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

[User] In fact, the other teachers would remark how disciplined my class was. You know, like if they had, say, a quarterly exam or something like that, the students would go to the auditorium. I would make sure all the desks were spaced out so they couldn't copy from one another.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] I would make sure they were walking in an orderly line. Now, I'm telling you here, this is after a year.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] I didn't just wave a magic wand and get these kids to do that. In the beginning, it was awful. I mean, especially with the methodology that we were taught, you know. So like the first thing, I don't know if I already told you this, but the first thing we did in teaching English. We were told to use songs as a learning technique. So to have someone like myself stand in front of the classroom and start singing, row, row, row, your boat. This was hilarious to these students and it was undignified behavior for a teacher to be singing a song in front of class. So I, you know, just lost the class with that. So it took a while to recover from all of that, you know.

[Assistant] And how many students did you have?


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

[User] I would make sure they were walking in an orderly line. Now, I'm telling you here, this is after a year.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] I didn't just wave a magic wand and get these kids to do that. In the beginning, it was awful. I mean, especially with the methodology that we were taught, you know. So like the first thing, I don't know if I already told you this, but the first thing we did in teaching English. We were told to use songs as a learning technique. So to have someone like myself stand in front of the classroom and start singing, row, row, row, your boat. This was hilarious to these students and it was undignified behavior for a teacher to be singing a song in front of class. So I, you know, just lost the class with that. So it took a while to recover from all of that, you know.

[Assistant] And how many students did you have?

[User] I had classes of, I would say roughly 60 to 70 students.

[Assistant] And was it universal education?


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

[User] I had classes of, I would say roughly 60 to 70 students.

[Assistant] And was it universal education?

[User] Yes. I mean, one thing that was really interesting about an Iranian classroom is that you had kids from the elite and kids from the villages all together in the same place. But then the social structure was reflected in the classroom. So that the elite children would sit in the front and the kids from the villages would be in the back. And sometimes the elite kids, because they felt some sympathy for the poorer children, would give them help, like during an exam.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] So here you had the American concept of how to manage a school with the Iranian concept of, well, these kids need a break and I need to help them and what's so wrong about doing that?

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.


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

[User] Yes. I mean, one thing that was really interesting about an Iranian classroom is that you had kids from the elite and kids from the villages all together in the same place. But then the social structure was reflected in the classroom. So that the elite children would sit in the front and the kids from the villages would be in the back. And sometimes the elite kids, because they felt some sympathy for the poorer children, would give them help, like during an exam.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] So here you had the American concept of how to manage a school with the Iranian concept of, well, these kids need a break and I need to help them and what's so wrong about doing that?

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[User] It's like a different moral.

[Assistant] Oh, yes, I know.


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

[User] So here you had the American concept of how to manage a school with the Iranian concept of, well, these kids need a break and I need to help them and what's so wrong about doing that?

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[User] It's like a different moral.

[Assistant] Oh, yes, I know.

[User] Um, I forgot, what was the question?

[Assistant] What we were just talking about, I had asked you if education was universal in Iran at that point, if everybody could go to school?


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

[User] It's like a different moral.

[Assistant] Oh, yes, I know.

[User] Um, I forgot, what was the question?

[Assistant] What we were just talking about, I had asked you if education was universal in Iran at that point, if everybody could go to school?

[User] Yeah. You know, the Shah was really into universal education. He introduced a program called the White Revolution, and universal literacy was very much part of that. So I think that's probably why the schools were so overcrowded, because he wanted everyone to get a basic education.

[Assistant] And what was it like for you teaching such big classes?


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

[User] So I remember feeling frustrated that I, my command of the language wasn't good enough to kind of engage in real conversations with them. I mean, if I stopped somebody and then we started talking one on one. Okay.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] I usually understood. But when they're talking among themselves, I would lose maybe half the conversation.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] So that was a little frustrating. I think I got the most satisfaction out of the private classes, though, because these were the people who were the most motivated.

[Assistant] And were they all self-selected?


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

[User] So it was really quite something to be feted by these kids.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And everybody wanted to invite us to their house and have us over for tea and.

[Assistant] Nice.

[User] It was really nice.

[Assistant] It must have warmed your heart after all those years and everything that had happened in the interim.


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

[User] And everybody wanted to invite us to their house and have us over for tea and.

[Assistant] Nice.

[User] It was really nice.

[Assistant] It must have warmed your heart after all those years and everything that had happened in the interim.

[User] But of course, the kids that I was closest to were the ones in this special class. So we made a point of getting together with them.

[Assistant] Were they using their English?


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

[User] But of course, the kids that I was closest to were the ones in this special class. So we made a point of getting together with them.

[Assistant] Were they using their English?

[User] Yes, um, as a matter of fact, I think some of them, in particular in my wife's class, did become English teachers.

[Assistant] Ah.

[User] Yeah. And most of those young people were quite successful and, uh, I can't say that they're using English in their daily work life, but their command of the language is good.

[Assistant] Oh, good, good. Nice to hear. Nice to hear. What was your biggest challenge during these two years in Iran?


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

[User] They realized that we weren't brother and sister, we were husband and wife, and that, you know, the woman changes her name to the man's name generally in the United States.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] It was, they didn't quite understand why we both had the same last name.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] But the first Christmas, we got to meet a number of people and they realized how homesick we were and they realized how important Christmas was to us. And I guess Gloria might have mentioned that to some of the teachers at school. And I believe one of the teachers at school was either the governor's wife or a friend of the governor's wife. I don't know exactly how it came about. But the governor saw to it that we would have a Christmas tree by cutting down one of the trees in the public garden. So we had more evergreen than we could ever use. Not exactly a tree, but huge branches of evergreen.

[Assistant] And in the desert.


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

[User] It was, they didn't quite understand why we both had the same last name.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] But the first Christmas, we got to meet a number of people and they realized how homesick we were and they realized how important Christmas was to us. And I guess Gloria might have mentioned that to some of the teachers at school. And I believe one of the teachers at school was either the governor's wife or a friend of the governor's wife. I don't know exactly how it came about. But the governor saw to it that we would have a Christmas tree by cutting down one of the trees in the public garden. So we had more evergreen than we could ever use. Not exactly a tree, but huge branches of evergreen.

[Assistant] And in the desert.

[User] And in the desert. And we invited folks over and for a little party. And I had kind of a birthday, my wife's birthday is around Christmas, so I had a little party for her. And that's when things really, things started to improve at that point.

[Assistant] What did your family think about you going?


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

[User] Oh, ridiculous. They had, no, nobody thought it was a good idea. I mean, I remember, um. I was a little bit of a rebel in those days.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] There was one uncle that I had, my Uncle Joe, who I looked up to and admired. And I thought of, I come from a very big extended family, lots of aunts and uncles. And my father knew that I kind of looked up to my Uncle Joe. So somehow he commissioned him to come over to the house to try to dissuade me from doing this. And I was kind of surprised that my Uncle Joe was turning on me.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Um. No, it was a very unusual thing for some, people of our background to do.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And especially newly married and you're taking your wife over there.


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

[User] There was one uncle that I had, my Uncle Joe, who I looked up to and admired. And I thought of, I come from a very big extended family, lots of aunts and uncles. And my father knew that I kind of looked up to my Uncle Joe. So somehow he commissioned him to come over to the house to try to dissuade me from doing this. And I was kind of surprised that my Uncle Joe was turning on me.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Um. No, it was a very unusual thing for some, people of our background to do.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. And especially newly married and you're taking your wife over there.

[User] Right. Right.

[Assistant] How did gender roles impact you over there?


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

[User]
Now, there were also Iranian, this is a small conservative town, so you would find more women not wearing the veil in a place like Tehran than you would in Fassa. But even in Fassa, I would say, I'm guessing here, maybe out of a population of 20,000, there might have been 25 women who didn't wear the veil in the street. So the fact that Gloria was on the street, dressed conservatively, always covering her in her arms. It wasn't something that startled people. What startled them was that this was a Western woman, not so much that she was a woman without a veil. Uh, but there were certain times of the year when you had to be very careful and these would be the times of the religious, certain religious observances.

And in Iran, sometimes the people were kind of whipped up into a frenzy over certain events in Shia history. And what they would do is they would recreate those events through poetry and song. And people would start crying, remembering what happened to the Shia leaders of the past, the death of Hossein, and all of that. I don't know if you know anything about that. So when those events were going on, you had to be very careful and make sure you didn't go anywhere near where those festivities were taking place actually out on the street. You'd have somebody who was, you know, kind of chanting.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And then also people whipping themselves.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] So that was a little scary. I mean, not, not that we it forced us to stay indoors. But you thought twice about how you would get from point A to point B and you didn't want to go anywhere near the mosque in those times.

[Assistant] Did you guys celebrate Ramadan with others? Did you go to ikbar any time? Did you, what was your interaction with that part of the culture in Fassa?


