April 18, 2025 • 69 mins
Mike Sweeney's life unfolds like a quintessential American story spanning the mid-20th century to today. Growing up in 1940s Lansing, Michigan when children roamed freely and milk arrived via horse-drawn cart, Mike's journey weaves through pivotal moments in our collective history.
The son of hardworking parents, Mike became the first in his family to attend university, studying at Michigan State when tuition was an unimaginable $125 per term. His educational path led to a career in personnel administration, but Vietnam loomed large for young men of his generation. Rather than waiting for the draft, Mike proactively enlisted in the Air Force.
Perhaps the most poignant chapter of Mike's story centers on his marriage. Wed in February 1968, he shipped out to Vietnam just twelve days later. Despite this challenging beginning, their union has flourished for 56 remarkable years—a testament to commitment in an age where relationships often seem disposable. As a weapons controller in Vietnam, Mike mastered complex radar calculations using circular slide rules and grease pencils, skills that seem almost archaic in our digital era.
Returning stateside, Mike built a 34-year career with General Motors, finding particular fulfillment in mentoring young engineering talent. His pride beams brightest when speaking of family—his educator daughter with four degrees and two accomplished granddaughters pursuing their own dreams in teaching and medicine. Throughout the conversation, Mike's values shine through: commitment, hard work, and helping others.
As Mike reflects on a life well-lived, his parting wisdom resonates with timeless simplicity: "If you find someone you love, marry them. It may be tough, but stick to it because that's a commitment. Don't throw away relationships. Work hard, do the right thing, and learn how to live so you can help others." In today's fast-paced world, such steady wisdom deserves our attention.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning.
Today is Friday, april 18th2025.
We're talking with Mike Sweeney, who served the United States
Air Force.
Good morning, mike.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hey, good morning Bill.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm great, great, great to see you this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, sometimes it's good to be anywhere.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I heard it's better to be seen than viewed.
I haven't heard that one.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I had a first sergeant that used to say every
day above ground is a good day.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, it is too.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we'll just start out ourconversation with when and where
were you born?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I was born in Lansing , michigan, at a hospital that
doesn't exist anymore I believeit was called the McLaughlin
Hospital, down on the east sideof downtown.
Born and raised in Lansing andspent all of my life basically
in Lansing, with the exceptionof the military life.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, and where did you live when you were a kid?
Like in, like what part ofLansing.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I lived on Lansing Avenue at Lansing.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
That's just north of Willow Street School, the old
Willow Street School, just northand west of the School for the
Blind.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, all right, which is no longer there.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I see no, it's apartments now.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, yeah, I see that the house is still there,
but nothing else, yeah, so let'stalk a little bit about that.
What was it like growing up foryou?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You could go anywhere without locking your doors for
you.
Uh, you could go anywherewithout locking your doors.
Um, it's been outside most ofthe time.
Uh, we were close, three orfour blocks from the river.
So as kids we grew up uh, alongthe river, fishing, uh, hiking,
uh, doing things we shouldn'thave done Um, like uh, climbing
(01:46):
on the the idle boxcars andrunning across the top of them,
Never did anything with theswitches, but it was fun.
Growing up we played streetball, we hollered if there was
cars coming so we could get outof the way.
I grew up at a time when, earlyon, we actually had a milkman
(02:10):
that would come with ahorse-drawn cart you know, you'd
think I'd be older than that,but we remember those things and
they would deliver milk to theback porch.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Wow, now, just out of curiosity, was that quality
dairy that was delivering it atthe time?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Probably, I couldn't tell you.
Okay.
Back then the names of placesdidn't mean anything to me.
I just knew the milkmandelivered milk and he had a
horse-drawn cart.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So what year were you born?
Then I was born in 1944.
Okay, all right, I got you.
So, yeah, but that's a goodtime to be growing up, then.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It was, it really was .
You know we had no fears ofshootings or abductions or
anything like that.
You know we were out until thestreetlights came on or the old
man whistled for us to come in.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Right.
Either way, you were home,right, right, do you have
brothers and sisters?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
One sister older, Dorothy.
She was eight years older thanI.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, so you guys didn't really hang out then.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Not really.
No.
She left the house early on andgot married young.
Oh, the boy down the street.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, all right.
Well, tell me a little bitabout your parents.
What do you remember most aboutyour mother?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
My mother was a worker.
She worked all the time myparents both worked.
She had had a variety of jobs.
She grew up in a family of 13in southern Indiana on a farm.
She wasn't a stranger to work.
She wasn't a stranger to work.
She would take a nap for 15minutes in the evening after
(03:51):
supper and then she'd wake upand get right up and say did I?
Snore Did she.
And I was business.
She worked for the state.
That was her final job workingfor the state.
She died young.
She was 60 when she passed oh,that is young.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, that is.
I have to ask a question,though did she snore?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
um, I don't really recall that she did oh, okay,
the reason I asked my.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Uh.
So my grandparents lived onerie street in lansing, um,
right right off of cedar, behindthe quality dairy there anyway.
Um, my grandfather would comehome before he worked at
Motorwheel.
He'd come home from work and hewould take a 15-minute nap.
But that guy, he would take anap in the upper part of the
house and you could hear him inthe basement snoring.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh, I can believe that my mother during the Second
World War worked for the.
She helped build Norton bombsites in.
Indianapolis, okay, she helpedbuild Norton bomb sites in
Indianapolis, okay.
And big cities if you haven'tlived in a big city, there are
dangers there and there havebeen forever.
(04:55):
And she had, and I still haveit she had little, she called it
a trout knife and it was a verysmall knife and a sheath,
leather sheath, that she carriedin her purse.
But when she and she walked towork to apart from her apartment
, to work in the bombsitefactory, and she said, uh,
(05:16):
coming and going, she had thatlittle trout knife in her hand
just for just in case made herfeel better, right that made her
feel better.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah.
So what about your father?
What are some of your memoriesof him?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
My dad taught me how to hunt.
He had me shooting when I wasfive years old and we did a lot
of hunting together and weplayed a lot of catch, a lot of
ball.
That's pretty much what I canrecall.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Okay, all right, I'm curious about something.
So my, my father-in-law, grewup on Pennsylvania street in
Lansing and, um, he would skipschool and go hunting and I
thought he was.
He was hunting, hunting inlansing.
Did you ever do any of that?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
no, the closest.
Uh, we came to that not with mydad, but with the high school
buddies.
Uh-huh, we, we would huntpheasant along the northern uh
border of the lansing airport,where there were no fences,
state road was open, uh andthere.
It wasn't a internationalairport at the time, um, and it
(06:32):
was just.
It was different.
It was different back then ohyeah progress has hit in, hit in
and, uh, things have changedright right.
Progress is what we call itthat's right, I guess let's pave
over the world, yeah there yougo.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think there's a song about that, actually from
the 60s, but so you know how wasschool for you.
What elementary did you go to?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
School was always easy for me.
Not that I'm anybody that'sbrilliant but I went to Willow
Street School, had a good timethere, learned a lot.
Any, any, anybody that'sbrilliant.
But I went to Willow streetschool um, had a good time there
, learned a lot, went to a CWauto Um, and from there on to
Sexton high school.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, what year did you graduate, sexton?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I graduated from Sexton in 1962.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh, okay, All right and um yeah, so it sounds like
school was pretty good for you.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It was.
Yeah, we weren't bused at thetime there was.
There were busing for the ruralkids but not for us.
I did a lot of walking fromfrom auto junior high to and it
was junior high then, not middleschool.
Right.
And a lot of walking from backand forth from Suxton.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, and that's the kind of the way Lansing was set
up.
You had your local gradeschools and then you had your
junior high, which was fairlyclose, and then I think the high
schools, of course, were alittle bit further out, but it
was really convenient as a kidbecause you just walked to
whatever school you needed to goto.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, I said there was no school of choice back
then.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You went to the school where you were supposed
to go right, yeah, exactly, anda lot of those schools are still
there, oh that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They're rebuilding uh willow willow street uh
elementary school yeah, I'veseen it's.
It's like a almost a three-yearproject it is, it's it's,
architecturally it's, it's oddit is.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's a great way to say, cause I've seen all the
all the new building going on,cause I know Mount Hope school
is being rebuilt and so on.
So yeah, it's a progress.
I guess it is Yep.
So um you, uh you.
You get to Sexton high schooland you graduate Now did you go
(08:48):
in the service right aftergraduation?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
No, I was the first in our family to go to
university, so I applied for andwas accepted to, michigan State
University and I started thatfall the fall of 62, as a
freshman.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What was your goal there?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
My goal was to get a degree.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do?
I had no clue.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
My first two years it was like no preference and I
kind of wandered.
Registration for classes was ina big room with a lot of
students and you just kind ofwandered.
I think back then I didn't havemuch assistance from counseling
career counseling and I finallysettled down about the junior
(09:35):
year and declared a major.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Okay, and what did it end up being?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Personnel administration.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Business major.
Yeah, so this is interestingtoo, like a four-year degree
takes five years now.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Snell administration Okay, business, business major,
yeah, so did you do the?
So this is interesting too,like a four year degree takes
five years now, was it the sameway back then?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It took, uh, four years and one semester.
Okay, one summer semester.
All right.
It's amazing.
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you aboutMSU.
It uh, it ast.
I'll tell you about MSU.
It astounds me today to seewhat tuition is, and I commuted
from home so I didn't have thattypical college experience, but
(10:17):
tuition was $125 for 12 or morecredits.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And that's not per credit.
That's for all your credits.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's not per credit.
Wow, $125 for 12 or morecredits.
Uh, it just staggers me to seewhat uh tuition is today.
Of course, I've got twogranddaughters that are uh, one
is is uh got her master's degreealready and and what they pay
(10:51):
for tuition is just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I agree, I uh put my daughter through Michigan state
university and wow.
Oh yeah, it's, it's mine, minebending.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And they're increasing the fees constantly.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, right, yeah, I think that's all.
We could have a two-hourdiscussion on what's going on
with that.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I have my ideas, so you graduated, though you got
your degree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Graduated, got my degree at the time and while I
was going to school.
I worked summers at the oldFisher Body Plant.
I was like a vacationreplacement in the summer and I
worked in the Human ResourcesDepartment personnel office we
called it back then and I did avariety of jobs as replacing
(11:36):
people when they went onvacation and that helped.
That helped pay tuition, buybooks Seems like I paid more for
books than I did for tuition.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I think that's the plan.
I think so.
I think that's how that works.
Yeah, you know it's interesting.
So it used to be personnel,then it was human resources and
now they're even calling itpeople in culture, Like we just
keep changing the name of whatit is.
Yeah, don't you wonder aboutthat yeah, well, again that it's
(12:08):
that word that we keep using asprogress.
I think, right, yeah, so howlong so you?
Just how long did you stay atfisher then?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
uh, I worked for a fisher body, uh, for 34 and a
half years, uh, actually, uh,I'll say fisher body went away,
just like Oldsmobile did, butthe facilities were there.
I got an opportunity to work atthe Olds facility Same kind of
work, different people.
(12:36):
That was probably one of thebest parts of my work career is
the people that I got to meet atOldsmobile and different
functions forward planning,maintenance and engineering and
I I my other staff was the humanresources department or the
(13:00):
personnel department, and it wasgood.
That was a good time.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah yeah, those were great jobs.
My dad retired from Oldsmobile,so I get it.
So at what point did the AirForce come into the picture?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Almost well before I graduated from university.
Okay.
I realized that you were goingto serve in Vietnam.
That's just the way it was.
I had that student deferment.
I realized that studentdeferment would come up.
So now, what Do you wait forthe draft?
(13:37):
Do you do something proactive?
So I went ahead and signed up.
