my Coast Guard time, about mid-career we didn't go into when we went from Kodiak I uh between Kodiak and Juno kind of had a a uh mental health crisis.
• 2:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I wouldn't say a full breakdown, but uh ended up having to go uh on some pretty hard hard hard meds, uh what we called the Betty Ford Betty Ford Clinic Drugs, uh, because in the Coast Guard uh you know they said you've got six months to fix this or we're gonna med board you out.
• 2:11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um what was the trigger for the thing?
• 2:11:20
  Douglas: And I had been wrestling.
• 2:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I started I there may have been some of it hereditary, but it compounded a great deal following the Persian Gulf.
• 2:11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that being part of the way I carried it and still do is this the psychologist it's like this uber responsibility.
• 2:11:40
  SPEAKER_02: You feel like you're responsible for everyone.
• 2:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Well, I I had that team in the Persian Gulf and I was responsible for everyone.
• 2:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and it you know, everybody on my team, if we fouled that up their lives were at stake.
• 2:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and then you see that, you know, whether when you're doing an investigation in Kodiak and And you allow a uh an underlayment on on some fiberglass repair, and and that patch comes off in the middle of a winter storm on the backside of Kodiak.
• 2:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, so there were some things like that that began weighing heavily on my mind.
• 2:12:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and ended up the the diagnosis was uh OCD, where it's some of those things they just keep they just keep coming back and you can't flush them back.
• 2:12:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I I didn't go, you know, I knew the Coast Guard was going to be pretty tight on that.
• 2:12:32
  SPEAKER_02: So for six or seven years I didn't didn't say anything, just tried to cope with it.
• 2:12:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh finally, finally had to get some help.
• 2:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so mid-career, got help, went through that, and and ended up being such a better such a better um leadership opportunity the second half of my career because I was willing to talk about that and help these junior enlisted people that were working for me see, hey, if you're wrestling with this, let's go get it taken care of now so you can you and your family can be better for the next nineteen years instead of waiting seven years like I did.
• 2:13:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that uh uh you know, tying that back into the whole ministry thing, uh whether it's a ministry or whether it's being a good person in your job uh in the Coast Guard or whatever else, just being good to people.
• 2:13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Not having so much self-pride that you can't say, Yeah, I I've been there, I've done that.
• 2:13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you know, even just listening to the people's experience.
• 2:13:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's why it feels funny to sit here and talk for four hours.
• 2:13:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what I'm that's not what I'm supposed to be doing.
• 2:13:45
  Douglas: Maybe it is.
• 2:13:48
  Douglas: It is, but I know why you're feeling uncomfortable, but I I think some of the power for this, Matt, is sharing your story and acknowledging the times that you've stumbled or were less than perfect and the things that you've had to overcome.
• 2:14:04
  Douglas: It's good for all of us to hear.
• 2:14:07
  Douglas: Because a lot of times people's like, oh, he's a preacher, he's never done anything bad.
• 2:14:10
  Douglas: Right?
• 2:14:11
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:14:12
  Douglas: It's got it's some preachers, some pastors, and that that's the illusion that they want is that they've they've lived this life, and for all of us, it's hard to have that vulnerability and admit our shortcomings to others.
• 2:14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:14:25
  Douglas: Because it's we we don't want everybody to see those cracks and those faults in us.
• 2:14:31
  Douglas: It's hard.
• 2:14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:14:32
  Douglas: And so I think opening up about that, I think, is extremely powerful when we're able to do that.
• 2:14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:14:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've all got to be like that with each other.
• 2:14:43
  Douglas: Absolutely.
• 2:14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And when we're not, especially for leadership when we're not like that.
• 2:14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or ministers when we oh well, I've lived like that.
• 2:14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for Pete's sake, uh Moses didn't, Noah didn't, uh Lot.
• 2:15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I mean, there's some train wrecks in the old testament.
• 2:15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Paul, you know, there there's some plenty of examples.
• 2:15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was only one guy that did it perfectly, and uh he uh sure didn't mean me neither.
• 2:15:16
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:15:17
  Douglas: Well, me neither.
