Latest / SpaceTomatoes / Jim Paulk's Wild Ride Through Life's Greatest Hits - From Tomato Baskets to Submarine Shenanigans S2-EP11

Transcript

Jim Paulk's Wild Ride Through Life's Greatest Hits - From Tomato Baskets to Submarine Shenanigans S2-EP11 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  She said, I'm taking it home.
• 0:02
  And she grabbed the baby with a blanket and went home.
• 0:06
  She lived in a small cottage with her sister, Sarah.
• 0:10
  Her name was Nurse Ann.
• 0:12
  And she lived in that small cottage with her father.
• 0:15
  And they had a potbelly stove in one room.
• 0:19
  And they put the baby in a thatched tomato basket that had a handle on it.
• 0:30
  All right, everybody.
• 0:49
  Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
• 0:53
  I'm one of your hosts, Havoc.
• 0:55
  I'm Alex.
• 0:56
  Hello.
• 0:56
  Welcome back.
• 0:57
  And today we've got with us a special guest, Jim Puck, a 92-year-old former submariner who recently released a compilation of firsthand stories and a book called Shaking Up the World.
• 1:11
  Welcome to the show, Jim.
• 1:13
  Thank you for having me.
• 1:15
  Absolutely.
• 1:17
  So what gave you the idea to compile this list of stories from people?
• 1:22
  Well, to tell you the truth, I got talked into doing a first book, which is called Swimming for Our Lives.
• 1:32
  And after I retired from Procter & Gamble, I spent in the Navy, and then I worked for Procter & Gamble.
• 1:40
  And then I got into marine conservation work for about nine years in California.
• 1:45
  and then after that I started writing articles
• 1:50
  in fishing magazines because I got to be pretty well known
• 1:53
  in the state and the magazines wanted my name in their magazines
• 1:57
  so they talked me into writing stories on trips and whatever
• 2:02
  and anyway when I put that out people said
• 2:06
  won't you do another book and I said what do you mean another book?
• 2:09
  I said I wasn't planning to do this one
• 2:10
  And so I said, OK, the group that I admired the most in life was my classmates at the Naval Academy.
• 2:22
  When we got there the first night, we had no responsibilities and everyone was running around.
• 2:29
  Where are you from? What's your name? What did you do?
• 2:32
  And it seemed like to me that everybody I met had graduated valedictorian in their high school class.
• 2:42
  They were president of their class, and they were captain of the football team.
• 2:47
  And I'm thinking, I was none of those things.
• 2:50
  What am I doing here?
• 2:52
  But I didn't get an appointment out of high school, which is a good thing because I'd never made it.
• 2:59
  But I went to a military college up in North Georgia in the mountains and for a couple of years before I got an appointment to Annapolis.
• 3:09
  And so I had a couple of years of experience and I had that military background, which was very helpful to me.
• 3:17
  And because I kind of started off as a leader, it just that's the way it worked out.
• 3:23
  And so it but I was such in awe of my classmates and where they had been and what they had done and everything.
• 3:32
  And and then all 70 years later, I'm thinking I'm even more impressed.
• 3:39
  And look what these people did.
• 3:41
  How many people can say that they had a classmate that was the architect of GPS?
• 3:48
  he's the one
• 3:50
  is the one that we have GPS
• 3:53
  today
• 3:54
  and how many can say
• 3:57
  they had a classmate
• 3:58
  that was an astronaut
• 4:00
  that spent three days on the moon
• 4:03
  and I had a
• 4:05
  classmate that was
• 4:07
  NFL official for 27
• 4:09
  years and did three Super Bowls
• 4:11
  and I could go on
• 4:13
  and on and on all these
• 4:14
  and I'm just
• 4:15
  I mean like I said here I am
• 4:18
  I'm a nobody and, and all these guys, it's unbelievable.
• 4:22
  The stories from these guys, I said,
• 4:25
  the world needs to know about these, about these guys.
• 4:29
  And so I decided that that's what I do is I do this book.
• 4:34
  And so I announced to my classmates,
• 4:37
  I'm going to do a book of experiences.
• 4:41
  And no one said, who the heck are you to write this book or whatever?
• 4:47
  You know, they all said, what can we do to help?
• 4:51
  And it was a group effort to put out this book.
• 4:56
  It has 80 authors, I mean, 80 stories by 59 authors.
• 5:03
  And they're not bios.
• 5:05
  They're not like, I was born here and did this and this.
• 5:09
  They're extremely experienced stories.
• 5:14
  I'll tell you one.
• 5:15
  I had a classmate that was born in eastern Poland, and his family was Jewish.
• 5:24
  The Nazis took his family and put them on a boxcar, and they went west to Auschwitz.
• 5:30
  When they got there, the Nazis divided them up into three groups, with the boys in a group, the men in a group, and all the women and girls in another group.
• 5:40
  His name was Art Aronson.
• 5:42
  and when they got off the boxcars, the wind was blowing in that direction
• 5:47
  and they could smell the burning flesh and they knew they didn't have much of a future.
• 5:53
  And Art found out much later that his mother and his sister were executed immediately
• 5:59
  and his father was sent to a work camp and he did chores and stuff around the camp,
• 6:05
  but he didn't see his father again and the war was over.
• 6:09
  his father went to New York
• 6:12
  and they sent him back to his home
• 6:14
  in eastern Poland
• 6:16
  where a former nanny for the family
• 6:19
  took care of him
• 6:20
  until they could find his father
• 6:22
  and put them together
• 6:23
  but it was two years after the war
• 6:25
  before they got back together again
• 6:27
  and then they went to Texas
• 6:30
  and somehow he got an appointment to Annapolis
• 6:32
  and he was brilliant
• 6:34
  he spoke for five languages
• 6:36
  and a really sharp guy
• 6:39
  He even had a normal tattoo of the number on his arm.
• 6:45
  But that's an unbelievable story.
• 6:48
  And it's probably the worst story in the book.
• 6:55
  You say, what's the saddest story?
• 6:58
  That's probably the saddest story in the book.
• 7:01
  I had a classmate
• 7:04
  Walt Mucow
• 7:05
  who was born
• 7:07
  in Shanghai, China
• 7:09
  his father was a retired
• 7:11
  chief quartermaster in the Navy
• 7:14
  and
• 7:16
  if you remember history
• 7:17
  the Japanese invaded northern
• 7:20
  China and started moving south
• 7:22
  and
• 7:23
  the bombs started coming down
• 7:25
  and the chief said well we better get out of
• 7:27
  Shanghai
• 7:28
  So the family left there and went to the Philippines, which was a mistake.
• 7:35
  And this is a long story.
• 7:37
  And this story would make an incredible movie because of all the action and the drama in it.
• 7:44
  But they had trouble getting there.
• 7:47
  And they were in a dugout canoe, and they started taking on water.
• 7:51
  And they finally, one of the kids had a flashlight, and he signaled the ship.
• 7:56
  And the ship came over and got him off.
• 7:57
  and the dugout canoe went down.
• 8:00
  And then they landed there, and they were given a house to live in,
• 8:07
  and the father was going to work for the Navy there, of course.
• 8:11
  And they told him if the air raid sirens go off,
• 8:16
  he'll run to the fort down at the end of the street.
• 8:19
  So soon as they were having air raids,
• 8:22
  the Japanese were attacking and strafing and bombing
• 8:26
  and they ran to the shelter, and when it was all clear, they came back,
• 8:33
  and the house they didn't get in, had a direct hit, and they had lost everything.
