17 10 181 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jennifer Ho Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Miget (Michael) Lujan Bevacqua OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LujanBevacquaMichael_HoJennifer_2024-07-12.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Chamorro language;imperialism;language revitalization OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Lujan Bevacqua, Miget (Michael). Interview July 12, 2024. SC027-089 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm Chamorro language ; Chamorro culture ; Chamorro history ; language revitalization ; Spanish colonization ; Japanese colonization ; United States/American colonization ; grandparents ; education Chamorro language ; imperialism ; language revitalization Miget (Michael) Lujan Bevacqua Jennifer Ho Moving image LujanBevacquaMichael_HoJennifer_2024-07-12.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/f31815d4ea546e978b499adb5f085e06.mp4 Other video This interview is conducted in English and Chamorro 0 Introduction Oral history interview of Miget (Michael) Lujan Bevacqua, July 12th 2024, by Jennifer Ho, Communities and Cultures Archivist, university Library, California State University San Marcos. 0 148 Constantly Moving Miget discusses how his early childhood was filled with moving form place to place following his father's career for the US military and US State Department. Swaziland ; Guam ; United States ; Military ; Moving 0 530 Racism in Central California Miget talks about growing up in Atasacdero, CA and the racism that he encountered while going to highschool. Racism ; Chamorro ; white ; Latino ; Atascadero--Calif. 0 906 Moving to Guam Miget talks about how it was moving to Guam to be with his grandparents after highschool. Guam ; University of Guam ; College ; education 0 1332 Connecting with His Grandmother and Chamorro Culture Miget talks about how his attitude towards learning the Chamorro language changed when he took the time to sti down with his Grandmother and practice. Language revitalization ; Chamorro culture ; Imperialism ; US policy 0 1846 Connecting with His Grandfather Miget talks about how his Grandfather was always hesitant to speak Chamorro with him and would not teach Miget his blacksmithing. Miget's Grandfather's views began to shift as he saw how dedicated to the Chamorro language and culture Miget was becoming. Trauma ; Japanese occupation ; WWII ; US occupation ; Imperialism 0 2316 Chamorro Language Classes Miget discusses how he started teaching Chamorro Language lessons in smoothie shops and coffee shops. Language revitalization ; Chamorro language ; Chamorro culture 0 2739 Creating a Chamorro Immersion Program with June and Clarissa Miget talks about how some of his students, June Pangolin and Clarissa Mendiola, approached him with the idea of creating a Chamorro immersion program. Prugraman Sinipok ; Chamorro language ; Language revitalization ; Language immersion 0 3235 Escaping the States Miget talks about how he first moved to Guam to escape the racism and feelings of being lost or not fitting in in the United States. Racism ; Cultural identity ; Education ; California 0 3666 Cultural Influences Miget talks about how Johnny Sablan, a Chamorro musician and song writer, serves as an inspiration to him to continue his language revitalization journey. Johnny Sablan ; Chamorro music ; Chamorro culture 0 4001 What is Your Vision of the Future for Chamorro Language? Miget talks about his children and the hopes and dreams he has for Chamorro culture and language in the future. Children ; Cultural identity ; Chamorro culture ; Language revitaliztion 0 Oral history Michael Lujan Bevacqua is a Chamorro educator, language teacher, and activist. In this interview, he speaks on his experiences growing up in Guam and in California, the pivotal relationship with his grandparents and his path toward embracing his heritage and community. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:00.155 --> 00:00:14.585 Okay, 00:00:14.585 --> 00:00:19.195 I'm, a little bit under the weather, but, feeling very good otherwise. 00:00:19.195 --> 00:00:30.585 Okay, good. Thanks for being here with me. I appreciate it. Okay, so I would like to start with your childhood. Tell me when and where you were born, and I'd love to hear about the people who raised you. 00:00:30.585 --> 00:02:28.425 Oh, yes. So I was born in the year 1980 on the island of Guam. My dad, his name's Robert Bevacqua. He, has his roots in New York, Italian American, with some German ancestry, the Bevacqua family. His father, participated in the liberation of Europe in World War II and was a career US, Air Force officer, and then retired to Hawaii after, the war. And then, so my dad spent his formative years growing up in Hawaii. My mother, was the daughter of, Joaquin Flores. My mother, Rita Luhan--Flores Luhan was the daughter of Joaquin Flores Luhan and Elizabeth de León Flores Luhan. And my great--my grandfather on my mother's side was a master blacksmith. He was a cultural, master in Guam, the last traditional, cultural, master of that type, meaning that, there used to be many blacksmiths on Guam, especially during the Spanish period in which most people survived, by living off the land, farming and so on. But after World War II and dramatic changes to life, nearly all of them did not pass on the knowledge to their children, their grandchildren, or take any apprentices. And so my grandfather was basically the youngest blacksmith before the war. He--when the Japanese invaded Guam in 1941, he was 21 years old, and he had learned blacksmithing from the age of nine from his father. And then he also learned how to weld, as a machinist from the US Navy. And so, so my mother, you know, so my, my mother's family had roots in Guam. My mother and father met in Hawaii, and, they stayed together for a number of years. They had, three children together, and then they got divorced. 00:02:28.425 --> 00:05:20.206 And so my upbringing was a lot of moving back and forth between California and Guam, sort of moving back and forth between families. And then the most fascinating phase of it was a year and a half, a two year stint, in which my dad worked for the US State Department in a US farming aid program in the 1980s. And so we did live, for less than two years, in the country of, in the southern African country of Swaziland. So I was just like five years old at that time, or a little--five or six years old. And so growing up, I don't feel like I had a particularly strong sense of my identity as a person from Guam, as a Chamorro person. Part of it was just moving around from different places. And then also part of it too was that my mother's generation and then my generation, we represented in many ways, sort of the impacts of Americanization policies, kind of put out there by the US Navy, which had taken Guam in 1898 via the Spanish American War. And so Chamorro's after World War II had kind of put into hyperdrive this push to Americanize themselves. To stop speaking their language, to sell their land, to jump into sort of the wage economy, to leave the island behind and move to the states where they could, you know, finally, touch what they could only see in JC Penny catalogs that came to the island. When I was growing up on Guam it was fascinating because the television--the ads and the shows that were shown on television were recorded on cassette tapes on the west Coast of the United States, and then they were mailed every single day to Guam. So you watched shows like Dallas or LA Law two weeks after they initially premiered in California and in the United States. And so--and then eventually this was kind of brought down to just one week, and then now you can kind of watch them because of, you know, satellite technology. You can watch them the day of and so on. But that feeling of growing up and like constantly being fed these ideas of the United States, like, especially through media, but then kind of always never being able to realize it or find it on the island. It definitely did--It definitely did a number on me, and I think a lot of others in my generation where there was this feeling like, you need to leave the island. You need to kind of forget being a Chamorro, forget Guam, you know, head out to the States. 00:05:20.206 --> 00:08:40.024 Like a case in point for that is growing up, there was always ads for a place called Raging Waters (water park in LA). And kids, my generation, like desperately wanted to go to Raging Waters. And it was ridiculous because Guam has amazing beaches and it has waterparks and water slides already. Why would there be this cachet about Raging Waters? But it is sort of this, this kind of, this lure of--this colonial lure. The United States kind of is up here, and then we're constantly striving to kind of reach it. And in--and what happens as a result is that we kind of devalue, we set aside, we throw away the things that we, the things that we have. And so when I was growing up, I didn't care much about being Chamorro. In fact, I was growing up in the 1980s at a time where what we refer to today as the Chamorro renaissance, which is kind of like the cultural awakening. The Chamorro empowerment movement, which, which, in the seventies was initially called like the Brown Power Movement after sort of similar movements in the United States. It was starting to take root, but it hadn't really reached the wider population. And so even, the word that we used to refer to ourselves was in flux. So the word that we had used, that we used for ourselves for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands of years, of course, Chamorro. But after the United States had defeated the Japanese and returned, there was this feeling that we needed to show loyalty to the United States, that a new era had begun. And so part of this came then that the leaders of the Chamorro people actually proposed renaming themselves. And so instead of Chamorro, which was difficult for Americans to comprehend, difficult for them to pronounce, which could confuse them, instead what they did is they actually had a poll--polls in the late 1940s in which they put it to villages to ask them, which of these options do you approve? And there was options like Guamerican Guamanian, Guamian, Guamese. And so one of the highest vote getters was Guamerican. But the US Navy at that time informed Chamorro leaders that you are not to call yourselves Guamericans, 'cause you're not Americans. And so the one of the--the next highest--then because of sort of the war and sort of ill feelings towards the Japanese, which had occupied the island brutally for 32 months, Guamese was absolutely out. So Guamanian is what stuck. And so for two generations, Chamorros referred to themselves in this era of Americanization, this blitz of Americanization. They referred to themselves as Guamanians. So when I was growing up, there was--the conversation was starting about whether we should keep calling ourselves Guamanians or whether we should go back to calling ourselves Chamorro. And so it was a very confusing time. 00:08:40.024 --> 00:12:20.625 But I wasn't as a young person, and even into my teens, I wasn't somebody who cared a lot about these issues because, I didn't have a strong sense of my own identity. My grandfather, I mentioned, had been a cultural master. He had trained a number of apprentices. But the fact that his grandchildren couldn't speak Chamorro or the fact that he saw us as being too Americanized and too Westernized meant that he wouldn't teach us. My grandmother always teased him saying well, (speaking in Chamorro) who raised them? We raised them. We raised them because we wanted Americans. And now we can't be angry at them. We wanted Americans, we got Americans. And now you complain when they don't--when they only wanna look out for themselves. So my grandparents were always a balance on each other. My grandfather sort of--but eventually I did develop sort of a strong connection to my cultural identity. But it happened in a number of sort of convoluted ways. And a lot of it actually happened out here in San-- not in San Diego, but here in California when I was away from the islands that, my mother, had married our dad and then divorced. She had moved us back to Guam to live with her parents. We were there for a few years. And then she had met somebody else when we were visiting her sister in California, in the Central Coast near Pismo Beach, Arroyo Grande. And so she just on a whim, because she had fallen in love, decided to move us all out there. Which was very jarring and shocking because for me, I wasn't, I didn't like love Guam. I wasn't gonna like die for Guam. But I also--California was not my home. And so when we came out to California, I liked it in some ways. I didn't like it in other ways. And this especially became, so as I moved into high school years, and I ended up in a school in a city, it's called Atascadero, which has a, like a mental, State hospital, and then it has an In-N-Out burger. And so it's--it was a very weird place for me because my mother had married a man who I had issues with at that time because they loved each other, but they also basically reinvented the Brady Bunch with us. My mom had three kids. Charles, my new stepdad had three kids, and we all lived in a three bedroom house. And then they had one more kid together. And so it was tough because, you know, for me, you know, the more that I was out in the States and as I was getting older, like I felt like I didn't belong in the States. And a lot of this I didn't share with my family because I didn't know who to talk to about this sort of thing. There was no other people from Guam in the area, just my mom, my siblings, and then my aunt who lived 40 miles south. But I would go to my--I would go to school, like the high school there, and I would get like hazed and harassed by like the white kids with the giant belt buckles and the big cowboy hats, because they saw me as being some sort of like weird Latino kid. But then I would also get harassed by Latino kids, 'cause they saw me as being like a fake Hispanic kid who wasn't like cholo enough, who wasn't--who was like fronting that I was white or--and so I was like-- it was--I was getting harassed and I was getting into fights, like on both sides. And it like really frustrated and angered me. 00:12:20.625 --> 00:15:16.945 And it eventually--like left where I like ran away from home. For a while and went to go stay with friends. And my mom, who, you know, who at that time I was very, I was not a good son. I was a very unpleasant sort of like 16-year-old to her. She was very patient. She was very loving. I don't think that she could really understand what I was feeling 'cause I think, you know, for her it's just, she's okay being out here in California. And I didn't nearly know how to talk about what I was feeling. I had no idea. But if something happened in my life though, that changed everything, was that once I-I decided to finish high school early. So I tested out of high school and then, because I hated going to high school. I went to like five different high schools in like a semester because I had trouble acclimating. I even went to like a, (coughs) excuse me--like a high school for juvenile delinquents because of my behavioral problems at that time. And so I decided to take the test in which you can just do your high school proficiency. So then I could just start going to college and then figure out what I wanted to do. And at that time, I was kinda lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but my, my grandparents who were in Guam, my mom's parents, you know, they were hearing about all the stuff I was going through. They had come out at one point because my grandfather had heart surgery at Stanford. And so they, they basically--my grandmother told me, just come stay with us. Just come home and stay with us. You can stay here. We have a car you can use. Just come home and stay with us. And so I just decided to. And it was--it took a few years, but eventually this is--this was a choice that completely changed my life because I wasn't --it--the homecoming wasn't like that I suddenly like got on my knees and I said, I am a Chamorro. I love my culture, I love my identity, I'm proud. But I came home and I found that I liked, even though I was, you know, I'm half Chamorro and I, you know, I'm a little bit lighter skinned than a lot of Chamorros and I can't speak Chamorro. I found that I was more comfortable and Guam than being out here. I found I liked that my family was out there, so I had roots. So if I felt like I didn't have a place to go, I still had a family. If I didn't know where I belonged, I had my grandparents and I could always kind of turn to them as like a, so even if I felt lost, I could just go hang out and, you know, just take my grandparents for a drive and take them to a funeral and then go eat lunch, you know, at a restaurant with them and just hang out with them. And then I felt like, like home. 00:15:16.945 --> 00:18:32.765 And so all of these experiences though, connecting with my grandparents really like, changed my perspective. Where I started to get more interested first in kind of the history of our people a little bit in the culture. I started to, at first when I started going to the University of Guam, I just wanted to like, take class in like English literature, I wanted to go into an MFA program for art. But towards the end of my undergrad, I started to take classes in like Guam history and Micronesian history, Pacific Island history. 'cause I realized like I wanna know more about this place that we come from. And so, like, my whole life changed when, in my last year at the University of Guam, I had to pick my foreign language requirement. And I had already taken one semester of Spanish at a community college here in California. And so I was trying to decide should I take another language or should I just take Spanish? And I was gonna take Spanish. I signed up for Spanish. And then when I got in there, it was so hard, like I realized that it had been like three years since I had taken Spanish and I had forgotten all the Spanish because the teacher just put on a telenovela and I had no idea what anybody was saying. And so I was at the breakfast table with my grandparents and my mom's oldest sister, my Auntie Eleanor. And then I was asking them, I was like, man, what language should I take? There's always this pressure to take Japanese 'cause that's for the longest time, that's the biggest bulk of the tourists to Guam, Japanese. There's all these language classes there. And so I was trying to figure out--and then my Auntie Eleanor, who was always very blunt, she said, that's a stupid question, Miget. Aren't you Chamorro? You should take Chamorro if you're Chamorro, you're not Spanish. You should take Chamorro. Aren't you a real Chamorro? And at that time, I did not feel like I was a real Chamorro at all, but I felt challenged. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna take Chamorro. And so I decided to, and I thought in my-- in sort of the smaller sort of more fragile parts of my brain, I thought I took Spanish. Chamorro was just like Spanish. We were colonized for a few hundred years. This should be easy, right? I was like the worst student in the class. I was so bad 'cause I had--a lot of the students in the class had grown up in Guam. So a lot of things they were already familiar with because in Guam, if you go to the public school, you take several years of Chamorro language. So things are very familiar. You may not be fluent, but you at least are familiar with certain songs, with certain, like pledges, certain words, vocabulary. I didn't know any of it. And so my professor, who is now a master storyteller in our culture, he teased me 'cause he knew my grandfather. And he's like, Miget, your grandfather is so very Chamorro and you are so very not Chamorro. You are a shame for your family. You bring shame to your family because I was so bad. And everyone was--and the thing is, like, I was--everyone knew me as being smart. 00:18:32.765 --> 00:19:40.635 I was always good in my classes. I was like the kid from California, like the Chamhaole Chamorro haole, the Chamorro white kid from California who talks a lot in the classes and does well, we can ask him for help with your homework. But in this class, I was so bad. And it was a very humbling experience. Some of the students who sat behind me who were pretty good in Chamorro, they would tease me. They would feed me answers and embarrass me. So there was a--there was a girl who I kind of had a crush on who sat on the other side of the class. And I would look at her sometimes and I would be like, man, Maria's so good at Chamorro and, but I'm so bad at Chamorro. I should get better at Chamorro than maybe Maria will like hang out with me or something like that. Because, you know, Maria, like, you know, she's learning to say the pray the Catholic prayers in Chamorro from her family, she's super Chamorro compared to me. And so the guys that sit behind me, they like whispered some stuff to me, and they told me to say this. And so after class, when I said it to her, it was very offensive. It's one of the most offensive things you can say in the Chamorro language, 00:19:40.635 --> 00:19:46.134 Oh no! 00:19:46.134 --> 00:19:48.868 that I said to her. And so she hasn't spoken to me since, but, 00:19:48.868 --> 00:19:49.000 You can't tell us what it is? 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:55.000 Oh, so the word is, Chada Nana-mu, so it means it's--you're your mother's eggs, as in you're your mother's vagina. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:56.000 Oh dear... 00:19:56.000 --> 00:22:12.585 So it's like a, it's the equivalent of like Chamorro for 'motherfucker'. And so I didn't--I had no idea 'cause my grandparents spoke Chamorro to each other, but my grandmother was very religious and she did not allow any cursing in Chamorro in the house. So I didn't even know curse words in Chamorro. Everyone else knew at least the curse words. I didn't know that. And that was super embarrassing. But all of these experiences were important because then what I had to do is that I had to go and I had to ask my grandparents for help with my homework. And my grandfather said, no. You know, and my grandmother said, absolutely. My grandmother was very excited to help me. And so she would sit with me and sometimes she would walk me through the homework and sometimes she would just do my homework for me. And so after a few weeks, my professor would be like, Miget, why is it that your written Chamorro is so good, but your spoken Chamorro is still so bad? And I'd be like, oh, I'm just, I need time to prepare professor. I just need time to prepare and then I got it. And so my grandmother was like, she was loving it. And the more that I went through this, the more I realized that like, my grandparents spoke more to each other, but they did not speak it to their children. So part of the legacy of the 20th century when the United States came into Guam is that one of the earliest things that they proposed is that the Chamorro language be banned in public spaces. So it was banned for the most part in schools. Children were punished. You might have to drink castor oil If you drink--if you speak Chamorro. You might get slapped on the fingers with a ruler. You might have to wear a dunce cap. There was like jars akin to swear jars where you have to pay a fine if you're caught speaking Chamorro. And children were encouraged to report on each other too. So eventually some teachers, some principals, created English clubs in which Chamorro children wore badges that said, "Speak English", "English only." And then they went around finding children speaking Chamorro and then they turned them in to get them in trouble. 00:22:12.585 --> 00:24:30.825 And so this created like an atmosphere in which--my-- for people in my grandparents' generation, they could all speak Chamorro, but the idea of passing the language on to the next generation was fraught with, it was fraught with peril because the school system, the United States, all of these things, all these pressures had basically convinced you that while the language is good for you to speak to your parents, good to speak to your peers, you shouldn't be using it with your children. The language shouldn't go on. And so what we've seen since then is ever since World War II, the language just completely declines to the point now where 80% of the Chamorro people in the world cannot speak their language. Including in the Mariana's Islands and then out here. And so my--so I didn't know much of this, but, when I came to my grandmother, though, she was so eager to help me and what was beautiful about it is that I was your typical sort of 19 and 20-year-old. And I'm very upfront about it 'cause I think sometimes people can be very--sometimes people can be very idealized. I was very upfront--I'll be very upfront, like I was a 19 and 20-year-old who did not want to hang out with my grandparents all the time. I had a car, I had friends, I had other things I wanted to do. So sometimes if my grandmother said, Mike, can you take me to the store? I might make something up. So I didn't have to. Or if she said, can you take me to a funeral? I would say, oh, I have homework. And so I don't--you know, I am very real about that because I loved my grandmother, but I didn't have this strong connection to her yet. But learning Chamorro from her gave me like a very strong connection. Because the more I sat with her at the breakfast table and the dinner table, and the more that we talked and the more that she shared, the more I realized that actually I would much rather be sitting at that table with her than going to any club or any bar going and hanging out with friends. 00:24:30.825 --> 00:28:41.865 And so I decided after taking the first level of Chamorro, I took the second level of beginning Chamorro. And like the second class I was having fun. Like, I went above and beyond, you know, like we had an assignment where you had to like translate an English song in Chamorro. I worked with my grandma to translate a bunch of songs into Chamorro. So I was like, grandma, can you help me translate? "Hey Jude" (Hey Jude by The Beatles) my grandma's like, hafa enao "Hey Jude", what's, "Hey Jude", what's that? And I'm like, here, ni ta ekungok, let's listen to it. And then she listened to it and then we sat there for a while translating, "Hey Jude". And then eventually after we had the lyrics, you know, we sat there just singing it in Chamorro together. And it was so much fun. We translated "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" (Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers) into Chamorro. And it was like glorious because I realized that my--like I had lived with my grandparents a lot. I had sat in the cars with them. I had sat next to them in churches I had sat with next to them at parties. This didn't mean I talked to them a lot. This didn't mean I knew a lot about them. But once I came to my grandmother and my grandfather and I started to ask them for help in Chamorro, suddenly my grandmother was telling me things and talking to me. And I loved it. I loved it so much. And so after I finished my two Chamorro classes, I asked my grandmother in my very broken Chamorro I said, (speaking Chamorro), can you talk to me (in) Chamorro? And my grandmother was so happy. And my grandmother then shared that when she had been a teacher before World War II in the 1930s, 1940s, she had had to punish Chamorro children for speaking the language. And she hated it. She thought it was wrong. She did not like it. But those were the rules. And the Americans created the rule and then Chamorro principles and other Chamorro teachers enforced those rules. And so she couldn't challenge it, but she was so happy. My grandmother was a quiet woman that never like very rarely ever protested or spoke out directly, but she always whispered that more people need to stand up for the Chamorro people. And so when I told her I wanted to--when I wanted to learn Chamorro, she said, more people need to learn Chamorro, this is good. My grandfather resisted at first, he did not want to speak to me in Chamorro. He would tease me. And my grandfather and me always had a tough relationship in which he was always about teasing. But this is a normal thing. People experienced different types of trauma and people have different ways of dealing with that trauma. My grandfather had been, beaten by the Japanese during World War II. He had almost been executed along with his father and siblings by the Japanese during World War II. After the war, he had become the first Chamorro US immigration Officer. And his experience, there was something that I did not fully appreciate, until years after years when he would talk more openly and grandma would talk about it. But he was constantly made to feel like he was less than because he didn't speak good English. And so he--his resistance to sort of me speaking Chamorro. So for example, my grandfather, when I would ask him to help me with my Chamorro for the first few years, he would resist it just out of sort of insecurity. Like, I can't help you. Like why you wanna learn this language, this language stupid. It's useless. You should learn a language that people want to speak. All sorts of stuff like that. And so--but I persisted and eventually it changed my grandfather too. And so, you know, one of the things that me learning Chamorro did is that, you know, getting connected to my grandparents is that then I started enjoying spending time with them. 00:28:41.865 --> 00:32:56.464 So my grandfather had a shop in which he displayed his tools and sold his blacksmithing tools at one of the night market Chamorro village areas. And, I had to go with him every Wednesday night to help sell him. I used to hate it now, I liked it. I got to help grandpa, I got to talk to people, and I got to practice my Chamorro. And then I showed more interest now in grandpa as a blacksmith too. I wanted to know about this part of our culture. And so I left, you know, when I, left in, 2004 to start my PhD out here in California, I was learning Chamorro. And I was very sad because I thought like I was gonna lose my Chamorro ability 'cause I was gonna be away from my grandparents. Because I had gotten into this flow of--with my grandparents, where like I would before if my grandma said, can you take me to a funeral this week? I would be like, oh, grandma,I have a paper. Do I can't? But now I would wake up and I'd be like, Hey grandma, is there a funeral this week that I can take you to? 