• 2:15:18
  Douglas: So what what what have we missed in the story of Matt?
• 2:15:24
  Douglas: Sam has a Sam has a question.
• 2:15:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel that your Coast Guard career has helped you be the chaplain for EMS?
• 2:15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:15:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 2:15:36
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't get into that.
• 2:15:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think it is certainly it's very different jobs.
• 2:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: In the Coast Guard, it's easy.
• 2:15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Both law enforcement, any of the roles in the Coast Guard are easy because you're federal and you're gonna be moving around.
• 2:15:50
  SPEAKER_02: So some of the toughest things I did was as the investigator in Kodiak when I would go out and we would work um death cases, um, people would die, and and and the the helicopters, the search and rescue guys, they go get the body, bring it back, put it away, well then it's they're done.
• 2:16:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was my job to then follow up for the next six weeks figuring out what happened and and how they how they perished and um and and that type of thing, working with the families, interviewing the families.
• 2:16:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and that gave me a sense more on the personal level.
• 2:16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I consider uh being in Haynes as long as we've ever lived anywhere, and I get to know the people and realize that that the the folks on the EMS and fire team and the police are exposing themselves in a small town where everybody knows each other's business, and and so that is just uh maximized.
• 2:16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm like, wow, I had it really easy compared to what they're doing.
• 2:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and yet they're also doing it in the Coast Guard.
• 2:17:04
  SPEAKER_02: We had resources, we had a work-life team that um mid-career they started coming out and saying, hey, when we have critical stress incidents, we're going to debrief right after the incident.
• 2:17:16
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe it was a body recovery that was particularly um in that the corpse was in bad shape, or maybe it was you you drew your weapon and and maybe it was a use of force incident or something like that.
• 2:17:31
  SPEAKER_02: But we had these re deep resources that would help um people address those and and work them through mentally, and we found that if you eat a lot of times it's just talking and listening, and after you get that off your chest, then 9.8 times out of ten, you can move on to the next case.
• 2:17:55
  SPEAKER_02: You identify that point to you go get it taken care of like I did mid-career.
• 2:18:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the first half of my career they didn't have that.
• 2:18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so in small towns, when they don't acknowledge that or they don't have that, or they just don't have the depth of the bench to it's all they can do to get to the fires, grab the people, put it out, you know, and then the next call comes, and they're all doing it as volunteers.
• 2:18:20
  SPEAKER_02: It um it has made me want to want to volunteer to help.
• 2:18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I would say it humbles it's humbled me in the sense that I look at what they're doing and they're doing it for nothing, and I did it for uh pay that is still paying me in retirement.
• 2:18:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that kind of you know makes me really appreciate and respect um what they do.
• 2:18:49
  Douglas: Yeah, you were uh a key component for us during the slide too, because you just you were fairly fair, you knew a lot of the people in the Coast Guard.
• 2:18:57
  Douglas: Yeah, and so you there's times that you were kind of a liaison for us to kind of help us figure out what we were doing and coordinating with the Coast Guard during the 2020 slide.
• 2:19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think everybody optimized whatever resource they had to do that.
• 2:19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so mine, that niche certainly was open for me, but but then other people in the you know, Richard Clement working logistics and having done that at Aliasca and and you and and um Aleca stepping in in the manner that you did, and um, I think everybody in town kind of worked what they could.
• 2:19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I can and and yeah, what a what a what an unreal um I I mean that was just a big thing for our small town and and so much, you know, there are there are some things that very difficult things that have come out of that, but there are also some uh I can I can tell you that there are some relationship pieces and some impacts on people's lives um that have come out of that slide that have um when we look at uh like when you talked about my aspect of being on the eagle as a young man versus looking at it when I'm in my 50s.
• 2:20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's only been seven years and that's a relatively short time in a lifespan.
• 2:20:21
  SPEAKER_02: But uh an amazing thing about being a minister is being able to see life change in people.
• 2:20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And life change, I would say, doesn't happen maybe, maybe four or five times in our life do we really have significant events where we change a habit or change an attitude or change a key part of our personality.