• 8:37
  They didn't have a change of clothes, nothing.
• 8:40
  Everything was gone.
• 8:41
  And he went to work, and everyone there was dead.
• 8:45
  The bomb had hit there, and they were killed.
• 8:48
  So, and then after that, you remember the Bataan Death March.
• 8:53
  We had 75,000 American soldiers were captured, and then they had some provisions they shared with the men, and they were told to go surrender to the Japanese too.
• 9:09
  So when they surrendered, the Japanese thought his father was a spy and interrogated him pretty harshly, but eventually they decided he was not.
• 9:20
  And the way they put the family, it was Walt, his younger brother, his mother and father were put into an internee camp, which is a civilian term for prisoner of war camp.
• 9:31
  And they were moved from camp to camp during the war.
• 9:35
  And towards the end of the war, the Army heard the rumor that the Japanese planned to execute everyone in that camp because they didn't have any food to feed them.
• 9:48
  So they were just going to kill them all.
• 9:50
  So they worked out a raid with the Filipino guerrillas.
• 9:55
  They coordinated and they helped lead them.
• 9:58
  And so the raiders parachuted in.
• 10:01
  They killed the 75 Japanese guards.
• 10:04
  They put the people into an Amtrak, which came across the water, put them in,
• 10:10
  and they went back across the water into behind U.S. lines, and they were rescued.
• 10:14
  At that point, Walt was 13 years old and weighed 52 pounds.
• 10:20
  he had always starved to death
• 10:23
  and during the time
• 10:25
  that they were there
• 10:26
  he and his younger brother would sneak out
• 10:28
  under the fence and go out in the jungle
• 10:31
  and climb trees to get fruit
• 10:33
  if they had been caught they would have been
• 10:35
  executed but
• 10:36
  this story is
• 10:38
  unbelievable and
• 10:40
  Walt's still alive
• 10:43
  and
• 10:44
  did a good job of writing his story
• 10:47
  and it's one of my favorite ones
• 10:49
  because I
• 10:50
  I think one of the editors, the editor of our book said that this book is history at eye level because it's a lot that went on in the latter half of the 20th century from all the wars,
• 11:05
  from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and of course the Cold War.
• 11:11
  And a lot of my classmates were involved with development of the satellites.
• 11:18
  When Gary Pyre was shot down in the U-2, we could no longer fly over Russia.
• 11:26
  So we had to develop satellites to go up and do the spying for us.
• 11:31
  And my book actually has three photographs that were taken from those satellites.
• 11:38
  One of them is a Kremlin, and one of them is a Russian launch site.
• 11:45
  So we had all of those things.
• 11:47
  And our guys and my classmates were involved in developing that.
• 11:53
  And at the time, satellites were pretty crude.
• 11:57
  If they wanted a certain image, they had to rotate the whole satellite.
• 12:01
  They couldn't just move a camera.
• 12:02
  They had to turn the satellite so they could bend down and get the photo.
• 12:06
  So it was not much sophistication, but it was the beginning.
• 12:11
  And they got to start doing that.
• 12:14
  But I'll tell you, one of my favorite stories is about Bruce DeMars.
• 12:23
  And Bruce was from Chicago, and he worked at a bank as an assistant janitor, as a teenager.
• 12:33
  He was from a very poor neighborhood.
• 12:35
  He had zero future, nothing.
• 12:38
  His future was going to be nothing.
• 12:39
  But the owners of the bank took a liking to him, and he had told them that his biggest
• 12:47
  dream of their life was going to the Naval Academy.
• 12:51
  And somehow they got him an appointment to Annapolis.
• 12:56
  And so when he got there he hadn had his physical And so when the hospital corpsman was checking him over he said your blood pressure is too high
• 13:07
  He said, but you look like you're totally exhausted from your trip here from Chicago.
• 13:14
  Go over there and lie down on that couch and sleep for a couple hours,
• 13:17
  and I'll check you again.
• 13:19
  So two hours later, he checked him.
• 13:22
  He said, okay, Red, you're good to go.
• 13:25
  and he got into the academy.
• 13:27
  So he did well academically, graduated, went into the submarine force
• 13:32
  and got selected for the nuclear program and advanced up to the ranks.
• 13:37
  You won't believe this.
• 13:39
  He became a four-star admiral.
• 13:43
  Wow.
• 13:44
  I was at one from nothing to one of the top admirals in the Navy.
• 13:49
  And when I did these stories and I got through editing
• 13:54
  and I sent it back to the person if they were alive and said,
• 13:58
  check it over and change everything.
• 14:00
  Make sure it's accurate and to your desires.
• 14:06
  And I didn't get anything back from Bruce.
• 14:09
  And I kept sending notes, Bruce, have you had a chance to read the story yet?
• 14:14
  Eventually, I got a phone call from his son.
• 14:19
  He said, Jimmy, he said, Dad has not been doing very well lately.
• 14:23
  He said, but I read the story to him, and he looked up at me from the bed, and he said, I want to buy that book.
• 14:35
  And he passed away about two weeks later, but he's one of the finest people to ever live.
• 14:43
  He was the second successor to Rick Hovich's job as the director of Navy Naval Reactor.
• 14:49
  So he was in charge of all the nuclear programs in the Navy, and he did a lot because he's been that job for nine years.
• 14:57
  But there's no mention in the story of what he had done.
• 15:01
  The story was janitor to admiral.
• 15:04
  I call it a fairy tale.
• 15:08
  That is a very interesting story right there.
• 15:11
  My goodness.
• 15:13
  Very impressive.
• 15:14
  Wow.
• 15:14
  And so these are all people that you were at the academy with?
• 15:20
  Yeah, the classmates.
• 15:22
  The class of 1957.
• 15:25
  And like I said, we graduated.
• 15:28
  Well, we started with 1160 and graduated 848.
• 15:33
  And thankfully, I was one of the 848.
• 15:36
  Right.
• 15:37
  It's a rigorous program.
• 15:39
  It's physical.
• 15:40
  And the academics are thrown at you so fast.
• 15:43
  And most schools, you have an unlimited amount of time to study.
• 15:47
  But the academy, you have a brief time and everybody has to study the same amount of time.
• 15:53
  You can't have extra study.
• 15:56
  And then every afternoon, you're out for sports.
• 15:58
  You're not studying.
• 16:00
  And then you have dinner.
• 16:03
  And after dinner, you can study until 10, 15 or so.
• 16:06
  Then lights out.
• 16:07
  As upper class, you can stay up to 11.
• 16:10
  but it's like bang, bang, bang
• 16:14
  and everything is thrown at you pretty fast
• 16:16
  and I don't know how they do it today
• 16:19
  because there's so much they have to cover there
• 16:22
  and they must be 10 times smarter than we were there
• 16:27
  but it's a very rigorous program
• 16:29
  and there were two things that we had to do to graduate.
• 16:35
  You had to be able to swim a mile with your clothes on
• 16:39
  and some people couldn't do that the other thing there was a one mile obstacle course
• 16:46
  and you had to run that at at a certain within a certain time and a lot of people had trouble
• 16:54
  getting over the wall that was that was hard to pull up get over the wall but
• 16:59
  i was lighter and and i was pretty strong so i didn't have any trouble with that i enjoyed running
• 17:05
  the optical force. It was kind of fun. It was kind of like being an army raider in World War II.