'cause I was excited to go and hold her hand and meet her friends and get to practice our language and then just hear their stories and then write them down. And then, this is when I started to do like my own oral history research--is that my grandmother would go with me and then we would sit with people, and like spend the afternoon taking down their stories. And it was so much fun. And so when I went out to the States for my PhD, I thought that this was gonna kind of like ruin my Chamorro, but it actually made my-- it made me miss my grandparents a lot. I called them just about every day to keep practicing. And then within a few years I came back and my grandfather had completely changed his kind of attitude to the end of his life, my grandfather said that my Chamorro is not the same as his Chamorro. And he would--he could sometimes be very mean about that. But when I came back in 20--2008 and I was starting to work on my dissertation, like something had shifted in him because by that time that I was, you know, I was getting a name for myself as somebody who cared about culture and language and I was maybe gonna be like a professor or something. And he--and people were telling my grandfather, you should be proud Mr. Lujan of your grandson. He can speak Chamorro. And so he was starting to shift. And so in 2008, my youngest--my younger brother and me both came back to Guam. And I asked my grandfather, you know--to if he wanted our help in his blacksmith shop. And for the first time he said yes. And that was, that was very life changing because he had always said no before. And he had always done it in a way that is very reminiscent of sort of like cultural artisans in which they basically say, yes, I will teach you, but you have to show enough initiative. So like--so if you don't show that you care enough, then they're not really gonna teach you. They're gonna say they're willing to teach you. But if it's clear that you don't care enough. So like for example, if you--so some people that would ask my grandfather to teach them, he would say, come to my house at like 10 o'clock on a Sunday. And then if they showed up at 10 o'clock and they didn't bring any food with them, then he would say, nevermind, you know, if you're serious, you should come earlier. You should bring something to eat. 'cause we got to eat. And so you gotta show that you care and you have to show that you respect the person you're learning from. And so learning from my grandfather, that was very life changing. And it was frustrating at times. But part of it was that my grandfather's--sort of his insecurity, his trauma around English, his trauma dealing with racism, like, I don't know if he ever kind of dealt with it in any full way, but at least me speaking Chamorro gave him some comfort when we were in the shop. He could speak English if he wanted to, but he could also speak Chamorro. 00:32:56.464 --> 00:35:55.385 And sometimes he might tease my Chamorro, your Chamorro is not my Chamorro (speaking Chamorro). But we kept learning, making tools and it was, it was fun and it was cool. And all of this just solidified me as somebody who like cares about language, culture, history, people in like a very deep way. And so it-- and it's all because my grandparents, and it's all because of my connection to them. And it's all because I humbled myself to take the language from them, even if it may have taken a little while for my grandfather. And so I, I hold onto, (responding off camera) oh is it okay, okay. I hold onto to certain memories. 'cause now them, both of them have passed away. My grandmother passed away in 2013 and my grandfather passed away in 2015. And so I was so glad that my grandmother got to hear, one of her great-grandchildren speak Chamorro before she passed. And it was a very touching moment where we went over to visit and my oldest child who's now 17, you know, went to go, while I sat at the table with my grandfather and was talking, my oldest child who was just a young baby at that time, went over to go and sit with my grandmother in the living room. And you know, my grandmother came over after a few minutes and she put her hand on my shoulder and you know, she said to me, (speaking Chamorro) your daughter is speaking Chamorro. And I was like, yeah, (responding in Chamorro) because for me, every one of my children, from the moment they're born, I promised them (speaking Chamorro), I tell them, I will protect you with all of my life and then I will speak to you only in this language. And so my grandmother was like tearing and up and crying and she was rubbing my shoulder and I was like, (speaking Chamorro) grandma she's speaking Chamorro. And my grandmother was like, (responding in Chamorro) It's like a miracle, because after a while there's still thousands of Chamorro speakers, but they're all older. There's very few young Chamorro speakers. It's very rare to hear a baby speaking Chamorro or a child speaking Chamorro. And so I'm so glad that I got to have that moment with my grandmother to give her that moment and for me to have that moment. And even for my grandfather who towards the end of his life, he would not let go of blacksmithing even when he could no longer stand on his own. We would have to wheel him down into the shop and he was in a walker and we would've to hold him up so that he could work. 00:35:55.385 --> 00:39:31.835 And even when his eyesight started to go, he was still better at shaping blades and sharpening blades than I was. But towards the--in like the last few months of his life, he told me, you know, (speaking Chamorro) our Chamorro's not the same, but I'm happy that you're speaking Chamorro. And I think that was the best I was ever gonna get from Grandpa in terms of acknowledgement. But all of this though, basically made it so that what was something that was not important to me at all, the Chamorro language, has become something that is like supremely important to me--wanting to share.--having like that experience when I was trying to learn Chamorro in Guam in the early two thousands and having that experience of working with my grandmother and then trying to find elders to help me practice, but then realizing that fewer and fewer people can speak the language. So when I was like 21 years old, I would map out my day to always try to find the Chamorro speakers. When I go to a grocery store, who is the cashier that can speak Chamorro. And I go to them. You know, if I go to like a clinic, which is the nurse that can speak Chamorro, and then I'll try to talk to that person. And then--but realizing that for a lot of people, if they wanna learn Chamorro, it's gonna be really difficult just because they may encounter somebody--like they're--they may not have somebody who's as generous as like my grandmother. 'cause my grandmother was like the kindest soul ever. When I would like create atrocious Chamorro sentences, my grandmother would say, I wouldn't say it like that. Why don't you try saying it like this? My grandfather would just be like, it's wrong lachi' it's wrong. That's--or he would tease me, what's that? Tagalog? Is that Tagalog? He would just tease me. And most Chamorros, because of their own kind of insecurities around the language, especially being punished for speaking Chamorro, like they'll just tease. 'cause they don't want to deal with like the trauma involved. So what I did is, even though I got a degree in Ethnic Studies, which was not about language revitalization, I just decided to make language revitalization a big part of my life. I decided to make sure that my kids can speak Chamorro, but I also decided that I would help the community. And so for the past 15 years I've had free language classes in the community. At first they started off in a smoothie shop and then they started--and then they went to coffee shops. And sometimes like two people, three people would be there. I would put up a flyer or later put up just a note on Facebook saying, free Chamorro lessons, just come down. If somebody buys me a drink, I'll teach you Chamorro. And sometimes there'd be a few people, sometimes there'd be 20 people and it would ebb and flow. But for me it was just important because there's classes that you can take on Guam, you can sign up for a class in the University, but there needs to be more spaces than that. And so for me it was just like, come to a coffee shop and I'll give you--I'll just give you some lessons in Chamorro. 'cause some people don't have the money or don't have the time to go and sign up for like a full on class. 00:39:31.835 --> 00:42:00.853 And so I kept these language classes going on Guam for a very long time. And it was pretty interesting because over the years, so many people kind of filtered through them. People who were like poli-- eventual politicians, activists, radical scholars. People would come on island and just like hang out at them just to kind of see what is this language class here? And the classes would be all types because they would be basically based on like whatever people were feeling. So sometimes it would be handouts with like a formal lesson. And then sometimes if people had a little bit more fluency, we would just play games in Chamorro. So like we would play Clue in Chamorro or we would play Scrabble in Chamorro. And then, we even played Dungeons and Dragons in Chamorro. And so sometimes we would just listen to music and then translate songs. And so it would just change depending on whoever came and whoever was coming. And so it was a very--it was a wonderful organic community space for language learning. And then the pandemic happened. And at that point I had maybe like 20 or 30 people who are coming every Friday, excuse me, every Saturday to the classes. And I just put it out to them in our WhatsApp chats like, well, I don't know when this is over the pandemic. Do you just want to meet on Zoom? And everyone said yes. And I said, well, are you okay if I also just like invite people online? I'll just put it out online too and say free Chamorro classes people can sign up and, and come, and when I say sign up, you just need to get the Zoom link and then you can just join. There's no formal sign up, there's no fees. You just have to come and then hang out. And I wasn't prepared for how like successful it was. In the first year, in 2020, we broke my Zoom 'cause there was a limit that I didn't know about where you could only have a hundred people. So then I had to like upgrade my Zoom for more people. And so that was--and then at the high point, like in August of 2020, over the course of three hours, because I would offer three levels, beginner, beginner, two, and then intermediate. There was 300 people in the class. 00:42:00.853 --> 00:42:00.864 Wow. 00:42:00.864 --> 00:45:39.264 And I'm always careful because people come to the class at different stages and for different reasons. So some people come are very serious learners. They want to study. They're going to come up with a plan for learning. Other people just feel the word in Chamorro is mahalang, meaning lonely, isolated, homesick. They just don't have any Chamorros around them. Maybe they're the only Chamorro in their corner of Wyoming or Vermont and maybe they've left the islands or maybe they are somebody where their family migrated to the United States in the fifties or sixties and then erased what it means to be Chamorro. Not just the language, but then even just-- 'cause I've encountered so many students where they wouldn't even use the word Chamorro at all because of pressures to assimilate or perhaps feelings of racism that were internalized. And so students come into the classes and they just are so excited to be in a space where like, I'm a Chamorro, I don't know what it means. Is it okay to be here? And I'm like, yeah, this is a space for everybody. Like you don't have to be the smartest Chamorro. You don't have to be the best Chamorro just--and you don't even have to be Chamorro. 'cause a bunch of people have Chamorro wives or husbands or partners or they have a-- like even in the program that we have now, four of the people in our immersion program here are not Chamorro. And so from this program, it's like, it's grown huge. And when I say people join because they have different needs and they're at different points, it's so true. Some people will turn on their cameras and they will take copious notes. Other people, you know, will basically be driving, you know, driving in their car, who knows where, other people will be cooking with their family, other people--one of my favorites is when one of the students had her camera off, but sometimes when she turned it on, it was clear that she was a nurse in a hospital. So her camera accidentally went on and like, she was in the hospital in the class. And like there was like a someone they were working on. And I was just like, Hey, it's okay. Go take care of that person and then you can come back. We understand, we appreciate your love of our language and culture, but don't worry it'll be here go, go help that person. But so that's-- for me, that's-- yeah, for me, as somebody who learned the language as a second language, it's key, right? Because, languages, you know, it's key to have a variety of spaces to meet a variety of needs. Sometimes people assume that you need one space or like one proposal, and that's simply not the case. Certain types of learners can use certain types of programs of learning, but heritage learners are so different. Heritage learners of languages even--are so dramatically different because even the excitement that somebody feels in learning the language can block them in learning the language. Because what they feel like, I should, I should be able to say this. I'm Chamorro. Doesn't my DNA give me an advantage? Your DNA doesn't really give you an advantage. Like there's ways that you--there's ways that your sort of, your spiritual connection, your cultural connection, it can help you. But it's not like downloading an app. 00:45:39.264 --> 00:50:13.034 And so from,--so June (June Pangelinan), and most people that are in the immersion program that we're having here at San Marcos, they were my Zoom language students. So June Pangelinan started--and Clarissa Mendiola, they started in, 2020. And then June actually came to Guam the following year. And she met with me. 'cause I work at the, as the curator at the Guam Museum. And she met with me when I was giving a number of my language students who had come on island at the same time. She met with me after I gave them a tour of the museum. And she asked me, she said, you know, coming to Guam and then like, finding that like my family, even those who speak Chamorro won't speak Chamorro to me. And I know it's hard for people to understand because there's, there's thousands, there's still tens of thousands of Chamorro speakers. But you also have to remember that they're not there to serve you and the language. So you have to create a relationship with them. And sometimes students have trouble with that 'cause they feel like, my grandma speaks Chamorro, she should just speak to me in Chamorro. Your grandma has a lot of--there's a lot of issues involved. Like, you need to, you know, you need to make your grandma feel loved and trusted and cared for. Like your grandma probably, she may have been a survivor of World War II in Guam, the Japanese occupation, she was probably punished for speaking Chamorro. So when you say, hey, just speak to me in Chamorro, you're like bumping up against a lot of things and you can help her get past those things, but your desire for her to teach you is not enough. She's got a lot of blocks and you can help her get through those. But part of it is decentering the self, not learning through the ego, not learning through the ego. That's like, that's the danger for heritage learners learning through the ego. It's the worst. So June had had that experience where she had like prepared herself to be on Guam and then her family that spoke Chamorro, like really didn't speak Chamorro to her. Like she tried, but they wouldn't, they would just speak English to her. And it's--the dynamics are tricky. 'cause for most people you wanna be understood, right? And for most people, we have cognitive maps of the world. We see people in languages. And so if you see a particular person, a particular body, if there's a particular place, a lot of times our minds assign a language to it instinctively. And it doesn't mean you can't use any language there, but what happens is that your brain part of it will fire up and you'll enter--So like when I walk in here, oh, English, English. But when I go, you know, if I go into my grandma and grandpa's house, oh, Chamorro, Chamorro. And so having people kind of understand that. But so for June, she asked me, she's like, do you think it would be possible to create like a program, like an immersion program where students can like level up their learning? And I was like, of course. Will you help organize it? Because if you agree to help, then I will absolutely teach it and I will help organize it, but I just don't have the time or ability to like run the program. And so June, as they say in Chamorro, geftao, very, very generous, gof geftao. She took that task on in 2022. And then her and then Clarissa took the task on in 2023 the second year. And then this year we decided to bring it out to the diaspora because there are far more Chamorros that live out in the diaspora than live in the islands at this point. But there's almost no infrastructure out here for language learning. And so, it's been beautiful. It's been beautiful. Like, creating these spaces. It's also very exhausting. This type of work is so exhausting, but seeing sort of people come to the culture, come to the language, even just hearing the differences from day one to day five in terms of how much Chamorro they're using, it's difficult because we don't practice sort of like an aggressive immersion model. Because I always tell people, you know, aggressive immersion models can be effective, but they are also not fun. 00:50:13.034 --> 00:52:16.784 Like, one of our participants in the first year, Jesse Lujan Bennett, she has a--her husband is Maori and he-- she was in a Chamorro immersion program, he was in a Maori immersion program that same year. And so in our program, people were like crying every day about sort of their identity, coming to terms with things. And then Jesse asked her husband, are you guys crying every day? And he's like, no? It's a language immersion program. Why would we like do that? We're here to learn a language. And so--but it's a--one of these things is-- so one of --at least for me, the way that I see it is that it's a language and culture immersion program. And so what you're doing is you're giving people this robust connection to language and culture. You're giving them language for sure, but you are also trying to forge a connection that will increase the chances that they will continue to learn, or that they will continue to take up to Chamorro causes, whether at their work, in their family, in in life, social media, whatever. But just so that in--because--and it's kind of tricky because yeah, we're in the classroom all day and then part of me just wants to say no. Like, if you just wanna learn the language, then there has to be less space for you to talk about your feelings. But I also recognize that if you do that, then people may come away from this and say well--'cause this is the danger of second, you know, heritage learners, is that they don't have to learn the language. There's oftentimes not like a--there's a desire to learn it, perhaps like an identity based desire to learn it. But if it's unpleasant, then they simply will stop learning it. And so that's like the balance for it. If it's a bootcamp, then they'll just stop learning. 00:52:16.784 --> 00:53:31.425 And so that's the trade off. That's the trade off is trying to find a balance there where people get as much of the language as possible, but they also have the space where they can kind of come express their identity, talk about their feelings. Which unfortunately because of where they're at in their language level, has to be in English. And then--but fundamentally though, all of this puts them in a better position that they will come back to the Zoom classes to keep learning, or they will take up learning in another way in their family. Because this is about permeating the foundation of who they are as opposed--So oftentimes what we say is more than words, sort of the more aggressive language immersion models are words, words, conversation. You give people that and that's what they regurgitate. We have a more holistic model, which has its advantages, has its dis disadvantages, but it is rooted in this idea of that we are shaping sort of the larger person and their identity. So that hopefully yeah, they won't--this isn't their only experience in learning Chamorro. (Glances at the clock) Oh yeah. Five more minutes.. 00:53:31.425 --> 00:53:38.235 Oh wow! May I ask a question? 00:53:38.235 --> 00:53:38.244 Sure. 00:53:38.244 --> 00:53:55.255 I wanted to go back to 16-year-old you when your grandparents invited you to come home. What made you decide to say yes? Like what were you--where was your mind when you said yes? Was there any hesitation. 00:53:55.255 --> 00:57:24.804 At that time--there was definitely some hesitation, but at that time I was just really unhappy with sort of being in where my family was living in California and then just not knowing who I was. And not having any ability to like--not having any real answers. And, yeah. And so looking back on it, and I think part of it too, at least at that time, I was feeling frustrated with my mom and my stepdad and I wanted to kind of get a break from them and get away. And then on Guam I would be more free with my grandparents. And so I think a lot of it came down to that, just wanting to kind of get away. And I wouldn't have admitted at that time that I had questions about who I was. But, I definitely had those questions. I had no idea, like I didn't know where I fit in. And it's always been difficult for me as sort of like a--as a mixed race man with light complected, skin, dark, you know, sometimes dark features, dark hair, and then sometimes sort of passing, sometimes not passing and then never knowing when it's gonna work. So even like where my mom stayed in California in Atascadero, like I remember as a teenager looking for a job and I just went--there's a help wanted sign in like some sort of like antique store. And then I walked in and then like the owner basically says, no, not you, not your kind out. And I was just like, what? And I was just like--I mean, it was a very racially segregated town at that time. I mean, now it's a little bit more gentrified as people move up to escape cities and stuff. But at that time it was basically a lot of, farms and stuff and people that worked on the farms and people that owned the farms. And so--but it was everywhere I went. So like, I remember walking into a comic bookstore in San Luis Obispo once and I was walking around 'cause I didn't have a car 'cause my mother was working and I was waiting for her to finish. And then I just had found a stick and I was walking aong--so I was just like walking with like a stick. And then like, I walked into the store and then the owner was like, you need to get out of here. We don't allow weapons in here. And I'm like, it's just, it's just a stick. He's like, no, no. That's a deadly weapon in the right hands. And I'm like, I don't know how to use it as a deadly weapon. And he's like, you need to get outta here. And I'm just like, what? So it was like--I didn't--so this--these sorts of things happened a lot like in just these ways. That was always like surprising. And one of the things that always was hurtful for me was that my--the middle brother Jack. So there's, from my mom and my dad, there's Jack--there's me, Jack and Jeremy. And then my middle brother Jack is very white passing. And so when we would--like, so when we would go into places, like he would never get harassed or never like--but then I would sort of get like rude treatment or get followed in stores and stuff like that. And so like --and so it was just sort of like this weird thing like where do I belong? Like what is this? 00:57:24.804 --> 01:00:18.525 I don't even understand like why people hate me or don't like me. And I had--didn't have enough consciousness at that time to even like be like a brown power sort of person or like racial consciousness. It just, it just sucked. And it made me angry at my father, my white father. 'cause he definitely didn't understand a lot of that. 'cause my white father at that time, both of my parents kind of didn't understand. They just saw me as being sort of like a rebellious teen. And then even my brother didn't quite understand at that time either. And so, going to Guam made perfect sense because I--it took a little while, but I found a place where I belonged. Yeah. And that was like a great feeling. just like thinking--and I feel it here too, when my kids, who are my teenagers who are here with us, when they're go around and they sort of feel--they kind of like it that you go around in San Marcos and no one knows you. And I'm like, yeah, I know that. But then after a while, you might miss the fact that no one knows you. 'cause I start to miss that if I'm in the States for too long and you don't know anybody. I miss that. 'cause yes, it is draining and exhausting to be on a small island where lots of people know you and you have all these connections and obligations, but it's also a full life. And so for me, what I loved about going home was that I became tun Jack's--tun is a sign--a marker of respect, tun Jack Lujan's grandson. And that gave me a place, and it was a place that I struggled with sometimes, but I eventually came to like it. Representing my grandfather, representing my family. You know, I'm not the one that you go to if you want food for the party, but if you want a lecture about, you know, Guam history, I'm the one that you go to if you want research on our family background. I'm the one that you go to if you want something translated into Chamorro, I'm the one that you go to. And so finding a place that was going back to Guam was kind of the start of that. And then not knowing, you know, just all of this kind of ambiguity. And then finally realizing like going home and then standing next to my grandparents and then being their grandson, and then feeling the pressure off of me. Like, oh, I'm their grandson. This--these are my roots. And at first, not liking that a lot, but then eventually accepting it and embracing it and liking it and enjoying it a lot. But, so that's, that's one of the reasons why. 01:00:18.525 --> 01:00:42.905 Your grandparents obviously had a huge influence on you. And you also spoke briefly by your Auntie Eleanor. Can you tell me who--what other people had a profound effect on, on your life path, whether or not they were personal connections or even, public figures who you looked up to at the time, and now whether they're in your community or not? 01:00:42.905 --> 01:00:57.434 Oh, yeah. Let me think here. There's a number of people that I could definitely highlight. I'm trying to think if I want to do more language focused or-- 01:00:57.434 --> 01:01:06.105 Yeah. Maybe a, maybe a bit of both. 01:01:06.105 --> 01:03:03.485 So, yeah, one of the things that I like to do in the way that I teach and the way that I engage people is to kind of talk about sort of the figures from our history that can kind of inspire them to go past, their feelings of insecurity. So like, for example, yesterday we were focusing in the language immersion program on Chamorro music. And so we divided into groups. Groups had to sing some Chamorro songs. They also had to translate an English song into Chamorro and then sing it for everybody. And then today--oh, and then I talked about, for example, one of sort of the most famous Chamorro singers, a man named Johnny Sablan, who's still alive. And so I always use him as an example for learners, because when Johnny Sablan was 20 years old, he had already a career as like a teeny bopper recording English music in California. But he had an experience when he was going to college in Monterey, California, where he was part of like an ethnic culture club. An ethnic music club. And when his friends told him, Hey, Johnny, can you share some Guamese songs with us? And he realized, because Johnny Sablan could not speak Chamorro, he realized that he didn't know any Chamorro songs except for like religious songs, church songs. He didn't know any Chamorro songs. And so that experience, that experience basically led him then to go and seek out his elders and collect Chamorro songs. And then what he did is he sold his motorbike that he had in California, and he bought studio time. And instead of continuing to record in English, he decided to record the first ever Chamorro language album. 01:03:03.485 --> 01:05:45.505 And I told the students, and I always remind students, and I say, he did this even though he wasn't fluent in Chamorro. So he recorded elders who worked with him to pronounce the words correctly, to help him memorize the words. And even when you hear that first album you can tell that he messes up. And even the Chamorro musicians who did the backup music teased him and said, what are you doing making a Chamorro record? You can't even speak the language. You shouldn't be doing this. And he said, somebody's gotta do it. And so I always tell them, I say, I always try to highlight the figures who push against the grain, who push back, because I always say, for my students in my work, I always invoke the saying, Anggen ti hita pues håyi? if not us, then who? So if Johnny Sablan hadn't recorded that first ever Chamorro vinyl record in 1968, when would that have happened? Who would've done it? Like, who was the right person to do it? 