It was a delayed enlistmentprogram and I signed up to go
into the Air Force, whichhappened, and before I graduated
, I think, the draft board knewthat my student deferment was
(13:57):
going to be up and I had aletter from the draft board that
says you need to appear beforethe draft board in in
preparation for being drafted.
So I did, you know, went toFort Wayne and got the induction
(14:18):
physical and all that andappeared before the draft board
and said hey, you know, I'vealready volunteered in a delayed
enlistment to serve in the AirForce.
And they said okay, now, whenwill that take place?
And I said they tell me I'mgoing to be inducted into the
Air Force mid-March.
That would have been 1967.
(14:41):
Okay, and they said, okay,that's fine, but if you don't
serve, you will be drafted thevery next day.
We will come find you, and so itworked out all right.
You know I am, march 17th camearound and and I enlisted in the
(15:02):
air force okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And where did you go to basic.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Basic training was at San Antonio, at Lachland Air
Force Base.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Okay so that really hasn't changed over the years?
I don't think it has no, tellme a little bit.
So what was that like?
Getting to basic training?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Hot, Hot.
We suffered long with everybodyelse.
I recall, uh, after a Reveille,uh, and before we had to gather
for the morning PT, there was a?
Uh, an Air Force bandpracticing and they practiced
that song.
(15:39):
We got to get out of this place.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I know exactly what song you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and uh, we commiserated.
Oh yeah, and uh, wecommiserated with each other,
but uh, basic wasn't horrible.
Uh huh.
You know it's not like uh ParisIsland for the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Right Right Air Force a little bit different.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It is.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, and how many weeks was that?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Do you remember?
I think it was 90 days.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Okay, so really quick kind of in and out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It was an officer candidate school program.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Okay, oh, because you had your degree Right, right,
Okay, so it was kind of thequick.
Here's what the Air Force isabout, and getting you ready for
your service.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right.
We had no idea what we weregoing to do until we got our
orders.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, so where did you go from basic?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
From basic.
I went to a place that Icouldn't figure out what the
orders meant.
And I had them and I looked atit and it was Picks Town Air
Force Station S-D-A-K.
I said what is that?
And then finally somebody saidwell, that's short for South
Dakota.
And I said where's that?
(16:54):
So I went to a little radarstation in very rural South
Dakota, right on the MissouriRiver.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So it's a little bit different from how you grew up.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Oh, quite a bit, yeah , Quite a bit.
A lot of good guys there.
We stayed at a our officer'squarters were in the old General
Pick Hotel and it was ArmyCorps of Engineers base at one
time when they built the FortRandall dam, uh, right under
(17:33):
Missouri river, so it was.
It was not bad duty, I mean itwas isolated right.
But it was not bad duty.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And not a lot.
Not a lot to do in South DakotaIs there.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, the best part of that, I think, was eight
week uh training at uh Panamacity, Florida, at Tyndall,
therefore space.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, I can imagine that'd be a whole lot different.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, it was nice on the beach.
Nice Left my girlfriend at home.
You know that wasn't the goodpart of it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Well, no.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Wandered, wandered the streets of Panama city
looking for a uh uh, looking inthe windows of the jewelry
stores.
You know what kind of?
What kind of wedding engagementring and wedding ring do I want
to buy, you know?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So you were your, your gal back home was pretty
serious then.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We were.
We didn't really realize thatuntil the separation right, yeah
, yeah, what's that old saying?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
uh, distance makes the heart fonder.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, so it's true for us it was yeah, yeah okay,
all right.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
So you uh, you were there for eight weeks.
Did you end up getting a ringwhile you were?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I did.
I bought the ring and broughtit home and proposed and she
said yes, her family said yes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh, that's perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
We were married in February of 1968.
And 12 days later I shipped outto Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Oh my gosh, that must have been hard for both of you.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
It was.
It was hard for both of us.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, that's a tough goodbye.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, a lot of marriages don't last with that
kind of early separation.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
People don't realize in marriage there's a commitment
and it's a lifetime commitment.
It's too easy now to just throwaway relationships.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I think people forget that marriages work.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh, yeah, every day.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's that beginning part of the marriage
where you're in love and you'rekind of in that honeymoon, but
then there's the part of themarriage where it's actual work.
It's good work.
Oh yes.
But you got.
You can't just give up when itgets tough.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
You got to keep at it Right.
A lot of tenacity.
I know our high school footballcoach, bob Boshoven, was a U of
M grad and the one word that heused over and over again when
you're out there practicing wastenacity.
You've got to have tenacity.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
That's a great word.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Stick to it.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Is that a really good impression of him?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
He was a nice man, yeah, and a good coach.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Oh, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
So you get married and thenyou're off to Vietnam, so you've
been married for how long then?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Now you mean.
Yeah 56 years.
Yeah, wow 19,.
Whatever that was 67.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
1967, 68,.
Yeah, Wow, that's you know what.
It shouldn't be surprising thatsomeone's been married that
long 1967, 68.
Yeah, Wow, that's you know what.
It shouldn't be surprising thatsomeone's been married that
long, but it is.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I know it's amazing.
It is, um, my 50th high schoolreunion.
Well, he sat at a table, it wasa round table and I think there
were four couples, my one buddyfrom uh middle school, junior
high school, all the way throughuniversity, was at the table
with his wife and two othercouples, rex Stelgius and Bob
(21:14):
Franchino.
All of us still married to thesame women, which was pretty
amazing, because you could lookaround and see a lot of uh,
failed marriages or marriagesthat people just gave up on uh
and threw away thoserelationships.
You know, but our table wasdifferent.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Well, and if you think about it, the seventies
was when, when divorce kind ofbecame you know the thing to do.
And so, yeah, I mean you werepart of that group that either
stuck with it or didn't, but alot of them didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
A lot of them didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, well, that's great.
You know our mutual friend.
They're celebrating 75 years.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I know, it's just absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's yeah.
Yeah, his birthday's coming upand then their anniversary's
coming up, so anyway, I digress.
So you, uh, you ship off toVietnam.
And uh, where, where do you go?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Uh, well, that was interesting.
Uh, I flew out of um.
I'll tell you the story aboutthat.
Okay.
Uh, I married into a really good, close knit family.
I couldn't have asked for abetter set of in-laws.
I had the airplane ticket outof Lansing to Sacramento I don't
(22:32):
even recall where the stop wasin between, but my father-in-law
had a sister that lived inSacramento that's my wife's Aunt
, ada and he called her and hesaid my son-in-law is coming out
there, he's going to land atSan Francisco International
(22:55):
Airport and can you meet himthere?
And of course she said yes.
So, uh, she and her son, uh,not David, david's brother, I'll
think of his name before.
All right, yeah, you can callme.
Well, they met me at theairport.
It was late, late in theevening, and I got a whirlwind
(23:17):
tour of San Francisco, uh, withan ADA and her youngest son, um,
she had told her brother, myfather-in-law.
Of course I'll meet him, youknow, uh, he's family, wow.
So, uh, we did that and and uh,and then she worked for the uh
(23:43):
California highway patrol andshe lived in Sacramento.
So, um, we, we finished thatwhirlwind tour and then she
drove back to Sacramento and, uh, the next day took me to uh
Travis air force base and I flewout, then Got to Vietnam at
(24:09):
Saigon Tan Son Nhat Airport AirForce Base and had my orders, of
course, and people had no ideawhere I was going.
They had no clue.
Somebody said well, I thinkit's Da Nang, so how do I get
(24:29):
there?
Well, you go here to the opsbuilding and catch an airplane
that's going to Da Nang.
So I did, and it stopped inPleiku and I went into the ops
building there.
I said do you have any ideawhere this outfit is?
And they looked at the order.
So I was just, and it stoppedin Pleiku and I went into the
ops building there.
I said do you have any ideawhere this outfit is?
And they looked at the orderand saw it and said, yeah, it's
(24:51):
up on the hill right there.
So there I was en route to DaNang and stopped for probably a
courier flight and got a Jeep upto the hill where the air force
station was, the radar stationwas and that was my uh, my home
for a year.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Okay, and you were there.
You were, um.
So did you like oversee radaroperations?
Is that how that worked?
But what?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I was a uh they, they called it a weapons controller
and I learned to do with theradar air-to-air intercepts,
mainly learning for defensepurposes.
But it turned into asub-segment of hooking fighters
(25:35):
up to aerial refuelers.
Oh, okay.
So back in the day, radar backthen on the airplanes weren't
nearly as sophisticated as it istoday.
That's more an example ofprogress, I guess.
Yeah.
But we had manual radar, not thesophisticated computerized SAGE
(25:56):
.
They called that semi-automaticground environment.
It was just manual radar.
You had a big old, clunky radarscope and you had ground-to-air
radios and you learned how tocalculate intercepts based on
altitude and speed and all thoseother factors.
(26:18):
We use circular slide rules tomake our calculations and a
grease pencil on the screen.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, there is a lot that goes into that calculation.
I did fire control in the Navyand so, yeah, that fire control
solution.
There's a lot of math involvedin that.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
One of my buddies over the over the course of the
years was a uh, uh, he was amath teacher and turned into be
a school high school counselor,cincinnati, and I met him on
Florida and uh, larry was in thearmy.
And and uh, he did, uh I Iguess you'll call it fire
control for artillerycalculating, uh, what needed to
(27:02):
be calculated, you know right.
Depending on the ordinance theywere releasing.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's not.
I don't think it's boring workeither, I think it's kind of no
it's for him.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
It was very challenging for us, it was very
challenging.
Yeah.
Uh, we didn't know what we weregoing to experience.
Fortunately not a lot of, uh,not a lot of emergency aircraft
Uh, but uh, they usually come.
We were central Highlands atLake who and um, although we had
uh fighters at the base, theywere close air support uh groups
(27:38):
.
We had uh T-37s, t-37s, a-37s,I call them that the Vietnamese
Air Force flew.
But we also had the A-1 SkyRaiders, which were the old
fold-wing big propeller aircraft.
(27:59):
They used to fly off carriersthat were based there, spads
with their call name.
We had our own spooky, our ownPuff the Magic Dragon at Blake
that flew a combat air patrolover the bases at night.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
That's quite an airship there.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh, it's amazing, and of course they progress.
Turned us uh, an AC one 30 intoa uh gunship with howitzer.
Uh, I don't remember if it's aone, oh, five, uh, or or what,
but can you imagine that?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I can't imagine being on that when when they fired
those weapons.
I understand it moves.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, when you fire that cannon, the aircraft
actually moves sideways, andit's a big aircraft too.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I flew on many of those.
Well, yeah, you think aboutlike the big battleship, like
the Iowa.
If they do a full broadsidefiring with those 16-inch guns,
that ship moves in the watersideways yeah.
Yeah, I can't imagine the wholeairplane thing just kind of
shocked me.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
You had to qualify periodically.
So I had the opportunity to flyin a jet up the coast to Da
Nang and we circled.
It was miserable, it wasmonsoon season, the weather was
miserable and we circled thatairstrip at Da Nang I don't know
how many times before.
(29:22):
Finally they were able to breakthrough the clouds and land and
then up in a jeep up the top ofMonkey Mountain to the Air
Force radar site there.
We had to be careful when wedid our intercept training
because it was close to, I wantto say, hainan Island I'm not
(29:47):
sure which, it was out in theSouth China Sea.
We had to make sure we avoidedChinese airspace.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, they'd get a little upset, wouldn't they?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I would think so yeah .
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, so how was your ?
It sounds like your tour ofduty was um.
You know you had a lot going on, but uh, anything you want to
share about your time in Vietnamother than what we've talked
about?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Uh, I learned how to play bridge.
Oh and I haven't played since.