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

[User] That's a great question. So I told you that I had these private classes.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User]
You know, I'm remembering now that not only, I had three classes. I had a class for the young kids, a class for the high school students, and a class for adults. And in the high school student class, there were some very devout Muslims. And I don't know if you know this, but in Islam, you can earn a special place in heaven if you can convert someone to Islam. So I constantly had people trying to convert me to Islam. They would give me copies of books to read in English. So that was a little bit annoying because you knew that there were some people that were kind of cultivating a friendship with me. But they had an ulterior motive, you know?

Now, on the subject of Ramadan, I guess it intrigued me a little bit. And so I did observe the Ramadan fast one year. I don't remember what year it was, but I observed it for a period of three days just to have the experience.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And I mean, you probably have to get up early in the morning before sunrise, and you have enough to, try to have enough food to sustain you to the end of the day. But I just wanted to know what it was like. Not, not that I was seriously contemplating becoming a Muslim.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.


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

[User]
You know, I'm remembering now that not only, I had three classes. I had a class for the young kids, a class for the high school students, and a class for adults. And in the high school student class, there were some very devout Muslims. And I don't know if you know this, but in Islam, you can earn a special place in heaven if you can convert someone to Islam. So I constantly had people trying to convert me to Islam. They would give me copies of books to read in English. So that was a little bit annoying because you knew that there were some people that were kind of cultivating a friendship with me. But they had an ulterior motive, you know?

Now, on the subject of Ramadan, I guess it intrigued me a little bit. And so I did observe the Ramadan fast one year. I don't remember what year it was, but I observed it for a period of three days just to have the experience.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And I mean, you probably have to get up early in the morning before sunrise, and you have enough to, try to have enough food to sustain you to the end of the day. But I just wanted to know what it was like. Not, not that I was seriously contemplating becoming a Muslim.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[User] But, you know, they talk about the health effects of the, of the fast and how it's good for your body to do that. So I just wanted to see what kind of effects it would have on me. But three days was enough.

[Assistant] And Eid, did you, were you there with the slaughtering of the sheep or anything like that? Any of the post-Ramadan or the other Eid?


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

[User] We saw sheep being slaughtered all the time.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] It was very common for somebody to have a sheep just right out in the kucheh and just be cutting up a sheep.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] I don't know why they did that, but they did it. So. But I don't remember ritual slaughter or anything.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just picturing two young kids from Brooklyn walking out in the kucheh.


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

[User] It was very common for somebody to have a sheep just right out in the kucheh and just be cutting up a sheep.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] I don't know why they did that, but they did it. So. But I don't remember ritual slaughter or anything.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just picturing two young kids from Brooklyn walking out in the kucheh.

[User] Of course, one of the grossest things was to go to the meat market, because they don't quite understand that there are different cuts of meat. So the meat market would be the carcass of some animal just hanging from a hook. And if you wanted meat, wherever they were in the carcass, that's where you would get your meat. And it might have not been the healthiest of cows or whatever it is. You know, you couldn't really cook the meat the way we cook the meat. You needed a, you need a pressure cooker. Nobody ever told us that. So we didn't, that wasn't covered in Peace Corps training.

[Assistant] It wasn't in your trunk.


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

[User] I don't know why they did that, but they did it. So. But I don't remember ritual slaughter or anything.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just picturing two young kids from Brooklyn walking out in the kucheh.

[User] Of course, one of the grossest things was to go to the meat market, because they don't quite understand that there are different cuts of meat. So the meat market would be the carcass of some animal just hanging from a hook. And if you wanted meat, wherever they were in the carcass, that's where you would get your meat. And it might have not been the healthiest of cows or whatever it is. You know, you couldn't really cook the meat the way we cook the meat. You needed a, you need a pressure cooker. Nobody ever told us that. So we didn't, that wasn't covered in Peace Corps training.

[Assistant] It wasn't in your trunk.

[User] We had to arrange to get a pressure cooker to do anything with the meat there. Um. So. So, yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. How was the food?


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

[User] We had to arrange to get a pressure cooker to do anything with the meat there. Um. So. So, yeah.

[Assistant] Yeah. How was the food?

[User] We grew to love the food. I mean, it took a while. Like anything else, you have to get accustomed to it. Especially the flavor of the cooking oil, which I guess is sheep's oil? Something like that. It's not in the oil that we use in the United States.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] But after a while, we loved Iranian food. If we have an opportunity to do Iranian, we do it. And in fact, my wife cooks Iranian sometimes.

[Assistant] Cool. Cool, cool. What was it like for you as the end of your time came? Did you guys think about extending it all? Was there even that opportunity? What did it feel like when the end came for your time in Fassa?


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

[User] Believe it or not. And when that bus pulled away from that town. Because in those days, you know, chances are you're on the other side of the world, you're never going to get back to Iran. So it's a form of death to leave a place.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And by that time, we were, you know, I didn't want to say members of the community, but we were accepted in the town and we had lots of good friends there.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And just to see all these people outside the bus saying goodbye. I mean, I cried all the way to, we had to go to Shiraz and then get back to Tehran. But all that bus ride was the worst bus ride of my life.

[Assistant] And then what was it like when you came home?


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

[User] And so I remember when we got to Minnesota, I mentioned the taroff and all of that, the formal courtesy. A part of taroff is anytime you meet someone, even if you saw them 2 hours ago, you meet him again, you shake hands. And so when I arrived in Minnesota, I remember offering my hand like a million times to people, and it was kind of strange. This guy just wanted to shake hands all the time. I mean, little stupid things like that.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] Or, you know, being deferential to people and making sure that they go through the door first. They didn't know what was going on in my head. But kind of interesting that most people, maybe it's because of our background and the people we knew, where we came from, but not too many people were really interested in what the experience was like. You could have a 15 minute conversation and that was it.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] So that was a little bit disappointing, but I don't remember it bothering me that much. It was just surprising that we had gone through this experience.

[Assistant] And you had all this stuff.


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

[User] So that was a little bit disappointing, but I don't remember it bothering me that much. It was just surprising that we had gone through this experience.

[Assistant] And you had all this stuff.

[User] Yeah, most people were really didn't care or didn't know. They probably couldn't appreciate what it was like to.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Experience culture shock, make the adaptation, and then come back and experience reverse cultural shock.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.


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

[User] Experience culture shock, make the adaptation, and then come back and experience reverse cultural shock.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[User] And we did indeed experience reverse culture shock. A certain amount of revulsion to life in the United States compared to, you know, the simple life in rural Iran. And you get used to that, and you see how kind of wholesome it is.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] You know, people work hard, but they also know how to enjoy themselves. And it's, it's a lifestyle that I miss actually.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Was there any time when you were in Iran that you felt like you guys were in danger or that your health was threatened? Anything like that?


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

[User] It was just too many people. Just, you know, Gloria knew that she had been touched. So it was very frustrating.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] You know, you feel like it's your obligation, especially traditional male thinking, it's your obligation to protect your wife.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And so the way we generally did that, if we were in a crowded city street, is instead of Gloria walking behind me, which is what normally happens in Iran. The man walks ahead of the woman. I would walk behind Gloria so I could protect her from the rear.

[Assistant] What was your contact with Peace Corps once you were settled in Fassa? There were no telephones, there wasn't any direct contact, was there?


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

[User] You know, you feel like it's your obligation, especially traditional male thinking, it's your obligation to protect your wife.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User] And so the way we generally did that, if we were in a crowded city street, is instead of Gloria walking behind me, which is what normally happens in Iran. The man walks ahead of the woman. I would walk behind Gloria so I could protect her from the rear.

[Assistant] What was your contact with Peace Corps once you were settled in Fassa? There were no telephones, there wasn't any direct contact, was there?

[User] Well, our Peace Corps director did travel around the country visiting the various sites, and he came to Fassa at least once. He might have come twice, I don't remember exactly. And then, of course, we were called back to Tehran all the time for, you know, maybe it was an inoculation or a physical or just some sort of gathering. But I would say over the course of two years, maybe we went to Tehran I'd say ten times something like that. So.

[Assistant] And how long a trip was that?


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

[User] Well, our Peace Corps director did travel around the country visiting the various sites, and he came to Fassa at least once. He might have come twice, I don't remember exactly. And then, of course, we were called back to Tehran all the time for, you know, maybe it was an inoculation or a physical or just some sort of gathering. But I would say over the course of two years, maybe we went to Tehran I'd say ten times something like that. So.

[Assistant] And how long a trip was that?

[User] Oh, for us it was a long trip.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] It was like all by bus. So it was like 3 hours to get to Shiraz. And then from Shiraz to Tehran, I want to say 13 hours. Maybe 13, 14 hours on a bus.

[Assistant] Yes, so that was a trek.


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

[User] Oh, for us it was a long trip.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] It was like all by bus. So it was like 3 hours to get to Shiraz. And then from Shiraz to Tehran, I want to say 13 hours. Maybe 13, 14 hours on a bus.