'cause people told Johnny Sablan, you're not the right person to do it. And so I love to share stories like that. So every time I start a a new Zoom class, I always present a figure from our history who was a pioneer in the language in some way to help inspire the students. And usually there're people that I knew who inspired me as well. So for me, I remained inspired by Johnny Sablan. 'cause that idea that you would put yourself out there when you couldn't even fluently speak Chamorro, but to make a whole record and then just put it out there, it's--in Chamorro they say matatnga, brave. It's audacious. And so for language learners, you need that nowadays. You need some bravery, you need some audacious. And so I'm always--I always like to share stories like that to inspire students and say, look, Johnny Sablan is now a symbol of Chamorro culture and language. He was where you are at now. He couldn't speak Chamorro. He had a grandmother who didn't speak English. So he kind of had to pantomime and make do, and he could understand a little bit with what she said. But he struggled in Chamorro. He could not speak it, but he said that every people have an identity. Every people have a song. And even if the songs that he makes are different, that the music, the instruments have changed. It's important that the Chamorro people have music just like everybody else. 01:05:45.505 --> 01:05:53.394 And so I, I love that idea. Just like, don't get stuck up in the idea. Like, just do it. 01:05:53.394 --> 01:05:54.605 Have you ever met him? 01:05:54.605 --> 01:06:10.385 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I know Johnny, he's still around. He's still around. I always try to sit down with an interview for him, but he's been sick for a while. So he's difficult to interview nowadays. But one of these days I'll get to sit down and just spend the afternoon with him. 01:06:10.385 --> 01:06:19.000 Oh, I hope so. I have so many more follow up questions, but I think we have to wrap up, unfortunately. 01:06:19.000 --> 01:06:20.097 Oh, no. 01:06:20.097 --> 01:06:24.813 Is there anything, feel free to (gestures at water) yeah. 01:06:24.813 --> 01:06:26.385 Oh yeah. 01:06:26.385 --> 01:06:33.224 Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything I should have asked about? Anything you want to cover? oh, 01:06:33.224 --> 01:06:40.065 No, no. Thank you for letting me talk and ramble. 01:06:40.065 --> 01:06:42.090 Can I ask one more question? 01:06:42.090 --> 01:06:43.536 Of course. Of course. 01:06:43.536 --> 01:06:55.784 You talk about your children a lot, your four kids. What kind of world do you want to see for them? Whether Chamorro related climate, anything. Like what's your vision for them? 01:06:55.784 --> 01:08:56.185 Oh yeah. That was really one of the reasons why I started to teach the Chamorro language, was that I was speaking to my kids in Chamorro, my older kids, my current teenagers. And I was realizing though, that as they get older, there was no other kids their age that could speak Chamorro. They have no cousins that can speak Chamorro. There's some other children, 'cause there are like, immersion schools for youth that can, that are trying to bring up speakers. But in general, there was not speakers. And so I could see them that I would speak Chamorro to them, but for the rest of the world, they would just speak English and the language would kind of fade away. So I just started--so one motivation for starting just the organic community classes was just to try to get more people to speak Chamorro. And in a university, there's all sorts of issues, bureaucracy, and it can be very good to have that, but it can also be very problematic. So I just said, let's, let's do it as easy as possible, just a coffee shop and people show up and then, you know, so people take this on, not because they want credit, not because of this. People just show up because they wanna show up. And so I do feel definitely depressed at times because I know--so for example, with my two older children, they speak to each other in English. They speak to me only in Chamorro. And I only speak to them in Chamorro, but they speak to each other in English. And so it was something which I struggled with for a very long time. Trying to kind of get them more comfortable and confident in the language. But, but ultimately it's hard because there's no--studies show that, you know, that young children, they tend not to adopt the language of their families. They tend to adopt the language of their peers. 01:08:56.185 --> 01:11:29.795 And so if there's no one speaking Chamorro around them, then kids aren't gonna like be picking up Chamorro. They're not gonna be using it 'cause they don't assign it social value. And they certainly don't assign social value to something from their parents at that time. So yes. But a lot of what I do is sort of related to trying to improve things for them. I've told, so Sumåhi, my oldest is 17 and Sumåhi's very good at writing in Chamorro. She serves as the youth representative for the Chamorro Language Commission in Guam. And she does not like to acknowledge it, but is a star for all of the students here. Everyone here like adores Sumåhi. 'cause they see her as like the future of the language. And so when I talk to my older kids, I tell them it's like, you know, there's gonna be a place for you in this language, in this culture. Like, I'm, creating a place for you. It's up to you what you wanna do with it. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to do what I say. Soon you'll be old enough that you can make your own choices. But I do hope that you come home, I do hope that you keep this alive and then--'cause the idea that this language has existed for thousands of years, but then within the lifetime of my children, it could disappear. Makes me very sad. And so for my older child, she understands it more. She definitely understands it more. Although she's trying to figure out things in terms of her own life choices, like where she wants to go to college and what she wants to do. And she doesn't really like the fame that she has. 'cause people on Guam come up to her and they say, Sumåhi, you're so cool. Sumåhi, you're so cool. Can I get a picture with you? And Sumåhi's like, who are you (Speaking Chamorro). Who's this person? And so--so yes. But in time I'm hoping-- I give them the space so that they don't have to participate if they don't want to and that they can do--They--But I always tell them, I hope you find your way back. 'cause this is, you know, this makes our family special, this makes us special. And so. Yeah. 01:11:29.795 --> 01:13:46.585 'cause what I always like to tell people is there's so many different ways that you can express love of your culture, of your identity, but your language is one that cannot be replaced with other sort of exchangeable forms. So I always tease people and say that you can buy a thousand shirts that express your cultural pride. You can make a thousand recipes that express your cultural pride. You can make a thousand pieces of jewelry, get a thousand tattoos all over your body. But none of those things, and all those things are important, but none of them replace the connection that your language gives you to your past. And so the difference though is that you still cannot buy your language the way you can buy a t-shirt, where you can buy a tattoo, where you can buy food. And so that's part of my goal here, is to impress upon people that your language is an irreplaceable part of your culture. And so for those of you who are--who wanna take on the task of keeping it alive, you keep alive a connection to our ancestors that, yeah, that is actually more durable and more powerful than a lot of the other things that you can buy at a festival or online. Yeah, yeah. It's true because, for the Chamorro people, we were the first people--we were likely the first people to settle the Pacific Islands to leave somewhere in Asia, in boats, in ships, and then settle the Marianas Islands 3,500 - 4,000 years ago. And so I always try to impress upon people that what we brought with us, a lot of that has changed dramatically. But in our language, so many of the words that we use today, those are the words that were first spoken with, the first breaths that came over with those first sellers. 01:13:46.585 --> 01:14:10.524 And so it's a harder road to become fluent in your language, but it is a deeper connection. And so this is not to say that if you don't know your language, you are less of a Chamorro, but you cannot substitute your connection to your language with food tattoos or, or t-shirts. Yeah. 01:14:10.524 --> 01:14:14.045 Thank you. 01:14:14.045 --> 01:14:14.965 (Coughs) Oh, excuse me. 01:14:14.965 --> 01:14:17.604 That's Alright. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Michael. 01:14:17.604 --> 01:14:19.425 Oh, no problem. To Michael. 01:14:19.425 --> 01:14:21.965 It was a pleasure. 01:14:21.965 --> 01:14:23.965 Oh no, thank you. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection.&#13 ; Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=LujanBevacquaMichael_HoJennifer_2024-07-12.xml LujanBevacquaMichael_HoJennifer_2024-07-12.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lujan Bevacqua, Miget (Michael). Interview July 12, 2024. Description An account of the resource Michael Lujan Bevacqua is a Chamorro educator, language teacher, and activist. In this interview, he speaks on his experiences growing up in Guam and in California, the pivotal relationship with his grandparents and his path toward embracing his heritage and community. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-089 Subject The topic of the resource Chamorro language Chamorro (Micronesian people) -- History Chamorro (Micronesian people) -- Social life and customs Language revival Colonization -- Spain -- Oceania Colonization -- Japan Colonization -- United States -- Guam Grandparents Education Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-07-12 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Miget (Michael) Lujan Bevacqua Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Ho Robert Sheehan Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Hawaii Guam Atascadero (Calif.) San Diego (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource This interview is conducted in English and Chamorro Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Miget (Michael) Lujan Bevacqua License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Asian Pacific Islander Desi American experience Community history Prugraman Sinipok Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Aguilar OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=AguilarJohn_MillardMicah_2013-05-21_access.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Aguilar, John. Interview May 21, 2013 WAHA-02 00:27:16 HIST-01 CSUSM Veterans Voices oral histories CSUSM This interview was conducted as part of the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project, now called the CSUSM Veterans Voices project. WAHA was conducted by the California State University San Marcos History Department in collaboration with the CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center) from 2012-2013. The project aimed to document, preserve, and make accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. csusm Afghan War, 2001-2021 ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; Twentynine Palms (Calif.) ; Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (U.S.) ; Veterans--Health aspects--United States ; Veterans' spouses ; Veterans--United States John Aguilar AguilarJohn_MillardMicah_2013-05-21_access.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/072f64d928766dbd5dfe4c28078244fe.mp4 Other video English 0 Interview introduction Oral history interview of John Aguilar, Jr., May 21, 2013. Aguilar begins the interview by listing his dates of service and his place of service, at Camp Pendleton, California, with the HQ Support Battalion. California State University San Marcos ; Digital History ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; HQ Support Battalion ; Afghan war, 2001-2021 0 79 Enlistment and training Aguilar discusses his motivations for enlistment and his experiences at basic training and at 29 Palms, California for follow-on training as a computer systems expert. basic training ; enlistment ; follow-on training ; 29 Palms (Calif.) 0 243 Death at 29 Palms ; Afghan War Aguilar recounts the death of a sergeant during his training at 29 Palms and how it impacted him. He also recounts around the same time the beginning of the Afghan War, and seeing the attitudes and perspectives of deployed and stateside Marines change as the war progressed. Aguilar also describes the effects on service members that he saw from their deployments, and how they changed upon returning to the United States. 29 Palms (Calif.) ; Afghan war, 2001-2021 ; post-traumatic stress 0 656 Laptops and contractors Aguilar describes his work as IT support, and stress-testing laptops for combat use. Aguilar recalls the military choosing to contract with a company that offered an inferior laptop system over one that he felt was a superior machine for combat use. military contractors ; IT support 0 788 Impacts of service on military members and military families Aguilar circles back to his experiences witnessing the effects of combat service on veterans and recounts a story of a neighbor who suffered a brain injury on active duty that led to divorce. head trauma ; post-traumatic stress ; Afghan war, 2001-2021 ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 0 970 Military impact on Aguilar ; Public perception of military service Aguilar speaks to the impact his service had on him and the way it has improved his circumstances. He also speaks to public perceptions of veterans and the glorification of service in our society. 0 1165 Media manipulation, racism and prejudice Aguilar offers his perspective on lessons to take away from the Afghan and Iraq wars, including governmental and media manipulation. He also talks about anti-Arab racism and prejudice against veterans, and offers his thoughts on the human capacity for division. Afghan war, 2001-2021 ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; racism ; prejudice 0 1561 Honorable discharge from the Marine Corps Aguilar briefly speaks to his honorable discharge and rank reduction, and misdemeanor conviction for false official statement. honorable discharge ; rank reduction 0 John Aguilar, Jr. is a Marine Corps veteran who served from 2001-2005. In his interview, Aguilar recounts his motivations for enlisting with the Marine Corps and his experiences at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, 29 Palms, California. Aguilar also offers his thoughts and experiences regarding the trauma and changes wrought by combat deployments on veterans and their families, his work in information technology in the Marine Corps, and his perspective on the Iraq and Afghan wars, media manipulation, anti-Arab racism and societal glorification of and prejudice towards veterans.&#13 ; &#13 ; This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:06.865 --> 00:01:19.000 My name is John Aguilar, Jr. I am a former Marine, once a Marine, always a Marine. Former active duty. I am here at ca--at Cal State San Marcos. And I'm doing--participating in this WAHA project. War At Home and Abroad. And I'm giving my experience for Digital History. Um, right now I'm looking at a written account that I made here, because I don't have any questions or prompts to work with. But I served from March of 2001 to April of 2005. I enlisted in the Bronx, New York, and I served mostly here at Camp Pendleton. I was with the HQ Support Battalion of the parent unit for Camp Pendleton. So my unit wasn't deployable. When the war actually kicked off, we would just send someone out six months at a time and we would rotate that way. I never went out. My turn just never came up. 00:01:19.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Well, when I, uh, when I first enlisted, I was married with two children. I had two daughters and married my high school sweetheart. And we were just in a position where we didn't have any resources, aside from public assistance, and I didn't want to rely on that. I did face opposition. I had people telling me, you know, that I couldn't do anything else. That I had to work and work dead end--two dead end jobs, and get food stamps. And that was my option. I didn't like hearing that, and I felt that joining the military would be a good way to acquire skills and get the GI Bill so that I could actually do something with my life. So I chose the Marine Corps because I felt that it was the best of all the branches. They expect more of their members. And I didn't feel like I wanted to sell myself short. So I enlisted. I just went in one day, let everybody know. You know, I had church members telling me I was doing the wrong thing. I had my family, uh, was afraid that I wouldn't actually do it. I remember one day I came home, my wife told me that people were actually asking her if I had given up this "Marine thing." So when I heard that, if there were any doubts left in me, that drove them out. So I went through with it. I spent four months there. So I had, uh, some stress fractures in my legs. So I had to spend a month recuperating. Finished the third phase of training, which involved a lot of pain because I wasn't used to training after a month in rehab. I almost gave up just because it--it just hurt that much that I wanted to just throw the towel in, but I didn't. So anyway, I went on to become a co--a small computer systems expert. Um, I was in 29 Palms for about two or three months. And after a second trip over there for a couple months, tell you is one place I don't want to be. 29 Palms is not a nice place. The people there are not very friendly towards Marines. It's basically a desert and there's not much to look forward to there. I've heard of some people who like living there but my experience there has been horrible. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 I actually lost a sergeant there. I watched him, literally watched him die on his feet. He--and it traumatized me. It was the first time I saw anyone die. You know, coming from the South Bronx, it's like, I'd never witnessed that before. And, um, no, I didn't think he had passed. His body was moving. What I didn't realize was that it was just the air coming out of his body. It made it look like he was trying to talk but he was dead before he even hit the floor. And, a couple, you know, his best friend was there, another sergeant, and a staff sergeant. And they tried to revive him, but, you know, they couldn't. There was no possibility. I won't say his name, just in case his family ever sees this, I wouldn't want to bring it back to their memory. 00:05:05.000 --> 00:06:59.000 So, uh, it recently--I mean like relatively a short time after that, I--we were running when it happened. So after that, when people would say things like, you know, we're gonna run until we die, and things like that, I would freak out. I would just act like I felt like they really were gonna run until they died because that's what happened. The sergeant was running and he died. And after that, I remember one time we were watching videos--because the next day the sergeant had passed away--the very next day the war kicked off in Afghanistan. And, uh, people were sending YouTube videos of bodies, like people getting shot. And this one Arabic guy had gotten shot in this one video, and the air was coming out of his body. He was just like that sergeant, just, it looked like he's alive, but he's not. It's just the air coming out. And one of the marines with me making com--was still making comments. "Oh, yeah, look at him. He's still alive. He's still alive." You know, like if it was so cool that this guy got shot and was dying on camera, and like, I snapped at him and I'm like, "No, he's already dead! Obviously you've never seen a dead body." And, I let him know that the guy was already dead and it was the air coming out of his body. And just, I think it drove home for the people that were there that they didn't know what they were looking at. You know, it wasn't a movie, it wasn't fake. It was real. And none of us in that room had that experience of going to combat and of killing someone. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:08:38.534 One of the things that I did see recently was a presentation that Dr. (Ibrahim) Al-Marashi had on the War Against Terror. And he--one of the clips he shows was a video of a Marine being interviewed by a journalist saying that he and his friends shot someone and got a rush out of killing them, and that they wanted to do it again. And I noticed that there was no counterview presented. From some of my friends that went over there. I think that the initial attitude was one of conquest and excitement. And I think that changed though. I think it needs to be said that that changed. When people started dying, when Marines and other service members started seeing their friends blown up--for those of us who didn't deploy, news coming back of people that we worked with dying, IEDs exploding and killing people that we worked with. One--there's another sergeant--the one that I saw die? He didn't get to see his, I believe it was his daughter. He was--they were expecting a daughter, so he didn't get to see her. I mean, he died in relatively peaceful terms, you know. But another sergeant that I worked with, he was hit by an IED and he was expecting a child as well. 00:08:38.534 --> 00:10:56.715 So things like that, that we have to deal with at home, knowing that--two months ago I was working with this person and whether or not I got along with him is irrelevant. Because now he's dead. You know, whatever I felt about him doesn't matter. He has a wife that was waiting for him. He has a child that was waiting for him. People that did know him and love him were waiting for him to come back. And that would never happen, you know? So I think it needs to be said that while initially people were inappropriately excited to go to war, the reality of it eventually sank in. And that changed. The attitude totally changed. I'm sure there are those people who I were ignorant and felt like it would be exciting to go, you know, now ten years later. But the people that actually went through it, they were changed. They would, they came back differently. They, a lot of them couldn't walk by buildings. They walk around staring at windows because they're so used to having to watch out with snipers. I remember my car, the trunk, if I remotely open my trunk, a Marine happens to be walking by--you know, I'm approaching my car, I open my trunk, and they're jumping because they think something's about to happen. They're expecting an explosion or something. And I remember the first few times that I wasn't expecting that. And it was totally innocent. And I saw the reactions on their faces. So it made me realize that it had changed. The way people talked about it after a couple of years, it just, it was not that exciting, pumped up, I'm gonna go out and kill people, kind of thing. So, I just want that to be made clear, that with experience that attitude for the most part, changes. I'm sure there are exceptions. 00:10:56.715 --> 00:13:08.774 To talk about my job in the Marine Corps as a computer expert, I basically was the IT guy. Um, I had the opportunity to test one of the laptop suites that was sent out to the desert. These laptops were made, uh, just like typical laptops. I think they were just little heavier. And, it was competing with another system that would've definitely been a much better computer system for a combat zone. And I don't know who the companies that were involved, but I guess the laptop system had been purchased even though the other system was a lot better, and was suited for a combat zone. You were able to switch out parts very easily. And I really don't know why the military decided to go with that laptop system. We had to--a friend, me and another Marine--we had to work on it and debug it, come up with ways to solve the problems that were coming up in the software. We probably spent a, a week doing that. And the whole time we're sitting there just asking ourselves why would the Marine Corps want to give Marines this system? It was just full of problems. So, that's just a commentary on how we're not sending our service members out there with the best that's available. I know that whole, um, there was that whole argument going on about armor, and I can tell you firsthand, the software they were supposed to use was not the best that was available, for better or for worse. Um, I think that politics were involved and contractors were just out there to make money. I don't think they really cared about providing the best for our people. 00:13:08.774 --> 00:15:40.225 Um, and I've heard a lot of talk about the way people in the Middle East were living. And I wasn't there myself so can't really say if our presence there really made a difference or not. Because I haven't seen it firsthand. So I just won't comment on that because I really--I really don't know anything that hasn't been said in the news. I have my own opinions. I think, uh, I think that while Saddam Hussein probably did need to get deposed, I don't know if our presence there for so long was really necessary. So I just want my--in my view, I think that we really need to just scale down our presence there. A lot of people have died. A lot of people coming back injured, you know, irrevocably changed for the rest of their lives. I had a neighbor who was, uh, who was a reservist in the army, and he was unemployed at the time. He and his wife had three children. And he gets called up to go to, I believe to Afghanistan, maybe Iraq. And when he comes back, he had a brain injury. And it was to the extent that he had a British accent, even though he was American. So he comes back with this accent. His wife said that he wasn't the same, excuse me, he wasn't the same person. His personality had changed. And I remember they were my upstairs neighbor. So when I moved out of that apartment that same night, she was arguing with her husband over the phone to the extent that someone had called the police. The police thought he was in there, that they were fighting. I had to let them know, no, that's not the case. They're arguing on the phone because their marriage had devolved to the point that she wanted a divorce. And that that happened maybe in about a three to four month period after him returning. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that the war is creating. 00:15:40.225 --> 00:16:10.000 You have people who are physically maimed and injured. Marriages are falling apart, people are dying. It just--I don't think that it should be happening. You know, I think we did what we needed to do, and the governments there need to take control of the situation. And that's really how I feel about it. 00:16:10.000 --> 00:17:37.025 As far as my service in the military, I'm very proud of what I accomplished, and I was able to turn my life around. Here I am working on my master's degree, and my children have someone to look up to. And before I enlisted, I just didn't have that. I didn't have the resources that I needed to really make something of myself. But I think that people need to keep in mind that earning the title of a Marine or becoming a Soldier or a sailor or an Airman, there's still, they are still people. And I think like this glorification, hero worship, I really think it needs to get toned down because a lot of the time people are enlisting and they're not knowing what it is they're getting into, you know? You're not treated the same as most people are, in the military, and you are held to higher standards. And sometimes I think that the standards you're being held to can be unreasonable. And I think it causes people to stress out. It causes people to change and not always for the better. 00:17:37.025 --> 00:19:25.815 I think that when the public engages service members, they need to do it from a perspective of how this is a person who is maybe achieving things, and accomplishing things, and simply just getting things done because they have to, It is not that somebody goes into the service knowing what's expected of them. Because you think you know, but you don't. You don't know until you get there. I don't--I think that military members need to also keep in mind that they volunteered for service. And when they expect other people to fawn over them and tend to their every need, it's not a reasonable expectation. And I see that a lot. And I remember when I was there mentally, where I thought that I should be held in a higher regard because of my service. And the fact of the matter is: I volunteered. You know, I wasn't forced to do it. I didn't have to. It wasn't compulsory service where it's so terrible that I made it through against my will. It's not how it, how it is, you know? There were people who did more than what I did. There were people who did less than what I did. And that's in any endeavor that we take upon ourselves. I think, so I guess what I'm trying to say is I think we all need to be grounded in reality. 