Um, our first uh quarters wasat the old McPhee compound and
it was rough.
It was French hooches.
If you were lucky, you hadscreened in the top, my first
(30:31):
experience with a mosquitonetting.
You know that you had aframework to use over your cot
to keep the critters out.
We set not a mousetrap, butit's called a rat trap.
We set rat traps out and oncein a while you hear that thing
go off.
You say, well, we got anotherone.
(30:52):
It was a little crude.
And then the last five and ahalf months probably, they had
built quarters for us right onthe air base itself.
Prior to that we had to ride ina crew cab to work I don't
(31:12):
remember how far it was from theMACV compound to the air base
and the quarters weresignificantly better.
We had an army fort south of us, uh, quite a ways uh fort, I
can't remember the name of it.
Anyway, it was always a cloudof dust.
(31:34):
You could look off and say, yep, that's, that's where, that's
where the grunts are, you know,down there.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Always moving around kicking up dust.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I tell you, but the duty was good duty we had.
It was 24-hour duty.
We did what the FAA does today,basically flight following,
hooking up the fighter bombersto forward air controllers.
It wasn't.
(32:10):
We actually had a mess hall,you know.
We had an officer's club aswell.
My wife always gets in charge,out of some of the voters, I
took of the of the Filipinoladies that were singing and
dancing, you know.
Uh, once in a while we get aUSO show.
Yeah.
No, no big names, but uh, it wasfun for us to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
No, no, bob, hope for you guys.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
No Bob hope, uh, no Ann Margaret.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh, that would have been worth going but it was, it
was okay.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Good duty.
Looking back on it, you forgetthe bad things, I think.
Yeah.
And remember the good things,had a good crew that we worked
with.
I can recall, uh, my very when,when I left, when I got to play
coup, got off the airplane,figured out, my uh duty
assignment was up on the hilland I got a ride up there.
(33:02):
The operations officer washaving a meeting with with the
crew and he was, he was chewingbutt, he was hot, and that was
my introduction to him.
He was an interesting guy, agood guy.
I, I, I can't think of his nameright now, but he was a captain
(33:25):
.
However, he had been selectedto be promoted to major and he
never, let you forget thatcaptain promotable.
Oh man, and that really rubbedus the wrong way.
You know, here I am, uh uh, agold buyer, second Lieutenant
coming up there to go to workand listen to this guy.
But it's okay, Everybody moveson and he moved on.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Right, right, that's true.
Yeah, hopefully he actually gotto put the major pin on.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Our duty was good.
We helped build a Quonset hutfor training.
Quonset hut, uh, for training.
Uh, it was a uh, a jointproject, not just the Quonset
hunt, but uh, that whole, ourwhole function was joint with
the uh Vietnamese air force andthey weren't a much good.
(34:17):
Uh, it's just the way it was.
You know, right.
Um, we tried not to let them getin our way.
Uh, I, we had one of our guys,george Reamer, his uh brother.
He did the same work that I did.
(34:37):
His brother was a uh F fourpilot, uh, and he flew
reconnaissance and they theywould correspond and once in a
while his brother would flythrough our airspace.
Oh they got we kind of if heknew we get George on the on the
screen and on the radio so atleast he could control him when
(34:59):
he went through, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Our uh, our shifts were interesting.
We worked 12 hour, 11 hour dayshifts and a 13 hour night shift
, and on Monday you did a quickturnaround.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Oh, so you're like yeah, the day shift.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Folks went home at six and then they uh came back,
uh, at midnight and they had ashort stint midnight to 7, and
the day shift was 7 to 6.
So you're always working, yeah,always working.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
You're either going to work or you're just going to
sleep, right?
That's right, yeah, so you werethere for a year, and then your
tour is up.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Is that what happened ?
No, we wanted it to be up.
Yeah.
You know one of my buddies.
There was Howie Spellman, andHowie was from New Jersey and he
did not talk a lot.
My wife says I don't talk muchbut she'd really be amazed at
Howie.
(36:03):
He'd sit at the radar scope anda flight of F-100s would come
up out of Tuiwar fan ring andthey'd click in on the radio.
They'd say Peacock, peacocklitter, do one flight.
And Howie's sitting therelooking at the screen Peacock,
(36:26):
litter, do one flight.
Do you have contact?
I said, howie, you got to talk.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I can't see you shaking your head.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Anyway, the story is Howie and I got orders about the
same time, and Howie's orders?
Well, we got major commandorders, not outfit major command
.
So how he got his orders, itwas, uh, air defense command and
uh mine was, uh, U S air force,Europe, you safe?
Well, I'd had enough of beingoverseas, I didn't want to go to
(36:58):
Europe, I want to go home.
Right.
I had a wife yeah, you know, Ihadn't seen her in a year.
Well, we did have.
We did meet up for ouranniversary in Honolulu and that
was nice.
But I said, howie, you're goingto go to Point Barrel, alaska,
(37:19):
or maybe you're going to go toNorth Dakota, maybe Minot, and
he didn't like the sound of that.
I said you want to trade orders?
So we got a hold of thepersonnel officer and talked him
into trading orders for us.
So Howie went to Templehof inBerlin and I went to Homestead
(37:41):
in Florida.
That's not a bad swap, that wasgood duty, berlin and I went to
Homestead in Florida.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
That's not a bad swap .
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That was good duty, that was real good duty.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, and so how long were you at Homestead then?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
We were at Homestead a little over two years.
Our daughter was born there onthe airbase.
All right and it was.
We had fun, we had good duty,uh we'd get a weekend pass and
and uh, we'd go down to the keysor uh, entertain family if they
(38:13):
had a chance to visit.
Uh, that was.
It could have been better.
Hot is hot.
Yeah, you know we lived, uhlived on a on the base, uh base
housing and a duplex and we wereright across the street from
the fourth T and the golf course.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh well, that's not bad.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Not bad at all.
That was, that was good duty,we enjoyed it, we really did but
we were ready to go home too.
Yeah, it must've been nice,though, to have her be with you
for that part of your time.
Oh yeah, it was great.
(38:52):
Uh, she went with me to SouthDakota, uh for four months and
12 days, right, you know, and welived there on uh, on the on
the site, uh for a uh uh.
Well, they had the uh general.
It was the old um army uh base,uh for the Corps of Engineers.
Right.
We're building the dam and wehad a one bedroom house, you
(39:16):
know kind of like row houses.
Yeah, you know, you'd see in inthe in the uh, coal mining days
, you know that's kind of whatit was like.
It was nice, it was decent.
She learned how to fish and shelearned how to cook.
Her mom is a good cook and Irecall she made biscuits one
(39:37):
time, first time she ever madebiscuits.
Couldn't eat them, so we tookthem down the river and floated
them across like skipping stones, that's a great memory.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Wow, did she finally figure it out though?
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh yeah, she's a good cook.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, well, that's good, that's good, so you?
So you served a total of howmany years then?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
A little over four, four and a half years, okay,
from uh, from uh March of 67 toAugust of 71.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Okay, and then you moved back to Michigan.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
I moved back to Michigan, back to home, back to
Lansing.
I had been on leave fromGeneral Motors, so I got
reinstated, went back to work.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Okay, and you had your daughter at this time.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Daughter yep.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Okay, only one child then.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
We did.
We lost another child shortlyafter birth, but yeah, we had
the one daughter.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Okay, all right, and so you kind of just get home and
pick up your life at GM.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We did yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And how was that?
So you said you were there for34 years 34 and a half years.
Okay, I don't want to miss thatextra six months.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
No, I didn't either yeah.
It helps towards pension.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yes, it does.
Pensions are a good thing.
So yeah, so tell me, like, whatwas work like for you?
So you were at Fisher.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
At Fisher.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
And were you at Fisher for most of that time?
Then Most of my work time wasat Fisher, with a little hiatus
to Oldsmobile for about maybefive years.
I did a variety of things, fromemployment office to clerical
work to labor relations work,working with the UAW.
I moved on to salariedpersonnel where I got involved
(41:33):
in the benefit planadministration and record
keeping for the salaried workers.
One time we had over 600salaried workers and that's
dwindled considerably.
I did student programs 600salaried workers, yeah, uh, then
that's dwindled considerably.
Um, I did uh student programs.
So I did a lot of recruitmentof uh high school kids, uh to
(41:54):
come and work uh for generalmotor says engineering students.
I worked with them uh at uh GMI, which is now Kettering
university, and he'd get thoseengineering students I think it
was a co-op program and theywould go to school for so many
months and work for so manymonths and get them acclimated
(42:18):
to automobile manufacturing andsee if that was something they
wanted to do.
Did a lot of work withrecruiting uh high school kids
to uh who are already in school,already in university, to uh
(42:42):
come to work for us in thesummer as an intern and got them
exposed to uh manufacturing.
I met a lot of good kids and Ifound that there's a real hotbed
of engineering talent innorthwestern Clinton County in
that Palomo Westphalia Fowlerarea.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Well, that's interesting because it's very
rural, very you know farmcountry.
Well, they knew how to work,you know?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, absolutely, I said what did you do this past
summer?
So I picked rocks at theSimmons farm.
I said, well, if you pick rocks, you know what work is like.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, let us teach you something.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I wanted uh these young people, men and women,
both who uh who wanted to uhcontribute to manufacturing.
I called them.
Uh uh, they contribute tomanufacturing.
I called them.
They wanted to learn aboutdirty knees engineering, where
you actually get down on yourhands and knees and solve
problems and make things work.
Met a lot of good kids.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, probably had a great influence on them too.
I mean to have a good mentorteacher to bring you into that
group.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I had one student.
My wife used to work atMervin's and she would close on
the night that we had uh, uh,the uh sharp park fireworks or
uh independent state fireworks,and she'd get out at 10 o'clock
(44:06):
and I'd meet her there.
And here's this young man andthis girl coming up, mr Sweeney.
Mr Sweeney, I'd like you tomeet my girlfriend, julie.
Well, this was Doug Kuhn fromKiwamo, and he was just a
student, just a college student.
(44:27):
You know.
Well, doug married Julie andwhen he graduated he got hired
and I still have his letter.
He wrote me a letter after hehad been there for 25 years,
thanking me for being a mentorand for getting involved and
(44:48):
providing him the opportunity touh.
And he married Julie, by theway, that's great.
And for an opportunity to have agood life and and and uh
provide for his family.
So those are nice memories.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, you can't ask for more than that.
That's um, that's kind of likea.
It's a wonderful life momentwhere you get to figure out that
you really helped somebody.
Yeah, that's, true, and theyand they told you that's, that's
fantastic, and and so I want toask something, though this is
kind of off topic, but Iremember my dad worked at
Oldsmobile.
Every, every year, they wouldhave like an auto show for the
(45:25):
employees, where employees andtheir families would go and you
could see the cars that werecoming out the following year.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Do you remember that at all?
I do not remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Well, you've got to consider that things change just
about every model year.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm amazed at what went intothe dye work and the center
shapes changes and that's a lotof work.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Oh, yeah, I remember every July my dad would get two
weeks for changeover and we'd goto.
We'd go to, um, oh gosh, cedarpoint, because he had two weeks
off.
So we'd go to Cedar point.
That was our big.
So we'd go to cedar point, thatwas our big, that was our big
deal.
But yeah, so 34 years.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
So you retired in the early.
I retired in uh march of 2000okay, all right, and then.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
So march is so in.
In march, you, you, I'm trying.
March seems to be a month foryou.
There's a couple things thathappen in march for you.
Uh, you left for the militaryin march yeah, so you retired in
march.
And and what did you do afterthat?
I retired pretty much yeah, youdo some traveling, or we?
Speaker 2 (46:35):
traveled.