• 17:11
  Oh, nice.
• 17:13
  What happens to the 300 or so that did not make it to graduation? Do they go home or do they do
• 17:21
  something else?
• 17:21
  1160 to 848. So several hundred didn't make it. For one reason or another, it could be an academic,
• 17:28
  make it could have been medical and it could have been because they got too many demerits
• 17:35
  and you were booted out.
• 17:36
  Or it could have been that they decided that that was something they didn't want to do.
• 17:42
  And up until the third year there, the first two years, you can make a decision to leave.
• 17:48
  And after that, you owe the government some time and you're going to go into military
• 17:54
  and serve off your obligated service.
• 17:58
  Going into it, was the idea that you wanted to become a submariner or was that just how they gave you?
• 18:07
  You know, I started out, my roommate was a Marine and his father was out of the class of 27.
• 18:15
  So that's 50 years before us.
• 18:18
  And he had an uncle that was a lieutenant general.
• 18:20
  I had a lot of pressure on me to go in the Marine Corps.
• 18:23
  And up until the end, I thought that's what I was going to do.
• 18:30
  But I didn't really want to do that.
• 18:32
  I wanted to go into submarines.
• 18:34
  I had read a lot of books about World War II submarines,
• 18:37
  and it seemed like something that was challenging and would be exciting life.
• 18:45
  And that's why I decided to do that.
• 18:48
  And the thing that I've found is that the people in the submarine force were the greatest people I have ever known.
• 18:57
  They had to be smart because they had to qualify in submarines.
• 19:01
  They had to learn all the systems in the boat.
• 19:04
  And they were dedicated.
• 19:06
  And we lived in very close quarters.
• 19:08
  And so you better be able to get along with everybody.
• 19:14
  And you know what?
• 19:15
  Here it is.
• 19:16
  all these years later
• 19:18
  and I'm still in touch with
• 19:20
  some of the enlisted men off the boat
• 19:22
  where I served. How many enlisted men
• 19:24
  want to stay in touch with officers?
• 19:27
  But you know what?
• 19:29
  There was
• 19:29
  a period of time where the
• 19:32
  graduated classes from
• 19:34
  submarine school
• 19:36
  in New London were named after
• 19:38
  World War II submarines.
• 19:40
  And our boat, the Redfin, was a submarine.
• 19:43
  So
• 19:43
  we were asked
• 19:46
  to provide somebody for the remarks for the graduation service.
• 19:51
  And so they all asked me to go and do it.
• 19:55
  So I went to New London, and I'm 82 years old,
• 19:58
  and I did the remarks at submarine school to these young guys.
• 20:02
  And that was one of the most exciting things of my life,
• 20:05
  to talk to those guys.
• 20:08
  And before the service, I went into the auditorium,
• 20:14
  I was standing there talking to about a dozen of them.
• 20:17
  Have you read this book?
• 20:18
  What about this?
• 20:19
  What about that?
• 20:21
  They're just hanging on every word.
• 20:25
  Then the chief petty officer got me by the arm and says,
• 20:29
  Jim, you got to come out in the hall.
• 20:31
  We're going to march in.
• 20:32
  I'm thinking, 82 years old.
• 20:33
  I had thought that I was going to be in the front row,
• 20:41
  and I had put a bottle of water there.
• 20:44
  And so we go in and go right up on the stage.
• 20:46
  And so I didn't expect that.
• 20:49
  And then after I did the remarks, they said, go stand over there.
• 20:55
  You're giving out all the diplomas.
• 20:57
  And so I said, all these guys are in detention,
• 21:00
  and they got every one or two rows at a time to come up,
• 21:04
  and they're all standing in detention.
• 21:06
  So I said, I'm going to make every one of these guys laugh
• 21:09
  when they come up on the stage.
• 21:10
  So when they came up, I handed them the diploma
• 21:13
  and congratulated it and i said something wise after so when i had all of them laughing but i
• 21:19
  just absolutely loved it and then after that i went to uh have lunch with the chief petty officers
• 21:26
  there that i got to be friends with and it was it was a wonderful day and when i got home my wife
• 21:31
  said you were walking two feet off the ground you were so excited about about talking all these young
• 21:38
  guys. That was special.
• 21:42
  That's awesome.
• 21:43
  That certainly sounds very special.
• 21:46
  And what an amazing thing, too, to be chosen to do the remarks at a ceremony like that, right?
• 21:52
  I enjoyed it.
• 21:54
  And I told him some stories, and I got him to laugh.
• 22:01
  I said, there was a movie called City Slickers with Billy Crystal.
• 22:07
  You know that movie?
• 22:08
  I do.
• 22:09
  And I said, Billy Crystal, they were terrified that Jack Palance had this big old knife and he was cut their throats.
• 22:19
  And so one day, Jack Palance said, told Billy Crystal, come with me.
• 22:24
  We're going to round up a stray.
• 22:27
  And Billy Crystal said, this is it.
• 22:29
  He's going to kill me for sure.
• 22:30
  so all of a sudden they get out in the wilderness area and palace turns around
• 22:37
  and looks at him and he said there's only one thing in life that counts
• 22:45
  and billy crystal said what's that your finger and uh and and he said no that's for you to figure
• 22:55
  you're out. And at that point I told, and everybody's laughing, you know, the audience.
• 23:01
  And so I said to me, the number one thing in life is relationships. And I said, the relationships
• 23:12
  that you have with your shipmates, your wives, your family, and your neighbors, everyone,
• 23:20
  That's what life is all about.
• 23:23
  And if you can conquer relationships, you're going to have a happy life.
• 23:28
  So when you get on your ship on a submarine, you create relationships,
• 23:35
  and you nurture those relationships, and they will be with you forever.
• 23:41
  That's life.
• 23:42
  So anyway, that was part of my guidance to them at graduation.
• 23:48
  Some good advice.
• 23:49
  And it's wonderful advice. Absolutely. So growing up, was this something you really wanted to do? Just be, you know, go into the military or did you have other plans growing up or?
• 24:04
  uh well i i i had lots of hobbies and things that i did and growing up in a depression um
• 24:15
  there wasn't much money around and so i worked from the time i was about eight years old i worked
• 24:21
  my first job i think it was at a gas station and i was cleaning windshields and sweeping out cars
• 24:27
  and get a nickel or dime if I was lucky.
• 24:30
  And I had to stand on a wooden shotgun shell box to clean,
• 24:36
  get up to reach the windshields to clean off.
• 24:39
  But I always had a job and I did a lot of things.
• 24:42
  I even drove a gasoline delivery truck,
• 24:47
  delivering gasoline to service stations when I was maybe 18 years old,
• 24:51
  something like that.
• 24:51
  And that's a pretty responsible job.
• 24:54
  You had to gauge the tanks and put the exact amount of gallons in that tank and so forth.
• 25:00
  And put a regular one tank and an extra superior in another tank and so forth.
• 25:06
  But I enjoyed doing that.
• 25:09
  And I even got called out at night sometimes to go down to the dock and pump diesel out of a 55-gallon drum into shrimp boats.
• 25:19
  Like at 2 o'clock in the morning because they were going to go out the next morning and need fuel.
• 25:24
  I did that a few times.
• 25:26
  Then I worked at a grocery store.
• 25:29
  Started out carrying out groceries for tips.
• 25:33
  Then I had stock shelves and unloaded AT-wheelers with cases of canned goods.