00:19:25.815 --> 00:21:15.365 I think that when people think about this war in the future, when we look back, I think we really need to question what's being fed to us. The government really took control of the media and censored what was sent back. Now we know we were lied to about multiple issues. And I think that's part of the problem, is that people who initially went over there thought that they were doing something really great and honorable, and that may not be the case. We can talk about spreading democracy what we want, but the people there may not have wanted that. If anything we could've tried politically to change the government. And without getting into a convoluted discussion, you know, it's just too complex to boil down to a few words, but I think we just really need to question our government's motives and not make assumptions. And especially the way people talk about Arab Americans or Arabs in general. This is supposed to be the melting pot. And our military is made up of many ethnicities and religions, and people just throw around these slurs and degrade other people like it's fine. Like it's acceptable. And that shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. Racism and prejudice should not be viewed in that light. 00:21:15.365 --> 00:22:33.000 I think as a Marine, I think that I have a duty to speak out against that kind of thing. I think that while I will defend my fellow servicemen from people who make those assumptions and try to degrade them, at the same time, I'm having to defend people who are being subjected to that by the military. Like when a service member makes comments about Arabs, I will defend the Arab community because it's the right thing to do. Not every single person from the Middle East, whether they live there or descended from their, has to anything to do with terrorism. And at the same time, you know, not every service member is a gung-ho, trigger-happy racist. Both sides of the equation are complex, and individuals all have their own views. And I think we need to remember that. I think ultimately what I, what my message would be is that we all need to remember that we're all people. 00:22:33.000 --> 00:23:46.365 The Marine Corps, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Arabs in the countries that we have invaded, that we have conducted airstrikes, like in Libya, the governments, the--even the rebels, they're all people. You know, some people who are fighting, like American contractors down there, uh, rebels even, like I heard one story about a rebel who was captured and he said the only reason he was fighting was for a paycheck. It's like, they're not even ideologically inclined. They're just there to make a paycheck to feed their families. And a lot of our military members join to get a paycheck. So it goes beyond politics. It goes beyond politics. And I just really feel like we need to keep that in perspective. 00:23:46.365 --> 00:24:24.000 Um, so I hope I didn't sound too high-handed and I hope I didn't come across like I'm rambling. But we just need to keep in mind that people are people and wars are politics. Politicians decide that we go to war, not generals. And the people on the ground are not always there because they want to be there. 00:24:24.000 --> 00:26:01.233 And the military changed my life for the better, and not everyone is that lucky. And I met some great people who we will have lifelong friendships. And I met people who I don't ever want to hear from again, you know, and that's just keeping with my point that not everyone can be put into one framework. Ultimately we're all people, we're all individuals, we're all a composite of our experiences and education and instruction, you know? So I would just like for our service members who might be watching this, people who are thinking of joining, to keep in mind that the people that you might be down range from shooting at, getting shot at by--and I'm not saying don't defend yourself--I'm just saying they may not believe what you're being told that they believe. And you probably don't believe what they are being told you believe. I think we just need to keep that in perspective. There are many layers to any situation and war is not exempt from that. So I guess that's all I really have to say. Thanks. (video cuts and is turned back on) 00:26:01.233 --> 00:27:17.233 Okay. I'm just gonna give my rank here. I was discharged in April of 2005 as a private. I got an honorable discharge, even though my rank was reduced, I had promoted up to Lance Corporal and a legal investigation ensued, which took two years, so I couldn't get promoted to corporal. And went to the hearing and it lasted a few days, maybe a week. And the conviction came back with a misdemeanor, false official statement. Now I didn't make a written statement and I didn't make a verbal statement. The--that's just what came out of the hearing after all the evidence was heard. So even though I was reduced in rank, I still got my honorable discharge. And I discharged maybe a week after the--I served a sentence of, I believe, fifteen days or twenty days. And I discharged a week after that. So I'm Private John Aguilar, Jr. Thanks. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> In copyright video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. 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Interview May 21, 2013 Description An account of the resource John Aguilar, Jr. is a Marine Corps veteran who served from 2001-2005. In his interview, Aguilar recounts his motivations for enlisting with the Marine Corps and his experiences at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, 29 Palms, California. Aguilar also offers his thoughts and experiences regarding the trauma and changes wrought by combat deployments on veterans and their families, his work in information technology in the Marine Corps, and his perspective on the Iraq and Afghan wars, media manipulation, anti-Arab racism and societal glorification of and prejudice towards veterans. This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, a collaboration of the California State University San Marcos History Department and CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center), from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WAHA-02 Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001-2021 Iraq War, 2003-2011 Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (U.S.) United States. Marine Corps United States. Marine Corps -- Recruiting and enlistment Veterans -- Health aspects -- United States Veterans -- United States Veterans' spouses Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-21 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource John Aguilar, Jr. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Twentynine Palms (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a> CSUSM Veterans Voices Latine experience Veteran experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Kevin Cole OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=ColeKevin_WattsJill_2012-11-28_access.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Cole, Kevin. Interview November 28. 2012 WAHA-03 00:39:51 HIST-01 CSUSM Veterans Voices oral histories CSUSM This interview was conducted as part of the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project, now called the CSUSM Veterans Voices project. WAHA was conducted by the California State University San Marcos History Department in collaboration with the CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center) from 2012-2013. The project aimed to document, preserve, and make accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. csusm United States. Marine Corps ; September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001 ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; United States. Marine Corps--Recruiting and enlistment ; USS Cole Bombing Incident, Aden, Yemen, 2000 Kevin Cole ColeKevin_WattsJill_2012-11-28_access.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/67729db2171d7e702b46743f60168566.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction Oral history of Kevin Cole, recorded November 28, 2012, for the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project by the California State University San Marcos History Department. Cole begins his interview by discussing his family background as coming from an Irish Catholic immigrant family located in Lynn Massachusetts, and the role his civic-oriented family played in his and his brothers’ enlistment with the United States Marine Corps. Cole also briefly describes his brothers’ experiences in the Marines. Lynn (Mass.) ; Irish Catholic immigrants ; public service ; Marine Corps ; Mayor (Lynn, Mass.) ; fire crash rescue ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) 0 251 College experience, enlistment, and bootcamp Cole recounts his journey to enlistment in the Marine Corps, including dropping out of UMass Amherst and a short stint in community college, before attending bootcamp at Parris Island, South Carolina. UMass Amherst ; Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) ; bootcamp 0 400 Becoming a Marine Corps Rifleman Cole explains his decision to enlist with Marine Corps Infantry and describes his occupational specialty (O311), including the on-the-job training that is required to be a Rifleman and the knowledge and skills required. Cole also briefly discusses his parent unit for the entirety of his Marine Corps career, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, and the two-year cycle that being a Marine entails, including a six-month deployment aboard the USS Tarawa and some of the training and work that entailed. Cole also goes into detail about the experience of visiting foreign cultures and the humanitarian service side of his work. Marine Corps Infantry ; Rifleman ; O311 ; Light Armored Reconnaissance ; Marine Expeditionary Unit ; Delta Company ; 2-year cycle ; USS Tarawa ; Darwin, Australia ; Hawaii ; Thailand ; Guam ; Philippines ; Middle East ; East Timor 0 1050 Bombing of the USS Cole, ship life, downtime Cole recounts being deployed when the USS Cole, and his involvement in security and patrolling the bombing site and cleanup efforts when the USS Tarawa was dispatched to provide support. Cole also remembers his deployments aboard US naval vessels and the difficulties of ship life, and the work of a Rifleman continuing during downtime. USS Cole ; Gulf of Aden ; Indian Ocean ; downtime ; USS Tarawa ; Persian Gulf ; ship life ; Camp Doha 0 1389 September 11, 2001 and reenlistment Cole recounts learning of the 9/11 terrorist attack, which happened in the interim between his first and second deployment, while he was training at “29 Palms” (Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC)) during a combined arms exercise. Cole also remembers breaking up with his girlfriend in the wake of the attack. Cole reminisces about the state of technology at that time and the lack of media available to him about the attack while he was training, and the scarcity of instantaneous communication while deployed. Cole also discusses the clarifying incident that led to him reenlisting with the Marines, and how public sentiment towards members of the armed services changed after the USS Cole bombing and 9/11. 9/11 ; 29 Palms (Calf.) ; Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) ; USS Mount Vernon 0 2110 Second deployment Cole describes his second deployment, this time aboard the USS Mount Vernon, including the places he went and the training he undertook, as well as an attack on the Marines in Kuwait. Cole also recounts refusing orders to go to recruiting school so that he could be deployed alongside his unit in Iraq, January 2003. USS Mount Vernon ; Darwin, Australia ; Camp Doha ; Kuwait ; terrorist attack ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; Singapore ; Guam ; Thailand ; East Timor 0 Kevin Cole served with the Marine Corps as a Rifleman from 1998 - 2007. In his interview, Cole recounts his personal motivations for enlisting with the Marines and for enlisting as a Rifleman, as well as his family's civic-minded nature. Cole also discusses his bootcamp and on-the-job training with the Marine Corps, as well as the two-year cycle of Marine life: training, joining a larger joint unit, deployment, and downtime. Cole recounts two deployments, ship life aboard his deployments on Naval vessels, the bombing of the USS Cole, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how attitudes towards Marines and the armed services shifted in the wake of those attacks. Cole ends his interview by relaying his reasons for reenlistment after 9/11.&#13 ; &#13 ; This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:06.474 --> 00:00:50.871 My name's Kevin Cole, and I was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1977 to a Irish Catholic immigrant family. Um, my mother was from London, my dad, from the city of Lynn, which is just north of Boston. And I was the third of three brothers. I come from a family that is very kind of--a family that's very civic-minded or civic-oriented. My dad's side of the family in particular, has a lot of service, um, in the family, a lot of military service, a lot of public servants. Maybe that's the Irish heritage too, I don't know. But a lot of firefighters and cops. And the bulk of my family is still in the Boston area. 00:00:50.871 --> 00:02:06.734 My grandfather was an attorney in the, uh, United States Army. He served from, I wanna say, '40 to '44, somewhere in there. because when he got back from World War II, he served as a politician as well. He was a state senator in Massachusetts. And he was also the mayor of my hometown, which is a pretty big city outside of Boston, just north of Boston. I know he had brothers who were also in the military. I know my uncle Joe, my dad's Uncle Joe was in the Marine Corps for many years. And I had another, um, great uncle who also served in the Marine Corps. He was a colonel in the Marine Corps as well. My dad and his brother didn't serve in the military, but they were public school teachers. They both served as public school educators in the elementary schools. I think between the two of 'em, they had like seventy-five, seventy-four years of teaching service. My dad was a teacher in the Lynn Public School System in Massachusetts for forty years. And my mom and dad had three sons, um, still have three sons and all three served in the military. 00:02:06.734 --> 00:03:08.675 And I can remember as a kid growing up in Massachusetts, knowing my cousin who's the firefighter, and my uncle who's the firefighter, and, you know, other cousins who were cops and served in the military and uncles and aunts who served in the military, it was kind of a no-brainer when I was a little kid. I can remember dressing up as a Army Ranger for Halloween. And it was kind of a theme in my family. All three of the boys always talked about joining the military. My eldest brother Mike graduated from high school and kind of piddled around for a few months, and then enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was a firefighter in the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1996. And he served in a fire crash rescue department in Camp Pendleton. He served on the runway, and he's what most Marines would commonly refer to as a pope. He was a personnel other than grunt. So he wasn't a trigger puller. He actually learned a skill while he was in the Marines. 00:03:08.675 --> 00:03:39.000 It's not to say I didn't learn skills in the infantry or my other brother Pat. We both learned skills, certainly, but they don't translate well to the outside unless you want to become a cop or a SWAT team member or something along those lines. So my eldest brother Mike, served for five years. He did deploy on one occasion. He deployed to Somalia with the Marine Expeditionary Unit, sometime in early 1993 prior to the whole Black Hawk down scenario. That played out later in that year. 00:03:39.000 --> 00:04:11.444 My brother Pat also served in the Marine Corps. He enlisted in 1992, and he served for, I think just a little over four years. He was stationed primarily in Okinawa. I think he was there for three years. And he, as I said before, he was an infantry Marine. He served in the Marine Corps infantry as a reconnaissance Marine. He served, um, he served as a reconnaissance Marine for I want to say almost the entire time he was in. So he was in the infantry the whole time. 00:04:11.444 --> 00:05:29.725 And then finally the third of three sons. I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1998. I had graduated from high school in 1996 and attended UMass Amherst for a year. And then I dropped out, mostly due to poor grades. I--I think a big part of it was that I didn't have the discipline as a student that I earned over many years in the Marines. So in 1996 when I graduated, um, went straight away to college at UMass, which was just far enough away from home to dorm and just close enough that I could drive back on the weekends if I wanted to. And so I wanted to get out of the hou--out of my parents' house. And so I went to UMass, but it didn't really work out. And so I went to community college in Massachusetts for a year part-time. And it was at that time that I met a couple of Marine Corps recruiters, and I wound up enlisting in the Marines in the summer of '98. I signed my papers on June 30th, '98, and went to bootcamp at Parris Island, South Carolina, um, MCRD, Parris Island, October 18th of '98. 00:05:29.725 --> 00:06:40.562 So I left for bootcamp. And I can remember going there and because I was an Eagle Scout, kind of a cool thing the military does, if you're an Eagle Scout, they give you a rank. They figure that you have some leadership skills. So they--you get an automatic promotion when you enlist. At least they did it that time. I think they still do it now, but I'm not certain. But regardless, I was made a private first class right when I signed the paperwork. And I went to bootcamp, and I can remember my dad saying to me, "you're the type of kid that you're either gonna wash out or you're gonna graduate from bootcamp, you know, at the top of your class." And so I went to Parris Island in October of '98. I graduated from bootcamp. I graduated a private first class. I was among the leaders of the group. Probably narrowly missed out on a promotion. But I think I gained quite a bit from bootcamp. It was a good experience for me. I got into shape and I certainly started learning discipline. But it was a process over many years that led me to being a disciplined Marine. 00:06:40.562 --> 00:08:06.824 So after bootcamp in Parris Island, um, I went to Camp Geiger, North Carolina for School of Infantry. I had enlisted as an infantry Marine despite the objections of my recruiters, I had scored really well on the ASVAB, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. It's the entrance exam you have to take to enlist in the military. Actually, to enter the military, you have to take this exam. And I scored really, really highly on it. In fact, I scored so highly that the Marine Corps said, you can take whatever job you want, um, and do whatever you want in the military. But there were certain job fields that encompassed many different jobs. And the one I really wanted to do was what my older brother Michael had done. He had served in a fire crash rescue, and I wanted to do the same thing. I thought being a firefighter was cool. Again, it kind of goes back to that family tradition of civil service. And so that is what I wanted. But the recruiter told me that he couldn't guarantee me a specific job. He could only guarantee me a specific job field. And that field that included fire crash rescue also included all air supporting duties. And some of 'em were just horrific. I remember Air Traffic Controller was the one that jumped out at me, and I thought there's no way I can sit in front of a computer screen for the next four years. 00:08:06.824 --> 00:09:30.595 And so, despite the recruiter's objections, I enlisted infantry knowing that all the fields are so closely related, at least I'm gonna get to do what I want to do. And so I enlisted in the infantry. My military occupational specialty is called O311. It's the Infantry Family, O3, and 11 is the designation for a rifleman. It's the most basic Marine there really is. Of course, I say most basic, and it doesn't mean--it doesn't mean elementary. It doesn't mean not as advanced. It just means that that's kind of the baseline for all Marines. And when you become a Marine Corps Rifleman, you then go on to learn a whole lot more. There's a lot more OJT, on-the-job training that comes with being in the Marine Corps Infantry. Whereas with a lot of specialty jobs like fire crash rescue or air traffic control, whatever, the initial schooling is a lot greater. Of course, there's still a certain degree of on-the-job training, but, with the Marine Corps Infantry, you really never, ever, ever stop learning. I can remember my last year in the Marines, after having served for over eight years in the Marine Corps, serving the infantry the entire time, I was still learning new things. 00:09:30.595 --> 00:10:59.514 So I think people kind of jokingly refer to as Marine Infantrymen as grunts, because that's all they do, and they don't really learn too much. But actually the knowledge that a Marine Corps Infantryman has is significant. And it doesn't come easily. It's not an easy job. So when I say basic, in terms of Marine Corps Rifleman being the basic Marine, they're actually pretty advanced, as far as intelligence, because they have to learn so much. Um, so I went to Camp Geiger. I went to School of Infantry there for the, O311 school, and I can't remember how long it was. I remember it started in January, I wanna say January 25th, 1999, and ended probably sometime in March. I think I checked into my parent unit at Camp Pendleton in the end of March. March 21st, 2000--excuse me, March 21st, 1999 was when I checked in with the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Uh, they're stationed in Camp Pendleton. And it's a mechanized infantry unit that provides forward reconnaissance. So it's a, it's an infantry force, but it's also a reconnaissance force. So I checked in there March of '99, and I served with that unit as my parent unit for the entire length of my Marine Corps career, until I was discharged, honorably on March the first, 2007. 00:10:59.514 --> 00:11:15.000 So I served in the same unit for just a little under eight years, plus four or five months of schooling, was my total time in service. 00:11:15.000 --> 00:12:24.215 So after checking in with first LAR (Light Armored Reconnaissance), I learned the pattern of an infantry Marine. Their cycle is such that when you join the infantry or any deploying unit for that matter, you're guaranteed somewhat of a certain cycle that follows a two year--a two year pattern. And so the two years is broken up into four, six-month pieces. The first six of which is a training cycle, which is when I joined my unit. I joined during the training cycle, and then after the six month training cycle within your unit, you then are tasked with a larger joint unit, and that unit becomes the Marine Expeditionary Unit. And so when I was with Delta Company, first, LAR, that unit was then chopped out of our parent unit and placed with a larger battalion landing team. I think it was 3-1 on my first deployment. And we spent six months training as Delta Company. And then our company moved and attached to the battalion landing team, 3rd battalion, 1st Marines, and we trained as a larger combined unit for six months. 00:12:24.215 --> 00:14:14.000 So that's the first year of the cycle. Then the second year of the cycle, the first six months is when you actually deploy. So you spend six months training as a unit. You spend six months training with the collective, a greater unit, and then you spend six months deployed. My first deployment at that time, it was prior to, uh, you know, war. It was in 2000 and September 11th hadn't happened yet. And we deployed on a normal Marine Corps pattern. So we did six months of training, six months of working up training with the larger group, and then six months deployed. My first six months as I said, was on the USS Tarawa, um, which is a pretty large ship. And we went out with the Marine Expeditionary Unit, with the battalion landing team, and we traveled by ship from San Diego to Hawaii. And then from Hawaii, we really went all over the place. Some of the ports we hit were, in Australia, we ported in Darwin, and we had the opportunity to train with the Australian Army there, the 2nd cavalry regiment, which drove--utilized the vehicles similar to the light armor reconnaissance vehicles, the LAVs that we used. Um, but we had an opportunity to train with many units. We did lots of training in Hawaii, we did training in Darwin on a couple of occasions. We trained in Singapore. We--I'm sorry, we didn't train in Singapore, we trained in Thailand. Um, but during the six months at sea on ship, we made several port ports of call. And during those times, some were for work, but some were for liberty. And so we would get free time. Singapore was one example where we got lots of free time. I think we probably spent ten days there, five days on the way out and five days on the way back. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:15:27.914 And when I say on the way out, I mean to the Middle East. It was certainly a hotspot at the time in the late nineties. So we were--we were always cognizant as Marines that there were places in the world that were danger zones. And in fact, the Middle East is a tax free zone for that purpose. It's considered a hazardous duty. And so servicemen and women who serve in that region don't pay taxes. I don't know why, but regardless, it was more pay for us. So that was nice. But the destination of deployments at that time was to the Middle East. And so we would leave San Diego and go to the Middle East and come back, and we would make that a six-month trip. And in doing so, we would stop at many ports of call. So Thailand was one example. Singapore, Guam, the Philippines, we stopped at a lot of different places. I had the opportunity to go to Seychelles, which was like, amazing. Learned how to dive there. It was pretty cool. Um, but at the same time, there's a lot of work involved as well. We, we went to, whoa! (room light turns off) 00:15:27.914 --> 00:16:12.315 So we were able to go to many different ports of call for training purposes, but also for free time purposes, which was really nice. It was the opportunity to see the world, which was cool. Which it--it wasn't why I joined the military. I think I honestly ultimately joined the Marine Corps out of a sense of civic duty. And it ended up being the Marines out of, I guess, pride. But there were a lot of Marines in my family at the time. Of course my two older brothers were both Marines. Um, they had both just been recently discharged. But I think part of it was a, certainly a sense of civic pride and a duty, kind of a sense of an obligation to give back to the country that's been really good to my family, who, as I said, were immigrants. 00:16:12.315 --> 00:16:50.044 So, going overseas and deploying to a different hostile--different hotspots at the time, they weren't quite hostile until later, was an amazing experience. To visit foreign cultures and do a lot of good--in different ways--providing medical services in East Timor was a great one. We earned a--my unit collectively earned a humanitarian service medal on a couple of occasions for going to East Timor and helping a really severely impoverished country. 00:16:50.044 --> 00:17:30.315 But we also had opportunities to do, you know, help build schools and paint houses and lots of neat stuff like that. The service abroad was not just, go to Iraq, go to Afghanistan and start, you know, being a bully. It was an opportunity to do humanitarian work. In fact a significant portion of my time spent in Iraq in 2003 was actually giving out food, giving out food. Giving out water, medical aid to people. That's certainly some of the things that I remember fondly from my service in Iraq. 00:17:30.315 --> 00:19:06.000 But going overseas on my first deployment on the USS Tarawa, the threat of war is something that's always in the back of a mind, the mind of a Marine, especially one in the infantry who fires a gun almost every day and learns how to employ weapons of warfare. So it was a shock to me, but not a total shock when the USS Cole was bombed. I was deployed, I was onboard the USS Tarawa at the time when the USS Cole was bombed. In fact, I believe we were in the Persian Gulf. And when the Tara--excuse me, when the USS Cole was bombed in the Gulf of Aden--I think it was the Gulf of Aden--we, you know, did 180-degree return and sailed south from the Gulf. And I believe we were on scene the next day. We provided security operations, uh, Zodiac patrols. Zodiacs are the small boats you see in movies. We provided security patrols via those small boats. We also, uh, the ship, as I said, the Tarawa was a big ship, so we provided a base of operations for the investigation team that was there. I believe they were members of the FBI. I'm not certain, um, or might have even been the CIA, I don't know. But there were guys wearing suits and they were investigating the USS Cole bombing. And so we were there onsite for that. And that was really, um, I don't wanna say it was a wake up call because it wasn't a shock, but it was a surprise that a terrorist attack had occurred. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:21:26.324 Regardless, we continued with our deployment after the area had been secured in the USS Cole was then, taken over by another crew and I believe it was floated back to the United States on a huge cargo ship. We continued on with our mission, which as I said, was to go to the Middle East, to do some training in the Middle East to be a part of the Fifth Fleet and to monitor activities in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf area. And so we went to camp Doha in Kuwait and did some training in Kuwait, for, I don't know, probably a month? Two to four weeks. Anyway. And while we were there, we were doing training exercises, and it was always, uh, everything we did was always a preparation for war. It's really--it's a reality. And it's funny because--it's funny--it's strange because as young Marines, you are taught and you perform so much in preparation for war, that when it comes, it's not a surprise, it's not a shock. And for the most part, you're ready for it. So we, we conducted our deployment. We did our training in Camp Doha, and we came back to the States. Um, we spent, I think, six months to the day on board the USS Tarawa. We'd also spent some time ashore of course doing some training and stuff, but for the most part, it was ship life, which it isn't, uh, it isn't very fun. It isn't very fun at all. It seemed like on both my deployments via US Naval vessel, both times in the middle of the Indian Ocean, in the middle of summer, when it's 120 degrees out, the air conditioner breaks in the berthing area, which is the room where, um, which is a quarters on board the ship where Marines and Sailors sleep. It seemed like it didn't fail that the air conditioner would break at some point during the deployment and make the inside of the ship, you know, 150 degrees. And I can remember many, many hot nights sleeping on the flight deck, which is probably frowned upon now, I would imagine. But at the time, it wasn't that big a deal 00:21:26.324 --> 00:23:09.000 Regardless, we came back, I wanna say in February of 2000. I wanna say February of 2000, or, yeah--February of 2000 is when we came back from my first deployment. I believe it was with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, but it might have been the 11th, because I always get 'em confused. The next time I went out was about a year and a half later, and I went out with the other one. This time it was with Battalion Landing Team 2/1, which is 2nd Marines, excuse me, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. And with 2/1, we did the same cycle again. So it's the six months of training, six months of training as a combined unit, six months of deployment on ship, and then you get six months of downtime where there are a lot of three and four-day weekends. Sometimes. They're--you're supposed to get a lot of three and four day weekends. It doesn't always work out that way. Um, but after our six months of downtime, which we did get, we went right back into training phase again, and an Infantry Marine trains all the time. You shoot your gun all the time, you clean your gun all the time. We had large vehicles to take care of being in a mechanized in mechanized infantry unit. We had vehicles to clean, to maintain, to test and to push to the limit to ensure that we could do so again in a time of crisis, which of course, proved relevant. Regardless, my second deployment came in 2002 after training some more and training with the Battalion Landing Team again, we then deployed in June of 2002. 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:56.825 Now, in the interim, September 11th had happened, and I remember September 11th, pretty vividly, only because I was--I mean, I'm sure I'd remember it vividly either way, but I remember it, I remember the moment for me when a corporal I was serving with came up to me and told me a plane crashed into the Twin Towers. And then he said, and you know, half an hour ago, another plane crashed into the other tower. And at the time, we were training in 29 Palms. We had been in 29 Palms for several weeks. We were doing a combined arms exercise. So it was a lot of different moving parts, a lot of units. In fact, I think it was one of the biggest combined armed exercises that 29 Palms had seen in a while. And that was saying a lot because it's one of the biggest bases, it's my understanding it's the largest impact area. 00:23:56.825 --> 00:25:22.000 So there's the largest training ground where you can fire weapons. And they often have combined armed exercises that have, you know, five, ten thousand Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, et cetera tied to them. This was one of the larger combined armed exercises that 29 Palms had conducted. And I don't know how many thousands of Marines were there working in cooperation during this training exercise, but it was significant. It was a lot. And when September 11th happened, I remember calling home, and I had a, I had a girlfriend at the time back in Massachusetts where I'm originally from, and I can remember calling her the next day and telling her this, you know, our relationship isn't gonna work anymore. And it was not a hard decision for me at all. I remember she kind of got upset and said, "What are you talking about? You know, you're gonna break up with me over the phone." And I said, "You know what?" I said, "I am serving my country and I can't afford to be tied to anything but the Marine Corps. I'm married to the Marine Corps, essentially." And I can remember it wasn't a tough decision. I just felt it incumbent upon me as a citizen of this country to continue to serve to the best of my ability and to eliminate any distractions. And I don't think it was right then that I had decided to reenlist, but it was a short time later. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:26:40.815 I remember September 11th, you know, it all went down and we continued our training cycle. We were scheduled to be in 29 Palms for several more weeks, and we stayed. So we didn't have access to TV at the time. You know, it was 2001. I remember I was a squad leader of a group of fifteen to twenty men, and I think seven of us had cell phones. Six or seven of us had cell phones, the other guys didn't have cell phones. It's important to consider that as the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the conflicts that have arisen in the 2000s, as they have progressed, technology has advanced in such a way that it blows people's minds when I tell them, you know, when I served in Iraq, there were no cell phones. You couldn't just pull a phone out of your pocket in 2003 and call your mom in Boston. It just wasn't possible. Phones weren't capable of doing that. And if they were, I sure didn't have one. And they were probably way too expensive. I remember we had one or two reporters who were tasked to our unit in Iraq, and they had phones that were capable of calling the United States. I got to call home once in 2003. One time I got to call home and talk to my, I think, my brother, for about five minutes. And that was it. That was it. That was it. 00:26:40.815 --> 00:27:08.055 So I think it's important to recognize that technology has advanced in such a way that when I say to people, only seven guys out of, you know, fifteen to twenty had cell phones, they say, what? This was a time, Skype hadn't been invented, MacBooks and Apple was, was still a significant, um, significantly struggling, I should say. Technology wasn't advanced to the point where it is now. 00:27:08.055 --> 00:28:25.765 And so when September 11th happened, I can remember we had one guy in my unit who was from New York State. He was just a little ways away from New York. And I remember he used my phone to call home and make sure his family was okay. And they were, but I can remember the impact of September 11th happening on us as Marines wasn't as significant as it was to the common citizen. Um, I think because of our military training, I think because of our military mindset, because we were in the infantry, it was kind of like, wow. But it wasn't a total shock. It was shocking that somebody was able to attack our country so boldly, so blatantly. But I don't think it really surprised or scared any of us. I think it--in the infantry, we can't be scared because of our training and our training is very important and very thorough, and it prepares us for things like that. Certainly, it doesn't prepare you for a plane flying into a building, but at the same time, the shock factor wasn't as big for us as Marines. 00:28:25.765 --> 00:30:49.375 And so after September 11th happened, we had to continue to train. We were still in 29 Palms. We still had a couple of weeks there. I think we spent probably three more weeks in 29 Palms. So much time in fact, that when we got back to Camp Pendleton, the video footage of the attack on the Twin Towers was gone. They had already removed it from the news reels. So for the most part, all we saw was still images. I saw a few small videos, but I didn't see what everybody else saw on September 11th, because I was training, I was out in the field. I didn't have access to a TV. I didn't have a smartphone where you could watch the news. In fact, in 2003 when we deployed to Iraq, we heard the news probably three times, BBC. But it was one of the biggest aspects of coming home that was fearful to me. People often ask me, were you scared in Iraq? And I said, no, never. I was scared when I got on the plane and was about halfway back to the United States, though, because I didn't know what people were gonna think of me. Technology hadn't caught up to that point to, like it is today where soldiers in the field can actually get in front of a computer and Skype home and read their kid a bedtime story. That is new technology that we weren't privy to. And so when September 11th occurred, and we were in 29 Palms, it was certainly shocking to us. But I think it was later that I made the decision to reenlist, because later in the year, we were coming back from a large exercise in the cold weather training facility up by Bishop California. And when we were on our way back, I can remember somebody had. in my vehicle had wired a little FM radio to our intercom system so we could actually hear the news. So we could actually hear the news. And we actually got to hear a local station come on and say, you know, soldiers in, in their big tanks are gonna be driving down Main Street any minute, go out and, and, and wave to the soldiers. 00:30:49.375 --> 00:32:27.865 And I can remember driving through the small town California and seeing kids running out of a schoolhouse to line the sidewalk and wave and cheer for us. And it was very, um, it was very--it was very special. It was very special to receive that kind of support because I had never seen it before. And when I talked to servicemen and women today about the support we had and the support we didn't have while serving from society, they're kind of shocked when I tell 'em about my first few years in the Marines when Marines were kind of frowned upon. They weren't well liked. They were--Marines were underfoot, there were too many of 'em. Um, I can remember going into a couple of bars, nightclubs in North Carolina when I was in School of Infantry and being told, "Hey, Marines aren't allowed in this bar. You need to go somewhere else." And that was okay. You know, that nowadays you hear that somebody isn't supporting the military and whoa, go to another country. Um, but at that time, it wasn't cool to be a Marine. It wasn't cool to be in the service. And so to see that transition, probably right after the USS Cole was bombed, certainly at September 11th, to see that transition of servicemen are kind of frowned upon to, wow, I want my daughter to date a Marine. Um, and I don't know if it's ever actually gone that far, but certainly better than Marines aren't allowed in this bar. 00:32:27.865 --> 00:34:09.000 And I think it was driving through those small towns and watching kids wave and people come out, I can remember thinking, and maybe even saying over the intercom of my vehicle, "Hey guys, this is why we're here." And I remember thinking in my head, this is why I'm serving my country, to provide freedom, and to provide security for our people. And to see that threatened was--it was horrifying. But as I said, it wasn't shocking. I think the shock value of it was lessened on us as Marines. But regardless, to see an outpouring of public support for the military and to see the public really at that time transitioned from a, eh, I don't know how I feel about the military to wow, I love our military. It was definitely special. And at some point in there, I decided to reenlist. Each of my older brothers served one enlistment. My older brother Mike served for five years. My brother Pat served a little over four, but I made a decision to reenlist partly based upon September 11th, partly based upon the type of support we got as servicemen and women from the American public. But I think a big part of it too, was, again, it kind of fell back to this civic duty, this sense of obligation I felt, that was kind of inborn in me as a kid. I felt that my duty was not yet done. 00:34:09.000 --> 00:35:10.656 And further, when we got back from 29 Palms, when we got back from--when we got back from, uh, the training exercise in the cold weather warfare, I can remember I was pretty close to getting out of the Marines at that time. I had a few months left in the Marine Corps in my first enlistment. And I remember one of my commanders saying, we're gonna need volunteers to go back out on a second deployment because we're short. And me and probably three or four other guys--me and probably three or four other guys volunteered to go back out with Delta Company first LAR again. And that was when we deployed on the (USS) Mount Vernon, in 2002. We did another six month deployment. We did another six months training, six months of training with the combined group, and then a six month deployment and returned home on December 15th, 2002. 00:35:10.656 --> 00:36:33.934 Now, that deployment was a little bit different than the first. I can recall that somebody was retiring. I believe it was the admiral, or someone high ranking was retiring. And so he wanted to go to some of the nice places on our deployment. That was the rumor. I don't know if it was true. But regardless, we seemed to be going to a lot of nice ports of call. We went to Darwin, we went to Singapore, we went to Guam, we went to Thailand. We went to Thailand, we went to East Timor, which was kind of typical in the training cycle at that time, doing some humanitarian efforts there. We also went to, I believe we went to Seychelles on that deployment. So we hit a lot of cool, cool places to go, a lot of good places to go and enjoy ourselves, to, you know, go on the beach to surf, to dive. But we also did some significant training. And it was there in Camp Doha when we were out in an impact area training, we received word that one of the units at assigned to the Battalion Landing Team had been attacked in Kuwait. And I don't remember if one Marine was killed and one Marine was wounded, or if two Marines were killed. I think it was two Marines were killed. And it was a terrorist attack. It was kind of this truck full of guys drove by and fired into a group of Marines who were doing some training, and one or two were killed. 00:36:33.934 --> 00:38:16.485 And that was kind of shocking because we were a forward force at the time. We were, you know, not out there in a peaceful manner. We were out there doing training, firing guns, having a live fire exercise in Kuwait, in Northern Kuwait. And we were attacked. And I remember that really kind of set the tone. When we were on our way back, we already knew that something was going down soon. And I remember I had extended my contract by four or five months to deploy on the second occasion. And when we got back from deployment, I remember I was told--uh, I reenlisted during deployment. I remember I was told, we're gonna need you, Sergeant Cole to go to recruiting school. And I can remember saying, no, I'm not going to recruiting school. You're crazy. My unit's getting ready to go overseas again. And we returned on December 15th, and between December 15th and I think January 6th, I refused orders to go to recruiting school, got like a reprimand. Um, mainly for the fact that the sergeant who was gonna replace me--I didn't trust him with my Marines. Period. I didn't trust him with my Marines. And I felt that if somebody was gonna continue to lead my platoon, it should be me and not somebody they don't know. So for those reasons, I denied my orders and was reprimanded and deployed to Iraq. 00:38:16.485 --> 00:39:31.945 So we deployed to Iraq in January, 2003. We had just come back from deployment on a--on the USS Mount Vernon. And a month later we were on a plane from March Air (Reserve) Base flying back to Iraq. We landed in Kuwait in, I don't know, mid-January 2003. And at that point, we were all aware that danger was imminent. Um, period. We knew what we were there to do. But in the back of our minds, we were all told, you know, this is a military engagement certainly, but it is also a significant humanitarian effort. We're going to relieve people who are being oppressed. And we were given humanitarian food. We were given extra water, extra food that we could give out. All of our Navy Corpsmen were instructed to give out medical aid as necessary and as able, um, without it being detrimental to the Marines they were serving with. And so we knew that was definitely gonna be a part of our mission. 00:39:31.945 --> 00:39:51.445 So when we arrived in Kuwait, again, we went right back into training and preparing. We had many different missions that we were, um, that we were tasked with. I'll get to that another time 'cause I gotta go. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> In copyright video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=ColeKevin_WattsJill_2012-11-28_access.xml ColeKevin_WattsJill_2012-11-28_access.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/4/resources/55 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cole, Kevin. Interview November 28, 2012 Description An account of the resource Kevin Cole served with the Marine Corps as a Rifleman from 1998 - 2007. In his interview, Cole recounts his personal motivations for enlisting with the Marines and for enlisting as a Rifleman, as well as his family's civic-minded nature. Cole also discusses his bootcamp and on-the-job training with the Marine Corps, as well as the two-year cycle of Marine life: training, joining a larger joint unit, deployment, and downtime. Cole recounts two deployments, ship life aboard his deployments on Naval vessels, the bombing of the USS Cole, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and how attitudes towards Marines and the armed services shifted in the wake of those attacks. Cole ends his interview by relaying his reasons for reenlistment after 9/11. This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, a collaboration of the California State University San Marcos History Department and CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center), from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WAHA-03 Subject The topic of the resource Iraq War, 2003-2011 September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001 United States. Marine Corps United States. Marine Corps -- Recruiting and enlistment USS Cole Bombing Incident, Aden, Yemen, 2000 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-11-28 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kevin Cole Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lynn (Mass.) Twentynine Palms (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a> CSUSM Veterans Voices Veteran experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cheryl Dinning OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Knowles, Cheryl (Cheryl Dinning). Interview May 16, 2013 WAHA-01 00:00:00 HIST-01 CSUSM Veterans Voices oral histories CSUSM This interview was conducted as part of the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project, now called the CSUSM Veterans Voices project. WAHA was conducted by the California State University San Marcos History Department in collaboration with the CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center) from 2012-2013. The project aimed to document, preserve, and make accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. csusm United States. Navy ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; Gay military personnel--United States ; Afghan War, 2001-2021 ; LGBTQ+ life Cheryl Dinning video DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/404f80c9a30af3ea36457e736a0d34f2.mp4 Other video English 0 Knowles’ background and enlistment with the U.S. Navy Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning) discusses her place of birth and why and how she ended up enlisting in the United States Navy. Whittier, California ; enlistment ; U.S. Navy ; 9/11 terrorist attack ; Great Lakes, Illinois 0 138 Basic Training Knowles describes her experience during Basic Training, including her impressions, role within her unit, and what she learned. U.S. Navy Basic Training 0 255 Experience during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Knowles recounts her experience during A School, where she met a girl and started a relationship, and was eventually outed. Knowles describes her process to discharge, her secret romantic life, and how she escaped discharge, including her marriage to a sailor for the sake of appearances. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ; machinist training ; sham marriages ; discrimination ; A School 0 605 First tour of duty Knowles speaks to her first tour of duty, “shore duty” in San Diego repairing survival equipment sent out to ships. She also discusses being a woman and being in the closet in the Navy. shore duty ; San Diego, California ; woman and gay experience in the Navy 0 703 First onboard duty and first deployment Knowles recounts her first ship-side duty as a machinist on the USS Ronald Reagan, beginning 2005, and her first deployment in 2006, where Knowles deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom. She speaks to the places she stopped on the way to deployment and “the sailor’s life.” Knowles goes into detail about life aboard the USS Ronald Reagan including her work duties, the food, the informal ship economy, and the “political game” of the military, and how she worked within it as a gay woman. Knowles also recounts the specifics of her deployment, and the best parts of being overseas. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Operation Iraqi Freedom ; machinist ; locksmithing ; ship life ; Subway [sandwiches] ; McDonald’s ; sexism ; shipboard politics ; Damage Control Central ; Dubai ; Ramadan 0 1340 Second deployment Knowles recalls her second deployment, which started six months after returning from her first, when President Obama started the Afghanistan troop surge. Knowles recounts their ship launching bombing runs over Afghanistan, prayer services for pilots onboard the USS Ronald Reagan, and her misgivings about those services. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Afghanistan war ; bombing runs ; shipboard prayer and religion 0 1446 Third deployment Knowles describes her third deployment aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, back to Afghanistan to “drop warheads on foreheads,” and her increasing disillusionment with the ongoing wars she was being deployed to. Knowles also speaks to her brief periods back home, and how her short time at home impacted her. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Afghanistan war ; bombing runs ; disillusionment ; binge drinking 0 1559 Fourth deployment and release Knowles briefly delves into her fourth deployment and finally, in July 2009, her release from ship life, where she returned to advanced machining school. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; advanced machining school 0 1607 Shoreside life and loss Knowles recounts her partner’s fertility treatments and the birth of her two daughters, describing in detail the medical emergency and passing of one of her newborns. Knowles discusses the difficulty of therapy and leave time for her in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell era, and how that policy impacted her grieving process. Knowles also recounts her use of Navy Fertility Services a year later, and the ways in which she benefitted from her time in the Navy, as well as the ways in which she views the hypocrisy of “The Sailor’s Creed” in how the U.S. Navy treats gays, women, and minorities. U.S. Navy Fertility Services ; Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ; pregnancy ; infant mortality ; The Sailor’s Creed 0 1978 Separation from Navy Knowles briefly touches on her separation from the Navy and her joining of the U.S. Navy Reserves. separation ; U.S. Navy Reserves 0 2023 Interview conclusion, communication Knowles concludes her interview by talking about how the Navy facilitated communication with family and friends while she was deployed, as well as social media use in the Navy. communication ; email ; U.S. Postal Service ; Facebook ; calling cards 0 Interview with Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning), Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy. In her interview, Dinning discusses her enlistment, basic and advanced training, and four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowles also discusses life in the Navy, including shipboard life, as well as what it was like serving in the Navy as a lesbian during the Don't Act, Don't Tell era, an how if forced her to lead a double life and impacted her ability to be her genuine self and to grieve the loss of her daughter. &#13 ; &#13 ; This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:04.144 --> 00:00:05.365 &lt ; Silence&gt ; . 00:00:05.365 --> 00:01:02.155 My name is Cheryl Knowles. I was born in Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. I joined the Navy in April of 2002. I served during operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom as an E-6. I come from a large extended family of military, mostly Army. I have uncles that are, uh, colonels and generals in the Army, uh, stationed on the East Coast. My grandfather, who I was closest to, was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, and he pretty much inspired me to want to join the military, listening to his war stories and the time in the service. I decided pretty much when I was a kid that I wanted to join the military. I remember watching war movies and school, movies about boarding school and military schools. And I was always fascinated with that life. And I just knew, I knew in high school that I was going to join. 00:01:02.155 --> 00:02:18.094 I tried to do the college thing after high school and get a real job in the civilian world, live out on my own, uh, before I joined the military. And it wasn't until after 9/11, uh, which reaffirmed my assumptions that that's where I belonged. Six months after the 9/11 attack, I found myself in a Marine recruiting office. Um, they sent me on my way though, saying that I had too many tattoos. My next stop was the Army recruiting office. And, I probably could have joined the army, but I was looking to pretty much ship out the next day, and their process was taking a little bit longer. And on my way back to my car, just walking past the Navy recruiter, which I had no intentions of going in and talking to them, um, a couple sailors pulled me inside and said, Hey, you know, what are you doing here? Are you interested in the Navy? I'm like, yeah, but you know, I got tattoos, and, you know. And they're like, come with us, we'll get you in. So I did the testing, the physical process, and I was shipped off to Great Lakes, Illinois two weeks later for bootcamp. 00:02:18.094 --> 00:03:21.000 Navy Basic Training was great. I had a great time. It was basically summer camp gone wrong, you know, coming from trying to live on my own as a young teenager, young adult, and working in the civilian world struggling to get by. I now had people walking me to medical, making me get my teeth clean, walking me to breakfast, lunch and dinner. And, you know, I got eight hours of sleep at night, and pretty much everything was done for us. You basically just had to keep your mouth shut and your head down, and that's how it went. Um, I made a lot of friends in basic training. I was kind of like the, the unit clown. I had a sense of humor about everything just because I was a little bit older than the other recruits. So, I was a little more boisterous than the others. And, you know I got in a little bit of trouble here and there, but it was mostly "drop and gimme twenty" or "gimme some pushups and sit-ups." But, you know, I was all about that. So, I had a great time with it. 00:03:21.000 --> 00:04:15.205 Basic training was interesting in the sense that this was the first time I was in a large group of people from basically all walks of life, people from all over the country. We had people from different countries, different religious views, political views, crazy people, weird people, funny people. So it was, um, it was a learning, it was a learning experience, trying to get used to working together as a team with people that think differently than you. But it was a good time! And I learned a lot about people, and I learned a lot about different parts of the country and how diverse we are. But, you know, we came together and we worked as a team, and we all survived via nine weeks of basic training together. 