Uh, we, uh, uh.
We purchased a, uh, a winterhome in florida, and if somebody
would have told me early onthat you're going to spend your
winters in Florida, I said no,thank you.
I've been to Florida.
It's hot, I don't know if Iwant to go down there, but the
winters were fine.
We had a nice, nice place,comfortable place.
(46:55):
Trying to sell it now.
Uh uh, uh, we had, uh, someunfortunate experience with, uh,
the two hurricanes this pastseason Hurricane Helene and
Milton, the damage in our park,horrible damage in our park,
some damage to our unit, butit's a buyer's market there now.
(47:20):
Right.
So it's tough.
There's over 40 places for salein our park alone and it's
difficult to sell and with Nancybeing on dialysis it's tough to
travel.
We can do it, we did it.
The center works very well forher in uh assigned to a dialysis
(47:46):
center, uh close to where we uhwere or are in Florida.
Uh, this past season we wentdown just for the month of
January and the close centerthey could get her into was uh
about half, about 40 minutesaway.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Uh at three times a week you know, it's a lot of
traveling while you're inflorida, yeah, yeah.
So tell me a little bit.
One thing we didn't talk aboutwas your, your daughter.
Do you want to?
Do you mind talking about, like, what does she do?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
and oh no, uh, I got, I've got a great.
Uh, I got a great family Ourdaughter Michelle, with one L.
I don't know why, but when wenamed her, that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Just seemed right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
She's a good student, loves to read and learned how
to play the trumpet in middleschool and became the lead
trumpet player at her highschool.
The Grand Ledge Went on to auniversity, at Western Western
Michigan University, and she wasin the marching band for two
years.
And that was fun.
(48:59):
We'd get season tickets for thefootball games yeah, why?
So we could watch the marchingband.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
That's exciting stuff .
Speaker 2 (49:07):
And she I think these are my words now I think she
decided that practice with thetrumpet and carrying that
trumpet around was too much.
So she's musical.
So she took up choir and shewas in the choir for the last
couple of years at Western.
(49:29):
A good student graduated.
It took her seven years, whichI remind her of often Right.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
You're obligated to let her know.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
And she got two bachelor's degrees in those
seven years.
She also finally settled downand decided she wanted to become
a teacher.
So her first degree was inuniversity studies, or, said in
my terms, no preference.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
No preference degree.
Yeah, there you go yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
So she got her teaching degree and teaching
certificate.
So she left Western with thetwo bachelor's degrees, got a
teaching position at right thereon the border of I-69 and US
12,.
Whatever that city is escapesme, It'll come to me on the way
(50:35):
home.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Cold water.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Okay, it took me a minute, but cold water.
I only know that because Ithink they have a drive-in movie
theater down there.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Anyway, she took to teaching well, taught middle
school, loves middle school.
Kids got married and she lived.
She had an apartment there inColdwater.
Then, after she was married,her husband was still a student
(51:05):
at Western, so they moved to anapartment in Marshall.
Okay.
And then when Johnny graduatedthey came back to Lansing area.
For a while she drove fromLansing to Coldwater to teach
and then she landed a positionat Williamston in the
Williamston district, a nicelittle close knit community.
(51:29):
It's an interesting community.
It has a lot of money and ithas no money at all.
Family wise, she loved the kidsand she, oh, and during that
time she, uh, went to MSU andgot a master's degree in
(51:51):
education.
I call it English.
They call it liberal arts.
Yes, uh, not liberal arts.
Uh, well, that'll come to metoo.
Language arts, yes, languagearts.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, okay, you have to have a fancy name to justify
that tuition.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
And she always liked books, always liked reading.
She's a voracious reader.
So she said there's apossession opening in the high
school library.
So she, while she was pregnantwith her first child, she drove
back and forth at night afterwork to Wayne State, hired at
Detroit and got a master'sdegree in library science.
(52:34):
So here she is with fourdegrees at teaching for what we
consider.
She considers peanuts, which iswhat we seem to pay, considers
peanuts Right, which is what weseem to pay teachers and nurses.
And then she views it a littledifferently than I do.
(52:54):
She was also a union rep at thehigh school and she got a
little crosswise with thebuilding administrator and he
eliminated the librarianposition.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Oh wow.
So what a coincidence that'sokay, I love kids anyway.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
So she went into the middle school and she's been a
middle school teacher, englishteacher, ever since.
Oh married a young man that isa gifted musician, and Johnny
(53:35):
has a profound hearing loss andhe is a tremendous musician and
his major at university wasmusic.
Uh, with a viola, uh, a littlebit bigger violin yeah and of
course, that um today about twodollars and 95 cents to buy you
(53:59):
a cup of coffee right uh camefrom a very musical family, a
family of educators.
His father's a former banddirector at his high school in
St Clair Shores, His mother's asinger and a teacher, both
(54:20):
teachers, both educators, Bothfar-out liberals, as many
teachers are.
And of course Johnny, theson-in-law, grew up with that.
(54:42):
But with my daughter pushing himhe went back to school at msu
and he got a master's degree inspecial ed okay and he's been a
special ed teacher at the samedistrict at williamston, not
high school, ever since hegraduated and it's good, it's
good for him, you.
(55:03):
He kind of taught himself toplay the piano, so he has both
of those, he's mastered both ofthose instruments.
He can play the double down toGeorgia on the violin and he can
play some pretty mean keyboardstuff as well and in the
(55:23):
summertime keyboard stuff aswell.
And in the summertime you mightfind him out at the band shell
at the McCormick Park inWilliamston as they have a
little musical group that playsat least once during the summer.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
I have to shoot out there this summer and listen for
him.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
It's Thursday evenings and you just bring your
own chair, you set the yard andthe lawn and they have a
variety of different performersthat come out there once a week
during the summer.
Michelle has two daughtersgreat kids, great kids.
(56:08):
The oldest is a extremelyintelligent.
Well, they're both sharp,intelligent.
The oldest one loves books,like her mother.
The youngest one, she, doesn'tread.
I'd rather not.
But the oldest one, jenna, wasa fourth generation western
(56:34):
michigan university student andgrad and in four years she
earned a bachelor's and amaster's degree that's pretty
incredible, you.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
You pointed out to her mom.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Yeah, we're really proud.
We're proud of both of them,but I keep telling them the
oldest one her name is Jenna.
I said you know school comes.
I mean, you work at it, butschool comes pretty easy for you
.
Why don't you go ahead and geta PhD?
I know it's a lot of work, alot of time involved, but you
(57:09):
can become a universityprofessor and I think you'd love
it.
Also and she doesn't want to dothis she could become a
researcher.
You know, when she as much asshe loves to read, she would be
good at it, but she wants to bea teacher.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yeah, you can't.
I mean, my daughter is ateacher and that was her goal
from middle school.
She just always wanted to be ateacher.
You're never going to get richbeing a teacher, but she loves
her job.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
Oh yeah, now Jenna did an internship at Portage
Central High School in EnglishLanguage arts and she liked the
district, liked the people,liked the students and they had
(58:01):
a position opening up in themiddle school when she graduated
.
But it didn't open up in time.
So she said, well, I made acommitment to the state of
Michigan to teach for five yearsand an opportunity presented
(58:23):
itself to her to teach atWilliamston in the high school
as a Spanish teacher.
Of course that was her minor,she didn't like that, but she
accepted it.
She said yes.
Shortly after she said yes, thePortage Central opportunity
(58:45):
came and she had to turn it downbecause she gave her word to
this district.
Shortly after she said yes, thePortage Central opportunity
came and she had to turn it downbecause she gave her word to
this district that she was goingto teach there.
So I'll belabor my grandkids alittle bit, because they're
super.
She is just going to teach oneyear.
She's already turned in herresignation and she's already
(59:06):
got an apartment in Kalamazoothis summer.
July.
I think, and she's looking foran opportunity to teach English,
which she really wants to teachlanguage arts.
Uh-huh.
And she says I'll find a job.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
I bet she will.
Speaker 2 (59:25):
Oh, I think so Now she'll be 23 in June.
The youngest one will be 21next month and the youngest one,
maya.
She's a good student in whatshe likes, right, and she wants
(59:50):
to work in the medicalprofession and before she
graduated from high school shebecame certified as a
phlebotomist and a medicalassistant, so she had both those
certifications.
She's now working as an MA forthe University, michigan State
University Medical Center andFamily Practice.
(01:00:10):
She loves it, she likes doingthat and I think, and she's
studying.
She's now at, I think,davenport and she'll get a
degree, some kind of medicaldegree, when she finishes.
And her boss there seems tothink you could give him a PA.
Why don't you think about beinga PA?
And I think she wants to work,I think, with pediatrics.
(01:00:34):
So they're both good kids, youknow.
Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Yeah, it sounds like everything kind of come full
circle and they're kind of alldoing great, which is, you know,
what more could a parent askfor than to see their children
and grandchildren flourish likethat?
Yeah, so you know, as we kindof come to the end of our
(01:01:02):
conversation, I want to makesure that we talked about
everything you wanted to talkabout.
So is there anything else thatwe missed that you wanted us to
say?
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Oh golly, I uh, I'm not sure I love my family.
They're good kids All of them.
Uh, I know my son-in-law's uhon the on the brink of a, a
cochlear implant, which will bea major lifestyle change for him
.
He's anxious.
A little bit of anxiety thereSometimes borders on a little
(01:01:33):
bit of fear, when you thinkthey're going to drill a hole in
my skull.
Yeah, but I think he's come togrips with that and it'll be a
learning process and I thinkthat he's going to do fine.
My daughter, for 15 years ormore, has had a second job
(01:01:55):
teaching for the University ofPhoenix online.
Here she is with her full-timeteaching position at the middle
school in Williamston andteaching other people not just
kids either, but other people tobecome teachers, and she does
(01:02:19):
it all online.
But she's traveled to a varietyof places in the state just to
observe her students in theclassroom and to see how they're
doing in the classroom.
She's been to Detroit up in theThumb out here in the western
part of the state.
She drove into one school ininner city Detroit one time and
(01:02:42):
parked her car on the street,walked up the building.
When she got in they immediatelylocked her in a closet because
they had lockdown and then whenshe got out, they were making
bets the teacher's making betson whether her car was going to
be there when she got finished.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
A pretty tough area, Wow.
So yeah, she sounds very busy.
She is, she's very busy.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
she likes what she's doing she loves what she does
and she's got enough time, Ithink, with the uh williamson
district to retire if shechooses to do so yeah uh, which
she says, maybe another threeyears it's got to be on her time
, right sure, yeah, it's goodthat she can do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Yeah, well, you know you have uh lived quite a life.
Um sounds like a great family,married into great family.
Um served your country, had agreat career, um, you know, a
good retirement.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I don't regret any of it, really.
Uh I the fact that, and I'll goahead and say this that General
Motors thought so little of thesalaried workforce that they
canceled all of the retirees'health insurance and life
insurance.
So, no dental, no vision, nohealth insurance.
Well, you're on Medicare, youknow.
(01:04:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
You got health insurance you know, yeah, you
got life, you got healthinsurance.
So, yeah, I, uh, I rememberwhen they restructured, it
impacted my, my father as well,even though he was not salaried,
he was hourly, but yeah, helost a lot of benefits as well.
Yeah, it was not a good thingyeah, didn't hurt the executives
.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Well, it may have hurt their, but their their
bonuses for a short period oftime.
Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Right, they still draw millions of dollars yeah,
yeah, my dad doesn't get hisprofit sharing anymore either.
No, yeah, so it all went away.
Well, I do want to ask you onefinal question, if I could and I
ask everyone the same question,and that when someone's
listening to this in the future,when you and I aren't here
anymore, what message would youlike to leave people with?
