Interview with Jewel Maynard Viot, November 1, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Maynard Viot November 1, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Joan Leavitt © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Maynard Viot November 1, 2004 Conducted by Joan Leavitt Table of Contents Introduction: birth ( 1931) and childhood ( Salt Lake City, UT), family background 1 Memories of youth during World War II ( Victory gardens, raising chickens, working in stores) 4 Family involvement in LDS Church activities, and ordination as deacon and rise through Aaronic Priesthood 6 Education: high school and later University of Utah ( engineering) 7 Military service: communications instructor, U. S. Army, Ft. Monmouth, NJ and Europe ( ca. 1952) 9 Discharge from U. S. Army, marriage, takes job with GE, Syracuse, NY ( defense contract, working on radar) ( ca. 1956) 10 Involvement with LDS Church in NJ ( branch president, bishop, high counselor) and LDS lifestyle ( Word of Wisdom, tithing, welfare farm) 11 Move to Las Vegas, NV and the NTS ( 1978- 1999), confidentiality of work at NTS and effects on marriage and family 15 Experience of an LDS person working at GE and at the NTS 16 Mormon orientation re: protesters at the NTS, working in and moral acceptance of the defense industry, Soviet communism, role of Ezra Taft Benson in LDS Church and in federal government 17 Atomic weapons and competition with USSR 20 Discussion of defense industry and peaceful uses of technology 21 Teachings of the Book of Mormon re: U. S. history, and historical relations between Mormons and the U. S. Government 23 Talks about best and most difficult times in life and career 25 Overall guide and formula for living: setting priorities ( family, Church, and work), talks about vision loss 27 Conclusion: children, grandchildren, and great- grandchildren 29 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Maynard Viot November 1, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Joan Leavitt [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Joan Leavitt: OK, for the record, would you say your name? Maynard Viot: Maynard Viot. OK. And could you tell a little bit maybe about your family background, your mother and your father and who they were? Yes. My father was born in Nancy, France. France? Oh! Yes. And he came to this country as a young adult. He went first to England and was married there. He came to this country and his wife passed away here, and he remarried, and that was my mother. So I had a half- brother and then I also had a brother and a sister, siblings from my mother. Now where did you grow up? I grew up in Salt Lake City [ Utah]. Were you born there, too? Yes. OK. Did your father come to Salt Lake when he came from France? No. He first went to England. That’s where he met his first wife there, and that’s where he came in contact with the Church [ of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints] there. He was going to church. OK. So after he joined the Church in England, is that when he came to Salt Lake, then? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 Yes, he came. And this would’ve been shortly after World War I when he came here. And so our family, we all grew up in Salt Lake. And he was a you’d call non- skilled laborer and jobs were hard to get during a lot of that time, but he got a job at a dairy on a temporary thing for a week and it lasted about thirty years. Ohhh! Now was that during the Depression? That was actually earlier than the Depression. Well, I’m not sure of the date. Well, first he tried to run a store, a small store, and that didn’t work out too well. So I’m not sure of the date when he started working in the dairy but it would’ve been around the Depression time. Yes, jobs were very hard to get. Now did you grow up in town? Were you a city kid or were you a farm kid? I guess you’d call me more of a farm kid. We didn’t have a farm ourself. In the back of our property was a large pasture that the stake patriarch had a small herd of dairy cows there, so I experienced like that kind of background. You kind of got work with him, then? Yes. Was that to kind of help out the family, then? No, the kind of work I got, I got part- time jobs around the nursery or a grocery store or something like that as a teenager kind of thing, and I’m not sure I contributed to the family except in the way that I took care of my own needs. I guess from the age of fourteen I got all my clothes and spending money and all that kind of thing, so there was no drain on my parents for that kind of thing, although they did support me while I was living there. OK. Now you said you were not the older child. You were a second child? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 Yes. Well, from my mother’s side, OK, I have an older sister and then myself and then I have a younger brother. OK. And tell me a little bit about your mother. Well, she was born in Salt Lake. Her parents came from Switzerland and from Germany, so she grew up in an immigrant family as well. And what was her name? Her last name was Gygi. Oh, Gygi. How do you spell that? G- Y- G- I. And it was, you know, a lot of immigrant families were poor and struggling, and they were very poor and struggling. I know one time the bishop gave them a sack of flour and Mom would say, Gee, do we have to have flour soup again? What it was was flour mixed with water. A kind of a gravy, then. Yes. That was kind of a way they had to get along. It was pretty tough in those days when there was no defined poverty level. But anyway, they managed to survive OK. And my parents did [ 00: 05: 00] OK. My father was very imaginative. He wanted to try several things. I told you he tried a grocery store and that didn’t work out. So he tried raising chickens, and I guess an epidemic came through and all the chickens died and it ruined that, so he had this chicken coop out there and nothing in it. So that’s what I remember is this empty chicken coop. Pretty big one. So it was a good thing he had the job at the dairy because that was the mainstay. Now what year were you born? What was your birthday? Nineteen thirty- one. Nineteen thirty- one. What day? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 August the eighteenth. August the eighteenth. OK. And then you went to school in Salt Lake? Yes, I was raised there. I had a lot of different interests as I was growing up. During the war, you know, the Victory gardens were popular and I got very interested in gardening and, gee, I liked that. I was going to be a farmer when I grew up. Ohhh! So you had a little Victory garden near your home, then? Oh, yes. Yards there were a lot bigger than they are here and there was room to plant a nice garden, so I had my own garden there, and I was going to be a farmer. That was just great. Well, did you grow mainly vegetables? Yes. Did you have fruit trees? Yes, we had fruit trees, as well. Well, did you ever try chickens or anything like that, or was it just—? Oh, yes, I did. Did you have more luck than your father? Yeah. My dad had an old garage which he tore down and there was a pile of lumber there. And I asked him if I could use that lumber. So I constructed myself another chicken house. And we lived not far from a brickyard and they had an area where they put all the bricks which are discarded that weren’t quite right. And so I took a wagon down there and hauled a bunch of bricks up and made a floor. That was the floor in the chicken coop. And this pile of lumber there, I constructed a chicken coop and then I made a big run for it so the chickens had an area they could go outside. How old were you when you did this? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 I was about thirteen. And we bought twenty- five baby chicks. And I remember Mom showed me how to— they were enclosed in the house and— A brooder? Yes, she showed me how to make a brooder. There was some kind of a top board [ to] which you attached a lot of stockings [ 00: 07: 41] so the chicks had somewhere to snuggle with. And they just snuggled up against those and they just grew fine. And then when they were old enough, we put them out in the chicken coop there. And it turned out that they were almost evenly divided between hens and roosters. So as they matured, the roosters became family dinner, and I sold some of them to a local butcher shop. I’d go over and trade with him. I’d get some groceries and take him over a chicken, a nice roasting chicken to sell. And you know I had twelve laying hens and I got eleven eggs a day, just like regular. And so of course that’s more than we can eat, so I’d take the extra eggs and take them over to the butcher shop and trade them for some groceries. And so I earned some money that way. And you know I had to go over to the feed store and buy some laying mash and wheat and things like that. Now did any of them reproduce and produce baby chicks? No, I didn’t go in for that. We had family dinner from all the roosters. The hens, they were great. I just kept them going. And so that was my chicken project. Now you’re starting to get into World War II? Is that when you had shortages? Let’s see, when World War II started I was ten years old, so this would’ve been toward the end of World War II. Yes, there were some shortages there. Let’s see, what else about growing up? Around that time, along with the chickens, I had a teacher’s quorum advisor who had his own grocery store, and I one day asked him if he could use some help over there. So he hired me to [ 00: 10: 00] work a couple days a week, so that’s my first regular job. I’d had other jobs like UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 working in a nursery weeding and stuff like that. But from there I then found another grocery store where I could work more hours, and so all the way through high school I worked in stores. Now was your family quite involved in their LDS community, then? Oh, across the street from my house was the stake president, and next to him was the church. Oh my goodness! You were right there in the neighborhood, then, weren’t you? And as I say, in the back of our yard was this big pasture where the stake patriarch had