• 2:20:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something that happens every year.
• 2:20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um there have been uh for all of the difficulty and and um struggle and work that that took, um there have been some really neat life change pieces that have come of that.
• 2:21:03
  Douglas: Changed my life considerably.
• 2:21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And still is.
• 2:21:10
  Douglas: Still is I've had a few of those moments so far.
• 2:21:21
  Douglas: But uh yeah, they uh they definitely throw your life in a spin cycle, and when you come out the other end, you're just at first you're just kind of like, what the heck just happened?
• 2:21:34
  Douglas: But then like you said, as you look back at it, you can see some, you're like, oh wow.
• 2:21:40
  Douglas: These are the these are the these are the flower blossoms that are growing and afterwards.
• 2:21:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think and that's a difficult time, that gap in between.
• 2:21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what we had, you know.
• 2:21:55
  SPEAKER_02: The Christmas uh we we had the gathering after, you know, we the parade came shortly after the landslide.
• 2:22:02
  SPEAKER_02: We had the Christmas parade and the gathering for the memorial down there.
• 2:22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And in that gap, you know, I I think people we struggle with what to say to each other and how to comfort each other.
• 2:22:15
  SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes the best answer is just not to say anything.
• 2:22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I love like the hospice people um uh that that have are are so good at having been through how they have a depth of experience in that.
• 2:22:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the rest of us, we just try to fill in, and so there's these awkward moments where we'll try to say something trite that we've heard said before, or where really people are just we don't know what to say.
• 2:22:42
  SPEAKER_02: I can't I don't know why it happened, but I I don't know where we're going.
• 2:22:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I think just knowing that there's a time window where that's that's as good as it's gonna get.
• 2:22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we're when we're burying a p a p you had when you're burying your dad.
• 2:22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, there's a time where that the best thing I can get is a guttural moan.
• 2:23:04
  SPEAKER_02: The best thing I can get right now is a cry.
• 2:23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um later, a week from now or a month from now or seven years from now, I can see where that was going in life.
• 2:23:15
  SPEAKER_02: But at the time, yeah, that that just it doesn't make sense, and don't try to sit there and tell me that it does.
• 2:23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think the community has done well with that.
• 2:23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think overall it built us.
• 2:23:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's unfortunate, and I don't think it's just Haynes that um life goes through cycles like that.
• 2:23:38
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have a family, if it's a family you're dealing with and they have a critical thing that draws the family closer, and then uh we get amnesia.
• 2:23:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a crowder song that says, We get I get amnesia, I forget that you've been coming around.
• 2:23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh you know, we get amnesia of the good that happened and came out of the slide, and the next thing we know we're we're bickering again over whatever issue.
• 2:24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and that's a hard that's a hard thing, I think, in our world right now, and certainly in our community as well.
• 2:24:13
  Douglas: It's hard to get up each day when there's challenges and to also see the blessings that are in each day.
• 2:24:21
  Douglas: There's both out there every day.
• 2:24:23
  Douglas: Just which one do you want to focus on?
• 2:24:26
  Douglas: And sometimes those challenges can be really hard to push past and look around them because they're so huge in front of us.
• 2:24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 2:24:34
  Douglas: To see the whatever's hiding behind it that pretty special on its own.
• 2:24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:24:40
  Douglas: But when you have one or more challenges just stacked up in front of you right at the beginning of the day, it's it's hard to look past those sometimes, and you can get pretty enveloped in that and and you miss those flowers on the other side of that big rock.
• 2:24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 2:24:54
  SPEAKER_02: I yep.
• 2:24:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that that I think that's a hard thing that in our careers uh we tend to want, okay, everything's stacked on.
• 2:25:03
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta keep promoting, you gotta keep getting better, you gotta keep doing more, you know.
• 2:25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um a ship is built to be in a storm, right?
• 2:25:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's built to withstand a storm, but it is not built to withstand a storm that lasts day after day after day after day after day.
• 2:25:25
  SPEAKER_02: So if you take a state ferry and you run it and you run it and you run it, and you don't get it invested in, it starts falling apart, right?