[Assistant] Yes, so that was a trek.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] That was a trek.


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

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] That was a trek.

[User] But it was nice to go to Tehran because, you know, we got to see other volunteers who were there. So it was kind of a reunion.

[Assistant] Mm hmm.

[User]
We got to go to the U.S. embassy and have pancakes or whatever you could get at the U.S. embassy, hamburgers, you know, that kind of stuff. We stayed at this hotel that was a favorite haunt for all the Peace Corps volunteers called the Hotel Polaris. And it was really a dive. That's where we stayed. We once discovered that all or some of the rooms had peak holes. That was towards the end when we realized that there were peep holes in the rooms.

Um, but Tehran had like an assortment of restaurants. So, like, if you wanted French food, there was a French restaurant. There was an Italian restaurant. So you could get your, if you missed that, you had an opportunity. There was a Hungarian place I remember that was very good.

[Assistant] And what was alcohol consumption there?


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

[User] So generally what we would do is we would smuggle in bottles of wine in our luggage every time we went to Shiraz. So in Shiraz we were able to go to a, it was a store either owned by Jewish people or by Armenians. There's quite a large Armenian community in Tehran, in Iran. And Shiraz had this wonderful wine which was called Hazaroyek 1001, was the brand name. And, uh, the grape growers in Fars province. By the way, this is a little bit of an aside. All of them, I understand, left Iran after the revolution and do you know where they established themselves?

[Assistant] Australia.

[User] Exactly. Yeah. They went to Australia and they began cultivate, I'm trying to remember what's the kind of wine that's famous for?

[Assistant] Shiraz.

[User] Is Shiraz one?

[Assistant] Yeah, there's a couple of different names of it. One's Shiraz. The other one is.


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

[User] Exactly. Yeah. They went to Australia and they began cultivate, I'm trying to remember what's the kind of wine that's famous for?

[Assistant] Shiraz.

[User] Is Shiraz one?

[Assistant] Yeah, there's a couple of different names of it. One's Shiraz. The other one is.

[User] It's another name that I'm not remembering.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah, it's "sha" something.


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

[User] Is Shiraz one?

[Assistant] Yeah, there's a couple of different names of it. One's Shiraz. The other one is.

[User] It's another name that I'm not remembering.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah, it's "sha" something.

[User] But anyway.

[Assistant] That's how I knew it was from Australia, because that's where that came up from.


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

[User] It's another name that I'm not remembering.

[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah, it's "sha" something.

[User] But anyway.

[Assistant] That's how I knew it was from Australia, because that's where that came up from.

[User] The production of these grapes was transferred from Iran. But that's the wine that we would get from Shiraz and bring back. We usually would bring back maybe two bottles, which would last us like two months or something like that.

[Assistant] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Interesting. Well, is there anything else you'd like to say about either Peace Corps or your experience in Iran or what it's meant in your life?


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

[User] So I have pretty much devoted myself to immigrant causes. I had a, I headed up a social service agency that helped immigrants resettle in the United States, and I'm still doing work in that area.

[Assistant] Cool.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Cool.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Great. Well, thank you very much.


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

[User] Oh, yes. It was Mike [Michael J.] Smith, good old Mike Smith. And it was Rick Hauck. Those were the two guys. In fact, we went up to—have you ever been to the lodge in Cloudcroft [New Mexico]?

[Assistant] No.

[User] Well, it was in February. It was cold. And we drove up to the lodge for supper, and there was about that much snow on the ground up at Cloudcroft. See, Cloudcroft’s only fifteen miles from Alamogordo, but it’s about 5,000 feet higher. Yes, Mike was a good guy, but Mike and Rick were the pilots.

[Assistant] This work also was awarded the Federal Incentive Award. Is that correct?

[User] Yes, yes. We got it.

[Assistant] Tell us how that worked and what that meant.


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

[User] Well, it was in February. It was cold. And we drove up to the lodge for supper, and there was about that much snow on the ground up at Cloudcroft. See, Cloudcroft’s only fifteen miles from Alamogordo, but it’s about 5,000 feet higher. Yes, Mike was a good guy, but Mike and Rick were the pilots.

[Assistant] This work also was awarded the Federal Incentive Award. Is that correct?

[User] Yes, yes. We got it.

[Assistant] Tell us how that worked and what that meant.

[User] I don’t know who turned it in. Somebody turned it in, and I got a letter from [President Ronald W.] Reagan saying, you guys done good. I got $2,000 or $3,000 or something like that for it, and there was a bunch of us. There was several guys involved in that. There was more than just Smith and Rick. I think Bobko was involved. There was a bunch of guys, and there was a lot of guys on the ground, too, like Tim Brown and myself and Dick [Richard D.] Tuntland and a few guys like that.\n\n One of the things that Ascent, Entry, and Procedure Section did do was work on some of the visual aids, because there was a triangle at the end of the runway. There was a triangle at the [outer glideslope] PAPIs. We went down to the Cape to figure out where to put those. Walked out, and they flew us out on the helicopter and flew us around. Then we walked out there and walked on up and got chiggers like you wouldn’t believe out there in that palmetto. So that was kind of a fun thing to do, that visual aid stuff. And every time I could get out of that Section Head business and get back to the technical stuff, I tried to do that.

[Assistant] Not so fun was, of course, the [Space Shuttle] Challenger [STS 51-L] accident.


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

[User] Oh, yes. Yes. We were on time and on budget, yes, which is pretty unusual. We converted somewhere around—because a lot of the code was Univac code or in some other code, and so we had to convert it all to work in a distributed system, in a Unix or whatever, because a lot of it was in Fortran. And we converted a couple million lines of code.

[Assistant] Do you remember how many people this impacted, how many were going to be affected by this new system?

[User] I would guess probably 300 or something like that, because it was all the flight design people in Rockwell. And then there were some terminals over onsite that the civil servants would use.\n\n But one of the things that happened during Apollo, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse, back early on, the civil service people did everything. As time progressed, as we closer and closer to the Shuttle, more contractors were involved, and now the civil servants were just contract monitors. It’s probably a little hard to say that. They’re more than that, but they became more of an overseer and a manager than they did a doer. So you’re losing a lot of internal expertise.\n\n So essentially, by the time we got to the Challenger, most all the detailed work was being done by contractors, and just the civil servants would kind of look over their shoulder to make sure it was being done right. So that took some of the control away from them. And I don’t think you can blame any of the accidents on that, but it certainly didn’t help anything.

[Assistant] It’s probably a good time for me to ask you about your participation on the Source Selection Board.

[User] Yes, I was thinking about that, and I think—when was that?

[Assistant] Well, I don’t think I have the date. I just saw that you had been on there.


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

[User] I would guess probably 300 or something like that, because it was all the flight design people in Rockwell. And then there were some terminals over onsite that the civil servants would use.\n\n But one of the things that happened during Apollo, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse, back early on, the civil service people did everything. As time progressed, as we closer and closer to the Shuttle, more contractors were involved, and now the civil servants were just contract monitors. It’s probably a little hard to say that. They’re more than that, but they became more of an overseer and a manager than they did a doer. So you’re losing a lot of internal expertise.\n\n So essentially, by the time we got to the Challenger, most all the detailed work was being done by contractors, and just the civil servants would kind of look over their shoulder to make sure it was being done right. So that took some of the control away from them. And I don’t think you can blame any of the accidents on that, but it certainly didn’t help anything.

[Assistant] It’s probably a good time for me to ask you about your participation on the Source Selection Board.

[User] Yes, I was thinking about that, and I think—when was that?

[Assistant] Well, I don’t think I have the date. I just saw that you had been on there.

[User] Okay. Well, I think that was like March to June of [19]’85. I think it was like a three-month time. I’m not sure. It was a long time. I know that.

[Assistant] Felt like a long time?


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

[User] Just as far as challenges go it was keeping up with the massive amount of stuff. Even since I've retired I've heard from my colleagues about tens of thousands of cubic feet of records that continue to come in, and as the bankruptcy records were all consolidated here. I know there's an ongoing project to get all of the appellate court records from the whole country. It's just because real estate costs less in Kansas City. I think it's really an economic move as much as anything. And we have so much cave storage in Kansas City. So it's a good locale for that. But just the sheer amount of stuff is overwhelming and to keep up with what's coming in was kind of overwhelming at times.

[Assistant] Would you say the staff here in Research Services have the amount of records exponentially increasing but maybe not staff levels increasing?

[User] Yes, exactly. When I retired they've not been able to backfill my position. When I started with NARA, there were three of us who were archivists downtown. Jake Ersland who is now deputy director, Elizabeth Burnes is still an archivist but also a subject matter expert, so she's really only halftime here as archivist, and me. There were three of us. Well, when Jake was promoted, which was needed because we have archivists at all three offsite facilities, we didn't get his backfill. Now we're down to two people downtown. I've retired. Now we're down to Elizabeth downtown. I know what that's like because I filled in for Elizabeth while she was on maternity leave twice. There were two stretches of five or six months where I was the only archivist downtown. It just really does become overwhelming and very stressful. It's hard to provide really good one-on-one service to individual researchers when you've got so many requests coming in. There were months that I had a hundred reference requests.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] It's a lot and when you're only on reference one day a week, it's a lot.