• 25:41
  It was so heavy.
• 25:43
  After unloading all those things, I would go home and I would always be dead.
• 25:48
  Then they taught me how to run a cash register.
• 25:52
  and I was checking people out
• 25:55
  and it was like five rows
• 25:56
  and I was the only boy there and the rest of them all women of course So we were competitive to see who could run the most money through their tape for the day and i beat them i think one time but that was it
• 26:07
  but they wanted me to be a assistant manager at the grocery store i said no i'm going away to
• 26:15
  school this is not not my life i want to do something else with my life and so i kind of
• 26:22
  had a varied background, but mostly I worked and
• 26:25
  whatever I had, I pretty much had to pay for it myself.
• 26:31
  Wow. I'm sure you've seen lots of
• 26:34
  changes since you were a young person. Just in my short time,
• 26:38
  all the things we've seen with the internet and even electric
• 26:42
  cars and all that, what is the biggest change you've seen since you were
• 26:46
  a child? Can you recall anything particular?
• 26:48
  I don't even know where to start.
• 26:53
  I mean, you know, my dad drove a public truck and we didn't have a car.
• 27:01
  We had horses and we had cows and all kinds of animals and things.
• 27:07
  So I don't know, going from basic living on a farm as a little guy to moving to town and going to school
• 27:16
  and then going away to college and everything.
• 27:20
  I don't know.
• 27:21
  You look at, like I mentioned, I had a classmate, Charlie Duke,
• 27:26
  that walked on the moon.
• 27:27
  And that was so far in the future from the time I was born.
• 27:33
  It just seemed impossible.
• 27:36
  And the things that transpired then were so fast.
• 27:40
  and I guess I struggled in the beginning with computers
• 27:46
  because I did grow up with computers
• 27:49
  and I had to learn to operate them at a later stage of life.
• 27:54
  But everything changed so much.
• 27:59
  But I don't know.
• 28:01
  I've done a little bit of everything.
• 28:04
  I've done a lot of volunteer work.
• 28:07
  I've worked with churches, my churches,
• 28:09
  and raises money to build new sanctuary and new buildings and things and fishing conservation.
• 28:16
  I got talked into leading an initiative in California,
• 28:20
  and we had five months to get 600,000 signatures to get it on ballot,
• 28:26
  which was probably the most impossible thing we ever did.
• 28:29
  I still look back at that and said, I don't believe we did that, but we did it.
• 28:32
  because I had a group that I've been meeting with talk about gill nets,
• 28:39
  which were really bad because of all the bycatch and killing the wrong things
• 28:45
  and sea lions and sharks and everything, including the right kind and wrong kind of fish.
• 28:52
  But I got talked into leading it.
• 28:56
  And so I asked this group, I said, I've been asked to do this.
• 28:59
  And I said, I'm retired, and I was trying to do some consulting with some other guys just for fun.
• 29:07
  And the only way that I'll take on this is if the rest of you will put your lives on hold for the next five months.
• 29:16
  And we'll bust our rear end getting signatures because we have to create the perception of success.
• 29:24
  and you have to do that in order to get money donated so that you can buy a lot of signatures
• 29:31
  and so uh we did that and we were everywhere and all over the state of california we had people
• 29:40
  working to get signatures and uh as a volunteer group we actually got over 100 000 volunteer
• 29:48
  signatures which they said was the most that had ever been done by a volunteer group at at that time
• 29:54
  and so uh at the end of five five months we had um we didn't know we had enough or not because a lot
• 30:04
  of a lot of them we didn't know the signatures were valid or not they had to be they had to be
• 30:09
  by someone that has registered to vote and they had to be signed exactly as they were registered
• 30:15
  and they could only do it once some people sign more than once so at the end of five months we
• 30:24
  I was really involved in fishing a lot.
• 30:28
  So I knew a lot of people.
• 30:30
  And I knew a guy that had a mortuary.
• 30:34
  And I knew they had a twin-engine King Air airplane.
• 30:38
  So I said, how about donating your plane for a day?
• 30:43
  I said, we need to fly from Orange County, California,
• 30:48
  to Sacramento to put on a dog and pony show in the governor's media room.
• 30:53
  and he said okay well i'll fly up there and his brother said i'll be the co-pilot
• 30:58
  so we had about that king air seats eight or nine people but we had about five in our group
• 31:04
  and so we left in the dark from orange county which is just south of los angeles
• 31:09
  and flew to sacramento and we went to the governor's media room which is like a small auditorium
• 31:16
  and we put on a dog and pony show with the anglers from up there.
• 31:23
  And we got back on the plane and we flew down to Burbank, California,
• 31:28
  to the media facility they had there.
• 31:31
  And we had a number of people from hit television programs.
• 31:38
  Patty Duke with Ronald Reagan's daughter was there.
• 31:40
  We had a lot of VIPs that were there to stand up with us.
• 31:44
  And we did another stand-up dog and pony show and a lot of media there, of course, and television.
• 31:51
  And then we got back on the plane and flew to San Diego.
• 31:54
  We got down there.
• 31:56
  The guys had arranged a convoy of forklift trucks with pallet loads of petitions.
• 32:04
  And they went down the road and put the petitions up on the steps of the courthouse.
• 32:11
  and then we did a program there too and of course all of these things attracted a lot of media and
• 32:19
  that's what we wanted to do i wanted to create a big hit with television and uh and then we flew
• 32:26
  back to orange county and got there right after dark so from dark to dark we covered the state
• 32:31
  of california we created a big thing and then five months then a month or two later we found out
• 32:39
  we were going to be on the ballot in November.
• 32:45
  And so that election night, Bill Ray, who owned the Balboa Bay Club,
• 32:51
  which is a private club on Newport Bay in California,
• 32:56
  and gated behind with the captain out on the dock to manage the marina out there.
• 33:03
  Big deal.
• 33:04
  And I think Joey Bishop was there.
• 33:06
  Mickey Mantle was there.
• 33:07
  a lot of celebrities there and about every half hour i'd get up and announce what the vote count
• 33:14
  was and all night we were ahead and by the end we won 53 to 47 which is a big margin of victory and
• 33:24
  over three years we eliminated the gillnets in california waters and then and then we could do
• 33:31
  I was asked to head up a 501c3 fishing conservation organization.
• 33:40
  And I did that for nine years.
• 33:41
  And we worked with SeaWorld to raise white sea bass to put back in the ocean.
• 33:47
  And that program is still going on today.
• 33:50
  We had raised money to build a hatchery.
• 33:52
  And I helped raise a lot of money to build a hatchery.
• 33:56
  And we had right legislation to put a stamp on all the fishing licenses to create the money to operate the hatchery.
• 34:06
  So that's what we did to get the operating money.
• 34:09
  And we had San Diego Gerson Electric donated seven and a half acres of land on the lagoon in Southern California for us for a dollar a year.
• 34:22
  and so we had a place to put the fact with the hatchery and and we worked with hub sea world with
• 34:29
  apartment fishing game with senior guests and lecture and other organizations to to create this
• 34:36
  this hatchery of fish and then we started to grow out facilities at 13 places uh in southern
• 34:44
  california from santa barbara down to san diego where we'd take the four inch fish that would come
• 34:50
  out of the hatchery and put them in grow out pens and grow them up to about 10 or 12 inches
• 34:59
  before we released them in the ocean. So the survival rate would be much higher because at
• 35:04
  four inches, they were like putting ice cream into water. Everything would eat them. But that
• 35:10
  program is going on today. And I saw a report recently that 40% of the white sea bats caught
• 35:16
  in Southern California have a tag in them that came out of the hatchery.