00:04:15.205 --> 00:10:05.000 Upon finishing basic training, I was sent right across the street with my A School. I was going to a machinist training school that was about eleven weeks long. There I met, um, I met a girl, and this was during the Don't Ask, Don't Tell era. And we were in the same school together. We hung out a lot. We ended up dating. We tried to keep it, you know, on the DL just because we were scared of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. And we had heard horror stories about people being outed and kicked out of the military. Um, word got out that we were dating or people thought we were dating, and they reported us to the higher-ups. So one day we both showed up to school, and we were escorted out of school by military police, and we were placed in separate interrogating rooms where we were both asked questions about our sexuality and our relationships to each other. We really didn't have any idea what was going on. It caught us off guard. Um, we didn't admit to anything. We were, you know, basically scared out of our minds because we both wanted to make twenty-year careers out of the Navy. And here they were starting the process to discharge us for homosexual conduct. We were taken out of our training school, and we were placed on a legal hold status where we weren't allowed to continue trading. And they were basically processing us out of the military without any evidence or confessions or anything, just based off of a statement that a roommate I had had made. During that time, we were still allowed to go off base and hang out and stuff, and we did, you know, we weren't doing anything wrong. We would go to Chicago and hang out. We had a hotel that we would go and stay at on the weekends, and the hotel owner would check us in under a male and female name that wasn't our own names, just to kind of cover us, you know, we were staying in the gay area of Chicago. So it was kind of--it was kind of cool and kind of sneaky where we would check in as Mr. and Mrs. something other than what our name was. But basically we were, we were hiding. We were trying to be ourselves, but, you know--in a different, I don't know, identity I guess. Um, one night we were at a club, a gay club in Chicago, and we were just hanging out, having a couple drinks, and in walks one of our chiefs, You can imagine the surprise on her face, you know, we're in a gay bar and here comes one of our superiors walks in. I don't know how she found us, but she basically wanted to tell us that she was gonna go to bat for us, we were gonna be okay, and that we both needed to find a male and, uh, get married. I had met another gay, uh, sailor. His name was Chris. And we were pretty good friends, and we all hung out together. So in my attempt to find a "husband," I pretty much told him the scenario is, "Hey, I need to get married and portray myself as a heterosexual female, and I need a husband, you know? Are you down for it?" And, you know, he thought about it, and it ended up benefiting us both because we would get paid the rate of a married a couple for housing and stuff like that. So, we went to a courthouse in Chicago. We exchanged vows and had an awkward peck on the cheek, and voila, we were married. My girlfriend at the time, Tara, she also got married. She married a friend of a service member who was an immigrant of Poland. And, he needed citizenship. She needed a husband, so she can look like a heterosexual female to stay in the Navy, and so they got married. So here we are, both E-1s, um, scared out of our mind thinking we're gonna get kicked out of the Navy and having to get married to a male. It was just, it was weird. It was awkward, it felt wrong. I had to tell my family about it. It was just--the whole situation was unpleasant. It was scary. Um, I felt like we were targeted and discriminated against, and that's just part of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military during that time. After the charges got dropped against us for homosexual conduct, we were both free and clear to finish tech school. And, um, that's what we did for the rest of our time in Chicago. You know, we laid low, made plans to get stationed with our respective "husbands," and just tried to stay out of trouble. I got stationed in San Diego. It was my first duty tour. I joined the Navy to get out of California and to explore the world. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw orders that I was going back to Southern California. I wasn't too happy about it, but it turned out to be a good experience. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:11:43.315 My first tour was on shore duty in San Diego. I was repairing survival equipment that was sent out to the ships, like life rafts and survival food kits and stuff like that. I was the only female working there, and there was probably about twelve males. And the first thing that I got asked when I checked in, uh, had nothing to do with my training, my abilities, my goals. They wanted to know if I was married, and once I told 'em I was married, they wanted to know where he was for how long and it was just like this weird, invasive personal interrogation into my life. But, you know, it just--it just set the tone for the rest of my military career and I know it's a very male dominated profession. And as a female, you have to work twice as hard to prove yourself. And that's what I did the whole time I worked there was I worked, uh, I tried to keep my personal life, my personal life. I had to lie about what I was doing on the weekends and who I was doing it with. Um, you know, and then it was--it was hard. It's hard to live like that and work in an environment where you can't talk about who you went to dinner with the night before, or--or what you're gonna do that weekend. You just, you have to make things up and make it vanilla and cookie cutter and non-interesting. So they stopped asking questions. 00:11:43.315 --> 00:13:11.845 I worked there for two years, and then I got transferred to my first ship, which was the USS Ronald Reagan. I felt comfortable taking orders there because my girlfriend from A School who became my best friend--uh, the dating thing didn't really work out with us. But, she was stationed there. And her supervisor, or my supervisor too, was also gay. So I felt comfortable taking orders there. I was excited and looking forward to it. And I checked on board in February of 2005. We spent a lot of time out to sea that year. In preparation for the ship's first deployment. We deployed for the first time in January of 2006. And, uh, we were heading over to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. On the way there, we stopped in a few countries ; Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, um--and I think Japan. But we would stop in these countries for three or four days at a time, and we'd get off the ship, go blow some steam out in town, do a lot of drinking. The guys would all go get hookers and--it's the sailor life, I guess. 00:13:11.845 --> 00:14:21.000 My job aboard the ship was a machinist. So I worked down in the machine shop with about twelve other machinists. And we were also connected with the welders who also did the plumbing. So we were involved with the ship's sanitation system as well. And there was a lot of times where I was knee deep in a bathroom that's overflowed with, uh, with poop and pee, trying to stop it from flooding the rest of the ship. I was also the ship's only locksmith. I went to a security institute in Kentucky and got trained on basic locksmithing and safes and vaults. So, on an aircraft carrier there's typically three to four thousand safes. So I kept pretty busy. I was also the only locksmith for our battle group, which included about six other ships as well. So whenever something would break on another ship I would helicopter off my ship and spend the night on another boat for a night or two until it took me to, uh, however long it took me to do the repair. 00:14:21.000 --> 00:17:31.000 Ship life is interesting. Um, we lived in a small confined space with about sixty females. Our racks were stacked three high. The middle rack is the ideal place to, you know, to sleep. So eventually I got a middle rack. We had a small locker, and our mattress lifted up, which exposed more storage space. There wasn't much room for storage, so you pretty much took what you could, the basics. Underwear, socks, and t-shirts. A few pairs of civilian clothes, and the rest was room for your uniforms and toiletries. We had two showers for sixty females. Three toilets and two sinks. You would imagine that it would be super crowded in the mornings, but with the way shifts work out the sea, we have a night shift, the day shift, um, people that sleep a little bit later because they had watched throughout the night or whatnot. So, mornings were a little bit crowded, but it wasn't ridiculous as you would think it would be with sixty females trying to, you know, line up for two showers. The food was good starting out on deployment. The farther away from the United States, you get, the more food you get imported from different places. So once we got to the Middle East, the milk, uh, changed color and texture. The lettuce, by the time it would reach us was brown. Vegetables weren't really good. Lunch meat was--colorful, but, um, ship life is about networking. So if you know somebody who works in the galley or works in the chiefs' mess or where the officers eat and you can do something for them, then you're gonna get taken care of food-wise. I ran the laser engraving shop that--you know, I can make signed, engraved coffee cups or pretty much anything. So, pretty--everybody wanted to send home gifts to their family. So I did a lot of engraving of personal items in return for real food and cooked food and cookies and snacks and stuff like that. I got my laundry done, so I rarely had to wait in line to use the washers and dryers, which is mass chaos on a ship. Um, I also--I did some work for the post office, you know, on the side. And when they would fly on mail, the postal guys on shore would go and pick up pizzas or Subway and throw 'em in the mailbox--mail bags. And even though it took a few hours or eight hours to reach the ship, by the time he got those cold McDonald's hamburgers or pizza, they were the best, best things you've ever had. 00:17:31.000 --> 00:19:34.000 Um, being a worker in engineering, I had to prove myself as a female. Like I said, you had to work twice as hard to prove that you could do the job of a male, and it was common for girls or females to, you know, not want to do their job, and they'd get placed in more like an admin type of a setting and less engineering, less hands-on. And that's just what some, you know, females prefer. But I wanted to be out there with the guys getting my hands dirty and stuff, so that's what I did. And it took a while but I gained the respect of the guys that I worked with, and they pretty much--they just start thinking of you as one of the guys. My sexuality was never an issue while I was on that ship. I worked with some of the coolest guys you'd ever meet. They treated me fairly. We made gay jokes or whatever, and, you know, it was cool. I was just like one of the guys. The military is kind of a game. It's a political game. It's all about who you know, good ole' boys club, and doing what you got to do to--to get ahead. Promotions and evaluations aren't based fairly, It's based on who likes you and its popularity contest. On my ship, I learned to play the game, and I did it well, and I got good evals. Sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut and let things slide, like, you know, I put up with some sexual harassment and--and stuff like that, and physical assaults. But, I just felt at the time that this is the way it is, and me complaining about something that's going on would just come back negatively on myself. And so, you just learn to let things go and kind of just join in, I guess. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:20:45.935 Being deployed to the Iraq area of operation, um, it was really hot out there. The food that we got on board, it wasn't good. We spent long hours working, because the air conditioning would stop working or we'd have problems making water. So, uh, we were pulling like eighteen-hour days. On top of that we would have watches in the middle of the night where we would sit down in Damage Control Central. We were basically the 9-1-1 / 4-1-1 dispatcher for the entire ship. Um, we had four hour watches while we were out to sea, and they rotated throughout the day. So if you ended up working from seven in the morning until ten at night, and then you had to be on watch from midnight to four am and you're only gonna get about two hours sleep before you had to get up and start working again. And that was just the way it was. You know, we just, we lived on Red Bull and taking Xenadrine and, you know, little sleep. 00:20:45.935 --> 00:22:20.000 Some of the best parts of deploying overseas were visiting different countries on the way to our area of operation and on the way home. Um, checking out the different cultures in Asia was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot about bargaining and drinking and met some really nice people. Um, a lot of, uh, a lot of shadiness goes on behind the scenes with people trying to solicit themselves sexually or trying to sell us drugs and aftermarket, fake watches and stuff like that. But, um, there was a lot of people that got in trouble, you know, no doubt. But, every time we would pull into a port, they would brief us on what to look out for, different customs and courtesies in the country, what to do, what not to do. Like, we pulled into Dubai and it was the end of Ramadan, so, they basically told us that we weren't allowed to drink until Ramadan was over. And that people, you know, they would stop throughout the day and pray and stuff, and just to stand by, let them pray and then continue on what we're doing, not to keep talking and yelling or taking pictures and stuff like that. Basically just telling us how to act. 00:22:20.000 --> 00:24:06.555 Six months after returning from our first deployment, President Obama started the surge to Afghanistan. And, we were the first aircraft carrier to be sent over there. So, just as we were unpacking from a deployment, we were throwing our stuff back in our sea bag and getting ready to head out again. This one, uh, we didn't have as many port visits just because we were in a quick hurry to get over where we needed to be. And, once we got there, we basically launched planes that drop bombs over Afghanistan and return. And it was pretty cool because they would record it and they would play it on the ship's TVs. And we'd get to watch like bombs drop, and you can see the explosions and stuff like that. What I found interesting was, every night before we go to sleep, the chaplain comes on the ship's intercom and does an evening prayer. I'm not religious at all. And I was actually, you know, I got kind of tired of having to listen to evening prayers every night because I felt like they were kind of forcing prayer and religion in the military. But I don't know. Anyways, they would--they would pray and, um, they would pray for the safety of our pilots as we're dropping bombs that are killing essentially civilians and people. And they were just, I don't know, using Christianity to justify war, I guess. And I mean, I'm not an expert on the Bible, but I'm--you know, isn't God and religion against war? And here we are, interpreting the Bible to justify what we're doing over there. 00:24:06.555 --> 00:25:25.000 Our surge deployment lasted about four months, and then we were headed back to San Diego or, you know, home port. And then, um, we deployed again the next year back to Afghanistan, where we sat off the coast for six months, doing the same thing. Flying jets, uh, "dropping warheads on foreheads." And by this time, this was my third deployment in three years. I was over it. I'm like, why are we here? What are we doing? You know, when we first deployed to Iraq, I was like, why? What are we here? What are we doing? If we're here because of 9/11 and the bad guys are in Afghanistan, why are we looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? But anyways, you just don't question anything. I guess you just do your job like a good soldier or sailor. But by my third deployment, I was--you know I was tired. Tired. I didn't believe in the mission anymore. I wanted to go home, I missed my family. I had missed funerals and weddings, and my nephew was born. I was just tired of it, and I was like, what is this for? Why am I doing all this? 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:59.184 Time in port turns into drink fests because you didn't know when you were going to be deployed or sent out to sea again. And our schedule was so busy. We'd come back from a six-month deployment, and we'd be home for, you know, two weeks, then we'd be back out to sea doing exercises again for another month. So being home was like a--we treated it like a port visit, so it was just like nonstop partying and drinking, and, you know, it was just, it was just, it was bad. &lt ; laugh&gt ; . 00:25:59.184 --> 00:26:47.955 By the time my fourth deployment came around, I was just about to transfer to a new duty station, but I still left and did half the deployment with my ship and my crew. Um, and I was way over it by then. I'm like, I don't want to do anything. So I, I just pretty much chilled and hung out and talked with everybody and didn't really take much seriously. And then in July of 2009, I was finally, you know, released from ship life. And I was sent back to the States to go to advanced machining school before I went to my next command. And I was pretty excited because I was gonna be off the ship for two years, and I could sustain some sort of normalcy in my life. 00:26:47.955 --> 00:30:38.914 During this time on shore duty, my partner and I--we had been together since right before my second deployment in 2007. So this is 2009 now. And we were in our thirties, so, you know, we're discussing kids and stuff, and we, uh, we started using fertility treatments through the military, in order to get pregnant. And while I was on shore duty, my partner Nicole, she got pregnant with twins, and I was able to be there for all of the doctor's appointments. Although I had to lie and say I had medical appointments to go to, and I was very fortunate that nobody ever questioned me where I was going or why I was leaving early. I was basically allowed to--I was in charge of the, uh, the machine shop, so I pretty much did what I wanted to do. The work still got done though, but I prioritized my personal life a little bit above what was going on at work. The twins were born prematurely in February of 2009. And, one of 'em quickly deteriorated and had to be transferred to a children's hospital. This got a little complicated with work because, I wasn't able to talk about, you know, the fact that I was about to be a parent. The fact that I had a partner, or the fact that I had an infant that was really, really sick. So the next day after they were born, I had to go back to work, and I had to leave Nicole in the hospital with one baby, and the other one was at (Rady) Children's Hospital. I got a phone call while I was work saying that I needed to get to the hospital, right away at Children's Hospital. And I had to drive over to UCSD to get Nicole discharged as soon as she could. She'd had a C-section. She could barely walk, but I kind of threw her in the car. And we got over to Children's Hospital, and we were able to hold our daughter before she, she died. Uh, she had a heart defect that caused other problems, and she didn't make it. I was still in uniform that day, just because I had come from work, and I knew that there was no way that I could go back to work that day or the next day. I just didn't know what to do. So, I got ahold of the Command Master Chief. I was pretty sure that she was gay, even though she was a Command Master Chief. So she's playing the political game of, um, hiding it, I guess. Anyways she wanted--she made me lie and say that it was my sister and my sister's baby that died. And, um, I mean, I was able to go on emergency leave or whatever, but I wasn't allowed the same, I don't know, grievance, um, bereavement leave of somebody else who had a close family member die, or the counseling and the support really, from the command. Usually if there was a death or a problem of command, we'd all pull together and raise money and send flowers or anything just for, you know, for everybody, for anything. But, you know, this tragic situation I was going through had to be a secret and a lie. 00:30:38.914 --> 00:31:40.204 A year later. I used Navy Fertility Services to, um--and I got pregnant this time. We already had our daughter, Avery, who was about one years old, and I got pregnant with our second child, Luca, through the Navy. And, I was discharged off of active duty before she was actually born. But, you know, if there's anything about the Navy that I could say good is they take care of, they take care of you. The fertility center never questioned. Um, you know, where's your husband? Why are you infertile? They gave me the medicines, did the procedures, and never asked questions. So, you know, because of the Navy, I've got two beautiful girls. I was able to buy a house. I'm able to use my post-9/11 GI Bill. I'm studying at Cal State San Marcos, about to transfer to UMass Boston. I mean, I just, I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it wasn't for the Navy. 00:31:40.204 --> 00:32:58.000 With that said, I did endure a bunch of bullshit along the way. You know, being a gay service member during Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The last line of (The) Sailor's Creed is, "I'm committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all." And we say The Sailor's Creed every single morning, and we say it before award ceremonies, we say it when we go through promotion boards, and I'm like, who wrote this thing? And fair treatment of all of, of all? Of all, except for gays, except for women, except for minorities, you know, fair treatment of all. It's a bunch of crap. I guess I do hold a lot of resentment, because I was out there defending, uh, defending freedoms that I myself couldn't even take for granted. Like I couldn't even say that I was in a relationship with somebody. I couldn't get spousal marriage privileges to who I really wanted to be married to. Instead, I had to marry a guy who I didn't even really like anymore. But, I was getting extra benefits for that. You know, the system's definitely flawed. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:43.516 I separated in February, 2012. The military started downsizing. So I finished my reenlistment and I was denied my request to reenlist. So I joined the Navy Reserves, and that's what I'm doing now. Um, I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. Um, I'm kind of, I feel like I've finished what I needed to do with the military. I'm just, I'm just ready to move on and do something else. And I am proud of what I did and all I accomplished and what The Navy has done for me. But I think it's time to go. 00:33:43.516 --> 00:35:37.516 Just to answer some of the, uh, the stuff that that's on this outline. As far as communication with family and friends, communication was pretty good. We had email most of the time, unless we had some, some tragic event or we were in harm's way or something, they would shut down email. And the internet, we weren't allowed to use it. But that never lasted longer than a day. So email, we had letters through the postal service, which mail took forever. So basically email. And then towards the end of my last deployment, they started allowing Facebook. They quickly turned it away. I mean turned it off, since people started posting our deployment schedule. But for a while we did have Facebook. We did have internet and the mail. So that's how we did communicating. We also had, uh, sailor phones. It was a dollar a minute, and you would buy a calling card and you can use that. Or if you knew somebody that worked in the communications department, you could use the ship's line. And, there were different codes. To open a line, you can just call out. So, I was able to call my family a lot, and I was constantly on email, so communication was never too big of an issue. Email was basically the reason I got up in the morning. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> In copyright video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/4/resources/55 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Knowles, Cheryl (Cheryl Dinning). Interview May 16, 2013 Description An account of the resource Interview with Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning), Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy. In her interview, Dinning discusses her enlistment, basic and advanced training, and four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowles also discusses life in the Navy, including shipboard life, as well as what it was like serving in the Navy as a lesbian during the Don't Act, Don't Tell era, an how if forced her to lead a double life and impacted her ability to be her genuine self and to grieve the loss of her daughter. This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WAHA-01 Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001-2021 Gay military personnel -- United States Iraq War, 2003-2011 LGBTQ+ life United States. Navy Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a> CSUSM Veterans Voices LGBTQIA+ experience Veteran experience Women's experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jennifer Fabbi Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joel Rafael OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-09-23.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Rafael, Joel. Interview September 23rd, 2025. SC027-087 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm Joel Rafael Jennifer Fabbi moving image RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-09-23.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/032bee5939ae038703eabe2141fb43d4.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction 0 56 Employment at the San Diego Wild Animal Park In the mid-eighties, Rafael began working at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (now Safari Park). His first position was to support the summer concert series as a crew member through a variety of activities. Shortly after, he became a Public Relations Specialist for the Park, where he eventually coordinated media-oriented location shoots. Wild Animal Park ; Safari Park ; Zoological Society ; public relations ; condors 0 1005 Working for the Steve Powers Craft Festival In 1987, Rafael got a side job as a stage manager at the Steve Powers Craft Festival, which traveled around the southwest United States. He coordinated both a music stage and a variety stage. During this time, he met Jim and Teresa Hinton and began to bring them in on his own recordings, forming a group called Reluctant Angel. Teamsters ; Steve Powers Craft Festival ; stage manager ; Jim Hinton ; Teresa Hinton ; Reluctant Angel ; Healing Heart 0 1410 Music industry's significant interest in Rafael's music Rafael sends his demos he recorded as Reluctant Angel to Paul Rothchild, a producer that he had met earlier. Paul communicated that Rafael would potentially be offered a publishing contract. Two additional band members were added: a drummer, David O'Brien, and a guitarist, Davey Allen. After an audition, the band waited for several months. After a second audition, Rafael was told that the record company had decided not to move forward with the contract. Reluctant Angel dissolves. Paul Rothchild ; David O'Brien ; Davey Allen ; Elektra Records ; Jack Holzman ; Donald Miller ; audition ; Elektra Records 0 2954 Formation of the Joel Rafael Band Rafael begins again as a duo with Carl Johnson, and guitar player he had known of in high school. The duo played many small coffee houses all over southern California. They added a drummer, Jeff Berkley, and Rafael's daughter, Jamaica Rafael, as violinist. The Joel Rafael Band release its first album in 1994. Carl Johnson ; Jeff Berkley ; Jamaica Rafael ; Joel Rafael Band 0 3229 Evolution of radio and its effect on the Band As radio was going through a transition, new genres were established including Adult Album Alternative, which allowed a lot of independent music. Because of this and a relationship with KKOS in Carlsbad, the Joel Rafael Band began to show up on playlists. Rafael formed a production team with his daughter, Corrina, The band began won a contest that got them an opening spot at the Troubadours of Folk Festival at University of California Los Angeles. Adult Album Alternative ; KKOS ; Troubadours of Folk Festival 0 3994 The Kerrville Folk Festival A new folk festival, The Kerrville Folk Festival, opens in Kerrville, TX. In 1994, Rafael submits songs the Band is recording for an album, and they are chosen to play at the Festival. Although the Band did not win the contest the first year, Rafael and his daughter returned in 1995 and won. Rafael feels recognized for his hard work. Because it is nationally known, Kerrville becomes a major stepping stone for the Band. Kerrville Folk Festival ; Texas ; Jamaica Rafael ; Joel Rafael Band ; recognition 0 Oral history NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:31.000 Hello, it's Jen Fabbi, and today I'm interviewing Joel Rafael for the California State University San Marcos University Library Oral History Program. Today is September 23rd, 2025, and it is 11:20 a.m. This interview is taking place at the California State University San Marcos Library, Kellogg Library. Joel, thank you for interviewing with me today. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:32.000 Of course. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:52.000 This is our second session of the interview, and we wanted to start off with--we were talking about some of the jobs that you held during the time that you were developing your music, and you had just gotten a job at the San Diego, what was called then the Wild Animal Park. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:53.000 Right. 