his herd of cattle, or dairy cows. So you were on all sides, then. Yes, we were surrounded by it. And Dad had to work most Sundays, so we were an active family but almost as individuals more than going over there as a family group. Of course, living that close by, it was just across the street, it wasn’t necessary to be together to get to church. Was your mom pretty good about making sure you guys went every Sunday, then? Oh, she didn’t have to make sure. We just grew up that way. Yeah. And she was primary president and you know she was pretty— Oh, she was— OK, maybe you can explain what primary president is. Oh, well, that’s the children up to age twelve. OK. The organization for the children. Yes, the organization for the children, and during those days they met on weekdays. I think on Wednesday after school the children would go to primary. And you went regularly and you graduated from primary, then. Oh, yeah. Primary, and after twelve years of age, why, the boys enter the preparatory priesthood, called the Aaronic Priesthood. And you were ordained? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 Yes, I was ordained a deacon and went up through the various steps in the Aaronic Priesthood as a teacher and a priest. And then you also went on to the higher lay priesthood. Yes. Yes. That was, let’s see, I’d have been in college by that time. What college did you go to? I went to University of Utah. It was just right in Salt Lake, so my parents could support me there. OK. Now did you have to earn your own way there, then? Yes. You know, our family was not equipped to send people to college, but I could live with my parents and I’d have a place to stay and a place to eat. And as I say, during my growing- up years, that wasn’t even on the horizon. I thought I was going to be a farmer, and after that I thought I was going to be a carpenter. So what changed your mind from becoming a farmer to going— let’s see, now did you become an engineer at University of Utah? Is that what happened? Yes. Well, I decided on that career even while I was in high school, but growing up, as I say, it was a farmer and then after that a carpenter, and we were so certain about that that one Christmas my dad gave me tools to be a carpenter. Oh, really? How old were you when you wanted to be a carpenter? Oh, probably fifteen, something like that. OK, well, did you build anything to practice your carpentry? Oh, yeah, I built some stuff. What’d you build? Oh, I built a big work bench and a stool and a bookcase and there were a number of things. You kept yourself busy, didn��t you? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 Oh, yes. Now were you involved in sports at all or was it mostly—? No, I was too skinny to be in sports. I liked sports but it wasn’t the kind of thing I could really compete in that well, although I liked to, you know. Any neighborhood games, that was OK, but as far as competing in high school or something, I was too skinny and too light for that kind of thing. And plus I always had these part- time jobs, so that took up a lot of time. But in high school, by the time I got in the twelfth grade, in fact, that’s when I decided really I liked mathematics more than anything. And that’s what persuaded me toward engineering. Did you have any teachers that were especially encouraging? Well, we had a physics teacher who was— at the time I thought he was kind of weird but as I look back, he was a great teacher. He sponsored many clubs. He had a ceramics club, a chemistry club, a radio club, all kind of things. So I used to go to his radio club, and we’d meet there at lunchtime. That’s where we’d go over and eat our lunch. He was a dedicated teacher, wasn’t he? Oh, he was, yeah. We’d go over there and practice the Morse code and learn how to build radios and things like that. Oh, that’s amazing. And he wasn’t getting paid for any of this extra, then. It was just because he liked kids. That’s right. That’s right. He was a real dedicated teacher. [ 00: 15: 00] What was his name? Mr. [ Marion] Poulson. Yeah, I’ll never forget him. What’s his first name? I don’t know. “ Mister.” UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 So he got you interested in engineering, then. Well, in electricity, yeah, and as I say, really math is the thing that I became most interested in. And so I graduated from high school and went to the university and that’s where I decided, I’ll major in engineering. And a lot of my friends did, too. And along about halfway through the first year, I remember one of my friends was going to change his major, and I was over at his house talking about it and I remember his parents were there, wondering if I was going to change my major, too. And I remember saying, Oh, I couldn’t possibly change my major. I’ve invested fifty dollars in this already. To me, that was an enormous amount of money. I couldn’t waste that. So anyway, I pursued that and graduated as an engineer from the university there. And then what did you do after you graduated? Well, that was during the Korean War, my college years, and so right after I graduated, you know, I had had deferments to keep out of the service to enable me to go to school. Well, as soon as I was out, why, the Army was only too glad to remember me. You were in the Army now, then. Yeah. So I served in the Army, and since I had an engineering degree, I became an instructor in the Army, in communications. And we went to a number of the sites in Germany and France and England. Oh, you went over to Europe, then. Yes, yes, I spent quite a while over there introducing new equipment out there and instructing how it all worked. Well, at least you weren’t in Korea, then. Yeah, that was kind of nice. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 Well, did you get a feel for the Cold War during your station in Europe? Oh, yes. The Army over there was there for the purpose of having a front against the Soviet Union [ USSR] because the Soviet Union was a tremendously big threat there. They were just intimidating everything within their reach. Now this was before the Berlin Wall, right? Yeah, it was before that. But it was after they had gone into East Germany. Oh, yes, they’d just taken over everything they could get their hands on. Yeah, they were very aggressive. And after my service in the Army, my home base actually was in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, even though I served a lot in Europe. So I went back to New Jersey after I came back from Europe, was married, and was there with my wife. Now was that Sidney that you married? Yes. How did you meet her? Oh, I’d met her while I was in college. My last year was when I met her. Was she also from Salt Lake, then? Yes. Oh, OK. And so while you were in the military, she was in Salt Lake, is that right? Yes, we wrote to each other for a long time. Yes. Oh, correspondence. Yeah. And as I say, when I got back we married and were there until my discharge from the service. While I was in the East, you know, at Fort Monmouth New Jersey, and I wrote to a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 bunch of companies there to see what kind of offers would come in. At that time, there were many offers, and so the one I selected was General Electric [ GE] up in Syracuse, New York. As I turned around looking at these eastern towns, I was very unimpressed with them. They all appeared to me as dirty, dingy, rainy towns. When we went to Syracuse, beautiful sunny day, I thought, this is where I want to live. It was the last sunny day they ever had. Oh really? And how long were you there? I was in Syracuse for almost twenty- two years. Oh, a long time, then. A long time with no sun, then. Yeah. Yes, I was there working in the defense business. They were in the business of developing radar, and so I worked with them for, you know, that many years. Now you served as a bishop during that time, is that right? Yes, yes. When I first got to Syracuse, there was not really an established ward there, which is the total organization of the Church. They had what we call a branch, and we met in the YWCA [ Young Women’s Christian Organization]. But during our time there, we were able to build a [ 00: 20: 00] building and the branch became a ward and I became a bishop there. And I served in the bishopric, branch presidency, for about ten years, and after I was released from that, I served on the high council for ten years. So during that whole experience there, you know, we were, as well as being very involved in work and raising family, I was very involved in the Church at the same time. Now can you tell maybe some of the other things that are associated with the LDS lifestyle, you know, the Word of Wisdom and some of the other things. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 Well, out on the fringe of the Church, the lifestyle for members is a seven- day- a- week lifestyle. You know, most people think of the church as someplace you go Sunday morning or something like that for an hour, but this was just a seven- day- a- week affair. And how many hours a week does a bishop serve? I mean in addition to your full- time job. Well, I remember calling a counselor, which is an assistant to the bishop, and he wanted to know what time requirements there would be, and I said, Well, I figure on reserving for my family one afternoon a week and a half- day Saturday. And so you could take it for that. As I say, we were building a building and doing just an enormous amount of things. Yeah, and then it involves a lot of evening- type counseling and meetings. And it’s spread over a long ways, too. When we first moved there, the branch covered three counties. And when I got to be a high counselor, I would travel to neighboring wards and stakes, and this was the whole western part of New York State, clear up to the northern border and out to the western border. Yeah, so your life was very much involved. You had work but then you also had a lot of time devoted to acting in leadership capacities for your congregation. Yeah, it’s kind of humorous. My kids grew up with a lot of this, and I remember putting my son to bed one night and he, you know, like a lot of kids, he