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Well, I would encourage people to.
If you find someone you love,marry them, and it may be tough,
but stick to it, because that'sa commitment that you make.
Don't throw away relationships.
Work hard, do the right thing,go to church, learn how to live
(01:05:18):
so that you can help others.
And that's pretty much it, youknow all right.
There's a lot.
There's a lot out there thatyou can give.
You just don't realize it yet.
Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
All right.
Well, you know, thanks forgiving your time to me today
sitting down here for the forthis hour that we've, that,
we've chatted and I reallyappreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
You're welcome, Bill.
It's my pleasure Interesting.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Today is Friday, april 18th2025.
We're talking with Mike Sweeney, who served the United States
Air Force.
Good morning, mike.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hey, good morning Bill.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm great, great, great to see you this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, sometimes it's good to be anywhere.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I heard it's better to be seen than viewed.
I haven't heard that one.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I had a first sergeant that used to say every
day above ground is a good day.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh, it is too.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah, absolutely.
So we'll just start out ourconversation with when and where
were you born?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I was born in Lansing , michigan, at a hospital that
doesn't exist anymore I believeit was called the McLaughlin
Hospital, down on the east sideof downtown.
Born and raised in Lansing andspent all of my life basically
in Lansing, with the exceptionof the military life.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, and where did you live when you were a kid?
Like in, like what part ofLansing.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I lived on Lansing Avenue at Lansing.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
That's just north of Willow Street School, the old
Willow Street School, just northand west of the School for the
Blind.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Okay, all right, which is no longer there.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I see no, it's apartments now.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, yeah, I see that the house is still there,
but nothing else, yeah, so let'stalk a little bit about that.
What was it like growing up foryou?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You could go anywhere without locking your doors for
you.
Uh, you could go anywherewithout locking your doors.
Um, it's been outside most ofthe time.
Uh, we were close, three orfour blocks from the river.
So as kids we grew up uh, alongthe river, fishing, uh, hiking,
uh, doing things we shouldn'thave done Um, like uh, climbing
(01:46):
on the the idle boxcars andrunning across the top of them,
Never did anything with theswitches, but it was fun.
Growing up we played streetball, we hollered if there was
cars coming so we could get outof the way.
I grew up at a time when, earlyon, we actually had a milkman
(02:10):
that would come with ahorse-drawn cart you know, you'd
think I'd be older than that,but we remember those things and
they would deliver milk to theback porch.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Wow, now, just out of curiosity, was that quality
dairy that was delivering it atthe time?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Probably, I couldn't tell you.
Okay.
Back then the names of placesdidn't mean anything to me.
I just knew the milkmandelivered milk and he had a
horse-drawn cart.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So what year were you born?
Then I was born in 1944.
Okay, all right, I got you.
So, yeah, but that's a goodtime to be growing up, then.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It was, it really was .
You know we had no fears ofshootings or abductions or
anything like that.
You know we were out until thestreetlights came on or the old
man whistled for us to come in.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Right.
Either way, you were home,right, right, do you have
brothers and sisters?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
One sister older, Dorothy.
She was eight years older thanI.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Okay, so you guys didn't really hang out then.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Not really.
No.
She left the house early on andgot married young.
Oh, the boy down the street.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Okay, all right.
Well, tell me a little bitabout your parents.
What do you remember most aboutyour mother?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
My mother was a worker.
She worked all the time myparents both worked.
She had had a variety of jobs.
She grew up in a family of 13in southern Indiana on a farm.
She wasn't a stranger to work.
She wasn't a stranger to work.
She would take a nap for 15minutes in the evening after
(03:51):
supper and then she'd wake upand get right up and say did I?
Snore Did she.
And I was business.
She worked for the state.
That was her final job workingfor the state.
She died young.
She was 60 when she passed oh,that is young.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, that is.
I have to ask a question,though did she snore?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
um, I don't really recall that she did oh, okay,
the reason I asked my.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Uh.
So my grandparents lived onerie street in lansing, um,
right right off of cedar, behindthe quality dairy there anyway.
Um, my grandfather would comehome before he worked at
Motorwheel.
He'd come home from work and hewould take a 15-minute nap.
But that guy, he would take anap in the upper part of the
house and you could hear him inthe basement snoring.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Oh, I can believe that my mother during the Second
World War worked for the.
She helped build Norton bombsites in.
Indianapolis, okay, she helpedbuild Norton bomb sites in
Indianapolis, okay.
And big cities if you haven'tlived in a big city, there are
dangers there and there havebeen forever.
(04:55):
And she had, and I still haveit she had little, she called it
a trout knife and it was a verysmall knife and a sheath,
leather sheath, that she carriedin her purse.
But when she and she walked towork to apart from her apartment
, to work in the bombsitefactory, and she said, uh,
(05:16):
coming and going, she had thatlittle trout knife in her hand
just for just in case made herfeel better, right that made her
feel better.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah.
So what about your father?
What are some of your memoriesof him?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
My dad taught me how to hunt.
He had me shooting when I wasfive years old and we did a lot
of hunting together and weplayed a lot of catch, a lot of
ball.
That's pretty much what I canrecall.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Okay, all right, I'm curious about something.
So my, my father-in-law, grewup on Pennsylvania street in
Lansing and, um, he would skipschool and go hunting and I
thought he was.
He was hunting, hunting inlansing.
Did you ever do any of that?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
no, the closest.
Uh, we came to that not with mydad, but with the high school
buddies.
Uh-huh, we, we would huntpheasant along the northern uh
border of the lansing airport,where there were no fences,
state road was open, uh andthere.
It wasn't a internationalairport at the time, um, and it
(06:32):
was just.
It was different.
It was different back then ohyeah progress has hit in, hit in
and, uh, things have changedright right.
Progress is what we call itthat's right, I guess let's pave
over the world, yeah there yougo.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I think there's a song about that, actually from
the 60s, but so you know how wasschool for you.
What elementary did you go to?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
School was always easy for me.
Not that I'm anybody that'sbrilliant but I went to Willow
Street School, had a good timethere, learned a lot.
Any, any, anybody that'sbrilliant.
But I went to Willow streetschool um, had a good time there
, learned a lot, went to a CWauto Um, and from there on to
Sexton high school.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, what year did you graduate, sexton?
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I graduated from Sexton in 1962.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Oh, okay, All right and um yeah, so it sounds like
school was pretty good for you.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It was.
Yeah, we weren't bused at thetime there was.
There were busing for the ruralkids but not for us.
I did a lot of walking fromfrom auto junior high to and it
was junior high then, not middleschool.
Right.
And a lot of walking from backand forth from Suxton.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, and that's the kind of the way Lansing was set
up.
You had your local gradeschools and then you had your
junior high, which was fairlyclose, and then I think the high
schools, of course, were alittle bit further out, but it
was really convenient as a kidbecause you just walked to
whatever school you needed to goto.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, I said there was no school of choice back
then.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
You went to the school where you were supposed
to go right, yeah, exactly, anda lot of those schools are still
there, oh that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They're rebuilding uh willow willow street uh
elementary school yeah, I'veseen it's.
It's like a almost a three-yearproject it is, it's it's,
architecturally it's, it's oddit is.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's a great way to say, cause I've seen all the
all the new building going on,cause I know Mount Hope school
is being rebuilt and so on.
So yeah, it's a progress.
I guess it is Yep.
So um you, uh you.
You get to Sexton high schooland you graduate Now did you go
(08:48):
in the service right aftergraduation?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
No, I was the first in our family to go to
university, so I applied for andwas accepted to, michigan State
University and I started thatfall the fall of 62, as a
freshman.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
What was your goal there?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
My goal was to get a degree.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do?
I had no clue.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
My first two years it was like no preference and I
kind of wandered.
Registration for classes was ina big room with a lot of
students and you just kind ofwandered.
I think back then I didn't havemuch assistance from counseling
career counseling and I finallysettled down about the junior
(09:35):
year and declared a major.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Okay, and what did it end up being?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Personnel administration.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Business major.
Yeah, so this is interestingtoo, like a four-year degree
takes five years now.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Snell administration Okay, business, business major,
yeah, so did you do the?
So this is interesting too,like a four year degree takes
five years now, was it the sameway back then?
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It took, uh, four years and one semester.
Okay, one summer semester.
All right.
It's amazing.
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you aboutMSU.
It uh, it ast.
I'll tell you about MSU.
It astounds me today to seewhat tuition is, and I commuted
from home so I didn't have thattypical college experience, but
(10:17):
tuition was $125 for 12 or morecredits.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
And that's not per credit.
That's for all your credits.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
It's not per credit.
Wow, $125 for 12 or morecredits.
Uh, it just staggers me to seewhat uh tuition is today.
Of course, I've got twogranddaughters that are uh, one
is is uh got her master's degreealready and and what they pay
(10:51):
for tuition is just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I agree, I uh put my daughter through Michigan state
university and wow.
Oh yeah, it's, it's mine, minebending.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
And they're increasing the fees constantly.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, right, yeah, I think that's all.
We could have a two-hourdiscussion on what's going on
with that.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
I have my ideas, so you graduated, though you got
your degree.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Graduated, got my degree at the time and while I
was going to school.
I worked summers at the oldFisher Body Plant.
I was like a vacationreplacement in the summer and I
worked in the Human ResourcesDepartment personnel office we
called it back then and I did avariety of jobs as replacing
(11:36):
people when they went onvacation and that helped.
That helped pay tuition, buybooks Seems like I paid more for
books than I did for tuition.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I think that's the plan.
I think so.
I think that's how that works.
Yeah, you know it's interesting.
So it used to be personnel,then it was human resources and
now they're even calling itpeople in culture, Like we just
keep changing the name of whatit is.
Yeah, don't you wonder aboutthat yeah, well, again that it's
(12:08):
that word that we keep using asprogress.
I think, right, yeah, so howlong so you?
Just how long did you stay atfisher then?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
uh, I worked for a fisher body, uh, for 34 and a
half years, uh, actually, uh,I'll say fisher body went away,
just like Oldsmobile did, butthe facilities were there.
I got an opportunity to work atthe Olds facility Same kind of
work, different people.
(12:36):
That was probably one of thebest parts of my work career is
the people that I got to meet atOldsmobile and different
functions forward planning,maintenance and engineering and
I I my other staff was the humanresources department or the
(13:00):
personnel department, and it wasgood.
That was a good time.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah yeah, those were great jobs.
My dad retired from Oldsmobile,so I get it.
So at what point did the AirForce come into the picture?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Almost well before I graduated from university.
Okay.
I realized that you were goingto serve in Vietnam.
That's just the way it was.
I had that student deferment.
I realized that studentdeferment would come up.
So now, what Do you wait forthe draft?
(13:37):
Do you do something proactive?
So I went ahead and signed up.
It was a delayed enlistmentprogram and I signed up to go
into the Air Force, whichhappened, and before I graduated
, I think, the draft board knewthat my student deferment was
(13:57):
going to be up and I had aletter from the draft board that
says you need to appear beforethe draft board in in
preparation for being drafted.
So I did, you know, went toFort Wayne and got the induction
(14:18):
physical and all that andappeared before the draft board
and said hey, you know, I'vealready volunteered in a delayed
enlistment to serve in the AirForce.
And they said okay, now, whenwill that take place?
And I said they tell me I'mgoing to be inducted into the
Air Force mid-March.
That would have been 1967.
(14:41):
Okay, and they said, okay,that's fine, but if you don't
serve, you will be drafted thevery next day.
We will come find you, and so itworked out all right.
You know I am, march 17th camearound and and I enlisted in the
(15:02):
air force okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And where did you go to basic.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Basic training was at San Antonio, at Lachland Air
Force Base.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Okay so that really hasn't changed over the years?