• 2:25:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't mean to go down the ferry track.
• 2:25:36
  Douglas: But but it's all here can relate to them, right?
• 2:25:41
  SPEAKER_02: We all get to the weapons on that after your storm.
• 2:25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um but but that idea that oh no, you know, and I and I did that.
• 2:25:51
  SPEAKER_02: So my first that's why I didn't go get help in the Coast Guard.
• 2:25:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're paid to fix the storm, we're paid to operate in the storm and conquer the storm.
• 2:26:00
  SPEAKER_02: You can't do that for you can't do that for 10 or 20 or 26 years straight.
• 2:26:07
  SPEAKER_02: You can't do that for a year straight.
• 2:26:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, and so that idea of of of being okay, I'm okay with stepping back, I'm okay with I've got to take some vacation, I'm okay with we've got to get more people to make this sustainable.
• 2:26:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I I you know thank goodness our uh you know, the police department has has gotten some more bodies to where they're it's more sustainable now.
• 2:26:33
  SPEAKER_02: They they uh Travis and and Max um they carried a heavy load for a long time.
• 2:26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Heck yeah, they did.
• 2:26:42
  Douglas: They we all owe them a huge debt because the the what they stepped up and did and the sacrifice their families made for this community with the amount of hours that those guys were working for as long as they did.
• 2:26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 2:26:57
  SPEAKER_02: That was huge.
• 2:26:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the same the the fire department, you know, and they've and so they're they've made some uh it's great.
• 2:27:03
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a chief that's helping with some of those procedures and processes, and um, but like the the hours that Al would put in or Brian Clay would put in, it's all of that.
• 2:27:14
  SPEAKER_02: The bottom line is all of us, regardless of what that storm is, sooner or later we've got to have a a break in it.
• 2:27:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh and and our the American way sometimes keeps us from doing that until it's too late.
• 2:27:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so in in my view, we we either come down, like in the Coast Guard, they would train, they trained for a long time, suicide prevention.
• 2:27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was like either thing everything's fine or you're committing suicide.
• 2:27:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's like wait, there's a lot of gap in between between them.
• 2:27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Can we do something with that?
• 2:27:50
  SPEAKER_02: And they finally came out with the idea of resilience, and that was that that rubber band being stretched.
• 2:27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if I stay stretched all the time, um eventually the rubber band's gonna break.
• 2:28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you you gotta let that back down.
• 2:28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I I just that's a where you were in the mayor cycle.
• 2:28:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I would love for you to be mayor again.
• 2:28:18
  SPEAKER_02: But the the I also understand the load that that carries.
• 2:28:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so some of these people that that take those positions, um uh you know, different different jobs in town, being a teacher.
• 2:28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And some of the um the issues that you're wrestle, whether it be from from administrative and pay and that type of stuff, versus um the the issues with the kids, you know, there's a point where that resilience has to come back in some.
• 2:28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that either comes from getting more people or maybe taking ourselves and saying, I'm gonna I'm gonna step back a little bit.
• 2:28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what so I sorry, I bring all that back to the uh about a year after the landslide, I finally um we were still working the work group that was addressing all that, and uh uh I eventually got to the point where I was like, okay, I've got to be done for a while.
• 2:29:18
  SPEAKER_02: My my latest doctor checkup had my my diabetes numbers were going like this, and my blood pressure, everything was going up except it was supposed to be coming down.
• 2:29:28
  Douglas: And um, so I didn't I didn't go see a doctor during that time, so I'm probably a good joint.
• 2:29:33
  Douglas: I think my whole life, my natural inclination has just always been if you see something, you just do it.
• 2:29:42
  Douglas: And so if there's nothing there, you just go it.
• 2:29:44
  Douglas: And I I remember boy, I was I can't remember, I was probably a junior, probably I think it was between my junior and senior high school.
• 2:29:52
  Douglas: Um that they were having the softball tournament here, and they need somebody to do the fields and stuff.
• 2:29:58
  Douglas: I was like, oh, I can I can run my truck around and run the drag around the field and do that.