didn’t want to go to sleep there, he wanted to get my attention for a while, so he said, But Dad, what about the Gospel? And I’ll never forget that. It was just— you know, he didn’t— I doubt if he knew what he was talking about. Yes. Now tell about the Word of Wisdom, you know, some of the— OK, this is kind of a thing which other people outside the Church identify with the Church very readily because it often comes up, you know. If you’re in a social setting with some people and UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 they want you to share some alcohol or something like that with them and, you know, you explain that’s not the right thing to do. And this comes from the teaching in the Church that alcoholic beverages and tobacco are not good for people. So you abstain from alcohol, from tobacco, from tea, from coffee, and that makes you unique in a lot of social settings, then, and work settings, too. Yes. And I found out that in all my experience with that, I can only remember one person who thought that was a dumb thing to do. He just couldn’t understand why I would. And as soon as he mentioned something about that, other people jumped right on him. They said, What are you talking about? You’d rather smoke that big cigar? Yeah, than to be healthy? Well, one other thing is that LDS people not only have dietary- type regulations and spend a lot of time, hours, donating to their Church, but they also have a tithing. We should tell what that is. Oh, well, the Lord’s law of financing the Church is that members should contribute one- tenth of their increase, which in a normal wage earner means really 10 percent of his gross income. Of his gross income. Yeah. For folks that are involved in businesses and things like that, you know, you have to separate the business from what their personal income is, but they have to figure out what that is. Yeah. And you pay 10 percent every year of your life, is that right? Yeah, we did that and, you know, there is a lot of other interesting things. We had a [ 00: 25: 00] welfare farm where we raised cattle. And describe what a welfare farm is. Oh, a welfare farm is the Church has really a great notion about assisting people that are in need, and that is that there should be some way in which they can contribute toward their own welfare. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 And so welfare farms are places where people, if they need help, they can come out and contribute toward the production of things. So these are owned by the Church. Yes, be owned by the Church. And where people can come and work there if they don’t have work in exchange for their necessities. Right. In exchange for getting whatever kind of help they need, yeah. So it’s a work for— instead of it being a dole, it is a way to preserve your dignity. Yes. We had a farm over in Palmyra, New York, just behind the Hill Cumorah, and we had five hundred head of cattle that we’d bring in in the early spring and we’d fatten them up all summer and sell them in the fall. Well, it sounds like you got to put your farming interest to work right there. Oh, right, we were out there putting up fences and chopping down trees and yeah, having cattle moved from one area to another. You enjoyed that, didn’t you? You really enjoyed that time of your life. Oh, that was a lot of fun. Yeah. And so what brought you out to Las Vegas and when was that? Well, in the seventies GE I think made a high level decision that they wanted to start getting out of the defense business. And I noticed that each year, about 10 percent of the people were invited to look somewhere else. Layoffs. Cutbacks. And I thought, you know, pretty soon these 10 percents are going to start getting toward me, so I started looking around a little bit. And in 1978 I wrote to a friend who had left the company and UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 was now working out here at the [ Nevada] test site, and he said, Oh, it’s great out here. And he was a program manager out here. And so I flew out to talk to them and decided, ok, I’d make this move. And so in 1978 we transferred to the test site. And it was quite a change and experience because Syracuse is so lush and green and damp, and out here it’s just the opposite. But it’s been a real great experience. Now did you commute? Did you drive that distance, then? Was it from 1978 until when was it that you retired? Well, I retired in September of ’ 99, so there’s about another twenty- one years, yeah. And yes, I commuted that time out to the test site. Now you didn’t [ ride] buses, then. You just drove in a car, then? Well— [ 00: 28: 10] End Track 2, Disc 1. [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 3, Disc 1. Now one of the other changes that your coming to the test site did was that you were unable to talk about your work, is that right? Yes, that was kind of sensitive. And how did that affect your relationship with your wife? Oh, she just took it for granted. Occasionally I would be required to go somewhere out of town and you know she just accepted this. And I remember one specific time when I was sent out, I was specifically told not to tell anybody where I was going. And that’s the one time she asked me where I was going and I felt so stupid telling her, Well, guess what? I can’t tell you. Yeah. Anyway, but she understood and that was not a problem with her at all. Yeah. Well, let me ask you, can you tell where you worked or do we just not say that? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 I’d better not. OK. Now tell me about your experience being an LDS person working out, you know, and how that experience was, or maybe made your experience unique as compared to somebody else’s. Well, I never really made an issue of my Church membership where I worked, but somehow the word got around. Even when I was back in Syracuse, it wasn’t long before everybody knew I was a Mormon bishop. You think it had something to do with no coffee and no drinking? Well, a lot of it had to do with publicity, like when the ward whose stake was organized and whatnot and the changing bishopric or something, why, they’d put your picture in the paper, so my friends found out from that, but they’d known before it. I can’t tell you how they really found out. Did you notice, were there a lot of other Mormons, or were you a small minority or—? We were a small minority but there were three or four others that worked at GE with me, and it turned out they were all very well- respected. I remember one time somebody asking me, Who else is Mormon around here? And I started naming them off and they were amazed because they were all really well- respected people. Yeah. Well, do you think they had any unique characteristics? It sounds like they were noticed and respected. Unique characteristics, you know, in the company there, they were respected so much for their intelligence and their dedication. You know they’re all workaholics. Were they all from Utah or were they from different parts? They had gone to school in Utah. One of them was from North Carolina but most of them were from Utah. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 17 OK. OK. Now did you get to associate with any of the other contractors and notice the LDS people in their different groups? No, I guess I don’t know that. Now we did have contacts with contractors but I don’t know as that ever came up. OK. Well, the other question I kind of wanted to get into a little bit was when you began to see protesters. Or maybe I should ask, did you see a change in attitude towards people who worked at the test site, over your twenty years? During part of that time, there were protesters at the entrance to the test site, but I didn’t see them. We were able to avoid that and so I just didn’t see that. Yeah, your work allowed you not to— I was aware that was happening and it made no sense to me. You know I understood what the threats were and it was just so apparent that I appreciated the significance of what they were trying to do because— The protesters or the test site? The protesters, because it was becoming more apparent some of the dangers of radiation, and so they needed to be more careful. But as far as terminating everything, which would be handing [ 00: 05: 00] domination of the world over to countries which are clearly aggressive and clearly wanted to dominate everybody within site, it just made no sense. I mean it was just vitally important for our country to be able to protect itself and its allies. Now could you maybe share your Mormon orientation towards working in the defense industry and why it was morally acceptable to you? Well, that was acceptable to me in the same sense that it was acceptable for servicemen in every age to defend their country. I remember during World War II, you know, we had the questions UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 18 come up about how you can go to war and kill people, and the president of the Church said, When you’re doing this in the line of duty to your country, you’re not responsible for things that’s happened or if you don’t have control of this. You have a responsibility to help defend your country. And this was a different kind of engagement we had. It was more of a technical engagement, I guess, rather than sword against sword. But the devastation could’ve been much worse, you know, giant bombs against giant bombs. And so there’s absolutely no difficulty at all in making up my mind what was right and what was wrong and I always felt very satisfied that I was doing something not only taking care of my family but in helping the defense of the country. Now did the Church make any statements about Communism? Oh, years past, the Church has been very clear about Communism, talking about Soviet Communism. It was one of the great evils and there was just absolutely no question about Communism being just, I don’t know whether to say the work of the Devil or not, but it’s something that any dedicated American would want to defend their country against. So regarding Communism as an enemy wasn’t just simply McCarthyism, you know, as far as you were concerned. Oh, no, no, that was far before that. No, it