I don't think it has no, tellme a little bit.
So what was that like?
Getting to basic training?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Hot, Hot.
We suffered long with everybodyelse.
I recall, uh, after a Reveille,uh, and before we had to gather
for the morning PT, there was a?
Uh, an Air Force bandpracticing and they practiced
that song.
(15:39):
We got to get out of this place.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I know exactly what song you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and uh, we commiserated.
Oh yeah, and uh, wecommiserated with each other,
but uh, basic wasn't horrible.
Uh huh.
You know it's not like uh ParisIsland for the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Right Right Air Force a little bit different.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
It is.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, and how many weeks was that?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Do you remember?
I think it was 90 days.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Okay, so really quick kind of in and out.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It was an officer candidate school program.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Okay, oh, because you had your degree Right, right,
Okay, so it was kind of thequick.
Here's what the Air Force isabout, and getting you ready for
your service.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Right.
We had no idea what we weregoing to do until we got our
orders.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, so where did you go from basic?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
From basic.
I went to a place that Icouldn't figure out what the
orders meant.
And I had them and I looked atit and it was Picks Town Air
Force Station S-D-A-K.
I said what is that?
And then finally somebody saidwell, that's short for South
Dakota.
And I said where's that?
(16:54):
So I went to a little radarstation in very rural South
Dakota, right on the MissouriRiver.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So it's a little bit different from how you grew up.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Oh, quite a bit, yeah , Quite a bit.
A lot of good guys there.
We stayed at a our officer'squarters were in the old General
Pick Hotel and it was ArmyCorps of Engineers base at one
time when they built the FortRandall dam, uh, right under
(17:33):
Missouri river, so it was.
It was not bad duty, I mean itwas isolated right.
But it was not bad duty.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And not a lot.
Not a lot to do in South DakotaIs there.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
No, no, the best part of that, I think, was eight
week uh training at uh Panamacity, Florida, at Tyndall,
therefore space.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, I can imagine that'd be a whole lot different.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, it was nice on the beach.
Nice Left my girlfriend at home.
You know that wasn't the goodpart of it.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Well, no.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Wandered, wandered the streets of Panama city
looking for a uh uh, looking inthe windows of the jewelry
stores.
You know what kind of?
What kind of wedding engagementring and wedding ring do I want
to buy, you know?
Speaker 1 (18:16):
So you were your, your gal back home was pretty
serious then.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
We were.
We didn't really realize thatuntil the separation right, yeah
, yeah, what's that old saying?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
uh, distance makes the heart fonder.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, so it's true for us it was yeah, yeah okay,
all right.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
So you uh, you were there for eight weeks.
Did you end up getting a ringwhile you were?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I did.
I bought the ring and broughtit home and proposed and she
said yes, her family said yes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Oh, that's perfect.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
We were married in February of 1968.
And 12 days later I shipped outto Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Oh my gosh, that must have been hard for both of you.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
It was.
It was hard for both of us.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, that's a tough goodbye.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, a lot of marriages don't last with that
kind of early separation.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
People don't realize in marriage there's a commitment
and it's a lifetime commitment.
It's too easy now to just throwaway relationships.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I think people forget that marriages work.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Oh, yeah, every day.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
There's that beginning part of the marriage
where you're in love and you'rekind of in that honeymoon, but
then there's the part of themarriage where it's actual work.
It's good work.
Oh yes.
But you got.
You can't just give up when itgets tough.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
You got to keep at it Right.
A lot of tenacity.
I know our high school footballcoach, bob Boshoven, was a U of
M grad and the one word that heused over and over again when
you're out there practicing wastenacity.
You've got to have tenacity.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
That's a great word.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Stick to it.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Is that a really good impression of him?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
He was a nice man, yeah, and a good coach.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Oh, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
So you get married and thenyou're off to Vietnam, so you've
been married for how long then?
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Now you mean.
Yeah 56 years.
Yeah, wow 19,.
Whatever that was 67.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
1967, 68,.
Yeah, Wow, that's you know what.
It shouldn't be surprising thatsomeone's been married that
long 1967, 68.
Yeah, Wow, that's you know what.
It shouldn't be surprising thatsomeone's been married that
long, but it is.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I know it's amazing.
It is, um, my 50th high schoolreunion.
Well, he sat at a table, it wasa round table and I think there
were four couples, my one buddyfrom uh middle school, junior
high school, all the way throughuniversity, was at the table
with his wife and two othercouples, rex Stelgius and Bob
(21:14):
Franchino.
All of us still married to thesame women, which was pretty
amazing, because you could lookaround and see a lot of uh,
failed marriages or marriagesthat people just gave up on uh
and threw away thoserelationships.
You know, but our table wasdifferent.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Well, and if you think about it, the seventies
was when, when divorce kind ofbecame you know the thing to do.
And so, yeah, I mean you werepart of that group that either
stuck with it or didn't, but alot of them didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
A lot of them didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, well, that's great.
You know our mutual friend.
They're celebrating 75 years.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I know, it's just absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's yeah.
Yeah, his birthday's coming upand then their anniversary's
coming up, so anyway, I digress.
So you, uh, you ship off toVietnam.
And uh, where, where do you go?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Uh, well, that was interesting.
Uh, I flew out of um.
I'll tell you the story aboutthat.
Okay.
Uh, I married into a really good, close knit family.
I couldn't have asked for abetter set of in-laws.
I had the airplane ticket outof Lansing to Sacramento I don't
(22:32):
even recall where the stop wasin between, but my father-in-law
had a sister that lived inSacramento that's my wife's Aunt
, ada and he called her and hesaid my son-in-law is coming out
there, he's going to land atSan Francisco International
(22:55):
Airport and can you meet himthere?
And of course she said yes.
So, uh, she and her son, uh,not David, david's brother, I'll
think of his name before.
All right, yeah, you can callme.
Well, they met me at theairport.
It was late, late in theevening, and I got a whirlwind
(23:17):
tour of San Francisco, uh, withan ADA and her youngest son, um,
she had told her brother, myfather-in-law.
Of course I'll meet him, youknow, uh, he's family, wow.
So, uh, we did that and and uh,and then she worked for the uh
(23:43):
California highway patrol andshe lived in Sacramento.
So, um, we, we finished thatwhirlwind tour and then she
drove back to Sacramento and, uh, the next day took me to uh
Travis air force base and I flewout, then Got to Vietnam at
(24:09):
Saigon Tan Son Nhat Airport AirForce Base and had my orders, of
course, and people had no ideawhere I was going.
They had no clue.
Somebody said well, I thinkit's Da Nang, so how do I get
(24:29):
there?
Well, you go here to the opsbuilding and catch an airplane
that's going to Da Nang.
So I did, and it stopped inPleiku and I went into the ops
building there.
I said do you have any ideawhere this outfit is?
And they looked at the order.
So I was just, and it stoppedin Pleiku and I went into the
ops building there.
I said do you have any ideawhere this outfit is?
And they looked at the orderand saw it and said, yeah, it's
(24:51):
up on the hill right there.
So there I was en route to DaNang and stopped for probably a
courier flight and got a Jeep upto the hill where the air force
station was, the radar stationwas and that was my uh, my home
for a year.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Okay, and you were there.
You were, um.
So did you like oversee radaroperations?
Is that how that worked?
But what?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I was a uh they, they called it a weapons controller
and I learned to do with theradar air-to-air intercepts,
mainly learning for defensepurposes.
But it turned into asub-segment of hooking fighters
(25:35):
up to aerial refuelers.
Oh, okay.
So back in the day, radar backthen on the airplanes weren't
nearly as sophisticated as it istoday.
That's more an example ofprogress, I guess.
Yeah.
But we had manual radar, not thesophisticated computerized SAGE
(25:56):
.
They called that semi-automaticground environment.
It was just manual radar.
You had a big old, clunky radarscope and you had ground-to-air
radios and you learned how tocalculate intercepts based on
altitude and speed and all thoseother factors.
(26:18):
We use circular slide rules tomake our calculations and a
grease pencil on the screen.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, there is a lot that goes into that calculation.
I did fire control in the Navyand so, yeah, that fire control
solution.
There's a lot of math involvedin that.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Oh, without a doubt.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
One of my buddies over the over the course of the
years was a uh, uh, he was amath teacher and turned into be
a school high school counselor,cincinnati, and I met him on
Florida and uh, larry was in thearmy.
And and uh, he did, uh I Iguess you'll call it fire
control for artillerycalculating, uh, what needed to
(27:02):
be calculated, you know right.
Depending on the ordinance theywere releasing.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's not.
I don't think it's boring workeither, I think it's kind of no
it's for him.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
It was very challenging for us, it was very
challenging.
Yeah.
Uh, we didn't know what we weregoing to experience.
Fortunately not a lot of, uh,not a lot of emergency aircraft
Uh, but uh, they usually come.
We were central Highlands atLake who and um, although we had
uh fighters at the base, theywere close air support uh groups
(27:38):
.
We had uh T-37s, t-37s, a-37s,I call them that the Vietnamese
Air Force flew.
But we also had the A-1 SkyRaiders, which were the old
fold-wing big propeller aircraft.
(27:59):
They used to fly off carriersthat were based there, spads
with their call name.
We had our own spooky, our ownPuff the Magic Dragon at Blake
that flew a combat air patrolover the bases at night.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
That's quite an airship there.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Oh, it's amazing, and of course they progress.
Turned us uh, an AC one 30 intoa uh gunship with howitzer.
Uh, I don't remember if it's aone, oh, five, uh, or or what,
but can you imagine that?
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I can't imagine being on that when when they fired
those weapons.
I understand it moves.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, when you fire that cannon, the aircraft
actually moves sideways, andit's a big aircraft too.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I flew on many of those.
Well, yeah, you think aboutlike the big battleship, like
the Iowa.
If they do a full broadsidefiring with those 16-inch guns,
that ship moves in the watersideways yeah.
Yeah, I can't imagine the wholeairplane thing just kind of
shocked me.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
You had to qualify periodically.
So I had the opportunity to flyin a jet up the coast to Da
Nang and we circled.
It was miserable, it wasmonsoon season, the weather was
miserable and we circled thatairstrip at Da Nang I don't know
how many times before.
(29:22):
Finally they were able to breakthrough the clouds and land and
then up in a jeep up the top ofMonkey Mountain to the Air
Force radar site there.
We had to be careful when wedid our intercept training
because it was close to, I wantto say, hainan Island I'm not
(29:47):
sure which, it was out in theSouth China Sea.
We had to make sure we avoidedChinese airspace.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Yeah, they'd get a little upset, wouldn't they?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I would think so yeah .
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, so how was your ?
It sounds like your tour ofduty was um.
You know you had a lot going on, but uh, anything you want to
share about your time in Vietnamother than what we've talked
about?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Uh, I learned how to play bridge.
Oh and I haven't played since.
Um, our first uh quarters wasat the old McPhee compound and
it was rough.
It was French hooches.
If you were lucky, you hadscreened in the top, my first
(30:31):
experience with a mosquitonetting.
You know that you had aframework to use over your cot
to keep the critters out.
We set not a mousetrap, butit's called a rat trap.
We set rat traps out and oncein a while you hear that thing
go off.
You say, well, we got anotherone.
(30:52):
It was a little crude.
And then the last five and ahalf months probably, they had
built quarters for us right onthe air base itself.
Prior to that we had to ride ina crew cab to work I don't
(31:12):
remember how far it was from theMACV compound to the air base
and the quarters weresignificantly better.
We had an army fort south of us, uh, quite a ways uh fort, I
can't remember the name of it.
Anyway, it was always a cloudof dust.
