Interview with Robert Joseph Curran, July 19, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Robert Curran July 19, 2005 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 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 Robert Curran July 19, 2005 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Important military individuals who witnessed tests at the NTS: Colonel Dan Gilmer, General Walter A. Jensen 1 Military prisoner exercise during Diablo ( 1957) 3 Treatment and respect accorded military personnel in the 1950s 5 ROTC and college during the draft, and attending law school 7 Leaves NTS after Operation Plumbbob and returns to Fort Lewis, WA ( 1957), talks about deaths of friends in the military, and compares military and NTS ideology of the Cold War era to that of today ( rights, duties, and individual responsibility) 8 Work as athletics director at Fort Lewis, WA ( 1957- 1958), death of father ( 1957), return to Missouri ( 1958), first run for public office, works as deputy assessor, City of St. Louis, law school 13 Law career: trial lawyer, prosecutor ( 1965- 1969), executive director of War on Poverty, assistant prosecutor ( through 1972), marriage ( 1969), prosecutor for Jefferson County, MO ( after 1972), judge, involved in rewriting Missouri criminal code ( 1979) 14 Military service: U. S. Army Reserve ( instructor, Air Defense), meets and courts future wife Mary ( 1968- 1969) 16 Reflects on the question of what constitutes a successful life 19 Talks about passion for the law and liking for people, and philosophy of life 21 Importance of time spent at the NTS ( 1957- 1958), and reflection on marriage and partnership as a balance 24 Conclusion: importance of confidence and independence in life 26 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Robert Curran July 19, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Suzanne Becker: Great. So if you would again state your name. Robert Curran: Robert Joseph Curran. And we’re picking up from where we left off, beginning toward the end of your stay here at the Nevada Test Site. In about October [ 1957] Yes, units. I think everybody thinks the only people that came to witness things were like Twelfth Infantry Division— I know they came— and units. But there was also individuals. And out on the test site, they had trailers, little trailers— Individuals from the community or individuals from the military? No. Military. And they had trailers. And these people were colonels, generals, people like that that came out, that stayed in a trailer. I have the letter of commendation from Colonel [ Dan] Gilmer which I think you have, is that correct? Yes. And he was Eisenhower’s secretary, I guess you want to call it, in World War II. And he was one of the people that went back to Washington. Actually he wrote some of the orders that went into the invasion, Normandy. But then he came back and was one of the guys that started Civil Affairs that went over to set up governments in Germany and places like that, which they would help the country, after they recaptured it, reestablish itself as a community. And then he was a big hero in the Korean War, known as Standing- Dan- the- Ring Mountain- Man, for whatever reason. I haven’t found out yet. But he was the commander of the Seventh Cav[ alry]. And General Walter A. Jensen was the commanding officer, actually out of Camp Irwin [ California]. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 And he called me into the office one day and said, This is my former commanding officer. They wanted to go to Death Valley. There was a couple of colonels. And I couldn’t get them a car because this is July in [ Las] Vegas, I mean north of Vegas, and there was no way. He calls me and he said they want tickets to see shows and so I told him what shows were there; and I remember a Jeanette MacDonald- Nelson Eddy- type show was there and that’s the one they wanted to see. And the general gave me his phone. I mean I was the God- danged man, let’s be honest about it, I knew where to call, and I got them reservations to see the show. And the general jokingly said, I got a car. You don’t have to worry about that, Lieutenant. So they went in. And Colonel Gilmer came back and stopped by my office the next day and he said, That was unreal. He said, Who do you know? We were in the front row. And I said, Well, I told you you would be in front of the generals. And so I was getting ready to go to have a meeting on the show coming up, which was Jack Benny. And he said, Can I ride along with you? And I said, We can always use a little rank. So he rode along with Sergeant [ Bob] Little, who we talked about yesterday, and myself, and we got in there, and I want to think the guy’s name was Harry White. I can’t remember. He was from the Desert Inn and he was the head of the variety club. And they got talking about how Jack Benny was in the show for Colonel Gilmer’s troops when they were in Korea. And he said to Colonel Gilmer, Why don’t you just stay in here and play golf? And he said, All my stuff is out in the trailer. And then I said, Would you like Sergeant Little—? If you give us the key, we can get whatever you want brought in here, including his golf clubs. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 Anyhow, he had a golf date with Debbie Reynolds’ father, I remember that, and he got to go to the opening of the show. And he was there for shot Priscilla. I can tell you that was the shot he was for, because that Sunday he helped me go get the show, which was supposed to be Teresa Brewer and Kay Brown, and I’ve told you the story about Kay Brown falling asleep on my shoulder. He was in the other side of the car when that happened. He was with me. He was having a ball doing all of that. And so he went, and of course you’ve seen the letter of commendation he sent back. As my wife said, You were full of it then and you still are. She was more explicit than that. You know what she said, don’t you? And I said, It was my job. I mean this was a guy who was a war hero, who was highly placed. He was [ 00: 05: 00] teaching leadership to colonels and generals. That’s why that letter about the leadership of a lieutenant was important, because that was what he was doing. He’s the one I remember specifically. But there were people of that rank and that caliber that were coming in like for one shot and that. And then we had the troops. And I think I told you about the, I think it was the Twelfth, kept on complaining about the dust problem and they got the rain. Yeah, I told you about that. But those were units that came in. And when I was outside when they read the letter and it said shot Diablo, he said, That’s the one that didn’t go off. Remember me saying— did I get it confused? Because I know the one I’m writing about is Diablo. I’m right. Diablo didn’t go off. And the guy out there, I can’t remember, it was the man that was standing behind the counter— Right out here? Yeah. He said, That’s the one that didn’t go. And I said, Well, it did eventually. And he said, Yeah. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 But that’s the one we went out and we took prisoners, quote unquote, you know, and we interrogated them, and people told us about they had been so indoctrinated at what was going to happen that they thought they had exper— Talk a little bit about that. That’s really interesting, and you don’t hear about that too often. But, you know, it’s like anything else, they’d been trained and trained, and these were troops. These were not staff, these were not people, these were not scientists. These were foot soldiers. And they had been told what they could do, because they were going to get up and march toward ground zero, right? And they were drilled, drilled, drilled, drilled as to what was going to happen and the flash and how you protect yourself. And nothing happened. But in their minds, something happened. And they would describe things to us. So this was an exercise that you did. Yeah. We were going to do it if it went, don’t get me wrong. Right. But the shot didn’t go and you did it anyway. Yeah. And so you rounded up these troops as if they were prisoners. Right. And asked them about the shot and what they saw? Yes. And I was one of the interrogators. And they told you, even though nothing had happened. That’s right. I always found that fascinating. The human mind can play those tricks. It can see a bomb go off that didn’t go off. Or like you said, they were so indoctrinated to what they were going to expect that this is what they said. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 They did it, yeah. There was a girl who I went to college with. Stephens College is in Columbia, Missouri. My wife, who is from the West, said little rich girls went east to Stephens College, which was in Missouri. We’re not talking about going east to Harvard; we’re talking about going east—. Anyhow, there was a girl who was from Vegas who dated a friend of mine. A lovely girl. And she was part Indian. And she had to be a little rich girl because she was from Vegas and her brother was an attorney, and I want to think he was either the city attorney for Las Vegas or an assistant. What was their name? The name is Ousley. They’re still in the phone— there’s still that name. And Jo or Josephine, who I knew in college; I get out here, and all of a sudden it dawns on me, I know somebody. So I look them up in the phone book and I called them up. And her father said, Well, she’s back in college. Why don’t you come out? We’re having a barbeque and a party, and he gives me directions and go to this what was [ a] rock- walled community. The house next door was owned by a guy by the name of [ Milton] Prell who owned one of the casinos at the time. The story I later got, I don’t know because I didn’t ask the people then, her mother’s family was American Indian. Her father was an electrical contractor. Her mother’s family owned property on Highway 91 South, which is The Strip. And the contingency to buying that property was you did your electrical contracting with— That’s really interesting. So