• 35:22
  So the program really worked, and I think that's probably one of the best things
• 35:27
  that we ever did.
• 35:28
  But we built artificial reefs.
• 35:31
  We did – we did – we did – we did – excuse me.
• 35:37
  I got this thing on.
• 35:41
  And we raised – we built artificial reefs,
• 35:44
  and probably the biggest artificial reef in the world.
• 35:48
  And I had, whenever we'd go take boats out to dump,
• 35:54
  I had people call me and head concrete
• 35:56
  because that's the only thing they put on there.
• 35:59
  And we had concrete chimneys.
• 36:02
  We had sand wall barriers.
• 36:04
  We had concrete from piers that were breaking up.
• 36:08
  We had all kinds of material that was donated to us.
• 36:13
  And whenever they had an occasion to haul something out, I always published something in the L.A. Times.
• 36:24
  And after one of these published, I got a call from Jim Hill, who was the bureau chief for CNN.
• 36:32
  And he said, we would like to go out on a boat when you make this dump.
• 36:38
  And I've got divers to go down and we'd like to make do make this into a program where we we we document the process and we go down and ask the materials on the bottom and then take us to an area with that where the material was dumped a year before.
• 36:56
  We can see the difference in the two.
• 36:59
  And I said, OK.
• 37:01
  And I I had a friend that was a world class diver and a good friend.
• 37:07
  And then I said, Ron, I said, we need to put them on your boat,
• 37:11
  and you need to be the dive master.
• 37:14
  And if they do anything that's out of ordinary, you stop the dive.
• 37:18
  You're going to be in charge of the dive.
• 37:21
  And then Jim Hill said, I want to go down too.
• 37:26
  And I said, we're talking 92 feet of water.
• 37:29
  Anything over 50 feet is pretty hazardous.
• 37:32
  I said, the last thing I want to do was kill the people,
• 37:36
  sea for CNN.
• 37:38
  But we had a successful dive out of it.
• 37:42
  And they actually had a program that went all around the world on CNN for about a week.
• 37:48
  And so they documented the benefits of a reef.
• 37:53
  And he asked me, and you will appreciate this, he asked me what kind of good it did.
• 38:00
  And I said, well, look, I said, we're putting this in a part of the ocean that's completely
• 38:04
  barren.
• 38:06
  And I said, I came from a farming background.
• 38:09
  And what I knew was the more pasture we had, the more cows we could have.
• 38:15
  And I said, the more habitat you have in the ocean, the more fish you can have.
• 38:20
  And I said, that's the basis of what we were trying to accomplish there.
• 38:25
  And it worked.
• 38:27
  But we dumped a lot of material out there.
• 38:30
  And Southern Cal Edison called me one time.
• 38:34
  and they said, we've got some streetlight poles we want to dump.
• 38:40
  And I said, how many do you have?
• 38:43
  He says, 1,400.
• 38:46
  And he said, we got them stored in areas all over Los Angeles.
• 38:50
  We're paying storage fees.
• 38:52
  And he said, if you'll take these out and dump it,
• 38:54
  we donate to hire a barge and hire a tugboat to take it out So I said okay And I had a contact that I got a spoiled barge
• 39:15
  which is real dredge balls that would haul dirt out
• 39:18
  that was bridged up to a dead area dump.
• 39:21
  And so they were huge.
• 39:22
  And it opened up like a clamshell at the bottom like that.
• 39:25
  And everything would just come out.
• 39:27
  and he said they would donate the barge and the tug for me
• 39:34
  so we had $25,000 we could use for other things.
• 39:38
  And I asked him, I said,
• 39:40
  where did all these streetlight poles come from?
• 39:46
  He said, they were knockdowns.
• 39:49
  Cars had run into them and knocked them down
• 39:51
  and they'd been accumulating over a lot of years.
• 39:54
  And I said, that's unbelievable.
• 39:56
  but I got a picture of those in the barge over my desk over there.
• 40:01
  They sent an airplane out, of course, to get some shots for publicity for Edison,
• 40:08
  but that's a heck of a story.
• 40:12
  But I enjoyed doing all this conservation work, but it was 24-7.
• 40:22
  And, you know, I had people call me at 11 o'clock on Saturday night and it was just go, go, go and a lot of fundraising all the time.
• 40:30
  But, you know, the benefits of that are always the people that you meet.
• 40:35
  It's always about relationships.
• 40:38
  And I'm still in contact with a lot of those people today that I worked with back then.
• 40:45
  And when I finally retired from that, I think I mentioned my name was pretty well known around the state and the fishing community.
• 40:55
  And all the magazines and fishing newspapers wanted my name in there and wanted me to write stories for them.
• 41:01
  And a lot of them were just pure garbage.
• 41:04
  I wasn't much of a writer.
• 41:05
  but anyway we took a few of those and made them a little bit better and turned them into a book
• 41:15
  and we added a lot to it and I'll tell you a story from the first book that's kind of different
• 41:24
  we went to Branson Missouri and I don't know if you've ever been to Branson but they had a lot of
• 41:31
  shows there and programs and so we flew to springfield uh and and then rented a car and
• 41:39
  drove over about 50 60 miles something like that and and my wife's roommate the husband
• 41:45
  drove up from houston it was a two-day drive for them and so we had went to a lot of shows
• 41:51
  and had a lot of fun and of course my wife and i fished a couple of days a couple of half days
• 41:57
  while we were there.
• 41:58
  We always fished wherever we went.
• 42:01
  And so we decided the last day we'd go to an afternoon show,
• 42:05
  go get dinner, and then go back to the room and pack up
• 42:09
  because they had to drive to Houston.
• 42:11
  We had to drive to Springfield, catch a plane back to California.
• 42:15
  And so after we went to Cracker Barrel, and after dinner,
• 42:20
  we came out and sat in the rocket chairs while our wires went around
• 42:25
  inside in the gift shop there.
• 42:27
  and shortly after we sat down, a couple of guys came out the door,
• 42:32
  and I heard them say, why don't we play a couple of games of checkers?
• 42:37
  And I turned around and looked at them.
• 42:38
  I said, there's a checkerboard right here.
• 42:40
  Take my chair.
• 42:41
  And I said, whoa, wait a minute.
• 42:44
  I said, he's got a white cane with a red tip on it.
• 42:47
  I said, you can't play checkers with him.
• 42:50
  I said, I'm going to have to referee this match.
• 42:52
  And so we got going like that, and about that time,
• 42:57
  My wife's roommate came out, Nancy, came out the door, and she said,
• 43:02
  you know who these guys are?
• 43:03
  I said, I don't have a clue.
• 43:06
  She said, they are the Platters.
• 43:09
  And I said, wow.
• 43:12
  I said, I love their music.
• 43:14
  I don't know whether you guys are too young to remember the Platters,
• 43:17
  but my favorite song is Only You.
• 43:20
  It was one of their big songs, but they had a lot of hits.
• 43:23
  And so they said, have you been to our show?
• 43:27
  I said, no, no, we got to go back and pack.
• 43:30
  We got to leave tomorrow.
• 43:32
  He said, you got to come to the show tonight.
• 43:34
  No, we got to pack.