[Assistant] I know we can't even begin to cover everything, but is there anything else I haven't asked you about that you want to speak to?


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

[User] But the people who changed were my close friends. So it was my counterpart who I'd become friends with. His life changed. Without realizing it, he started picking my brain. I know a lot about small business. He started picking my brain about small business. He left the health center and started a small business. He now has one of the largest Home Depot kind of organizations in that region.

[Assistant] Nice.

[User] Because he was a smart guy. He had a college degree and he figured out. And he set up now scholarships for local students. He, he is the good employer. He is the good, uh, business for the local people.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] Because he gives them, he doesn't gouge them on prices of things and all sorts of stuff. You know, he does community development like I always think, look, I live in the United States. I live in a capitalist society. Let's take advantage of the good of it, you know?

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah. And you're still in contact with him?


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

[User] But it got kind of moved into we bring business people for training here.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] So I did reverse. I was a facilitator. We went to Mississippi and Vermont. It was done with another foundation. And so I was, I was loaned by the Peace Corps to them. So those were my trips back. And then my vacations, I just did local stuff. I went to La Ceiba, I went to the coast, but I tried to mix it with work. So I went to the northern coast of Honduras, and then I repaid the favor of all those people who'd come and done training for me.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah.

[User] I went and did stuff for them. And then.

[Assistant] And were there a lot of other Peace Corps volunteers in your area, since there were so many in-country?


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

[User] My salary was paid by my grant, that grant.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] So we didn't get reimbursed for all those 152 cases because I settled them. And that's when I realized, you know what, I'm a systems person, I've got to be somewhere where we're working on these systems or helping people who work on these systems and changing these practices. And I thought that was going to be going on higher up in Legal Service of New Jersey to policy. But that's when somebody I went to law school with at Columbia called me up and said, I'm at the Robin Hood Foundation. We're looking for a program officer. You have all of the criteria that we need. They wanted somebody who had on the ground national and domestic community development experience in the areas that I was working with at Passaic County Legal Aid Society, who had a corporate background, who had gone to an Ivy League school, that wasn't stated, but that was kind of understood, and who was, uh, spoke multiple languages. I also speak Portuguese fluently. I learned that.

[Assistant] In Brazil?

[User] Before and after. Again, I'm a, if you're a student of literature and of language, it's easy to pick up these other romance languages.

[Assistant] Especially Spanish, or Brazil it's Portuguese. No?


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

[User] Before and after. Again, I'm a, if you're a student of literature and of language, it's easy to pick up these other romance languages.

[Assistant] Especially Spanish, or Brazil it's Portuguese. No?

[User] English. No, it's English to Brazilian. The big mistake people make is how things are written is what's important. Now you learn you, if you try, the people who learn Spanish can't understand Portuguese. The Portuguese understand Spanish. You know why? Because there's more, there's more sounds and consonants that exist in Portuguese that aren't used in Spanish. And if you just hear, if you're a Portuguese speaker and you hear Spanish, it sounds like a slow Portuguese. If you are a Spanish speaker hearing Portuguese, you can't make it. I'll just tell you one, one word that you would know. You've heard the last name Andrade, right? Andrade, Spanish. In Portugal they go Andrade. In Brazil, Andrade. It sounds Italian. If you look at it on a paper, they're spelled the same way.

[Assistant] Oh, wow.

[User] The same goes with how grammar works. Portuguese grammar is more complex, slightly more complex than Spanish grammar, and it's used differently. So in Portuguese. Um, okay. So in Spanish, no is no. So in Portuguese people say no, no, all the time. And in Spanish they don't understand what. In Portuguese, no is nao, N-A-O with the tilde. No, N-O, is the pulling together of two articles. In Spanish you have en la casa, en el car. In the house. In Portuguese, it's M-U. Well, it is house, so la casa. And Portuguese, em la casa. They combine the M and the la and they go na. So it's na casa. Na escritoire. You're in your desk. So when you're saying na in Portuguese, you're saying two articles.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.


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

[User] English. No, it's English to Brazilian. The big mistake people make is how things are written is what's important. Now you learn you, if you try, the people who learn Spanish can't understand Portuguese. The Portuguese understand Spanish. You know why? Because there's more, there's more sounds and consonants that exist in Portuguese that aren't used in Spanish. And if you just hear, if you're a Portuguese speaker and you hear Spanish, it sounds like a slow Portuguese. If you are a Spanish speaker hearing Portuguese, you can't make it. I'll just tell you one, one word that you would know. You've heard the last name Andrade, right? Andrade, Spanish. In Portugal they go Andrade. In Brazil, Andrade. It sounds Italian. If you look at it on a paper, they're spelled the same way.

[Assistant] Oh, wow.

[User] The same goes with how grammar works. Portuguese grammar is more complex, slightly more complex than Spanish grammar, and it's used differently. So in Portuguese. Um, okay. So in Spanish, no is no. So in Portuguese people say no, no, all the time. And in Spanish they don't understand what. In Portuguese, no is nao, N-A-O with the tilde. No, N-O, is the pulling together of two articles. In Spanish you have en la casa, en el car. In the house. In Portuguese, it's M-U. Well, it is house, so la casa. And Portuguese, em la casa. They combine the M and the la and they go na. So it's na casa. Na escritoire. You're in your desk. So when you're saying na in Portuguese, you're saying two articles.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[User] So it's simple things that, you know that if you're a student of literature and you've studied the grammar and you can see the differences, then it's easy.

[Assistant] Yeah. Can I get back to.


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

[User] The same goes with how grammar works. Portuguese grammar is more complex, slightly more complex than Spanish grammar, and it's used differently. So in Portuguese. Um, okay. So in Spanish, no is no. So in Portuguese people say no, no, all the time. And in Spanish they don't understand what. In Portuguese, no is nao, N-A-O with the tilde. No, N-O, is the pulling together of two articles. In Spanish you have en la casa, en el car. In the house. In Portuguese, it's M-U. Well, it is house, so la casa. And Portuguese, em la casa. They combine the M and the la and they go na. So it's na casa. Na escritoire. You're in your desk. So when you're saying na in Portuguese, you're saying two articles.

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[User] So it's simple things that, you know that if you're a student of literature and you've studied the grammar and you can see the differences, then it's easy.

[Assistant] Yeah. Can I get back to.

[User] Sorry.

[Assistant] When you first came back to the United States.


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

[User] So it's simple things that, you know that if you're a student of literature and you've studied the grammar and you can see the differences, then it's easy.

[Assistant] Yeah. Can I get back to.

[User] Sorry.

[Assistant] When you first came back to the United States.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What was that like for you after three plus years?


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

[User] Sorry.

[Assistant] When you first came back to the United States.

[User] Yes.

[Assistant] What was that like for you after three plus years?

[User] It was culture shock. Huge culture shock. I was in a village with, it's different now because now there's all the phones and everything. But I didn't know what "where's the beef" meant. Because that happened when I was away. So I was culturally behind. My parents were frustrated with me because I learned how to speak Honduran Spanish, which is much slower than Cuban Spanish. I came back with a lot of machismo, unconscious things that I did, like not washing my plates. Not because I didn't want to, I washed my plates in Honduras. They wouldn't let me. So I'm sitting there. My grandmother is like, you think I'm going to wash that plate? And things like that. Law school was probably the best environment I could go into in the first three months. It was a distraction. I had to read 1,000 pages a night. So I just focused on that.

[Assistant] So you went almost directly into law school.


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

[User] It was culture shock. Huge culture shock. I was in a village with, it's different now because now there's all the phones and everything. But I didn't know what "where's the beef" meant. Because that happened when I was away. So I was culturally behind. My parents were frustrated with me because I learned how to speak Honduran Spanish, which is much slower than Cuban Spanish. I came back with a lot of machismo, unconscious things that I did, like not washing my plates. Not because I didn't want to, I washed my plates in Honduras. They wouldn't let me. So I'm sitting there. My grandmother is like, you think I'm going to wash that plate? And things like that. Law school was probably the best environment I could go into in the first three months. It was a distraction. I had to read 1,000 pages a night. So I just focused on that.

[Assistant] So you went almost directly into law school.

[User] I literally walked off the plane and walked into a classroom the next day.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] I didn't go to the law school orientation. Nothing like that. I walked.

[Assistant] That would be.


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

[User] Blond and, uh, you know, and believe me, getting a daughter recognized in two different countries is, is, a bit of a challenge. But I learned how to work the bureaucracy. And by working I don't mean subverting it, I mean just how it works, getting what you need in front of the person that you need.

[Assistant] Finding a way to do it.