is that true? I don’t know, except they were extremely nice people. Then I get out to their party and they say, Oh, we forgot to tell you. She’s married. I mean I wasn’t UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 romantically interested, don’t get me wrong. But I said, Well, you got me out here and—. …. So they were nice folks, though? [ 00: 10: 00] They were nice folks. This was a rich family, but everybody treated people in uniform that way. The old man in the bar bought you drinks. I don’t think we ever paid for anything. So it was very well respected. Yeah, very well respected. The military was respected. We’re still getting the slam off of World War II. Yes, at that time. We’re still getting the prestige, whatever word you want to use. I use the slang word. The prestige and the reputation. Well, this is post- World War II, pre- Vietnam. Yeah, this is before the riots. This is before— you volunteer. I mean if I had not volunteered– I have a friend who was a year older than me and we graduated the same year at college, to this day go to lunch once a month. And he’s a lawyer, I’m a lawyer. He graduated from law school when I graduated undergraduate. He’s a year older than I am. And he got drafted. For Korea? No, we’re after Korea. We’re ’ 56. We’re after Korea. Korea’s over. There was still a draft, and if I hadn’t gone to ROTC [ Reserve Officer Training Corps]— They would’ve drafted you. I would’ve been drafted. I mean everybody went. It wasn’t a question of do you go or don’t you go. It was a question, when? And so I mean I’m in ROTC for various reasons, one of which I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 didn’t want to get drafted and blow my chance for my college education, to be perfectly honest with you. And a lot of guys were there, went through the ROTC, but I knew that coming out the back end someplace I was going to have to give my two years to my country, which is what I did and why I was there. But everybody did that. And I got to be very honest, I was a little bit of a, playboy’s not the word— Player. In undergraduate school. I wasn’t very serious. I didn’t buy books one semester. I did all this kind of stuff. Played games. Of course, grades now and grades then were different, because we graded on a curve. So if you were too bad, you were gone. But I probably had a 2.75. But then in law school I got a 3.5. Going at night, part- time, working forty hours a week, going against guys that are in there. Well, you got much more serious and from day one you were determined to be a lawyer. Yeah, the military developed it. Well, I always was, I tell you. And you think the military helped—? The military matured, that type of thing. I mean you can tell in the one letter there, I want to get back home and go to school. I wanted to go to law school since I was, what, six years old or something. And I did it. As I said I always wanted to be a lawyer. I loved lawyers. I admired lawyers. And one day they put a cap and gown on me and they handed me that degree and I didn’t feel any different than I did the day before. It was sort of disappointing. I was supposed to be like imbued with something wonderful when I became a lawyer, but I wasn’t. It’s like graduating, I guess, anything, it’s sort of you work to the pinnacle and then you’re done. There you are. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 When you become Dr. Becker, you will have the same and have that hood and all that wonderful stuff on and you’ll be the same way, right? OK. Now, where do you want me to go next? Well, talk about you leaving the test site. So your time at the test site came to an end and that was at the close of a series, at the close of [ Operation] Plumbbob. Yeah, of Plumbbob. And I mean I still had, let’s see, that was October, I had to go till the end of April. And then I left there and I went back to St. Louis. And what I remember vividly— a couple of things. I went back and I drove twenty- four hours and got to Dodge City, Kansas. I think I went to Dodge City. Then I went into Mizzou [ University of Missouri] for a football game on Saturday morning. And I went in to visit my parents. And I recall vividly I’m going back to Fort Lewis [ Washington] and I was informed that a fellow who I had gone to college with, who I had dated his wife before he dated his wife, and I [ 00: 15: 00] had introduced them, and he was killed. He was a pilot and was killed. And she lived in Heppner, Oregon. She was a Stephens girl, a little rich girl that owned all this property in Oregon. I always said I really blew it. She had all kinds of money. But anyhow. And this guy was an electrical engineer— or no, chemical engineer, excuse me, which was really rare back in those days, and he was being paid half his salary by whatever corporation it was while he was in the Navy. Somebody landed on top of him [ smacks hands together]. Anyhow, I had to drive within twenty miles of her home to go back to Fort Lewis. So did you go visit her? Yes. Everybody asked me would I go— I mean the girl had a