(31:34):
You could look off and say, yep, that's, that's where, that's
where the grunts are, you know,down there.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Always moving around kicking up dust.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I tell you, but the duty was good duty we had.
It was 24-hour duty.
We did what the FAA does today,basically flight following,
hooking up the fighter bombersto forward air controllers.
It wasn't.
(32:10):
We actually had a mess hall,you know.
We had an officer's club aswell.
My wife always gets in charge,out of some of the voters, I
took of the of the Filipinoladies that were singing and
dancing, you know.
Uh, once in a while we get aUSO show.
Yeah.
No, no big names, but uh, it wasfun for us to do that.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
No, no, bob, hope for you guys.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
No Bob hope, uh, no Ann Margaret.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh, that would have been worth going but it was, it
was okay.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Good duty.
Looking back on it, you forgetthe bad things, I think.
Yeah.
And remember the good things,had a good crew that we worked
with.
I can recall, uh, my very when,when I left, when I got to play
coup, got off the airplane,figured out, my uh duty
assignment was up on the hilland I got a ride up there.
(33:02):
The operations officer washaving a meeting with with the
crew and he was, he was chewingbutt, he was hot, and that was
my introduction to him.
He was an interesting guy, agood guy.
I, I, I can't think of his nameright now, but he was a captain
(33:25):
.
However, he had been selectedto be promoted to major and he
never, let you forget thatcaptain promotable.
Oh man, and that really rubbedus the wrong way.
You know, here I am, uh uh, agold buyer, second Lieutenant
coming up there to go to workand listen to this guy.
But it's okay, Everybody moveson and he moved on.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Right, right, that's true.
Yeah, hopefully he actually gotto put the major pin on.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Our duty was good.
We helped build a Quonset hutfor training.
Quonset hut, uh, for training.
Uh, it was a uh, a jointproject, not just the Quonset
hunt, but uh, that whole, ourwhole function was joint with
the uh Vietnamese air force andthey weren't a much good.
(34:17):
Uh, it's just the way it was.
You know, right.
Um, we tried not to let them getin our way.
Uh, I, we had one of our guys,george Reamer, his uh brother.
He did the same work that I did.
(34:37):
His brother was a uh F fourpilot, uh, and he flew
reconnaissance and they theywould correspond and once in a
while his brother would flythrough our airspace.
Oh they got we kind of if heknew we get George on the on the
screen and on the radio so atleast he could control him when
(34:59):
he went through, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Our uh, our shifts were interesting.
We worked 12 hour, 11 hour dayshifts and a 13 hour night shift
, and on Monday you did a quickturnaround.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Oh, so you're like yeah, the day shift.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Folks went home at six and then they uh came back,
uh, at midnight and they had ashort stint midnight to 7, and
the day shift was 7 to 6.
So you're always working, yeah,always working.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
You're either going to work or you're just going to
sleep, right?
That's right, yeah, so you werethere for a year, and then your
tour is up.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Is that what happened ?
No, we wanted it to be up.
Yeah.
You know one of my buddies.
There was Howie Spellman, andHowie was from New Jersey and he
did not talk a lot.
My wife says I don't talk muchbut she'd really be amazed at
Howie.
(36:03):
He'd sit at the radar scope anda flight of F-100s would come
up out of Tuiwar fan ring andthey'd click in on the radio.
They'd say Peacock, peacocklitter, do one flight.
And Howie's sitting therelooking at the screen Peacock,
(36:26):
litter, do one flight.
Do you have contact?
I said, howie, you got to talk.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
I can't see you shaking your head.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Anyway, the story is Howie and I got orders about the
same time, and Howie's orders?
Well, we got major commandorders, not outfit major command
.
So how he got his orders, itwas, uh, air defense command and
uh mine was, uh, U S air force,Europe, you safe?
Well, I'd had enough of beingoverseas, I didn't want to go to
(36:58):
Europe, I want to go home.
Right.
I had a wife yeah, you know, Ihadn't seen her in a year.
Well, we did have.
We did meet up for ouranniversary in Honolulu and that
was nice.
But I said, howie, you're goingto go to Point Barrel, alaska,
(37:19):
or maybe you're going to go toNorth Dakota, maybe Minot, and
he didn't like the sound of that.
I said you want to trade orders?
So we got a hold of thepersonnel officer and talked him
into trading orders for us.
So Howie went to Templehof inBerlin and I went to Homestead
(37:41):
in Florida.
That's not a bad swap, that wasgood duty, berlin and I went to
Homestead in Florida.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
That's not a bad swap .
Speaker 2 (37:46):
That was good duty, that was real good duty.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, and so how long were you at Homestead then?
Speaker 2 (37:52):
We were at Homestead a little over two years.
Our daughter was born there onthe airbase.
All right and it was.
We had fun, we had good duty,uh we'd get a weekend pass and
and uh, we'd go down to the keysor uh, entertain family if they
(38:13):
had a chance to visit.
Uh, that was.
It could have been better.
Hot is hot.
Yeah, you know we lived, uhlived on a on the base, uh base
housing and a duplex and we wereright across the street from
the fourth T and the golf course.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh well, that's not bad.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Not bad at all.
That was, that was good duty,we enjoyed it, we really did but
we were ready to go home too.
Yeah, it must've been nice,though, to have her be with you
for that part of your time.
Oh yeah, it was great.
(38:52):
Uh, she went with me to SouthDakota, uh for four months and
12 days, right, you know, and welived there on uh, on the on
the site, uh for a uh uh.
Well, they had the uh general.
It was the old um army uh base,uh for the Corps of Engineers.
Right.
We're building the dam and wehad a one bedroom house, you
(39:16):
know kind of like row houses.
Yeah, you know, you'd see in inthe in the uh, coal mining days
, you know that's kind of whatit was like.
It was nice, it was decent.
She learned how to fish and shelearned how to cook.
Her mom is a good cook and Irecall she made biscuits one
(39:37):
time, first time she ever madebiscuits.
Couldn't eat them, so we tookthem down the river and floated
them across like skipping stones, that's a great memory.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Wow, did she finally figure it out though?
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh yeah, she's a good cook.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, well, that's good, that's good, so you?
So you served a total of howmany years then?
Speaker 2 (39:57):
A little over four, four and a half years, okay,
from uh, from uh March of 67 toAugust of 71.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Okay, and then you moved back to Michigan.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
I moved back to Michigan, back to home, back to
Lansing.
I had been on leave fromGeneral Motors, so I got
reinstated, went back to work.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Okay, and you had your daughter at this time.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Daughter yep.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Okay, only one child then.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
We did.
We lost another child shortlyafter birth, but yeah, we had
the one daughter.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Okay, all right, and so you kind of just get home and
pick up your life at GM.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
We did yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
And how was that?
So you said you were there for34 years 34 and a half years.
Okay, I don't want to miss thatextra six months.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
No, I didn't either yeah.
It helps towards pension.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yes, it does.
Pensions are a good thing.
So yeah, so tell me, like, whatwas work like for you?
So you were at Fisher.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
At Fisher.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
And were you at Fisher for most of that time?
Then Most of my work time wasat Fisher, with a little hiatus
to Oldsmobile for about maybefive years.
I did a variety of things, fromemployment office to clerical
work to labor relations work,working with the UAW.
I moved on to salariedpersonnel where I got involved
(41:33):
in the benefit planadministration and record
keeping for the salaried workers.
One time we had over 600salaried workers and that's
dwindled considerably.
I did student programs 600salaried workers, yeah, uh, then
that's dwindled considerably.
Um, I did uh student programs.
So I did a lot of recruitmentof uh high school kids, uh to
(41:54):
come and work uh for generalmotor says engineering students.
I worked with them uh at uh GMI, which is now Kettering
university, and he'd get thoseengineering students I think it
was a co-op program and theywould go to school for so many
months and work for so manymonths and get them acclimated
(42:18):
to automobile manufacturing andsee if that was something they
wanted to do.
Did a lot of work withrecruiting uh high school kids
to uh who are already in school,already in university, to uh
(42:42):
come to work for us in thesummer as an intern and got them
exposed to uh manufacturing.
I met a lot of good kids and Ifound that there's a real hotbed
of engineering talent innorthwestern Clinton County in
that Palomo Westphalia Fowlerarea.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Well, that's interesting because it's very
rural, very you know farmcountry.
Well, they knew how to work,you know?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, absolutely, I said what did you do this past
summer?
So I picked rocks at theSimmons farm.
I said, well, if you pick rocks, you know what work is like.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, let us teach you something.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
I wanted uh these young people, men and women,
both who uh who wanted to uhcontribute to manufacturing.
I called them.
Uh uh, they contribute tomanufacturing.
I called them.
They wanted to learn aboutdirty knees engineering, where
you actually get down on yourhands and knees and solve
problems and make things work.
Met a lot of good kids.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, probably had a great influence on them too.
I mean to have a good mentorteacher to bring you into that
group.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I had one student.
My wife used to work atMervin's and she would close on
the night that we had uh, uh,the uh sharp park fireworks or
uh independent state fireworks,and she'd get out at 10 o'clock
(44:06):
and I'd meet her there.
And here's this young man andthis girl coming up, mr Sweeney.
Mr Sweeney, I'd like you tomeet my girlfriend, julie.
Well, this was Doug Kuhn fromKiwamo, and he was just a
student, just a college student.
(44:27):
You know.
Well, doug married Julie andwhen he graduated he got hired
and I still have his letter.
He wrote me a letter after hehad been there for 25 years,
thanking me for being a mentorand for getting involved and
(44:48):
providing him the opportunity touh.
And he married Julie, by theway, that's great.
And for an opportunity to have agood life and and and uh
provide for his family.
So those are nice memories.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, you can't ask for more than that.
That's um, that's kind of likea.
It's a wonderful life momentwhere you get to figure out that
you really helped somebody.
Yeah, that's, true, and theyand they told you that's, that's
fantastic, and and so I want toask something, though this is
kind of off topic, but Iremember my dad worked at
Oldsmobile.
Every, every year, they wouldhave like an auto show for the
(45:25):
employees, where employees andtheir families would go and you
could see the cars that werecoming out the following year.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Do you remember that at all?
I do not remember that at all.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Well, you've got to consider that things change just
about every model year.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm amazed at what went intothe dye work and the center
shapes changes and that's a lotof work.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Oh, yeah, I remember every July my dad would get two
weeks for changeover and we'd goto.
We'd go to, um, oh gosh, cedarpoint, because he had two weeks
off.
So we'd go to Cedar point.
That was our big.
So we'd go to cedar point, thatwas our big, that was our big
deal.
But yeah, so 34 years.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
So you retired in the early.
I retired in uh march of 2000okay, all right, and then.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
So march is so in.
In march, you, you, I'm trying.
March seems to be a month foryou.
There's a couple things thathappen in march for you.
Uh, you left for the militaryin march yeah, so you retired in
march.
And and what did you do afterthat?
I retired pretty much yeah, youdo some traveling, or we?
Speaker 2 (46:35):
traveled.
Uh, we, uh, uh.
We purchased a, uh, a winterhome in florida, and if somebody
would have told me early onthat you're going to spend your
winters in Florida, I said no,thank you.
I've been to Florida.
It's hot, I don't know if Iwant to go down there, but the
winters were fine.
We had a nice, nice place,comfortable place.
(46:55):
Trying to sell it now.
Uh uh, uh, we had, uh, someunfortunate experience with, uh,
the two hurricanes this pastseason Hurricane Helene and
Milton, the damage in our park,horrible damage in our park,
some damage to our unit, butit's a buyer's market there now.
(47:20):
Right.
So it's tough.
There's over 40 places for salein our park alone and it's
difficult to sell and with Nancybeing on dialysis it's tough to
travel.