• 2:30:04
  Douglas: And then it's like, oh, we need somebody to run a concession stand.
• 2:30:06
  Douglas: I've had some people that are gonna help me, and then nobody showed up, and I'm trying to run all this stuff by myself.
• 2:30:10
  Douglas: And by the last day, I was just I was so sick, I got through it and I just collapsed.
• 2:30:17
  Douglas: And for a long time, that was kind of my MO is I would just push until my body's like, nope, you're done.
• 2:30:25
  Douglas: And it'd get me sick enough that I'd spend a couple days in bed and it's like, okay, let's just rinse and repeat and keep doing this.
• 2:30:31
  Douglas: And as hard-headed as I am, it took me decades to get out of that cycle and realize it's like, okay, you probably could take I'm I I still suck at it.
• 2:30:41
  Douglas: Right.
• 2:30:41
  Douglas: I just I'm still terrible at taking enough time off.
• 2:30:45
  Douglas: Because my idea of taking time off is let's go for a go for a hike or let's go for a look get get on my Peloton and do a do an hour and a half or whatever on the Peloton and then go for a hike.
• 2:30:55
  Douglas: And because just sitting and doing nothing uh it just seems wrong.
• 2:31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Same, same here.
• 2:31:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that that's okay though.
• 2:31:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's what you're that good energy that you're creating being on the Peloton or whatever.
• 2:31:09
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be.
• 2:31:10
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to go.
• 2:31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Hawaii's nice, and it's good to get that that deep break.
• 2:31:15
  Douglas: But even just doing some of that stuff, you know, I think I put in a lot of miles during my three years as mayor on the Peloton.
• 2:31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, probably some uh overtime on the Peloton.
• 2:31:24
  Douglas: Yeah, when I when I could.
• 2:31:26
  Douglas: Yeah, I got some miles on that sucker.
• 2:31:28
  Douglas: Well, thank you for doing it.
• 2:31:30
  Douglas: It was a good stress reliever.
• 2:31:32
  Douglas: So yeah, I I think I've I I don't know if you know, I put my name in again.
• 2:31:37
  SPEAKER_02: I did not know that.
• 2:31:38
  Douglas: Yeah, so I'm running again this fall.
• 2:31:40
  Douglas: So I'm thinking it's it's it's it should be easier than the last time.
• 2:31:46
  Douglas: We're not in the midst of a global pandemic.
• 2:31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that helps.
• 2:31:50
  Douglas: So we're that should be a little bit easier.
• 2:31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:31:54
  Douglas: Um no natural disasters.
• 2:31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 2:31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:31:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's hard.
• 2:32:02
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of animosity.
• 2:32:04
  SPEAKER_02: The with the world, even like in an officiating, going back to the refereeing thing, people are much more verbal now than what they were when I first started in 06, 07.
• 2:32:16
  SPEAKER_02: They're much more verbal.
• 2:32:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not just here, like I said, we went to I went to Kansas.
• 2:32:21
  SPEAKER_02: They kick people out of the gym all the time down in the lower 48.
• 2:32:25
  SPEAKER_02: You get snarky, you're gone.
• 2:32:27
  SPEAKER_02: And that just we don't, I'm so thankful Haynes is very good for for our crowd.
• 2:32:32
  Douglas: There's times that probably should have been kicked out of the gym.
• 2:32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:32:36
  Douglas: Before you got here, but you can probably ask Michael, he'd probably agree there might have been some times that I probably should have been kicked out of the gym.
• 2:32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was umping a softball game and got kicked out of the game.
• 2:32:45
  SPEAKER_02: As the umpire?
• 2:32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:32:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's somebody in charge of the umpire.
• 2:33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I still had a little commander.
• 2:33:04
  SPEAKER_02: A little that commander ring on the top field.
• 2:33:07
  Douglas: I can't.
• 2:33:11
  Douglas: Get out of here.
• 2:33:12
  Douglas: I love it.
• 2:33:13
  SPEAKER_02: But to the mayor thing, was it good for you to take a to have that break?