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:56.914 So let's start there. Tell us about that job. 00:00:56.914 --> 00:16:26.000 Okay. Well, I went in to the Wild Animal Park and applied for a job because I was pretty desperate for regular income. And they had some openings. It was the summer, I believe it was summer of 1985--one year either way. I could probably find that out. But in any case, I was able to get a job there, a part-time job, for the summer. They had a summer concert series in an area of the park they called the Mahala Amphitheater. It was sort of a big grassy area, and they would do--they had been doing for a few years--a summer series of concerts there. Mostly, I guess what you'd call, oldies, you know, sort of established groups from like the sixties and seventies mainly. Jan and Dean, America--I'm trying to think of some of the groups that were there. The combination of folks that were in, say, like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at that point. Those were the kind of bands that they were booking. And I got a job as a concert assistant, which basically, I was on a crew with about four other people. And we would come in on like Thursday and start preparing the concert area, the stage, cleaning it up. And then on Friday we would literally set up all the microphones and get the equipment out and get it all ready for the show. And then the sound people would come in and get everything going. And then they would send us up to various jobs around there, cleaning the stage, the backstage area, the dressing room trailers, going up and getting the food for catering for the artists, that kind of thing. And then during the show, crowd control and running a spotlight, those were kind of the job responsibilities, and that was a part-time job. And I worked at that that summer. And it was a lot of fun, you know, to be there. But they would only let you in a part-time job, I think they wanted to try to keep you to like 20 hours a week. Sometimes you'd go a little over that. But they wanted to keep you at 20 so they wouldn't have to give you insurance and that kind of thing. And the thing that was good about having a job with the Zoological Society was that once you had a job there--whether it was part-time, if it was part-time or full-time--when new jobs were available, they would put them up on a board that was only accessible by the employees. Those are the only people that would see the board. I guess there were some administrative jobs that they would send out to publications, to certain publications, to try to draw in people appropriate for those jobs and educationally and so forth. And so a job came up on the board for the title of Public Relations Assistant. And there were two people working in what was then the Public Relations and Marketing Department at the Wild Animal Park. There was the marketing manager, a lady named Martha Baker, and the public relations coordinator. And that was a guy named Tom Hanscom. Both of them were younger than me, but basically they were running that department. And Public Relations and Marketing was one department. I was just so fortunate to get that job because they had, I think it was like 300 applicants and I was--for what the job actually was, which was mostly clerical, somebody to file, fill out purchase requisitions and do filing and answer the phones. It was kind of a secretarial, clerical position. And that's not my forte (laughter). Clerical work is not my forte. But I could--I might have even said this last time--I could type just fast enough, like, whatever it was, 30 words a minute or something (laughter), I could type just fast enough to be considered. And because I had actually--I'm gonna' back up just a little bit. When the summer concert series ended, I desperately wanted to keep working at the park. But you have to wait for a job to come up that you can apply for. I did actually get a second part-time job going into the fall after the summer. And there wasn't really a name for that job because the situation was that the park had been established in 1972, and this was like now 13-14 years later. And all of these beautiful signs on all of the shops and all the exhibits that had originally been put up in the park were--I guess you'd say they were sandblasted signs, sandblasted and painted signs, very, very crafty-looking wooden signs. And they were all wearing out. The paint was chipping off. And every department--merchandising, food services, signage for exhibits--they all needed, all the signs were just in ill-repair. So they hired me basically as a sign painter. I wasn't in any department, which is very unusual in a huge bureaucracy like that. But I kind of worked under the construction and maintenance guy and kind of under the buildings and grounds guy. So I had two different supervisors from two different departments that were kind of my bosses. And then I was on call for any department that had signs that needed to be refurbished. And so I'd get a call from merchandising, or I'd get a call from gardening, or whatever department that had signs that they needed fixed. And they gave me a golf cart that was mine to use when I was there. So I'd golf cart over to where the sign was, check it out, get a ladder, take it down, figure out what I needed to do to make it new. And then I could go up and requisition paint and brushes and whatever I needed from the supply area. And then I would--there was a little shed right back by the monorail tracks. It was just like a little wood, plywood, wood shed. And that became my office. And I would repair my signs inside that shed and just outside of the shed. It was just my work area. And that might have been my favorite job at the Wild Animal Park. But another job came up, and it was full-time, which meant I could get insurance and a regular 40 (hours per) week salary. And I applied for that public relations job. And because I had gone around to all these different departments and worked with so many people from so many departments at the park, everybody knew me. And I'd made friends with a lot of people. I'm kind of a people person. And so I made the cut. I got hired, even though there were 300 applicants, because I knew both the marketing manager and the public relations coordinator. I'd worked with them on a couple of events that they'd done for the park. And so I got that job, and it was mostly clerical. And I'm gonna' say it's probably about no more than three months-four months into that job, the Zoological Society decided that they were going to separate marketing and public relations and make them two different departments. And by doing that, what they were gonna' do is that Martha, who was the marketing manager, she was now gonna' be at the zoo as the marketing manager for the zoo. There'd be no marketing department at the park, only public relations. And then Tom, who was the public relations coordinator, would now be the public relations manager, and he would handle all news and that kind of thing. So that left me. I was either gonna' be going to the zoo with Martha as a marketing assistant, or I was gonna' be staying at the park with Tom as a public relations assistant. So I pretty much, behind the scenes, went to Tom and begged him to keep me at the park. You know, it was closer to my house. I had a really good working relationship with Tom. We got along really well. And I just didn't want to go down to the zoo. And out of the two, public relations and marketing, I preferred public relations because in a lot of corporations they are combined, but they're really different from each other. Marketing is really different from public relations. And the way that Tom explained that to me was that marketing was like advertising. You know, you pay for visibility. Public relations was about getting visibility for free (laughter). For a story, or something that was going on that was of enough importance to be reported in the newspaper. And so, turned out I got my wish, and I stayed at the park with Tom, and we kind of formed a, we formed a real team, the two of us. Because now it was just the two of us in that department. And we became really good friends. I think maybe a year or two, maybe two years after I was there, I had started coordinating locations. So basically there was a lot of kind of media-oriented things that were going on with public relations. Like there would be news stories. We'd have a new animal born, endangered species, you know, that was being born in captivity. And all of those stories, including the condors, which had at that point, had all been brought in from the wild because they weren't gonna' survive. There were only maybe, I don't know, three or four mating pairs still in the wild. And so Fish and Wildlife and a couple of different zoological societies kind of got together and formed a committee, I guess you'd say, to protect the condors. And the first decision they made was that they needed to be brought in from the wild--because we were gonna' lose 'em all--to see if we could breed condors in captivity. And so that was already in progress when I came into the department. And Tom was very much involved in the news dissemination of that story and was working very closely with the bird curator, who was one of the head condor people nationally. He was the curator of birds at the park, but he was also one of the main people working on the Condor Project (California Condor Recovery Program). And so Tom and I and Bill Toone, the bird curator, and then other bird people were kind of involved in anything that happened with condors. And at that point we had the first captive, hatched condor--happened while I was there. So we disseminated the news on that, Molloko (first condor born in captivity). I don't know if you remember when that all happened, but that was a pretty big deal. And then they--the breeding program was successful enough that a certain point later we started to reintroduce birds into the wild. And now there's a lot of condors in the wild. It's been very successful. So I was involved with all of that, but as an assistant. But I was also coordinating media and video and projects of that kind for things that were not news, but, you know, like we would have--Joan Embery would come up and do a story on a new animal. We had this guy, Dave Scott, who was the weatherman at KUSI, who had a, I guess you'd call it a sidebar program that he presented from time to time on his weather show about different things going on in San Diego. And one of the things he would do would come up to the park, and if there's a new animal that had been born or some story at the park, he would come up and do a little feature on it. And so, whenever that would happen, I would be the person that would accompany those people around to the different areas at the park. And then that kind of morphed into location scouting 'cause there were commercials that wanted to come in and shoot, like MasterCard and MotorTrend. And we did the MotorTrend car of the year layout for their magazine one year there in the East Africa exhibit with rhinos and giraffes and stuff around. And that involved hiring keepers, animal keepers, overtime to work with the film crews and stuff. And I was kind of the coordinator for all that. And so at a certain point, they let me write my own title. And so I created my own job there, which was a Public Relations Production Coordinator. And so anything that was production oriented fell into my area. Also, the other thing I did there was VIP (very important person) tours. So if they had somebody that would come to the zoo, for instance, like a celebrity, a VIP, a lot of times it was celebrities, sometimes politicians, but just somebody they might want to give a special tour to, then they would call me up, and I would meet that person and take the Land Rover and drive them out into the exhibits so they could see the animals up close, answer any questions they had. Photographers that would come in that wanted to photograph a specific animal or had a project they were working on that they needed to access certain areas, I would get them into those areas and make sure that it was safe and that we had keepers out there that knew what to do to make things safe. 00:16:26.000 --> 00:23:30.000 And so that was my job for probably six or seven, maybe eight years at the park. I'd say like eight years of the twelve that I worked there, maybe even ten years of the twelve I worked there. And towards the end of that run, which is right around let's say 1992 or '93--I left the park in '96-- but about 1990-- I'm gonna' say about 1990. Maybe even '89. Let's say '89. I picked up another side job, and I had the full-time job at the park. But I was building up now vacation time, so at a certain point, I'd have like two or three weeks of vacation time built up and that would--it was kind of up to me to schedule that, to use those hours. And I went, when I had that job in public relations, I went from being a regular employee, a Teamster, to being an administrative person. So, I had to retire from the Teamsters Union, which I always took a lot of pride in being a union member with the Teamsters (laughter). But I had to leave the Teamsters, and then I became like an administrative person. So let's see, where was I? About 1989, I picked up this other job with a guy named Steve Powers, and he had a company called the Steve Powers Craft Festival. (This was in 1987.) And he would produce and coordinate craft festivals in like four or five cities during the holidays, like just before Christmas. And then sometimes just before Easter. I think we did a Thanksgiving, a Christmas, an Easter, and a summer--just a summer run of shows. And they would be--we would go to convention centers and set up these big craft festival shows, like in Reno and in Las Vegas, in Phoenix, in Tucson, San Jose--just in all these places where they had convention centers mostly in the southwest. We didn't really go east, but we did Arizona, we did Nevada, we did California. I guess that's pretty much it. And my job was the production coordinator for the Craft Festival. And I managed two stages. I would travel with Steve to the convention centers and help set up the whole convention center with the--it would be him and myself. We would drive out to the convention center, pulling a trailer with all the stuff in it. And then about four or five other people would meet us there that had booths at the craft festival. And he would trade their booth fees for them to come in a day early and help with setup. So we had--that was our setup crew. And we'd kind of all meet at that first festival and set it up, and then when that festival closed down, we'd all travel together to the next festival and reset it up and so on. And I coordinated two stages--a variety stage and a music stage. And one of the acts on the music stage was a couple that did Irish music, Jim and Teresa Hinton. They were a married couple. And we got to be friends 'cause I was always doing their sound. And I had my studio. I built my studio at that point, and they wanted to record. So they lived in San Diego. So they started coming up to my house to record, recorded a couple albums at my studio. And Jim inspired me at a certain point in there, he said, You know, you're recording all these people all the time, and you need to record your own album. And I was recording my own stuff, but I'd never get it done 'cause I had a studio--it's easy to just not get anything done, you know? Whereas if you are booking a studio from someone else, and you're paying an hourly rate, you have to get something done. And that had always been what I'd done in the past. But now I had my own studio, and I just literally wasn't ever finishing anything. I'd go in, and I'd start a song and get it to a certain point, and then I'd be recording somebody else, and I'd go in and record a different song. And, you know, forget about the first one I recorded, and I just never was getting anything done. So Jim said to me, You need to record your own album. And kind of implored me to do that. And so I recorded the Healing Heart album, which is the cassette tape that's in the collection I gave you today. And that was probably in '89. So they recorded a couple albums there. And then, turns out Steve had been hiring them to play on these craft festivals. And I was actually playing one set also. I was doing all the coordination and managing the two stages. But there was Jim and Teresa, and then there was kind of a bluegrass band. And then there was kind of a modern kind of Eagles rock kind of a band. And then there was kind of a fifties rock band. So there were like four acts that would rotate through the day on the music stage. And then they had a magician and a comedian and a juggler on a variety stage, and we all got to be great friends, just traveling to these different shows. But what I did is I started to bring Jim and Teresa in on some of the stuff I was recording--some of my songs--to do harmonies 'cause they were really good singers. And that kind of evolved into us working together more, and we kind of formed a group that started performing at the craft festivals called Reluctant Angel, which was the name of one of my songs and became the name of my publishing company, Reluctant Angel Music, which that's still the name of my publishing company. And we started to record some demos. You know, we call 'em demos, like just demonstrations of the songs. And we recorded about, I think probably four songs, five songs, a couple of Jim's songs, a couple of my songs. And they really were sounding really good. 00:23:30.000 --> 00:30:04.000 And so I decided that I would call up this guy, a producer that I had met, and I think I mentioned it in my earlier interview. He--Paul Rothchild. He produced Bonnie Rait. And earlier in his career, he produced Judy Collins' folk music, Tom Paxton, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was the first electric band on Elektra Records. So he was already like a super producer. And I had met him in 1976 because he held a song for Bonnie Rait, and Bonnie Rait and he held a song that she was gonna' possibly record on her album. This is before she was really famous. She didn't record the song, but we remained friends all those years. So I decided I would send these demos to Paul Rothchild with a note that said, Hey, do you know a music attorney or someone in the music business that might be interested in what we're doing? I didn't really ask him personally because kind of my experience with him was we'd become friends and we'd stayed in touch more or less, but they hadn't done my song when they held it. So I didn't really have a particular in with him other than knowing that he was connected to the music business and maybe he might listen to this stuff and know somebody that might be interested. And I didn't hear anything for a while, and then it got to be the holidays. This was before cell phones. And so we were on vacation. I'm gonna' say it was a few weeks before Christmas and sort of the typical thing is in the music world, probably in business everywhere, is that nothing much happens during the holidays. Once it gets to be November, don't expect much to happen until after the first of the year. And I think it's especially true in music if you're trying to get some attention, it's better to wait 'til the springtime. But I sent him these tapes, and it was holiday times, so I didn't really expect anything right off the bat. But it was about two weeks later, we were up in Santa Cruz on vacation, and I just decided to call my phone and check my answer machine--'cause we didn't have cell phones then, but we had answer machine--and just see if we had any messages. Not from him particularly, but just anything. And there was one message that was from Paul Rothchild. And he said, Hey, this is Paul Rothchild. I'm calling you about your music. He says, Why don't you give me a call at home? Here's my number. Let's talk about your music. And it just blew my mind (laughter). I was like, Whoa. And so I called it back, and he said he was really interested in the stuff we'd sent and that he'd played it for a guy that he'd worked for for years--that had hired him many years ago in the music business, but he couldn't tell me who he was right now. But that he was a very connected in the music business and at this point, owned a small record company and a publishing company. And that he felt that if I could send him some more demos of the quality that I'd sent him that this person would be inclined to offer me a recording and a publishing contract. And so, of course, we were just over the moon. And so we just started recording more demos--me and Jim and Teresa. And we brought in a friend, an old friend of mine named David O'Brien, who was a drummer, to play drums on some of the stuff. And then one of the guys who had the fifties retro band with the craft festival was a guy who'd been in the music business for years but had had marginal success but was well known as a guitar player. His name was Davey Allen. And he had a group called Davey Allen and the Arrows. And they had recorded basically surf music, instrumental surf music. But he had also recorded music for a couple of the motorcycle movies of the--I guess they were in the sixties, some of these motorcycle movies that came out there, kinda' like B movies. And they would have this electric music. A lot of that was recorded by Davey Allen and the Arrows. And so he had a group called Joe Cool and the Rumblers, and they were the fifties group, right? That played at the craft festival. So we got to know Davey. And so we brought him in to do some lead guitar, electric lead guitar on some of the stuff. So we'd kind of formed this foursome--it was basically the three of us, well, it was a five-piece, actually. It was the three of us, plus the drummer and the guitar player. And we kept sending these demos to Paul and then at a certain point, he said, You know, really liking this stuff you're sending. And I can tell you now, the guy that I've been playing this stuff for is Jack Holzman. And Jack Holzman is the guy who started Elektra Records in the late fifties and hired me--Paul Rothchild--to record these, the great folk groups of the late fifties--Tom Paxton, Judy Collins. I forget all the different names--John Sebastian, The Lovin' Spoonful. These were great groups. And then, later, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was the first electric band. And then after that, Love, and just so many groups. I mean, Elektra, it was like one of the three big labels. And Holzman was like a music mogul. I mean, when he told me that, all I could think of was The Doors movie where Paul Rothchild and Jack Holzman are portrayed in the movie and the scene where they walk out and offer Jim Morrison a recording deal. That was kind of running through our heads. We watched the movie, and we're going like, I can't believe these are the guys that are listening to our stuff, you know? 00:30:04.000 --> 00:46:36.000 So eventually they set up an audition at a club in Santa Monica called At My Place. And it was right on Santa Monica Boulevard. And Paul Rothchild knew the owner of the club. So what he did is he was able to secure the club. It was on a Wednesday night or something, from eight o'clock until, or from seven o'clock until nine o'clock or something like that. And so we came in early and set up and did a sound check. He came in and mixed our sound for us. And then it was an invite only. So we invited some friends, and then Jack Holzman and his wife and his brother and some other people from the, where there were business associates of his came in and filled the place up. And we did this concert audition. And when we finished, you walked off the stage into a little, not really a dressing room area, but a little off-stage area at this club. And Jack Holzman, just like in that Doors movie, Jack Holzman and Paul Rothchild came back and told us how much they enjoyed it. And Jack Holzman was saying, You guys have a really great group, and I think Paul Rothchild is the perfect guy to produce you guys, and we really like what you're doing. And they offered us a development deal for a recording contract. They just, it just languished, (Phone rings) Sorry about that. And nothing happened. We kept sending him demos and just nothing happened. At a certain point, Paul Rothchild asked me if I knew a manager or anybody in the music business that, if we did get an actual deal on the table--which he was trying to make happen for us 'cause he really liked what we were doing--that we would need to have some kind of representation. And I didn't really have any representation at that point, but what happened was I told a few people at the Wild Animal Park that this was all going on. And one of those people was a girl who had worked at the park for years. She was a mammal keeper. And she was specifically a gorilla keeper. She'd worked with the gorilla troop there for years and was a real expert on primates. And we'd become friends over the years that I'd worked there. And we were having lunch together one day at our lunch break, and I was telling her all about this record deal--lingering, hanging record deal. And she said, Do you have a manager or anybody in the music business to guide you through this? And I said, No, not really. I said, I mean, I know about copyrights and the things I've learned on my own over the years through being in music all these years. But I don't have any real professional management or anything. And she said, Well, I'm going to introduce you to my brother. He's Jackson Browne's road manager. So she introduced me to him, and we had a phone conversation. His name is Mike Sexton and goes by Coach 'cause he was originally a coach when he got hired into the music business to be a road manager. And he called me up, and we had a conversation and he said, well, he could hook me up with one of three different managers, personal managers that he worked with. He could introduce me to one of three of them that could probably guide me through this process. One of them was Elliot Roberts, who was Neil Young's manager. And also kind of Steve Stills' manager off and on. And then there was another guy named Bill Siddens, who had been the Doors' road manager but was now a personal manager. I think he managed David Crosby, I think at that point. And then Graham Nash, I forget what his manager's name was, but maybe--I can't remember. There were three managers, Siddens and Elliot Roberts. And then the third manager was Jackson Browne's manager, Donald Miller. And I said I would like to meet Donald Miller, Jackson Browne's manager, because Jackson Browne was like on the top of my list. He was the best writer that I knew of. Really, I, as far as I was concerned, he was just one of the best songwriters that I'd ever heard. And his level of support for environmental issues, there was just a lot of integrity attached to him and his music. And so, I liked the other guys' music quite a lot, everybody that he mentioned, but something about Jackson Browne, that was kind of the area I just felt that was gonna' work best for me. So he introduced me to Donald Miller, who goes by Buddha. That's his nickname. So he told me, Well my name's Don Miller, but my friends call me Buddha. So he had me come up to his house up in Studio City and meet him personally. He was also managing Jennifer Warnes at the time. So he said like, Hey, if you've got any songs that might be good for Jennifer Warnes, bring those along. So I took some of those songs up. We had an initial meeting. I left the tapes with him, and he just said he would be there when they made a decision. When they finally made us an offer, he would be glad to guide us through it and hook us up with a good attorney that he knew that could walk us through, so we would get a fair deal. And so then it was just a waiting game. And I would check in with him, and he used some vernacular that I won't repeat, but basically the gist of it was they either need to get their act together or forget about it. I'd say, well, he'd say, well what's going on? If they said anything? Is anything new going on? I go, no. They're just telling us to keep sending more demos. And he says, Well, I would tell them to (laughter)--and I won't say what he said, but it was basically do this or get out of town (laughter). And so I, to tell you the truth, I was just intimidated to the point where I wasn't gonna' say that to them. I wasn't gonna' say, Well, hey, you need to tell us what's going on now. I wasn't gonna' make a demand on Jack Holzman and Paul Rothchild, who I also highly respected. I hadn't really met Jack yet, but I knew who he was. And so finally they set up an audition, and it was at the At My Place club. We went there, we did that, they offered us the deal. I guess I covered that. And so we are in this waiting period now, and it went on for months. Like it went on for nine months. And so, finally Paul kind of indicated to me that they were kind of getting cold feet, that attitudes were kind of changing with the people he'd been talking to. Now I didn't know who all of those were. I knew he was talking to Jack. He basically said you have two fans at the company, Jack Holzman and myself. He says, But there's some other people that are at the company that have influence that aren't so sure they wanna' do it. And I said, Well, you know, where does that leave us? And kind of in conversation, we came around to that we could do another audition and try to increase the excitement of the other people that weren't really behind us right then. So we set up another audition, a second audition, and I guess if I'd have been able to read the writing on the wall better, I would've been able to tell that the odds weren't nearly as good as they had been the first time. The excitement level wasn't the same. The economy was not great, hadn't--nine months had gone by, the economy kind of sucked. And found out later it was Keith Holzman, Jack's brother, who was basically the lifelong accountant for Jack's record companies, that was feeling like we weren't gonna' be a good investment. But they decided that they'd let me, in Paul's words, pursue my star, and they would set up another audition. But it was completely on us. We weren't gonna' do it at the At My Place club, which actually, it wasn't the At My Place club anymore, it had changed hands and was some other club. So if we were gonna' do it, we would have to figure out where we were gonna' do it and make it convenient enough for those people that were important to be there. So we decided we would rent a rehearsal studio in Burbank 'cause we had to go to where they were. They weren't gonna' come down to San Diego. And so we tried to be creative, like, how are we gonna' do this, to really capture the attention of these guys and get them excited about this again? And so we decided we would like I have--all my furniture at my house is my parents' and my grandparents' furniture. We've never bought any furniture. One thing my mom left us was all the furniture. And it's like really some nice old chairs. I mean, really comfortable furniture. They don't make furniture like that anymore. And so I've got four or five nice upholstered chairs, and I've got a rocking chair. I've got some little side tables and some nice lamps. And so we say we'll just take everything outta' my living room. We'll just literally strip my house of all the furniture and lamps and accessories that make my living room cozy. And we'll rent a truck, and we'll truck that all up to Burbank to this large rehearsal studio that basically was just a big room with a sound system in it. And we would rent a bunch of chairs, and we would set up some folding seats. But then we'd also put all of the comfortable chairs and stuff in and with the side tables and the lamps and make it feel like a big living room. We would create this atmosphere. And a couple people, one guy from the park that worked at the park that I'd become friends with--he was a security guard there. He volunteered to go with us. And then another really close friend of mine that had a house up in Temecula came down, and he drove the truck up for me. And then they helped us set it all up. We got up there like at ten in the morning, we rented this place for the whole day, set up the the place. We had a sound guy come in from Sound Image that I knew that volunteered to help out. He came in to mix us. And we set up another audition. We got mason jars, small mason jars, like a couple cases of mason jars. And then we got a water cooler that you could draw water out of. And we had all these mason jars set up so that people could get fresh water. 