• 43:35
  You come into the show tonight.
• 43:37
  I said, well, okay, we'll go to the show.
• 43:40
  He said, give me 15 minutes to arrange for tickets at Will Call.
• 43:44
  So they left and we waited a while and then we left and we went to Will Call, got our tickets.
• 43:50
  And those theaters are huge there, thousands of people.
• 44:00
  And they seat everybody.
• 44:01
  They got ushers because they could get everybody seated faster if they take them exactly to their seats and get them down.
• 44:07
  So we got our tickets, and they walked us all the way down to the front.
• 44:12
  We were sitting in the very front.
• 44:14
  There was not a row in front of us.
• 44:16
  And so it was a great show.
• 44:20
  and I found out later they had planned to get me up on the stage to give me a hard time,
• 44:26
  but there were three women from Nashville that had to be,
• 44:30
  were put on a portion of the show to get people to come to their show,
• 44:34
  so they didn't have time.
• 44:36
  But at the end of the show, Rooster, who was the leader of the group,
• 44:40
  sang bass and was the leader, and he came down off the stage with two long-stemmed red roses,
• 44:47
  and he gave one to my wife's
• 44:49
  roommate Nancy and he gave
• 44:51
  one to Pat and he danced with her in the
• 44:53
  aisle.
• 44:55
  So then when that was all
• 44:57
  we went back to the stage and they did
• 44:59
  the final number and ask everybody
• 45:02
  to come up front to the lobby
• 45:03
  to get signatures and
• 45:05
  take photographs.
• 45:07
  And I'm saying
• 45:09
  look at this crowd. It would take us a half hour
• 45:11
  to get up front and the line would be a mile long.
• 45:14
  I looked over
• 45:15
  next to the state. I said, there's an exit door right there. Let's go out that door. I don't see
• 45:20
  a guard over there. So we went out that door and guess what happened? It comes Rooster up the
• 45:28
  sidewalk. Where are you going? Rooster, we got to go back. We got to leave early in the morning.
• 45:34
  No, no, no. He said, you got to come up front. I said, the line will be a mile long. He grabbed
• 45:40
  Pat by the Ironman. He took off and I told John, I said, well, I guess we're going up front. He's
• 45:45
  got that so Ruth took us up there and we got photographs and and signatures and and whatever
• 45:53
  and uh it was just uh that was a surprise and and kind of the the cherry on top of a wonderful
• 46:02
  week in Branson to meet the platters and and I did a story on that for a magazine and I sent
• 46:08
  them a copy of it I don't know where they got it or not but I sent it to them but but uh that was
• 46:14
  that was kind of a fun thing in the first book.
• 46:18
  It had a lot of itchous stories in there about some near-death experiences
• 46:24
  and the remarks at Subreed School and whatever.
• 46:30
  I think it had 20 stories in that first book.
• 46:33
  And then we did the second one.
• 46:35
  And now we're doing the third one, which is going to be titled How I Found Love.
• 46:41
  And I wanted to do something more with relationships because, I mean, relationships to me are monumental.
• 46:53
  And I want people to be able to look at a lot of these ways that people met other people that are not normal.
• 47:04
  I mean, you're not going to the bar and finding somebody on the stool next to you that you want to spend your life with.
• 47:09
  that might happen occasionally, but not often.
• 47:14
  But all these things, I think it could be an inspiration to others.
• 47:19
  And they're not all about a man and a woman.
• 47:23
  And you want me to tell you a story from that book?
• 47:26
  Sure.
• 47:27
  Okay.
• 47:28
  This is called Baby in a Basket.
• 47:32
  a doctor and a nurse are delivering a baby in 1933
• 47:39
  pretty crude about the only thing he had was a stethoscope
• 47:44
  but they delivered the baby and he said this is a preemie
• 47:49
  he said put it on the table over there and help me with a mother she's in bad
• 47:55
  shape we've got to save the mother so the nurse put the baby on a table
• 48:00
  and help the doctor.
• 48:02
  They worked for two hours, but the mother died.
• 48:07
  And when they got done, she turned around and she says,
• 48:12
  Doctor, this baby's alive.
• 48:14
  He said, No.
• 48:15
  He said, It's not going to live.
• 48:17
  He said, The lungs aren't developed.
• 48:19
  None of the organs are developed.
• 48:20
  This baby's going to die.
• 48:22
  She said, I'm going to take this baby home.
• 48:25
  The doctor says, No, you're not taking that baby home.
• 48:29
  You'll just get attached to it, and it's going to die, and you'll be devastated.
• 48:34
  She said, I'm taking it home, and she grabbed the baby with a blanket and went home.
• 48:40
  She lived in a small cottage with her sister, Sarah.
• 48:44
  Her name was Nurse Ann, and she lived in that small cottage with her father,
• 48:50
  and they had a potbelly stove in one room,
• 48:53
  and they put the baby in a thatched tomato basket that had a handle on it
• 49:01
  and with a blanket next to that stove.
• 49:04
  And they fed that baby for five weeks, every two hours with an eyedropper.
• 49:13
  And the baby was surviving.
• 49:17
  Now, at that point, the author described this as agape, which is a Greek word for love.
• 49:24
  And it's love only in one direction where you give love, you expect nothing in return.
• 49:31
  And that's what these two women did.
• 49:33
  They just gave their love to this baby with nothing.
• 49:37
  And then the birth mother's sister that lived in the South Georgia came up and got the baby.
• 49:49
  And this was the depression.
• 49:50
  And taking the responsibility for a baby in the depression was an expense.
• 49:56
  And she and her husband had no children.
• 49:59
  But they dedicated their lives to taking care of that baby.
• 50:03
  that baby is now 92 years old he's a classmate of mine and when I asked him to write this story
• 50:15
  his story I thought it would be how he met his wife but it was not it was about the baby in a
• 50:23
  basket he said he said Jimmy he said you caused me to take this story out of my heart that's been
• 50:31
  eaten me for over seven decades. And he said, I just wanted to pay my respects for the family that
• 50:40
  raised me, gave me their name. And to these two women who took me off a table and the doctor says
• 50:49
  they take care of it. He was going to take care of it. But the nurses are the ones that got him
• 50:55
  going. But I just think that that's one of the most amazing stories that I have ever heard.
• 51:03
  That is amazing. It's quite heartwarming as well. It's hard, hard not to, uh,
• 51:09
  you know, uh, yeah, it's hard not to internalize and kind of feel that, you know, um, wow.
• 51:17
  absolutely wow i mean it just sounds like you've now i'm definitely you know i i have to pick up
• 51:25
  your books i think i think it's uh i think this book is uh is my third book but and i think it's
• 51:34
  got legs to it because i think it could be an inspiration when you read how some of these
• 51:39
  people met someone the people have given up of ever finding anyone maybe they've been through two
• 51:45
  two marriages or two experiences and they didn't work out and they didn't think they'd ever meet
• 51:53
  anyone and they did and my advice to people is be ready because you never know when it's
• 52:02
  going to happen and you might be meet that special
• 52:04
  person. And the first story in the book is about, and I won't tell you the whole story,
• 52:13
  but the name of the story was The Mystery Woman at a Rehab Facility. And he wrote the story as
• 52:22
  a mystery woman. I changed it. I said, I called it The Beautiful Mystery Woman. And it just hit
• 52:29
  my heart.