We can do it, we did it.
The center works very well forher in uh assigned to a dialysis
(47:46):
center, uh close to where we uhwere or are in Florida.
Uh, this past season we wentdown just for the month of
January and the close centerthey could get her into was uh
about half, about 40 minutesaway.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Uh at three times a week you know, it's a lot of
traveling while you're inflorida, yeah, yeah.
So tell me a little bit.
One thing we didn't talk aboutwas your, your daughter.
Do you want to?
Do you mind talking about, like, what does she do?
Speaker 2 (48:17):
and oh no, uh, I got, I've got a great.
Uh, I got a great family Ourdaughter Michelle, with one L.
I don't know why, but when wenamed her, that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Just seemed right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:39):
She's a good student, loves to read and learned how
to play the trumpet in middleschool and became the lead
trumpet player at her highschool.
The Grand Ledge Went on to auniversity, at Western Western
Michigan University, and she wasin the marching band for two
years.
And that was fun.
(48:59):
We'd get season tickets for thefootball games yeah, why?
So we could watch the marchingband.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
That's exciting stuff .
Speaker 2 (49:07):
And she I think these are my words now I think she
decided that practice with thetrumpet and carrying that
trumpet around was too much.
So she's musical.
So she took up choir and shewas in the choir for the last
couple of years at Western.
(49:29):
A good student graduated.
It took her seven years, whichI remind her of often Right.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
You're obligated to let her know.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
And she got two bachelor's degrees in those
seven years.
She also finally settled downand decided she wanted to become
a teacher.
So her first degree was inuniversity studies, or, said in
my terms, no preference.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
No preference degree.
Yeah, there you go yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
So she got her teaching degree and teaching
certificate.
So she left Western with thetwo bachelor's degrees, got a
teaching position at right thereon the border of I-69 and US
12,.
Whatever that city is escapesme, It'll come to me on the way
(50:35):
home.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Cold water.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (50:37):
Okay, it took me a minute, but cold water.
I only know that because Ithink they have a drive-in movie
theater down there.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Anyway, she took to teaching well, taught middle
school, loves middle school.
Kids got married and she lived.
She had an apartment there inColdwater.
Then, after she was married,her husband was still a student
(51:05):
at Western, so they moved to anapartment in Marshall.
Okay.
And then when Johnny graduatedthey came back to Lansing area.
For a while she drove fromLansing to Coldwater to teach
and then she landed a positionat Williamston in the
Williamston district, a nicelittle close knit community.
(51:29):
It's an interesting community.
It has a lot of money and ithas no money at all.
Family wise, she loved the kidsand she, oh, and during that
time she, uh, went to MSU andgot a master's degree in
(51:51):
education.
I call it English.
They call it liberal arts.
Yes, uh, not liberal arts.
Uh, well, that'll come to metoo.
Language arts, yes, languagearts.
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, okay, you have to have a fancy name to justify
that tuition.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
And she always liked books, always liked reading.
She's a voracious reader.
So she said there's apossession opening in the high
school library.
So she, while she was pregnantwith her first child, she drove
back and forth at night afterwork to Wayne State, hired at
Detroit and got a master'sdegree in library science.
(52:34):
So here she is with fourdegrees at teaching for what we
consider.
She considers peanuts, which iswhat we seem to pay, considers
peanuts Right, which is what weseem to pay teachers and nurses.
And then she views it a littledifferently than I do.
(52:54):
She was also a union rep at thehigh school and she got a
little crosswise with thebuilding administrator and he
eliminated the librarianposition.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Oh wow.
So what a coincidence that'sokay, I love kids anyway.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
So she went into the middle school and she's been a
middle school teacher, englishteacher, ever since.
Oh married a young man that isa gifted musician, and Johnny
(53:35):
has a profound hearing loss andhe is a tremendous musician and
his major at university wasmusic.
Uh, with a viola, uh, a littlebit bigger violin yeah and of
course, that um today about twodollars and 95 cents to buy you
(53:59):
a cup of coffee right uh camefrom a very musical family, a
family of educators.
His father's a former banddirector at his high school in
St Clair Shores, His mother's asinger and a teacher, both
(54:20):
teachers, both educators, Bothfar-out liberals, as many
teachers are.
And of course Johnny, theson-in-law, grew up with that.
(54:42):
But with my daughter pushing himhe went back to school at msu
and he got a master's degree inspecial ed okay and he's been a
special ed teacher at the samedistrict at williamston, not
high school, ever since hegraduated and it's good, it's
good for him, you.
(55:03):
He kind of taught himself toplay the piano, so he has both
of those, he's mastered both ofthose instruments.
He can play the double down toGeorgia on the violin and he can
play some pretty mean keyboardstuff as well and in the
(55:23):
summertime keyboard stuff aswell.
And in the summertime you mightfind him out at the band shell
at the McCormick Park inWilliamston as they have a
little musical group that playsat least once during the summer.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
I have to shoot out there this summer and listen for
him.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
It's Thursday evenings and you just bring your
own chair, you set the yard andthe lawn and they have a
variety of different performersthat come out there once a week
during the summer.
Michelle has two daughtersgreat kids, great kids.
(56:08):
The oldest is a extremelyintelligent.
Well, they're both sharp,intelligent.
The oldest one loves books,like her mother.
The youngest one, she, doesn'tread.
I'd rather not.
But the oldest one, jenna, wasa fourth generation western
(56:34):
michigan university student andgrad and in four years she
earned a bachelor's and amaster's degree that's pretty
incredible, you.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
You pointed out to her mom.
Speaker 2 (56:47):
Yeah, we're really proud.
We're proud of both of them,but I keep telling them the
oldest one her name is Jenna.
I said you know school comes.
I mean, you work at it, butschool comes pretty easy for you
.
Why don't you go ahead and geta PhD?
I know it's a lot of work, alot of time involved, but you
(57:09):
can become a universityprofessor and I think you'd love
it.
Also and she doesn't want to dothis she could become a
researcher.
You know, when she as much asshe loves to read, she would be
good at it, but she wants to bea teacher.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
Yeah, you can't.
I mean, my daughter is ateacher and that was her goal
from middle school.
She just always wanted to be ateacher.
You're never going to get richbeing a teacher, but she loves
her job.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
Oh yeah, now Jenna did an internship at Portage
Central High School in EnglishLanguage arts and she liked the
district, liked the people,liked the students and they had
(58:01):
a position opening up in themiddle school when she graduated
.
But it didn't open up in time.
So she said, well, I made acommitment to the state of
Michigan to teach for five yearsand an opportunity presented
(58:23):
itself to her to teach atWilliamston in the high school
as a Spanish teacher.
Of course that was her minor,she didn't like that, but she
accepted it.
She said yes.
Shortly after she said yes, thePortage Central opportunity
(58:45):
came and she had to turn it downbecause she gave her word to
this district.
Shortly after she said yes, thePortage Central opportunity
came and she had to turn it downbecause she gave her word to
this district that she was goingto teach there.
So I'll belabor my grandkids alittle bit, because they're
super.
She is just going to teach oneyear.
She's already turned in herresignation and she's already
(59:06):
got an apartment in Kalamazoothis summer.
July.
I think, and she's looking foran opportunity to teach English,
which she really wants to teachlanguage arts.
Uh-huh.
And she says I'll find a job.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
I bet she will.
Speaker 2 (59:25):
Oh, I think so Now she'll be 23 in June.
The youngest one will be 21next month and the youngest one,
maya.
She's a good student in whatshe likes, right, and she wants
(59:50):
to work in the medicalprofession and before she
graduated from high school shebecame certified as a
phlebotomist and a medicalassistant, so she had both those
certifications.
She's now working as an MA forthe University, michigan State
University Medical Center andFamily Practice.
(01:00:10):
She loves it, she likes doingthat and I think, and she's
studying.
She's now at, I think,davenport and she'll get a
degree, some kind of medicaldegree, when she finishes.
And her boss there seems tothink you could give him a PA.
Why don't you think about beinga PA?
And I think she wants to work,I think, with pediatrics.
(01:00:34):
So they're both good kids, youknow.
Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Yeah, it sounds like everything kind of come full
circle and they're kind of alldoing great, which is, you know,
what more could a parent askfor than to see their children
and grandchildren flourish likethat?
Yeah, so you know, as we kindof come to the end of our
(01:01:02):
conversation, I want to makesure that we talked about
everything you wanted to talkabout.
So is there anything else thatwe missed that you wanted us to
say?
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Oh golly, I uh, I'm not sure I love my family.
They're good kids All of them.
Uh, I know my son-in-law's uhon the on the brink of a, a
cochlear implant, which will bea major lifestyle change for him
.
He's anxious.
A little bit of anxiety thereSometimes borders on a little
(01:01:33):
bit of fear, when you thinkthey're going to drill a hole in
my skull.
Yeah, but I think he's come togrips with that and it'll be a
learning process and I thinkthat he's going to do fine.
My daughter, for 15 years ormore, has had a second job
(01:01:55):
teaching for the University ofPhoenix online.
Here she is with her full-timeteaching position at the middle
school in Williamston andteaching other people not just
kids either, but other people tobecome teachers, and she does
(01:02:19):
it all online.
But she's traveled to a varietyof places in the state just to
observe her students in theclassroom and to see how they're
doing in the classroom.
She's been to Detroit up in theThumb out here in the western
part of the state.
She drove into one school ininner city Detroit one time and
(01:02:42):
parked her car on the street,walked up the building.
When she got in they immediatelylocked her in a closet because
they had lockdown and then whenshe got out, they were making
bets the teacher's making betson whether her car was going to
be there when she got finished.
Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
A pretty tough area, Wow.
So yeah, she sounds very busy.
She is, she's very busy.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
she likes what she's doing she loves what she does
and she's got enough time, Ithink, with the uh williamson
district to retire if shechooses to do so yeah uh, which
she says, maybe another threeyears it's got to be on her time
, right sure, yeah, it's goodthat she can do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Yeah, well, you know you have uh lived quite a life.
Um sounds like a great family,married into great family.
Um served your country, had agreat career, um, you know, a
good retirement.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
I don't regret any of it, really.
Uh I the fact that, and I'll goahead and say this that General
Motors thought so little of thesalaried workforce that they
canceled all of the retirees'health insurance and life
insurance.
So, no dental, no vision, nohealth insurance.
Well, you're on Medicare, youknow.
(01:04:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
You got health insurance you know, yeah, you
got life, you got healthinsurance.
So, yeah, I, uh, I rememberwhen they restructured, it
impacted my, my father as well,even though he was not salaried,
he was hourly, but yeah, helost a lot of benefits as well.
Yeah, it was not a good thingyeah, didn't hurt the executives
.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Well, it may have hurt their, but their their
bonuses for a short period oftime.
Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Right, they still draw millions of dollars yeah,
yeah, my dad doesn't get hisprofit sharing anymore either.
No, yeah, so it all went away.
Well, I do want to ask you onefinal question, if I could and I
ask everyone the same question,and that when someone's
listening to this in the future,when you and I aren't here
anymore, what message would youlike to leave people with?
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
Well, I would encourage people to.
If you find someone you love,marry them, and it may be tough,
but stick to it, because that'sa commitment that you make.
Don't throw away relationships.
Work hard, do the right thing,go to church, learn how to live
(01:05:18):
so that you can help others.
And that's pretty much it, youknow all right.
There's a lot.
There's a lot out there thatyou can give.
You just don't realize it yet.
Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
All right.
Well, you know, thanks forgiving your time to me today
sitting down here for the forthis hour that we've, that,
we've chatted and I reallyappreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
You're welcome, Bill.
It's my pleasure Interesting.
Thank you.
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