• 2:33:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because it goes, it also when you say, like in the Coast Guard, we said uh a gal named Molly Waters, great officer, she's she she always said, find a gap and fill it.
• 2:33:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and that was a great motto.
• 2:33:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I still want, I want my kids to do that, I want to do that, but I can't fill all the gaps.
• 2:33:36
  SPEAKER_02: And and so if I'm gonna be the chaplain, I'm gonna be the, you know, there's a point.
• 2:33:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and and I also, if we're gonna have the family and the children that I want to have, somebody's got to be doing it.
• 2:33:48
  SPEAKER_02: So so Nancy is gonna be doing that.
• 2:33:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so if if they expect her to well put on this pretty preacher, Pastor Bonnet's wife hat and a denim skirt.
• 2:34:00
  SPEAKER_02: And come over here and play the piano and be everything else to the church.
• 2:34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's only so much to go around.
• 2:34:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so my wife has carried that role at the house.
• 2:34:10
  SPEAKER_02: I've carried it in the public, but there's only so much.
• 2:34:14
  Douglas: And and so that's it's to have a gap.
• 2:34:18
  Douglas: One of the things I so going into when I ran for mayor the first time, I told myself, told the family, told pretty much anybody to listen to them just gonna do it for three years.
• 2:34:27
  Douglas: Because I knew from when I was on the assembly before that after about three or four years being in public meetings all the time, it it takes a toll on you.
• 2:34:40
  Douglas: And also, at least I I I think it's good to have a break off of that because when you're there dealing with the issues all the time, sometimes it becomes personal that this is something that you keep fighting over the same things, and I taking that step back, taking a breather from it, let other people fight over some things for a while, but then also looking at how when you're in the building, how can we affect change differently?
• 2:35:10
  Douglas: Because when you're dealing with the subject all the time, you become really good at it and knowledgeable about it, and so you just kind of assume everybody else is knowledgeable about it, and so then they pick up people pick up flaws in it, you're like, well, no, this is great.
• 2:35:27
  Douglas: This is we've had this forever.
• 2:35:28
  Douglas: And so I think being able to take a step back, interacting with the government in a different way, recognizing some of the things that's boy, that you know, some of that isn't as good as we thought.
• 2:35:39
  Douglas: Let's let's maybe we can make this more customer-oriented, yeah, and make it easier for the people that are trying to come in and work with the borough.
• 2:35:50
  Douglas: How can we make that more seamless and less stressful for the taxpayers when they come in and and work with the borough?
• 2:35:57
  Douglas: I'm not saying it's always stressful, but there's some things that I think can we can do better on that.
• 2:36:02
  Douglas: And and yeah, I I think taking a break and having a different perspective is good for us.
• 2:36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Perspective is exactly what I was thinking.
• 2:36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we tend to all have the perspective from the seat that we're from the seat that you're in.
• 2:36:14
  Douglas: That's right, that's how it's change that view every once in a while, I think is good for us.
• 2:36:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, sir.
• 2:36:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, sir, it is.
• 2:36:20
  Douglas: And with you know, going through the the slide and the pandemic and moving forward with that and trying to be a full-time business uh owner and working at the store, it took a lot of time and I'm not I wasn't getting any younger.
• 2:36:35
  Douglas: And uh I learned a lot of lessons about how to really how to deal with stress and stuff in the in the interim.
• 2:36:42
  Douglas: And uh yeah, there's some things that came came about in the last few weeks, and I thought, you know, this is it's time for me to to get back in and hope if people want me to to do some more service for the community.
• 2:36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, great.
• 2:36:58
  Douglas: So we'll see, but I feel recharged and ready.
• 2:37:03
  Douglas: Okay.
• 2:37:03
  Douglas: And hopefully I can keep doing this too.
• 2:37:06
  Douglas: Sounds good.
• 2:37:06
  Douglas: Because this is one of the things that keeps doing these interviews is is great um therapy for me.
• 2:37:15
  Douglas: It really charge it, it charges my batteries, listening to other people, hearing their stories, having that, and and some of them it's yeah, there have been some some ones that are hard to go do just because of the emotional impact of it.