baby and was pregnant at the time we were doing this. Anyhow, and helped her write out the papers and that, you know, because she was very upset. And not too long ago, I was talking to somebody that comes from the little town that Larry, my friend, came from, and I was hearing a case. It was a lawyer that came from UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 that town. And I mentioned it. And he said, Larry’s, you know, Advance, Missouri, he’s buried there. He said, You know, his wife comes back every year. And she’s been remarried and has another family, but every year, he said, on the anniversary of his death, she comes back to this little town in Missouri. I have no idea where she is. So she was a nice girl. But that’s just an interesting little sidelight, life goes on and people were being killed in airplane crashes because they were pilots and, you know. I think I said yesterday about guys killed in Korea that graduated from high school [ with me]. So it was a different thing. We went into the military. I know it’s hard to explain to younger people since the voluntary [ enlistment] that everybody just expected that’s what you did. It never changed till Vietnam. And do you think that that was something, an ideology or an idea, that was maybe prevalent at the test site, too? I don’t know how to phrase it other than— Oh, sure, we were all— You know, people were out there, and even if you were in the military, this is what you were doing and you did it, as opposed to— Very much so. We were trying to analyze all my thinking of why I was there, and a part of it is yes, you— I don’t know. I gave you some of my stuff like from my American Legion oratory where we talk about not just rights, we talk about duties to go along with rights, and I think that was very prevalent because everybody felt that you had an individual responsibility to serve your country. I find that a little troubling now, that people don’t understand what the idea is. It’s a totally different mindset now. Different mindset. You knew you were going, and then you made up your mind, are you’re going to fight it or are you going to do it? What are you going to do? And most of us just— we were UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 there. And did we lose some? Yeah, we lost some. We lost some out here at the test site. We lost some in Korea. We lost my friend Larry on an aircraft carrier. Sure. Yeah, different time. But it was a very different time and a different acceptance of things. So I guess we probably did acknowledge it by seeing humor in [ being a] guinea pig. Which is true. Which is right, and that’s true. But you never really thought of yourself as— When you look back now, have your thoughts changed at all, or what do you think about it? I try, and I have tried through this whole thing, I told you when we talked on the phone, I’m trying to put my 1950s mindset on and not be a federal judge in 2005. I’m trying to be a second lieutenant in 1957. But now, I’m just curious, now that that time has gone and we’re in 2005, you’re still the same person but different. I mean I think inherently we stay the same. No, I admire what the young guy did. I can sit there, like the famous letter that everybody loves, I can sit there and say, hey, that guy did a great job writing that letter. You know, like it’s not the [ 00: 20: 00] same person, if you know what I mean. I can look at it in that sense. Right. But what do you think now, you as you now? I mean we all change, we all— Well, do you remember John Glenn went back out in space when he was seventy- seven? If they told me there was going to be a bomb shot off tomorrow and could I go out there, yeah, I’d do it. Am I afraid of it? No. Now, I’m really not afraid because I made it this far. I’ll either make it further or I won’t, you know. I’m sort of fatalistic at this time in my life. Well, I evidently was then, too, the way I recall. But I think you were a little different. Vietnam changed a lot of thinking patterns. And of course I’m a prosecutor in the Vietnam era. I’m getting spit on by people who were protesting UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 and this, that, and the other thing. So I have a real— the famous word “ dichotomy” in that era where— I was not a big Martin Luther King fan, I’ll be very frank, because I thought that the nonviolence got a little too violent for my taste when I walked down the hall. What he was saying, when you take it in context, was fine, but what people were doing in practice was not always the same. And as a prosecutor, I had certain duties and responsibilities. The- guy- that- got- the- death- penalty- and- didn’t- believe- in- it- type of thing. My job was to try that case because of my ability. I did it and I got it. My job was not to convict the innocent. In fact, a lot of people said that— when I was the head prosecutor in Jefferson County [ Missouri], a young guy by the name of Tim Patterson was now a judge. And I told him, I said, When you sign a warrant for somebody’s arrest, if your