[User] And getting everything done legally and appropriately. But sometimes you've got to give it a little, a little grease to just get it moving because it just stalls sometimes, not because of anybody's fault. It's just a paper. It gets accidentally filed in the wrong place. It took two years for my wife and daughter. I married my, I did do everything you're supposed to do. I married my wife in Honduras because there was no way to bring her daughter with her here. She could have come here. But I wasn't going to have another child left behind. So I married in Honduras and I had her, and she should have come over in eight months. But paperwork got misfiled. It took two years to get them over and it actually took a contact I know knowing somebody at Homeland Security, Homeland, um, Office of Homeland Security to just look at the file, to find it, and say this should have been processed a year ago and processing it.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] You know, and I'm always thankful to those people who, again, if there had been a problem, you know, not going to tell you. But it wasn't a problem. It was just that it wasn't followed appropriately.

[Assistant] Yeah. Is there anything else you want to say about Peace Corps or your experience?


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

[User] You know, and I'm always thankful to those people who, again, if there had been a problem, you know, not going to tell you. But it wasn't a problem. It was just that it wasn't followed appropriately.

[Assistant] Yeah. Is there anything else you want to say about Peace Corps or your experience?

[User] Yeah, I still think it's a valuable thing. I think we need it. I mean, the, if. I may not have been as active in the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Honduras, but I'm very active in all the things that have to do with educating people about what's going on in Central America in my daily life and when there are campaigns that pop up. Liberia wouldn't be Liberia today without returned Peace Corps volunteers. We've had Peace Corps volunteers now serve in all sorts of positions of government, and they bring just a perspective of we live in a big world and we need to understand our indirect impact that you may not think we're having, but everything that we do. When I was in Honduras and Clinton beat Bush, people in Honduras did not believe that Bush was going to cede power to Clinton. And that sounds funny. But, you know, in Honduras, that hasn't happened recently.

[Assistant] Well, that was the big thing when Obama got elected, too, people couldn't believe that, A, somebody not from a rich political family had won.

[User] Exactly.

[Assistant] And B, that he would be allowed to take power.


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

[User] Yes, there were. There's stories after stories about—I probably had it cush compared to certainly the guys who pulled ship duty.

[Assistant] Was that just random chance, where they were assigned?

[User] It was random chance how I got assigned, at least on the first simulation, NS-1. I think it was random chance where I got assigned. Later on, I think certain crews, subcrews, got kind of set as to which manager was going to which location, and therefore they started kind of picking which team they wanted to take with them. But it was random.\n\n The thing that happened, of course, I then came back to Mission Control Center in Houston and spent the rest of my career there, so I never deployed after that.

[Assistant] Talking about coming back to Houston to work at the control center, what was your first mission there?

[User] First mission I worked in Mission Control Center was Gemini IV, if my memory's right. We controlled Gemini II out of Florida, and I was there. Controlled Gemini III out of Florida with Houston, I believe, in a parallel mode, not active but parallel. In fact, I think they had a power failure right in the middle of the launch here in Houston. Do I remember that right?

[Assistant] I think so, yes.


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

[User] And then the other big surprise, of course, because we were all sitting there with our fingers crossed, because we were in lunar orbit and we couldn't wait to get out of lunar orbit, I remember that, but when the crew came around the horn from the far side of the moon and started reading from Genesis, to watch the reaction in the Mission Control Center, because here we are, you know, totally concentrating on our technical job, and for that to happen and then the onset, it just didn't occur to us, because none of us had any clues that was going to happen. And it took us a while to realize what was happening, the significance of that, and—wham!—it hit us. I mean, looking back on it, nothing could have been more perfect of a thing to have been said.

[Assistant] Absolutely.

[User] I think it not only impacted everyone in Washington, but it particularly impacted the mission controllers, because they were sitting there doing this highly technical jargon-oriented job, and then just the transition from that to a reading from Genesis, that was the big surprise.\n\n Apollo 8, of course, culminated a lot of things, because we had spent so much time redesigning the spacecraft, it seemed like a lot of time then. In today's world it doesn't seem much time at all, because what we do now in years we judged then in months. But we just completely redesigned the vehicle, had one test flight on Apollo 7, and then made the decision to go to the moon, and it was highly successful, not only the spacecraft, but the Saturn V. I mean, we forget sometimes the shaky start the Saturn V had. We had 501 and 502, and those were not anomaly-free missions. Had major anomalies with the boosters on those two unmanned flights. So it was a bold move.

[Assistant] But one that proved spectacularly successful.

[User] Oh, yes. It set the stage to do it.

[Assistant] If we can pause here for a moment, it's four o'clock.


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

[User] I think it not only impacted everyone in Washington, but it particularly impacted the mission controllers, because they were sitting there doing this highly technical jargon-oriented job, and then just the transition from that to a reading from Genesis, that was the big surprise.\n\n Apollo 8, of course, culminated a lot of things, because we had spent so much time redesigning the spacecraft, it seemed like a lot of time then. In today's world it doesn't seem much time at all, because what we do now in years we judged then in months. But we just completely redesigned the vehicle, had one test flight on Apollo 7, and then made the decision to go to the moon, and it was highly successful, not only the spacecraft, but the Saturn V. I mean, we forget sometimes the shaky start the Saturn V had. We had 501 and 502, and those were not anomaly-free missions. Had major anomalies with the boosters on those two unmanned flights. So it was a bold move.

[Assistant] But one that proved spectacularly successful.

[User] Oh, yes. It set the stage to do it.

[Assistant] If we can pause here for a moment, it's four o'clock.

[User] I've got some more time, but you may want to collect your thoughts and understand what you want to zoom in on, because we have not touched on particular facets of sort of my perspective of what makes things work at NASA and what doesn't work, and I can comment about that technically as well as management systems, and you may want to save that for another day.

[Assistant] Again, depending on how much time you have, if you think it may take longer than what you have, you know we're more than happy to come back.


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

[User] The interesting thing would be, because this is really just an archive, the interesting thing would be, because everybody sees the problem from their own perspective, and I'm as guilty of that, because we're all a product of our experience, right?

[Assistant] Of course.

[User] It would be interesting to interview Neil Hutchinson, who was the program manager at the time, interview Aaron Cohen, you're interviewing myself, Gerry Griffin, John [D.] Hodge, Phil Culbertson. I don't know whether you know Phil Culbertson or not. He was the associate administrator for Space Station when all this got started. And then try to piece the story together as to what was our decision process that caused all that to happen.

[Assistant] And it's only through talking with the people that were involved that you really do get a sense of that decision process. In reading meeting minutes or whatever other documents doesn't really give you an idea of the true process behind these things.

[User] So the Space Station you see today still has heritage to some of those early decisions. Some were good and some were not so good. That's protracted its technical efficiency to weigh more, take more power than it probably should have as a monolithic design, and certainly cost more. Now, the reason that's important is because that's the way of the future. We're not going to return to the world of Gemini, where you write a one-page summary of a space ship and just have one organization monolithically build it. We're in the business of how to farm out work to international partners, probably anybody that will take it, right? Because I'm convinced going to Mars, no single country is probably going to do that.

[Assistant] I think a lot of people agree with you on that.


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

[User] Sure. I started actually in archives work at the Maine State Archives in the late 1960s in a program that had just been legislated. And so I was one of the first hires there, and many of our consultants actually worked for the National Archives. And so I, early on in my career, was exposed to people like Frank Evans and Frank Burke and Bert Rhodes.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] Later on, I spent about five years doing consultant work, mostly on funding from the NHPRC, including a project that looked at library and archives preservation needs in all the states west of the Mississippi. And from there, I spent about eight years as the state archivist and records administrator in Oklahoma and another 11 years in the state archives and records administrator in Delaware. And that brings me up to roughly my time of starting it at NARA. I think the relevant experience was being a state archivist. That was kind of the key experience I went to. I'm an archivist that's really never processed the collection. All of my experience has been on the administrative side of government archives programs.

[Assistant] What were your impressions of the agency at the time that you started? You just mentioned some pretty significant names.

[User] I think I always had a favorable impression of the National Archives. I think it was reinforced once I got there by the really thoughtful quality of the professionals who work there. This was where some of the cutting-edge technology was being discussed. I mean, back as late as the early 1970s in Maine, we were working with Frank Burke on SPINDEX issues, which was an early National Archives initiative in trying to control records using electronic means. And so I always had a pretty positive vision of the National Archives. And after my ten years there, that hasn't changed. The people there are exceptional.

[Assistant] What part of that job did you enjoy? What was the work? I mean, you mentioned being an archivist who didn't process collections. So what part of your days did you like?


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

[User] Yeah. There were physical facility issues at Suitland. Early on, we had a serious fire at Suitland, which damaged a lot of records, which we investigated but were not able to substantiate. But there were indications that it was an inside job. A disgruntled employee.

[Assistant] Hmm.

[User] Right. You mentioned it. One of your questions down here below about the flood in 2006 at Archives I.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Well, about a week after that, we had a water incident at Suitland that damaged 15,000 cubic feet of records.