• 2:37:28
  Douglas: Wow.
• 2:37:28
  Douglas: But just having people being willing to share that much of themselves, it uh it it gives me a lot of fuel to to do other things.
• 2:37:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's it's interesting you mentioned that because I I talked to you before agreeing to do this.
• 2:37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, because I want to questions for one of the questions.
• 2:37:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I had some questions myself.
• 2:37:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I did, and I and I think that's because I know partly because I know myself, and I know where I sit on on several issues as a person, but I know where I want my ministry to go as a pastor and what I think is good for the the community and the people around me.
• 2:38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And and and um and and so I wanted to know which of you know of presuming that others have similar uh boundaries that where you were coming from.
• 2:38:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I appreciated where you're what you've done in this and especially the diversity of it.
• 2:38:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and again, that comes back to perspectives, like wow, when we listen to each other and hear those other perspectives, um it it it it makes us take pause.
• 2:38:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and I'm not real great at that.
• 2:38:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm much better at the you know, doing the work teams and stuff like that in town is in my wheelhouse, the firewood ministry.
• 2:38:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's in my wheelhouse, because I don't have to.
• 2:38:46
  SPEAKER_02: You think about you're thinking about others and you're serving others, but then you're just physically working.
• 2:38:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a lot to me that's a lot easier than thinking about man, why does he why is he approaching that so much differently than me?
• 2:39:01
  SPEAKER_02: That take that mental energy to deal with that.
• 2:39:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I feel like after doing that 26 years in the Coast Guard, I've not quite my rubber band is still fixing um from that experience.
• 2:39:15
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and so I appreciate others doing it right now because that takes a lot.
• 2:39:21
  SPEAKER_02: That emotional energy takes it takes a whole different beast.
• 2:39:26
  Douglas: It does, yeah.
• 2:39:28
  Douglas: And no, guy, getting back to one of the things you said, what one of my friends was telling me, he goes, you know, I've listened to your podcast, and you don't have a lot of questions, you just let kind of people talk.
• 2:39:36
  Douglas: And I was like, Well, I don't know if Doug Listens is gonna be as good as Doug has questions for a show title.
• 2:39:43
  Douglas: But but it is that is part of what I enjoy the most, is just listening to what other people and understanding, and that's why I tried to start, you know, growing up in Kansas and ending up in Alaska, because the different places you've been, the different jobs you've had have all shaped you into the person you are today.
• 2:40:02
  Douglas: And if we have abundant I've I've said this numerous times on here, that if we have a better understanding of somebody's life story, it's easier for us to relate to them on how they view things that are in front of us today.
• 2:40:16
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with that, and that it allows some change uh as need be in our in our own self.
• 2:40:22
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:40:23
  Douglas: Yeah.
• 2:40:23
  Douglas: So it allows me to reflect on on my views and positions on things and just seeing those from through different eyes.
• 2:40:31
  Douglas: Sometimes it reinforces it, sometimes it has me questioning things, sometimes it has me changing things.
• 2:40:36
  Douglas: It it just it just depends on on who I'm talking to, what we talk about.
• 2:40:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:40:42
  Douglas: Um but no, it's been an incredible journey for me to to do these, and that's why I want to keep doing them.
• 2:40:48
  Douglas: Is because I think each one I do, I'm l I'm learning.
• 2:40:51
  Douglas: I'm learning more about other people that I've I've known for a few years or a long time, lifetime.
• 2:40:57
  Douglas: I'm learning more about myself.
• 2:40:59
  Douglas: Yep.
• 2:41:00
  Douglas: Well as long as Sam and Marty keep wanting to be on the other side and doing this and keep doing it.
• 2:41:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds good.
• 2:41:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks for letting me be part of it.
• 2:41:10
  Douglas: Thanks for joining us, Matt.
• 2:41:12
  Douglas: Appreciate it.
• 2:41:13
  SPEAKER_02: All right, all right, thank you, buddy.
• 2:41:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.