• 52:30
  But that story is an unbelievable
• 52:33
  story. And he had
• 52:34
  given up on finding anyone
• 52:37
  and he did
• 52:39
  have found somebody there. And she
• 52:41
  had given up on finding anyone
• 52:42
  and it's worked out beautifully.
• 52:44
  And they're together today and it's just
• 52:46
  a great, great thing
• 52:48
  to see.
• 52:51
  But there are a lot of stories
• 52:53
  in here that you wouldn't believe.
• 52:56
  And I think
• 52:56
  people
• 52:57
  that read these stories could be inspired that maybe there is somebody in life for me.
• 53:04
  Maybe it's not over. Maybe there's somebody else out there. And you look at how they found
• 53:11
  somebody and how it worked out. And I don't know, it's just, it's incredible. And I think
• 53:19
  there are 32 stories in the book. And I think they're all pretty interesting. Some of them are
• 53:26
  very short some of them are like one paragraph but most of them they've got i've kind of paced
• 53:32
  them out with with real short ones in between some of the ones that are more long but uh
• 53:38
  but i think it's i think it could be a be an inspiration to people and like i said i really
• 53:44
  wanted to develop something on more on relationships because i think if if this helps people uh in
• 53:51
  finding a relationship, then it's probably one of the best things that we've ever done in life.
• 53:57
  And I'll be pretty happy if it does that.
• 54:00
  Now, I'll tell you this.
• 54:02
  The royalties from all of my books go to charity.
• 54:06
  I don't get one penny.
• 54:08
  The first book goes to the University of Delaware, a scholarship fund in the name of my wife.
• 54:16
  And she would be absolutely delighted to know that we had done this for her.
• 54:21
  So the second book goes to the Naval Academy Foundation, and we sponsor a professor in the history department to teach naval heritage, something that's our 50th gift to the academy, a 50th reunion we gave it to the academy.
• 54:40
  And then this third book is going to go to the academy as well.
• 54:43
  And then we're working on a fourth book called Close Calls that will be for 2027.
• 54:50
  I've got 10 stories in that.
• 54:51
  And that will go to the foundation of Naval Academy as well.
• 54:55
  But all the money does not come to me.
• 54:58
  I don't get one penny, nothing.
• 55:00
  I get nothing out of it.
• 55:01
  Just work.
• 55:02
  That's it.
• 55:03
  But I love it.
• 55:04
  I love the relationships, and I love coming and meeting you guys.
• 55:09
  This is special for my life is to spend time with you.
• 55:13
  And I don't know.
• 55:15
  Other people are so much more important than I am.
• 55:18
  And I just admire other people so much.
• 55:23
  And I want the world to know about those people.
• 55:26
  That's what it's all about.
• 55:28
  Yeah, I like the fact that you put it together in personalized stories as opposed to something, you know, more typical, which is bios and, you know, events and things of that nature.
• 55:40
  And it really, you know, from what you've told us, it really personalizes it, right?
• 55:45
  It kind of puts you there as opposed to looking at it from a historical perspective.
• 55:52
  You're looking at it from the eyes of someone that was in that.
• 55:58
  And that's just an amazing, I think it's an amazing thing.
• 56:03
  I think we need more of this, Jim.
• 56:05
  I think you're going to have to go with a fifth and maybe a sixth book, maybe a seventh, maybe up to 10.
• 56:10
  I could go on telling stories
• 56:16
  for hours
• 56:17
  and if we were sitting around having a beer I think we have a good time I think so too I positive of it Well I think we probably at a good place to start wrapping up
• 56:31
  And one of the things we always like to ask our guests is throughout our lives, there's someone, it could be an author, a teacher from school, a professor, could be a historical figure, could be anyone.
• 56:48
  But someone that made a positive impact in our life that really kind of changed our life views, our perspective, whatever it is, is someone that you would want to give a shout out to and just say thank you for making that positive impact in my life.
• 57:05
  There are so many, so many.
• 57:09
  And I always ask my grandchildren about their teachers.
• 57:14
  Do you have any teachers that stood out?
• 57:16
  And I did.
• 57:17
  But I had, and especially my senior teacher who taught my mother and father to all my aunts and uncles, and she was a mentor towards me, for me.
• 57:28
  And I was in her homeroom senior year, and when I was doing things, she always put me in charge and asked me to do things.
• 57:39
  And when my wife and I got back from my honeymoon, I took her to meet Miss Macon.
• 57:50
  And I said, I corresponded with her while I was at the Academy, not a lot, but a little bit.
• 57:56
  And I said, I want you to meet her.
• 57:59
  And she had retired at that point.
• 58:01
  And so we went up to her, a little tiny apartment that was loaded with books, as you can imagine.
• 58:07
  And I wanted her to get to know Ms. Macon because I think, I don't know what you call it, but she was a mentor for me.
• 58:18
  And she really had a lot of confidence in me.
• 58:23
  I guess as a teenager, you have an adult that has confidence in you, that's a big deal.
• 58:30
  So I would say that Ms. Macon was that person.
• 58:34
  And now there's an elementary school in Brunswick that's named Jane Macon Elementary School, named after her.
• 58:43
  She was a great, great woman.
• 58:46
  And I just, I don't know.
• 58:49
  She was so special.
• 58:51
  And she was a big fan of Shakespeare.
• 58:54
  She had a bust of Shakespeare up there over the door to the room.
• 59:00
  And I don't know.
• 59:02
  She was just, she was so special.
• 59:03
  But I had so many other people that had an influence on my life.
• 59:10
  And, of course, my classmates recently have had a big influence on my life.
• 59:15
  But the person that probably had the most was my wife.
• 59:21
  And she was the most impressive person that I've ever known.
• 59:27
  And after my Georgia girlfriend wrote me a Dear John letter, which we all post on the door for everybody to read,
• 59:32
  part of therapy and i had a friend says he was going over the delaware university of delaware
• 59:38
  for a three-day weekend would you like to go i said yeah i'd love to go and uh his girlfriend
• 59:45
  at that time sheila cunningham fixed me up with three blind dates and i'm sure the first two were
• 59:51
  great but when i met pat i could not believe her she seemed to have an aura about her that reached
• 59:58
  out five feet. And I later found out that she was the most popular girl on the campus.
• 1:00:06
  She had just broken up with the captain of the basketball team and had absolutely no interest
• 1:00:13
  in starting a new relationship. And when I met her, I'd all had girlfriends since I was a
• 1:00:19
  sophomore in high school. I had a steady girlfriend, but I'd never met anyone like her.
• 1:00:24
  and so I got a name and telephone number address and so forth and and I tried to get her to come
• 1:00:31
  down to Annapolis but she wasn interested at all I sure I didn make a very big impression on her but I kept working on her and were having a formal dance Navy had the reputation of having the best dance bands in the country come there
• 1:00:49
  She agreed to come down.
• 1:00:52
  On Saturday afternoon, we agreed to meet on the steps of Bancroft Hall, which is the largest dormitory in the world.
• 1:00:59
  4,000 midshipmen live there.
• 1:01:01
  and so at two o'clock I'm going to say oh my god I hope I can recognize it you know and I know she
• 1:01:08
  was thinking the same thing and so when I got to the steps there was this beautiful girl with a
• 1:01:14
  sweatshirt on with Delaware so we kind of smiled at each other and we clicked from that very
• 1:01:23
  beginning. I think I'll admit, but she was absolutely the nicest person and absolutely
• 1:01:32
  gorgeous. She was a beautiful girl, but she was like the girl next door. She was in sports.