pen doesn’t stop right before you hit the line, get out of the business because you don’t have the proper conscience for it. Did that make any sense to you, what I’m saying? You know, that your responsibility is great because when you sign that, somebody goes to jail. It’s somebody else’s life. Somebody’s gone. You better be sure what you’re doing. And you have a responsibility to the people, the victims, but when you’re representing the State of Missouri, the defendant is also part of the State of Missouri. Don’t ever forget that. We’re not playing good guy- bad guy. We’re legal. And I really find that offensive today, there’s so much good guy- bad guy and the press always damning somebody without— this Aruba thing that’s going on right now [ missing American tourist in Aruba]. They’re condemning the Aruban people. If that was in America, these guys would’ve been out on the street a long time ago, because we can only hold them seventy- two hours, not seventy- two days. I thought that was an interesting fact. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 And there’s no thing there. But they’re not doing the legality of it. They’re playing this- guy’s- got- to- be- a- bad- guy, you know, [ and] you haven’t any proof that guy’s a bad guy. We don’t know. It sort of seems to be the state that we’ve gotten to or evolved to, this political structure. Yeah, it’s a good guy- bad guy. So you didn’t see that so much, though, back when you were— in ’ 57, ’ 58. No. But we’re still pragmatic, don’t get me wrong. We maybe were more pragmatic then than we are now. I think we approach things very differently now. Yes. We’ve got a lot more information sometimes than we used to. Yeah, we were— oh, well, this has really raised my— I am one, I think computers are wonderful, but computers only do numbers. Computers can’t measure what we’re trying to measure here. Can’t measure human response, emotions, anything like that. And we have developed and sometimes have given those human emotions away to the machine. And we’ve lost that. We’ve lost that thing. Yeah, and I think you’re right. It certainly reflects our society and our ideologies. But there are things, like I found out about the guy that wrote “ Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” how did I do that? Going on the computer and finding out. OK, a lot of stuff that I did in here, that singer, I was trying to find her, I did it on the computer. You know I did. [ 00: 25: 00] Well, they’re wonderful aids to a lot— I needed your e- mail address. My twenty- eight- year- old daughter Googled you and found your e- mail address, you know what I mean? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 It’s a little frightening. But yeah— Well, like I said to my daughter, I think I wrote this down wrong, or something like that. She said, Ehh, she flipped out it and Googles you and said, Here it is, Dad, and it was right. But I mean we’re all there and we’re all available now and we weren’t then. We could hide. Even in the desert with the bomb you could hide. I wasn’t hiding. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to ask, so where did you end up after you left the test site and you were sort of making your way out west, it sounds like. OK, I go back and I wind up at Fort Lewis, Washington. And because of Special Services, I wind up being the athletics director. You talked about that a little bit yesterday. We talked about basketball and [ how] we won the game— but the guy that wound up being a general, you know, and all that kind of stuff, which I think is interesting— we really were for Bruce [ Palmer] because he was six- three and could dunk a ball. He wound up a general, so I guess he had more qualifications than we gave him credit for, right? No, he’s a very nice guy, don’t get me wrong, very bright guy. OK, then I leave the Army and I go back to St. Louis. My dad dies while I’m in the Army. My dad dies in December of ’ 57. I go back. I file and run for office and I get beat. In the meantime, I take the LSAT [ Law School Admissions Test] or whatever it was called in those days, and I go to work. Well, one thing I remember, and just throwing this in, I’m looking for a job and I go to an insurance company. I’m going to be a[ n] investigator, a claims adjustor. And the guy said, Oh, man, what great credentials. You’re a former Army officer, you know. You’re going to law school and that. And he sent it to New York. The guy had hired me. And it bounced back that you had to be five- eight to be an adjustor. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 Why? I don’t know. But anyhow, I didn’t get the job, so I went to the City of St. Louis and I took a test. And I wound up assessing property, appraising real estate, while I was going to law school. I did Anheuser- Busch. I did Ralston Purina. I was on the big stuff. Yeah, I was on the big stuff. I wasn’t alone, don’t get me wrong, there were other people, but we were on the big stuff and we did that. And that’s what I did through law school. I was a deputy assessor for the City of St. Louis. That’s good. It got you through. It got me through law school. And then I practiced law for about two or three years and made no money. Had a good friend of mine, got elected circuit attorney in the City of St. Louis, and said, You always wanted to be a trial lawyer. And there I went. What type of law did you initially practice? Just civil. But I did some criminal because you always were appointed in those days. They didn’t have public defenders; they’d just appoint you. And I did some of that. But then I was a prosecutor, and I started in ’ 65 and I was there through ’ 69, and then they had the law enforcement federal money, War on Poverty, [ President Lyndon B.] Johnson, and they asked me to be the executive director of it. And I’m the one that got it all started and got everything in there. And then, to be very honest, this thing came through one day and I started to write the check and the guy says, Don’t do that. You’re going to get in trouble. He said, You’re in the bureaucracy now, and the word under bureaucracy is CYA, cover your ass. [ Pounding on table for emphasis] And I said, I don’t do things like that. I quit and went back to being a prosecutor. So I was an assistant prosecutor until ’ 72 in the City of St. Louis. And then got married in ’ 69, so when we got married, that’s what I was doing. Then they needed a full- time prosecutor in UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 Jefferson County, which was the sixth- largest county in the State of Missouri, immediately south. And they had a search team go out to look for people. And I had one daughter [ al] ready [ 00: 30: 00] and one on the way, and I sort of wanted to move to the country and out of the big city, and so I went down as a prosecutor. And I professionalized their office, and Tim Patterson, who I talked about, who was a local boy, came on, and two years later when the judgeships opened I said, Are you going to apply for judge, Tim? He said, I’d rather be the prosecutor. Why don’t you be the judge? And we backed each other and I became a judge and he became a prosecutor. And I was there for nineteen years, ten months, and eighteen days— or twenty- two days, excuse me. Not that you were keeping track. Well, I also was involved in the writing in 1979 of the criminal code of the State of Missouri, when they rewrote it. I was a prosecutor. And the story about why I know the exact thing is on the nineteenth year, the tenth month, and the eighteenth day ( that’s where I got mixed up), the girl that had been my clerk for all those years comes in and says, I don’t know whether to show this to you or not. You’ve been reversed on a criminal case. You know, civil case, if you’d been— I mean she said— guy that knows criminal law backwards— You’ve been reversed. And she said she didn’t know, because I was leaving four days later. But what upset me— and she said, I laughed. And I said, It took them that long to catch up with me. And she said that was the reaction, that after all these years they finally found something. They couldn’t reverse me for nineteen years, ten months, and— And now they finally found an in. They finally found it. And so I left four— the reversal was correct. I agreed with it 100 percent. It wasn’t really reversing me; it was reversing a jury decision, but I agreed with it. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 Now, I want to back up just a little bit because we kind of blew through it, but tell me about when you met your wife. Her name’s Mary? Yeah. OK. Well, I wound up with eighteen years in the Res— with my Reserve, sixteen years of Reserve. And then I had the heart problem and it finally showed up on a test. Took them a while, huh? Yeah, it took them a while, because normally it wouldn’t have shown up. It finally showed up and it was like, hey, you can’t serve anymore. I was a major. Now, were you doing things on the weekends? Were you still actively on duty? No, I taught. Every Wednesday night I used to teach general military officers’ courses. And then in the summer I’d go to Fort Bliss, Texas and I’d teach Nike systems, radars. I was a judge. In the entire State of Missouri, when they needed to have a radar test case, because I was the guy that knew how radars worked, and when they wanted to try a new radar and they wanted to see whether it passed legal muster in whatever way, I’d always wind up with that case; I was the one that understood what was going on, I knew the difference between the type of pulse- beat radars, Doppler radar. I mean I do know all that stuff. But anyhow, so see, I’m a little diversified. And I stayed in the Air Defense and in that it was so different from what I was doing, and I enjoyed it. And I used to teach that, and then one weekend in the summer I’d come into St. Louis and I’d teach methods of instruction. I have a secondary minor in speech. And I’d teach methods of instruction to military people for a week. I did that at home, though. But we used to go down and simulate firing the missiles and all that kind of stu