[Assistant] Oh, my goodness.


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

[User] Right. You mentioned it. One of your questions down here below about the flood in 2006 at Archives I.

[Assistant] Yes.

[User] Well, about a week after that, we had a water incident at Suitland that damaged 15,000 cubic feet of records.

[Assistant] Oh, my goodness.

[User] And it seemed like about once every six to eight months there was some kind of water leak. It was an old building then, and it was one of the challenging areas.

[Assistant] I see. Well, speaking of, I just realized I'm tangentially connected to it because some of the records got loaned for an exhibit that is now in storage. Did you have any role in it? I know there were archival records brought from Iraq in 2003. I mean, they were in a flooded basement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but could you speak a little bit to that?


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

[User] And it seemed like about once every six to eight months there was some kind of water leak. It was an old building then, and it was one of the challenging areas.

[Assistant] I see. Well, speaking of, I just realized I'm tangentially connected to it because some of the records got loaned for an exhibit that is now in storage. Did you have any role in it? I know there were archival records brought from Iraq in 2003. I mean, they were in a flooded basement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but could you speak a little bit to that?

[User] Yes. We were contacted by the Department of Defense, about what ended up being called the Iraqi-Jewish Archives.

[Assistant] Yes. Okay.

[User] They were in a flooded basement in Saddam Hussein's headquarters. And we detailed three people to go to Iraq. Actually, two of our conservatives went into Iraq, Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Doris Hamburg, to oversee the removal of those records from that basement and the shipping of the records back to the United States for conservation, treatment, and preservation. Luckily I found some volunteers. Probably not one of the things I look forward to doing is sending, you know, people who work for me into a war zone. But that's what they did and that's what we did.

[Assistant] Yeah, it's an amazing story, the records being saved and preserved. Are there any other events that you want to speak about before we move on to your duties in your second role as the Senior Advisor for Disaster Preparedness?


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

[User] Yes. We were contacted by the Department of Defense, about what ended up being called the Iraqi-Jewish Archives.

[Assistant] Yes. Okay.

[User] They were in a flooded basement in Saddam Hussein's headquarters. And we detailed three people to go to Iraq. Actually, two of our conservatives went into Iraq, Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Doris Hamburg, to oversee the removal of those records from that basement and the shipping of the records back to the United States for conservation, treatment, and preservation. Luckily I found some volunteers. Probably not one of the things I look forward to doing is sending, you know, people who work for me into a war zone. But that's what they did and that's what we did.

[Assistant] Yeah, it's an amazing story, the records being saved and preserved. Are there any other events that you want to speak about before we move on to your duties in your second role as the Senior Advisor for Disaster Preparedness?

[User] Well, I think the other role was working with a lot of other people at NARA, but being involved in the development of the Archives Research Catalog, the ARC catalog, being involved in development of ERA [Electronic Records Archives] and really moving NARA into the electronic records age both in how we dealt with our customer agencies and also how we dealt with our internal processes and procedures.

[Assistant] Huge shifts forward. Can you speak at all about your role during the ERA? I mean, what did it look like? Were you part of a huge team or was there only certain staff? Just explain a little bit how it worked.


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

[User] You know, they're in parallel. ARC was more of finding aid and collections control system. ERA was more a preservation system. But they were running in parallel silos, but had intersections at points. As we were the office of the National Archives that ran both the archives part of the program and the records management part of the program, we were involved in a lot of those intersections and trying to see where they were and how they relate to each other.

[Assistant] Okay. Would ERA have debuted before you switched to your different role around 2007?

[User] Yes, I think early iterations of it.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] At that time, they had moved it to the off-site location out in West Virginia. And they moved ERA staff out there. And I'm unclear about the timing of that.

[Assistant] Can you kind of describe in your mind then, especially being part of such huge shifts in how records management was, how did the mission transform with electronic records being added on to it, or it still remains largely the same?


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

[User] At that time, they had moved it to the off-site location out in West Virginia. And they moved ERA staff out there. And I'm unclear about the timing of that.

[Assistant] Can you kind of describe in your mind then, especially being part of such huge shifts in how records management was, how did the mission transform with electronic records being added on to it, or it still remains largely the same?

[User] Mission has always been the same: to determine, you know, what records need to be preserved, for how long, to protect rights and obligations, to hold us accountable as public officials, and to document the history of the United States. Mission in the National Archives really hasn't changed, probably at that level from its inception in 1934. So how we accomplished the mission changed.

[Assistant] Oh, okay.

[User] You know, back in the Carlin administration there was a brief statement of what the mission was that everybody was supposed to know and it was "access to essential evidence."

[Assistant] Yes, I remember that.


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

[User] Mission has always been the same: to determine, you know, what records need to be preserved, for how long, to protect rights and obligations, to hold us accountable as public officials, and to document the history of the United States. Mission in the National Archives really hasn't changed, probably at that level from its inception in 1934. So how we accomplished the mission changed.

[Assistant] Oh, okay.

[User] You know, back in the Carlin administration there was a brief statement of what the mission was that everybody was supposed to know and it was "access to essential evidence."

[Assistant] Yes, I remember that.

[User] It's what the National Archives did. I actually like that because people could you know, you could have that tattooed.

[Assistant] I thought it was intuitive. And sometimes it's hard to describe what an archive does.


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

[User] It's what the National Archives did. I actually like that because people could you know, you could have that tattooed.

[Assistant] I thought it was intuitive. And sometimes it's hard to describe what an archive does.

[User] Yeah. And it was something everybody could remember, you know, from the guy who's pulling records out there in the records center to the Archivist. You could say that. But there were some people who didn't like that. So hey, I'm glad I didn't get it tattooed anywhere.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] There was another employee down in Houston who had a tattoo of the NARA seal on his arm.

[Assistant] Oh my gosh.


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

[User] Yeah. And it was something everybody could remember, you know, from the guy who's pulling records out there in the records center to the Archivist. You could say that. But there were some people who didn't like that. So hey, I'm glad I didn't get it tattooed anywhere.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] There was another employee down in Houston who had a tattoo of the NARA seal on his arm.

[Assistant] Oh my gosh.

[User] I hope he's got his whole career in NARA because it would have been really tough to go to work for another agency.

[Assistant] Yes, maybe a little awkward. Is there anything else you want to add about the years you were the deputy? Or I would like to hear from you about really kind of what your relationship looked like with other agencies while you were advising on disaster preparedness.


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

[User] There was another employee down in Houston who had a tattoo of the NARA seal on his arm.

[Assistant] Oh my gosh.

[User] I hope he's got his whole career in NARA because it would have been really tough to go to work for another agency.

[Assistant] Yes, maybe a little awkward. Is there anything else you want to add about the years you were the deputy? Or I would like to hear from you about really kind of what your relationship looked like with other agencies while you were advising on disaster preparedness.

[User] Yeah. NARA was always disaster preparedness. I was there during 9/11. Probably one of the worst workdays any of us in the public sector have had. Not to mention the country. As we worried about whether our staff in New York and our staff at the Pentagon were safe. And not knowing what was going to happen potentially in Washington, where we at the National Archives weren't on the A-list of targets, but we were on the B-list of targets. There was a lot of thinking at the National Archives after that about the continuity of our operations, at least. And so as one of the primary offices and the one responsible for all the records from the Declaration of Independence on down, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about issues of disaster response. But it really hit us with Katrina and Rita and I think the other one was Wilma. There were three hurricanes all at once, which, as you well know, devastated New Orleans and especially the Mississippi coast. All of a sudden, we were getting calls from people in Mississippi and New Orleans about whether we could help. And people were calling. My perception was the people in the impacted area down there, anybody they knew at the National Archives, they picked up the phone and called just to see, could we help? And we had no vehicles to do that.

[Assistant] Just to clarify, is this like other local archives or a records center?


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

[User] I hope he's got his whole career in NARA because it would have been really tough to go to work for another agency.

[Assistant] Yes, maybe a little awkward. Is there anything else you want to add about the years you were the deputy? Or I would like to hear from you about really kind of what your relationship looked like with other agencies while you were advising on disaster preparedness.

[User] Yeah. NARA was always disaster preparedness. I was there during 9/11. Probably one of the worst workdays any of us in the public sector have had. Not to mention the country. As we worried about whether our staff in New York and our staff at the Pentagon were safe. And not knowing what was going to happen potentially in Washington, where we at the National Archives weren't on the A-list of targets, but we were on the B-list of targets. There was a lot of thinking at the National Archives after that about the continuity of our operations, at least. And so as one of the primary offices and the one responsible for all the records from the Declaration of Independence on down, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about issues of disaster response. But it really hit us with Katrina and Rita and I think the other one was Wilma. There were three hurricanes all at once, which, as you well know, devastated New Orleans and especially the Mississippi coast. All of a sudden, we were getting calls from people in Mississippi and New Orleans about whether we could help. And people were calling. My perception was the people in the impacted area down there, anybody they knew at the National Archives, they picked up the phone and called just to see, could we help? And we had no vehicles to do that.