• 1:01:39
  I didn't know all about the sports stuff until later. And I knew that she played basketball
• 1:01:46
  and I knew that she did the long jump, the triple jump, and ran the 440,
• 1:01:52
  but I didn't know that she did the high jump.
• 1:01:55
  But about 25 years later, I got a call in California,
• 1:01:59
  and they wanted her to come back to a reunion.
• 1:02:02
  I said, well, she's at a meeting right now,
• 1:02:05
  but I'll have a call to you when she gets back.
• 1:02:08
  And we talked a little bit.
• 1:02:09
  He says, by the way, tell her that a high jump record is still good.
• 1:02:14
  I said, you've got to be kidding me.
• 1:02:16
  Well, anyway, what she really wanted to do in life was to teach school and coach kids.
• 1:02:25
  During the summers, she was a coach at a kids camp, and she taught all sports to the kids.
• 1:02:33
  But her main sport was swimming.
• 1:02:36
  And Peter Dalen was their coach, who coached at the University of Southern California after he left Pennsylvania.
• 1:02:44
  and he was there on a GI Bill after World War II
• 1:02:49
  and getting his education there.
• 1:02:52
  And he coached their neighborhood swim pool.
• 1:02:55
  And he must have been the greatest swim coach ever.
• 1:02:59
  He won like nine, I think, NCAA Division I championships there.
• 1:03:05
  He coached the men's Olympic team
• 1:03:07
  when Mark Spitz won the seven gold medals.
• 1:03:10
  Wow.
• 1:03:10
  And later he coached the women's Olympic team.
• 1:03:13
  But you look him up on Google Peter Dalen and look at that man.
• 1:03:19
  That is unbelievable.
• 1:03:21
  But I think the thing that she learned from him was competition.
• 1:03:26
  She was competitive, but she would be beautiful, beautiful smile on her face.
• 1:03:31
  But whatever you're doing, she was going to try and whip you.
• 1:03:36
  I know just about that personality.
• 1:03:39
  she uh she had the she could have been in politics she could she was always asked to be
• 1:03:48
  president of every organization she was in she didn't you know want to be but they always asked
• 1:03:53
  her to be and she did that she was she was president of everything and uh uh she just that's
• 1:04:00
  just the way she was but she was she's not a big wheel about anything she's just a regular person
• 1:04:05
  and in the first book I got a picture of her on the back of a boat barefooted with her hair messed
• 1:04:10
  up and she's standing there with a hand on my shoulder I'm probably having a beer or something
• 1:04:16
  I've been fishing all day and she's standing there and and I asked the publisher I said
• 1:04:22
  would this be a picture to put in the book she says no way you're gonna put my picture in the
• 1:04:27
  book unless I am dressed up and as much as possible.
• 1:04:33
  But, you know, I asked the kids, they said, yeah, that's mom.
• 1:04:36
  Put her in the book.
• 1:04:37
  So she's in the first book.
• 1:04:40
  But she would be comfortable.
• 1:04:42
  She was comfortable in almost any setting with any group of people.
• 1:04:46
  I don't care whether you were an admiral or you were an enlisted man.
• 1:04:51
  She was exactly the same person.
• 1:04:54
  She was always the same person And we never had a knock down drag out i know i know she probably got annoyed at me at times but she just turned around walking away i mean who gonna when i
• 1:05:07
  tell her i said uh we're planning to take a 26 foot trailer boat for huntington beach to cabo
• 1:05:16
  san lucas by water and we're going to be gone for a month and but we'll be back by thanksgiving
• 1:05:22
  because we paid somebody to bring the trailer down and haul us back on the road,
• 1:05:27
  which was about four days to get home from there, but 1,100 miles of water.
• 1:05:31
  And we planned this trip for a year.
• 1:05:34
  I think most women would have said, no way you're going to do something like that.
• 1:05:37
  But, you know, she never said no.
• 1:05:39
  And I did a lot of adventurous things that she went along with.
• 1:05:45
  She agreed.
• 1:05:46
  and we had the most loving, caring relationship I think a couple could ever have.
• 1:05:54
  And there's no question she made me a better person.
• 1:05:58
  I am much better today than I was when she first got started with me.
• 1:06:04
  That is an amazing thing.
• 1:06:06
  And those are wonderful shout outs, by the way.
• 1:06:10
  All right.
• 1:06:10
  So where can people find your work?
• 1:06:13
  Is there a preference of where they should go and look for your book to purchase a copy?
• 1:06:20
  The books are on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Apple.
• 1:06:24
  You can get them there.
• 1:06:26
  And I wish they'd stay in touch with me.
• 1:06:30
  They can get me on Facebook at Jim Park or James D. Park Jr. author, either one and two Facebook pages.
• 1:06:38
  I don't do a website because I thought it was probably too much for me to manage with all the other things that I'm doing.
• 1:06:46
  But I love to have people follow me and be friends on Facebook.
• 1:06:54
  And we try and post something almost every day.
• 1:06:57
  And we have a video that we do once a week.
• 1:07:00
  It's called Fishing Fridays.
• 1:07:02
  and Rachel is my producer and narrator and and we we go to a dock which is on the farm pond where
• 1:07:13
  we we farmed and and we fish bass it's 18 acres and it's got some good bass in there and and so
• 1:07:21
  we fish for two hours we can only fish in a certain area because it just has the railing off and I can
• 1:07:27
  sit in a chair. I can take my walker out there and sit in a chair and fish. And we have fishing
• 1:07:33
  Friday. And people look forward to that every week. And we do reels and hundreds of people
• 1:07:38
  watch our show. That is wonderful. Well, you heard the man. If you're on Facebook, look him up,
• 1:07:45
  Jim Polk. Give him a follow. You'll get some interesting content. And he likes to stay in
• 1:07:51
  touch with people. So let's make that happen. Let's increase his follow count.
• 1:07:57
  Yeah, they can get the book.
• 1:07:59
  They can get audio books, and they can get the paperback books however they want to.
• 1:08:05
  But believe it or not, the person that did the audio for us that I just met actually contributed a story in the third book.
• 1:08:15
  Oh, wonderful.
• 1:08:16
  Wonderful.
• 1:08:17
  Nice.
• 1:08:18
  Yeah.
• 1:08:18
  That is very nice.
• 1:08:20
  All right.
• 1:08:20
  Well, Jim, thank you so much for giving us some of your time.
• 1:08:24
  We really appreciate it.
• 1:08:25
  And once again, people, Facebook, look him up.
• 1:08:31
  Follow.
• 1:08:33
  Thank you.
• 1:08:34
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:08:35
  You had a wonderful time.
• 1:08:36
  Yes.
• 1:08:37
  And I hope I'll come back again someday.
• 1:08:39
  I would hope so as well.
• 1:08:40
  I would love to have you back on when your third book comes out,
• 1:08:44
  and let's talk about that as well.
• 1:08:46
  This has been a wonderful conversation.
• 1:08:50
  All right, everybody, you know where to find us.
• 1:08:52
  We're everywhere.
• 1:08:53
  Just search for us.
• 1:08:54
  if you can think of a platform we're on it we're also now on fountain.fm if you'd like to go follow
• 1:09:00
  us there you can support us by following us on fountain.fm and remember wherever you are
• 1:09:08
  whenever you're watching this have an amazing day see you everybody see you jim bye