[Assistant] Just to clarify, is this like other local archives or a records center?

[User] The Archivist of the United States got a call from somebody who apparently he knew who was the chief coroner in New Orleans.

[Assistant] Oh, my gosh. Yeah.


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

[User] Yeah. NARA was always disaster preparedness. I was there during 9/11. Probably one of the worst workdays any of us in the public sector have had. Not to mention the country. As we worried about whether our staff in New York and our staff at the Pentagon were safe. And not knowing what was going to happen potentially in Washington, where we at the National Archives weren't on the A-list of targets, but we were on the B-list of targets. There was a lot of thinking at the National Archives after that about the continuity of our operations, at least. And so as one of the primary offices and the one responsible for all the records from the Declaration of Independence on down, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about issues of disaster response. But it really hit us with Katrina and Rita and I think the other one was Wilma. There were three hurricanes all at once, which, as you well know, devastated New Orleans and especially the Mississippi coast. All of a sudden, we were getting calls from people in Mississippi and New Orleans about whether we could help. And people were calling. My perception was the people in the impacted area down there, anybody they knew at the National Archives, they picked up the phone and called just to see, could we help? And we had no vehicles to do that.

[Assistant] Just to clarify, is this like other local archives or a records center?

[User] The Archivist of the United States got a call from somebody who apparently he knew who was the chief coroner in New Orleans.

[Assistant] Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

[User] Asking if we could help him recover his records. And in fact, the National Archives got a big mission assignment at the end, and we sent our preservation people to New Orleans to help pack out records from the morgue in New Orleans Parish. I have some photographs of what it looked like down there.

[Assistant] Oh, wow. And do you remember any of the staff who were there or who were sent down there?


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

[User] Again, it was Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler who was the lead on that. And she was also one of the leads on the most interesting project that I was involved with, which was the conservation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

[Assistant] Oh, yes.

[User] I like to think I'm one of probably less than a hundred people who have ever seen both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence up close and personal outside of their cases.

[Assistant] That's incredible.

[User] They had been in for 50 years and the new encasement was supposed to last for another 50 years. And that was as close to a religious experience as one can have, I think.

[Assistant] I can only imagine. So were you there when NARA started having a conversation that there needed to be some "TLC" given to the Declaration and Constitution and better cases? Or had that been a conversation that had been happening for a while?


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

[User] I like to think I'm one of probably less than a hundred people who have ever seen both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence up close and personal outside of their cases.

[Assistant] That's incredible.

[User] They had been in for 50 years and the new encasement was supposed to last for another 50 years. And that was as close to a religious experience as one can have, I think.

[Assistant] I can only imagine. So were you there when NARA started having a conversation that there needed to be some "TLC" given to the Declaration and Constitution and better cases? Or had that been a conversation that had been happening for a while?

[User] It's been happening, I think, since kind of the mid-1990s. They started to notice that things were starting to bubble in the glass, and so there were some concerns that there was changes being made in the encasements themselves. And so that suggested at some point that the documents needed to be taken out of their 1953 encasements and at least get re-encased. And while they were out of the encasements to have the conservators actually evaluate the documents and do what needed to be done from a preservation point of view and a conservation point of view. And if you haven't talked to Mary Lynn about these things, I think that would be a fascinating oral history. She was one of the few people to touch those documents in the past 50 years.

[Assistant] Yes, I agree. I just made a note to check. We have a master list of people who participated in the interviews, and so I made a note to check that because I think she would be someone, if we have not yet, that we should talk to.


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

[User] Since New Orleans was in the Fort Worth region. And we also sent our staff from Atlanta to Mississippi since Mississippi was in the Atlanta region. And so we had NARA staff on the ground including the Archivist of the United States, who was Allen Weinstein by that time. And he really wanted to go and look. And I talked to my colleague down in Mississippi, who was the head of the Mississippi program. Finally, we had to convince the Archivist that we don't want you to come to Mississippi right now. We can't accommodate you. We're in the middle of a disaster response. Please don't come.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] So Allen did defer for about a month, but he did go to Mississippi and he went to New Orleans. Let me tell the story at least a little bit here, because I think it's a relatively important story for the National Archives and it kind of change. My colleague Barbara Voss, who was the regional director of Denver, came to Washington and spent about two weeks trying to figure out how to respond to all the requests we were getting from people in Mississippi and Louisiana. When we sat down with FEMA, we found out that, in terms of the national response plan, which is the thing that drives FEMA response to any kind of disaster, both historical and governmental records were not in the plan.

[Assistant] No kidding.

[User] And therefore if it's not in the plan, we don't have to respond to it. And so part of what I did in the last three years at the National Archives was to work with FEMA. But in particular to work with the Department of Interior, which was responsible for that part of the national response plan that dealt with historical sites to incorporate records as a critical asset that would be subject to response and recovery in case of disasters.

[Assistant] Well, so you're saying that it wasn't until Katrina that there was a conversation about including records.


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

[User] And therefore if it's not in the plan, we don't have to respond to it. And so part of what I did in the last three years at the National Archives was to work with FEMA. But in particular to work with the Department of Interior, which was responsible for that part of the national response plan that dealt with historical sites to incorporate records as a critical asset that would be subject to response and recovery in case of disasters.

[Assistant] Well, so you're saying that it wasn't until Katrina that there was a conversation about including records.

[User] Yeah.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] In the National Infrastructure Protection Program and the National Response Plan, records were not considered. And if people talk about them at all, they talk about vital records, which they thought were births, deaths, and marriages. Because for a lot of people, that's what a vital record is, as opposed to an essential record that you need for the continuity of your operations. And so a lot of it was working within the bureaucracy to try to figure out how we raise the issue of records as an asset that needed to be recovered for the purposes of government continuity following a disaster. And the last time I checked, those are still all in the plans.

[Assistant] Well, we just did a COOP [Continuity of Operations Planning] exercise maybe a week or two ago. Were there COOP exercises before this?


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

[User] So early 2007 I told my boss I was going to retire. As we worked through that, the Archivist came back to me with a counterproposal that if I was to look at the position, would I be interested in working in disaster preparedness, trying to get this into the national plan. And I could work in Maine instead of retiring. That sounded like a pretty good deal. The second part of that assignment was to still try to coordinate coalescing the records management staffs across the country and into one unit. I spent the last three years working basically only on two issues: disaster response and the Integrated Records Management Program. And that was probably the most rewarding part of the whole National Archives 10 years.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] There's the old saying, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And I think in this business, that really is true. It's making the relationships. There's a disaster preparedness thing that says you don't want to be exchanging business cards as the fire department comes to put out your fire.

[Assistant] Yes. Yeah.

[User] And FEMA and a lot of this thing is all about building relationships across the government. So when there is a disaster, you can pick up the phone and call somebody and they have some idea who you are. And I think the National Archives did that fairly well.

[Assistant] That's really great.


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

[User] And FEMA and a lot of this thing is all about building relationships across the government. So when there is a disaster, you can pick up the phone and call somebody and they have some idea who you are. And I think the National Archives did that fairly well.

[Assistant] That's really great.

[User] Parts of the National Archives that were fun? I think working with our colleagues up in Ottawa at Library Archives Canada. I enjoyed that immensely. Having a chance early on to look at the script for National T reasure , because at that time they wanted to film part of that movie inside the National Archives. So we had to try and figure out where they could film and where they couldn’t film. And interestingly enough, once they did all of that and they looked at all the requirements to film in the building itself, they found it cheaper to rebuild the Rotunda of the National Archives on the soundstage in California. And if you look at the movie real carefully, it looks like the National Archives, the Rotunda, but there are some things that are different. You know, the whole premise of the movie: there was something on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And there actually is.

[Assistant] Oh, right. Yes, I knew that. But what was it?


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

[User] Parts of the National Archives that were fun? I think working with our colleagues up in Ottawa at Library Archives Canada. I enjoyed that immensely. Having a chance early on to look at the script for National T reasure , because at that time they wanted to film part of that movie inside the National Archives. So we had to try and figure out where they could film and where they couldn’t film. And interestingly enough, once they did all of that and they looked at all the requirements to film in the building itself, they found it cheaper to rebuild the Rotunda of the National Archives on the soundstage in California. And if you look at the movie real carefully, it looks like the National Archives, the Rotunda, but there are some things that are different. You know, the whole premise of the movie: there was something on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And there actually is.

[Assistant] Oh, right. Yes, I knew that. But what was it?

[User] July Fourth. So in a sense it’s a file header. So when the document was rolled up, there was an indication about what the document was, July 4th, 1776.

[Assistant] Okay. I see. Well, I will definitely look very closely next time. I had heard about the movie. They did end up doing some street shots, correct? Or do you know.


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

[User] July Fourth. So in a sense it’s a file header. So when the document was rolled up, there was an indication about what the document was, July 4th, 1776.

[Assistant] Okay. I see. Well, I will definitely look very closely next time. I had heard about the movie. They did end up doing some street shots, correct? Or do you know.

[User] They did three shots outside and the opening sequence outside, but they ended up doing nothing inside the National Archives.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] But Nicolas Cage did come, and I was not there that day. My boss, Mike Kurtz, took him through the National Archives and said he was really just kind of a down-to-earth guy. And he went into the Rotunda and he spent a couple of hours just signing autographs for anybody who was there, who said, "oh, that's Nicolas Cage!"

[Assistant] Oh, that's so neat.


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

[User] They did three shots outside and the opening sequence outside, but they ended up doing nothing inside the National Archives.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] But Nicolas Cage did come, and I was not there that day. My boss, Mike Kurtz, took him through the National Archives and said he was really just kind of a down-to-earth guy. And he went into the Rotunda and he spent a couple of hours just signing autographs for anybody who was there, who said, "oh, that's Nicolas Cage!"

[Assistant] Oh, that's so neat.

[User] Yeah, I thought so too.

[Assistant] I'm sure that becomes quite onerous after a while.


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

[User] But Nicolas Cage did come, and I was not there that day. My boss, Mike Kurtz, took him through the National Archives and said he was really just kind of a down-to-earth guy. And he went into the Rotunda and he spent a couple of hours just signing autographs for anybody who was there, who said, "oh, that's Nicolas Cage!"

[Assistant] Oh, that's so neat.

[User] Yeah, I thought so too.

[Assistant] I'm sure that becomes quite onerous after a while.

[User] I would think so. Although I suppose if you're a movie star, if you were someplace that nobody recognized you, that would be even worse.

[Assistant] And I never thought about it like that.


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

[User] Yeah, I thought so too.

[Assistant] I'm sure that becomes quite onerous after a while.

[User] I would think so. Although I suppose if you're a movie star, if you were someplace that nobody recognized you, that would be even worse.

[Assistant] And I never thought about it like that.

[User] So that was one of the fun things that happened at the National Archives.

[Assistant] Yeah. There's so much you were a part of and you were involved in, I'm not even barely hitting the tip of the iceberg. I was going to shift focus to your time serving as commissioner for the NHPRC, but I don't want to move on if you still have other things to speak to.


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

[User] I would think so. Although I suppose if you're a movie star, if you were someplace that nobody recognized you, that would be even worse.

[Assistant] And I never thought about it like that.

[User] So that was one of the fun things that happened at the National Archives.

[Assistant] Yeah. There's so much you were a part of and you were involved in, I'm not even barely hitting the tip of the iceberg. I was going to shift focus to your time serving as commissioner for the NHPRC, but I don't want to move on if you still have other things to speak to.

[User] I actually don't have a lot to recall about that, and I didn't have any notes for that that I could go back and look at. I was on the Commission from the late nineties while I was still a state archivist in Delaware. And obviously had to resign from the Commission when I started working for NARA.

[Assistant] Sure, of course. Got it. I think that's why you were recommended to me to ask about the archivist who did some work in the USVI [U.S. Virgin Islands], maybe because the NHPRC provided a grant for a year for that. But it was a little bit before your time.


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

[User] Yeah. And maybe now that you said that, maybe the person to talk with would be Larry Hackman.

[Assistant] Larry Hackman.

[User] Yup.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Longtime state archivist in New York, longtime director of the Truman Library, out in your neck of the woods. But probably in that time, he was on the staff with Frank Burke at the NHPRC when that grant was done.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, thank you.


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

[User] Yup.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] Longtime state archivist in New York, longtime director of the Truman Library, out in your neck of the woods. But probably in that time, he was on the staff with Frank Burke at the NHPRC when that grant was done.

[Assistant] Okay. Well, thank you.

[User] I don't have contact information for him, but I know he's now living in Massachusetts, and I could get that to you if that would be useful.

[Assistant] Yes, that would be. Thank you. Well before. Real quick, did you, did you spend a lot of time while you were at NARA being involved with other professional organizations? Or did it help your role at NARA to have those organizations to look to?


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

[User] I don't have contact information for him, but I know he's now living in Massachusetts, and I could get that to you if that would be useful.

[Assistant] Yes, that would be. Thank you. Well before. Real quick, did you, did you spend a lot of time while you were at NARA being involved with other professional organizations? Or did it help your role at NARA to have those organizations to look to?

[User] Yeah. I mean, the work with the Council of State Archivists was critical to reacting both to the Katrina situation itself and then incorporating disaster preparedness into the NARA portfolio. After Katrina, we did two or three disaster response work with the state archives. Especially in the Midwest with the river flooding, which in Missouri, at least on the other side, happens quite frequently. There was some serious flooding probably in 2008, 2009, somewhere around there that we did some work with. We worked a little bit with the Hawaii State Archives and some people on the west coast when there was a typhoon in American Samoa. And actually the last kind of disaster response thing, which has nothing to do with the United States, that I worked on, was trying to support the archives recovery efforts in Haiti after the earthquake.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] So. And that was working primarily through what is known as the Blue Shield and the International Council of Archives out of Paris. But overall trying to support the archives in Haiti. The Foundation of the National Archives actually provided some money to them to be able to buy supplies. It's always interesting to work with a foreign government. It made the job at NARA interesting.

[Assistant] Sounds very interesting.


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

[User] Yeah. I mean, the work with the Council of State Archivists was critical to reacting both to the Katrina situation itself and then incorporating disaster preparedness into the NARA portfolio. After Katrina, we did two or three disaster response work with the state archives. Especially in the Midwest with the river flooding, which in Missouri, at least on the other side, happens quite frequently. There was some serious flooding probably in 2008, 2009, somewhere around there that we did some work with. We worked a little bit with the Hawaii State Archives and some people on the west coast when there was a typhoon in American Samoa. And actually the last kind of disaster response thing, which has nothing to do with the United States, that I worked on, was trying to support the archives recovery efforts in Haiti after the earthquake.

[Assistant] Okay.

[User] So. And that was working primarily through what is known as the Blue Shield and the International Council of Archives out of Paris. But overall trying to support the archives in Haiti. The Foundation of the National Archives actually provided some money to them to be able to buy supplies. It's always interesting to work with a foreign government. It made the job at NARA interesting.

[Assistant] Sounds very interesting.

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] Well, and so you have mentioned a couple, but are there any other challenges or issues that you've faced? I can't imagine that for disaster preparedness, that things were easy on many days, but anything that you want to speak to?


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

[User] So. And that was working primarily through what is known as the Blue Shield and the International Council of Archives out of Paris. But overall trying to support the archives in Haiti. The Foundation of the National Archives actually provided some money to them to be able to buy supplies. It's always interesting to work with a foreign government. It made the job at NARA interesting.

[Assistant] Sounds very interesting.

[User] Absolutely.

[Assistant] Well, and so you have mentioned a couple, but are there any other challenges or issues that you've faced? I can't imagine that for disaster preparedness, that things were easy on many days, but anything that you want to speak to?

[User] We were responding to all these disasters, like 9/11 and stuff, but all the regular business was still going on. That kind of surprised me going back because these issues are so in your mind about your experience. But the day-to-day stuff continued.

[Assistant] Yeah. We're kind of wrapping up. Is there anything you want to add? Anecdotes? Words of wisdom? Any memories? I mean, like the Nicholas Cage one is kind of along the lines. I was thinking of anything like that that you want to share.


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

[User] I'll tell you another kind of fun story, if you like. The Archivist was supposed to go to meet with the National Archivists of the European countries and Canada. And for some reason, Allen couldn't do that. So he said to Mike Kurtz, Mike, you go in my place. And about a week before this happened, Mike came to me and said, I got a problem. I don't have a passport that's current.

[Assistant] Oh, no.

[User] I looked at him and said, I do. And so my last trip to Paris was to that meeting, and it was a very interesting meeting. One of the social things that we did there was that all the archivists from the European Union countries and the Commonwealth countries went to the ballet at the opera house in Paris.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] An amazing experience. One of our staff members on the records management staff had a sister in the State Department who was in Paris at that time. So I also got a tour of the American Embassy in Paris.

[Assistant] Oh, what a trip.


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

[User] I looked at him and said, I do. And so my last trip to Paris was to that meeting, and it was a very interesting meeting. One of the social things that we did there was that all the archivists from the European Union countries and the Commonwealth countries went to the ballet at the opera house in Paris.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] An amazing experience. One of our staff members on the records management staff had a sister in the State Department who was in Paris at that time. So I also got a tour of the American Embassy in Paris.

[Assistant] Oh, what a trip.

[User] So for every 15,000 boxes of records that we had to deal with on the not-too-good days, there were always a lot of good days at the National Archives.

[Assistant] Oh, well, that's really nice. If you don't have anything else to add, I think I'll conclude our interview. I do appreciate your time very much. Thank you for speaking with me today.