'Cause we didn't really serve any refreshments, we didn't have enough money to do all that. And then we invited everybody we could that would actually make the trip up to Burbank to come see us, telling them that this is really important, we gotta' really make an impression, and it's better if there's an audience. And so we put on this whole big thing. When we left to go up there, it started raining. Just after we got stuff loaded in the truck, it started raining. So we unloaded everything in the rain, got it all in there. It rained the whole night. Everybody showed up, and Jack and his brother, Keith, came. They came in, we played a show. Seemed like it went good. They were very accepting and very cordial and friendly, and it all felt really good. And then they all left, and it was pouring rain, just a downpour. So we had to load all that stuff back up in the truck. This is my side story to the whole experience (laughter). Loaded stuff all up in the truck. Drove back down here. Got back down to my house at about probably about three in the morning. But we had to return the truck. So my friend Stuart drove the truck, and I drove my car down to Escondido, to the U-Haul place where we had rented the truck, or Ryder or whatever it was. I can't remember. And there was a place to park the truck and then a key drop, so we dropped the truck and dropped the key. I turned my car around to pull out. And the driveway's kinda' one of those driveways that kinda' goes down in the middle. There's sort of a drainage right in the middle. And so it's a little higher on the sides, you know? And so as I turned around, I realized I had a flat tire. And so it's now, it's four or four-thirty in the morning, been up all night, still in my clothes that I wore to perform in. And now I've gotta' lay down in the puddle in the driveway and change my tire (laughter). So the omens weren't good (laughter). Still raining, pouring rain. We drive back up to my house, and Stuart gets his car and goes home. And I guess I went to bed about, I dunno', five-thirty in the morning. Slept 'til about noon or one. Got up waiting to hear something. And about two or three o'clock, I got a call from Paul Rothchild, and he said, Yeah, we basically decided not to do it. And we were devastated. Because it'd been almost a year of this. And so a couple of weeks before the audition, that last audition, I was also told by Paul Rothchild that the company was only interested in my songs, that they thought Jim's songs were good, but they were really only interested in my songs. And so at the new audition, they wouldn't hear any of the songs we'd sent that were Jim's. They just wanted me to play my songs. So I had to deliver that message to Jim and Teresa about two weeks before this last audition. Of course, they were devastated with that news, but they hung in there 'cause basically what I was saying was, Look, that's not how I feel. Once we get the deal, we'll do what we want to do, but we've gotta' hang in there to get the deal. So that was kind of where I was coming from. I just, I wanted this thing to happen. I was 43 or 44 years old, so it was like 30 years ago, 35 years ago. And so they agreed to do the audition, all that stuff. We went and did it. And then, of course, we got that news. And that was sort of the end of Reluctant Angel. 'Cause they just like, Well, see you later, Joel (laughter). 00:46:36.000 --> 00:52:37.000 And I just kind of went into a really deep depression. The thing that kept me going was that they had said that when we had the first audition, they had told us that they didn't think that the drummer and the guitar player really, they didn't really care for what they were doing on the demos. They think we needed that, but they wanted me to find another guitar player 'cause they thought that, what they said--it was kind of cruel 'cause what they said about Davey--'cause Davey had had a couple of failed deals over the years. And they just said he's kind of considered to be used goods. This is how they talk about people in the music business that don't become really successful. Then if they've had a couple of record deals and they've never become successful, even if their music's really good, then they're considered used goods. It's sad. It's not very nice. We never told him that, but we did get a different guitar player, who did the second audition with us. And he was a guy that I had met in high school. He was a couple years younger than me, a fabulous guitar player. And when I was in high school, we had these hootenannies, you know, and everything was acoustic folk music. And he was in a different folk group. He was the, actually the younger brother of a classmate that I knew that was a year ahead of me. And he was a couple years behind me. So when I was in high school, he wasn't quite there yet. And then my junior year, he was a freshman. And we never played music together back then, but I recognized him as a really good guitar player. So then, later, after we got outta' school, I did a couple of demos at a couple of different studios. And I brought him to play guitar on some of those. And that was sort of the extent of our relationship. I actually knew his family because his family and my family had been friends, local friends in the town we grew up in, Covina, California. And his dad, they had a Quaker background. And so when I applied for my conscientious objector (CO) status, he was my counselor, and he was kind of the guy, who I worked with to make sure that, to try to make sure that I would have the copacetic answers for the questions that the draft board was gonna' probably ask me. And I think I covered that in my other interview. They turned me down, so I wasn't a CO. So I got Carl Johnson to come play with me, and he did that second audition with us. And then after the whole thing fell apart, turns out Carl had stopped playing music when he'd gone to college, and he'd become like a, what do you call it? Not really a psychologist, but a psychiatric counselor, like a marriage counselor, relationship counselor. And that was what he was doing for a living when I contacted him to bring him in as the new guitar player. He had been kicking himself for about three years because he wanted to get back into music. And every time he'd think about it, he'd sort of make a commitment that he was gonna' do it and then never did it. So when I called him, it pulled him back into music. So he was really excited 'cause it gave him an excuse, and he was able to sort of justify it with his job. And he was still a really great guitar player. So we started playing together as a duo after Reluctant Angel broke up. And I'm still working at the Wild Animal Park during all of this. So we're playing these little coffee house shows here and there. Any place we could play, all the way up to Ventura--from San Diego up to Ventura--any coffee house, Riverside County. We're just driving everywhere and playing for like nickels and dimes. Which I think anybody that's dedicated to the music and their art in that way, I think would do that because it just, it's not about the money, it's really not. It's just about doing something you really feel a calling and a love to do. And so, um, we were playing these little coffee houses and there was a coffee house that popped up in Poway, and you've probably heard of it 'cause it's had a few different incarnations but Java Joe's, And Joe Flammini, had this coffee house that he started. And there were a couple people that were starting out, young people that were playing acoustic music. And I heard about this one guy, John Katchur, who was playing there. He is still--I just played a show with him last weekend. We're still friends. And so we went down to check it out, and they had like open stage nights. And I started, called Carl and had him come with me. And we started playing those, and we met another guy down there who was at the time, a percussionist and was playing with different people. He's now pretty well known in San Diego. He's won a bunch of San Diego Music Awards and stuff. But he started playing with us, playing percussion with us. Jeff Berkley was his name. And then my daughter, who was kind of hitting the wall at NAU (Northern Arizona University) in Flagstaff, 'cause she wanted to be in the music program, and she already had a lot of experience because she'd taken private music lessons, Suzuki violin and piano lessons. But there were a lot of classes she was required to take that she had already just blasted through all that stuff, and they wouldn't let her, what do they call it when you crash the class or whatever? 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:38.000 Audit. 00:52:38.000 --> 00:53:19.000 Audit the class, right? They wouldn't let her audit the classes. So she got very discouraged and her--actually, one of her instructors said, Hey, look, you know, you're a really good player. Your dad's got a band, you're flying in into California on weekends to play with him. You don't really need to get a degree in music to be valid. You're already a valid playing instrumental player. And so she kind of went with that, and she came back home and started playing in my band. So it was the four of us. 00:53:19.000 --> 00:53:20.000 And that was the Joel Rafael-- 00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:26.784 That's the Joel Rafael Band. Yep. 00:53:26.784 --> 00:53:33.000 And what year would you say that it was when that title came to fruition? 00:53:33.000 --> 01:06:34.000 Yeah, 1993. And we released our first album in 1994, and it was a self-titled, The Joel Rafael Band. And you've got that in your collection. Right then was when radio was going through a big transition, and there were some new genres that were established. Not Americana yet, but it was AAA and AA. So AA was--AAA was Adult Album Alternative. So it was album tracks. And then the other one was Adult Alternative? I don't know, I can't even remember what they stood for, but it was AA and AAA. And they were allowing a lot of independent music. I mean, it was getting into the mix. It wasn't just big labels. And just happened that in Carlsbad there was a station that was a AAA reporting station. So they report to the periodicals that list the charts for the different genres, or there was a rock or folk--or I don't know if there was a folk one--but there was rock and country, and I dunno' if they called it oldies or pop, whatever. So the AAA was a very open format and KKOS was the station in Carlsbad. And they were a very small station, not a huge transmitter or anything, but they were a reporting station. So they reported their playlist to Billboard and Record World and another periodical that was called the Gavin Report, which is no longer around. And so all of a sudden, we were showing up on playlists in some of these magazines, which caused other stations to pick up our record. And we'd sent our record, my daughter and myself, we formed a record promotion team. So she was still in school in--not Jamaica, but my other daughter, my younger daughter, Corrina. She was in school at Northern Arizona University, also. And was doing--she had a radio show at a radio station there. And we decided to, we got onto the whole idea and concept of how this worked with the record promotion and stuff. And there were certain call days when you could call the stations and talk to the program directors. And they would only take calls on like Tuesday and Wednesday between these hours. So we got our record to all of those stations that were reporting stations for AAA. And I think there were, there were probably about 70 stations, and pretty soon we were getting played on about 30 of them. But mainly due to the fact that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when those call days were supposed to happen, she would call--we would split up the list of the 70 stations, and she would call--over two days--she would call 35 of them, and I would call 35 of them from my office at the Wild Animal Park (laughter). Which was probably not allowed. But there were so many calls being made from the Zoological Society, long distance calls. It was minimal. So I mean, I had a lot of time when I was really busy in the job that I had there, and I had other times I just wasn't so busy. We didn't have any shoots or any people coming in for a story. I was basically just doing stuff in my office. And I'd slip in these calls to promote my record. And not with my name, though. I made up--I don't remember what the name was--but I made up a name. I'm so-and-so record promoter for this small label, Reluctant Angel Records. And the group, Reluctant Angel--no, it wasn't Reluctant--it was Joel Rafael Band at that point. And we managed to get our record on 30 or 35 stations. The irony of the situation was that no one could get our record. We didn't have distribution, so they could hear it on the radio, but they couldn't find it anywhere. It wasn't in any stores or anything, you know? We were developing mailing lists and just trying to figure out different ways to get it out there. And playing every gig we could play, every coffee house, every club gig we could get. Just before the band formed, just backing up a little bit, Carl's wife said, Hey, there's gonna' be a contest. They're having a big festival at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles). This was in '93. So it was just before, the year before our record came out. And I hadn't formed the band yet, but Carl and I were playing as a duo after Reluctant Angel had fallen apart. And so she said, Yeah, they're having a contest at this club called Highland Grounds in Hollywood. Over two days, they're gonna' have people come in and play two songs each after they screen--they're gonna' screen the demos, and then they're gonna' pick--I forget how many people, I think 20 people. And then they're gonna' over two days, they're gonna' have those people each come in and play two songs each. And then a panel of judges--I think there were three or four judges--would determine two winners. And then those winners would be the opening acts on Saturday and Sunday for the Troubadours of Folk Festival at UCLA. I can't think--Drake Stadium is where they had it, which is their big football field. And it was being produced by this guy, who had been a really big concert promoter in the seventies and eighties named Jim Rissmiller. He'd had a group called Wolf and Rissmiller, which is a big concert promoter back in the day. And so I met this guy, Jim Rissmiller, because I won the contest. Carl and I went, and we won the contest. I actually knew I was gonna' win before they announced the winners, because there's a show that was long established in Los Angeles called Folk Scene, and it airs on KPFK, and it started in 1971. So it's still running. It's a syndicated folk interview show, and they interview national touring folk acts--the top people basically--on that show when they have new records coming out and stuff. And I had met them years ago because when I discovered the program in the seventies I went up there. I never got on the show back then because I wasn't good enough (laughter). But I did meet Howard and Roz Larman, who put the show on and got to know them. And they were the kind of people that kept track of who was doing what in music, in folk music. And so they'd kind of followed me over the years. And so when this contest came down, they were two of the judges. And the other two judges were the people I mentioned in my interview last time, Len Chandler and John Braheny, who ran the Alternative Chorus Songwriter Showcase, who 15 years previous had spotlighted my songs, so they knew who I was. So all of a sudden, we show up on this show at Highland Grounds on one of the nights and play two songs. And then somewhere between when they announced the winners, I guess I--I don't remember why I was talking to Roz Larman, but for some reason I was on the phone with Roz Larman, and she said, Well, you know you're gonna' win, don't you? And I said, Well, no, I don't know that. And she said, Well, believe me, take it from me. You're gonna' win. And I said, Well, how can you say that? They haven't announced the winners yet. And she says, Well I'm one of the judges. I said, Yeah. And she says, And I know all of the acts in Los Angeles. She said, And I'm just telling you, you're gonna' win. And, you know, that was pretty cool for her to say that. Those are the kind of people that, people like that, that have come along that that will tell you in honesty. They're not just blowing hot smoke, but they'll tell you in honesty what they think. They'll tell you if they think it's bad, and they'll tell you if they think it's good. And I've had people tell me both. People you can trust to tell you the truth. And that can be really valuable especially if they're telling you, giving you constructive criticism. 'Cause we don't see ourselves the way other people see us. And so there's a bit of calculation that goes into something like that when you're presenting something. You wanna' get it right. And so we did, we won that contest. And so we opened that show at Troubadours of Folk Festival. And, of course, this was after that whole deal had fallen through and everything. And this is kind of a cool thing. So we were on at eleven o'clock in the morning, like the whole thing's gonna' go all way into the night and then into the next day. And we were on first at eleven in the morning, as people are still kind of coming into the stadium. So at ten o'clock in the morning, they had us go up and line check, just make sure everything was--and the lighting grid wasn't even up yet. It was like down here, you know? 'Cause they hadn't even pulled it up yet, and it was raining. And it was a rainy morning. And so I'm up there, and we're just checking out the sound system. I just feel somebody tapping me on the shoulder, and I look, and it's Paul Rothchild. And he had come because he had actually produced some of the acts that were on the show--Peter, Paul and Mary, and Judy Collins. And I mean, that show had everybody on it. You know, John Prine, Tom Petty, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bonnie Rait, Joni Mitchell made her comeback at that show. She hadn't played in like, I don't know, seven years or something like that. And it was crazy just all the stars from the folk world that were there. And that just really warmed my heart. I said, Paul, what are you doing here? He said, I came to see you (laughter). So that was really cool. And then he introduced me to Peter, Paul and Mary that day and to a bunch of people, which was really, really great. And one of the people he introduced me to was Peter Yarrow. And told me about--that he's a really good songwriter and this and that. And Peter says. Well, do you know about the Kerrville Folk Festival? And I go, No. And he goes, Well, the Kerrville Festival, it's in Kerrville, Texas, and that's the real songwriter festival. He says, You've gotta' come to that. Well, I kind of filed it. And then Paul Rothchild took me aside--and I can put this in my biography, I don't care. 'Cause most of these people aren't even alive anymore. But, Paul, I said, Wow, thank you for introducing me to them, to Peter, Paul and Mary. Me and my wife grew up on them. We went to see them when we were in high school on dates. And he says, Yeah, yeah, they're great people. He said, But don't ever give them America Come Home. It's one of my songs. And it was like one of the songs that Paul really liked. And I said, Really? He says, Yeah, if they ever ask you for it, don't ever give it to 'em. And I said, Why? He says, Because they don't sell 12 records (laughter). That's the ways people talk. I go, Oh, well, okay. You know, so I filed that. 'Cause that's all gonna' be relevant later (laughter). So we played that show. Let's see. And then we found our way to Java Joe's, and we formed the Joel Rafael Band. So, I'm already there. We recorded our first record. We got it on the radio. Let's see. 01:06:34.000 --> 01:08:58.000 Okay, so while we were recording the first record, I'm at my office 'cause I'm still working at the Wild Animal Park. And this is 19--1994. Probably April of 1994. And I get a call at my office, and it's John Kachur, this other songwriter guy. Hey, do you know about the Kerrville Folk Festival? Well, this is a year-and-a-half later from when Peter Yarrow told me about that. And I go, Oh yeah, I think I've heard of that (laughter). I didn't remember. It sounds familiar. Yeah. Well, what's that? He goes, It's a festival in Texas. And he says, And they have a contest--they have the New Folk contest there. And every year, they pick six new folk artists out of 32 artists that are screened to perform there. And then they pick six artists that get to come back and perform the following week on the festival, and the deadline for submitting material--because I missed it the year before when I saw, when I met Peter, and that was the summer of '93. Well, now we're in the spring of '94. And he says, And the deadline is tomorrow to submit. And I just happened to have two songs on a cassette tape that we were recording for the album. One of 'em was America Come Home, and the other one was Solo Pasando, I think it was called. And so we--I packed those up with, I typed out the lyric sheets, stuck them in a FedEx envelope and then ran down to FedEx right after work, or I, maybe I left early that day. And FedEx was in, right? San Marcos, their main office. So I drove over there, and I sent that to the Kerrville Folk Festival. Just before the deadline. And I got picked. And so in May of 94, I went to Kerrville to compete with the New Folk performers. 01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:01.000 And was this with the band or just you? 01:09:01.000 --> 01:17:38.000 No, what, what I did is--well wait a minute. No, it was with the band. So what I did is, my daughter was coming from Northern Arizona University to play with us on weekends. She was still going to school because this was early in the incarnation of the Joel Rafael Band. And when I got the invite, I decided, yeah, I'm gonna' take my band. So I took Jeff, and I took Carl, put it on a credit card, we booked our flights, flew out there. They gave us camping, but we stayed in a hotel 'cause I wasn't gonna' try to camp and play. I was already in my mid-forties at that point, going on 50. I just didn't want to camp (laughter). And so we got there, we went through the competition, and then on Sunday, just before the main show, they announced the winners. And we were sure we won. We just felt so strong about it, the three of us. And they started calling the names--five, six. Oh, that's it. Oh. Oh, we didn't win (laughter). So we were a New Folk finalist, but we didn't win. So that was disappointing and expensive. So we came back home, and we just kept playing as a band. My daughter--then she came--was home. And so then it was the four of us all the time. And then, the next year came around, and we were recording our second album. It wasn't done yet, but I just decided, well, I'm gonna' go ahead and--if you don't win, you can enter again. So I sent two more songs to Kerrville, and I got picked again (laughter). So '95 we went back. And this time I took my daughter. I left my band. I left the Carl and Jeff, and I took my daughter, Jamaica. And the two of us went and that was '95. And we played. And I just really had my emotions in check. It was like, that was really pretty hard last year to go through all that--come here, do this, so far from home. And then--'cause we hadn't been traveling that much yet. And then to play and feel really good about your performance and then not make the cut. It was, it was disappointing. And so I just, in preparing Jamaica for it, I said, look, you know, there's like 32 people we're competing with here over the weekend. And there's a lot of really good songwriters. It's all about songwriting, and people coming from New England and from the South and from Canada and just all over the place. And we, we're from California. And so we're waiting the night--on Sunday when they're announcing the winners. And they announced the first winner, and, I'm just thinking, I'm just gonna' keep my emotions in check 'cause there's a real good chance we're not gonna' get picked. And they announce the second person, and it's us. So we go up there. We had gone around to, in '94, we had gone around to some of the campfires 'cause after the show, they have the--it's a big ranch. It's like a maybe 30-acre ranch. And so after the show, which is in this one area of the ranch, they have these camping areas, and people form these campfires. And they--it's been going on for so long that they have names. You know, there's Camp Cuisine, and there's Camp Stupid, and there's Camp--they have all these funny names for these camps. And so the first year when we were finals, me and Jeff and Carl went down, and kind of nobody would really let us in the circles. It was very kind of clique-ish. And so, I walk up on the stage--me and Jamaica walk up there--and I'm standing next to this guy, Tim Bayes. He's from Nashville, and he's a songwriter. He was the first guy they called. And I had met him earlier already and real nice guy. And he just looks over at me and he says, Now see if they'll let you in the campfires when you go down there. It was pretty cool. And it was like recognition, you know? And so we went down and got to play in the campfires. And that was a really, a real good kickoff for us. We got a couple more festivals after that in Texas. Rod Kennedy, who was the guy that had established the Kerrville Folk Festival and was still running it then, he's passed away now. And they've had a couple more directors since then. But we became kind of like his pets. He just loved our band. And so we played, I guess it was the 25th anniversary show. And then they have a summer show and then they have one in the fall called Wine and Music, Kerrville Wine and Music, at the same place. Smaller festival. And so he had us on the Wine and Music that year. And then the next year, we were on the main festival again. And then we weren't on Wine and Music, but the next year, we were on Wine and Music. For like about four years, just every year he had us on one or both of the festivals. And so Kerrville kind of became, that became kind of our spot. And you, it's like just being accepted in Texas as a songwriter, it's kind of kind of weird, but it was great. And so that really was a big stepping stone, that Kerrville Folk Festival 'cause it's kind of a nationally known thing. And you can kind of use that to parlay onto other things--winner, New Folk winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival. I mean, it's not such a big deal to me anymore, but it was a really big deal then. And it was--allowed me to get some other engagements, open up some other doors. So we played everywhere. We played Rocky Folks Festival in Colorado, and we played the South Florida Folk Festival, and we played the Kerrville Folk Festivals. And we played shows in Minnesota, and we were just going everywhere. (This interview has been edited at the request of the narrator.) NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> video 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-09-23.xml RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-09-23.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rafael, Joel. Interview September 23rd, 2025. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-09-23 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-09-23 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Description An account of the resource Joel Rafael is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician from San Diego County, California. Joel has been making music with his band and solo for over fifty years. He is well known for his writing and performance in the style of Woody Guthrie. In this part two interview, Rafael discusses the evolution of his musical career and the formation of The Joel Rafael Band. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joel Rafael Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Fabbi Subject The topic of the resource Songwriters -- United States San Diego Wild Animal Park Folk festivals California condor — Conservation — United States Record labels Folk music — United States — The Joel Rafael Band Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) West (U.S.) Santa Monica (Calif.) Burbank (Calif.) Poway (Calif.) Los Angeles (Calif.) Kerrville (Texas) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Joel Rafael License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. community history Art and artists Community history https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/b180c3edcbc49ffa0dfcf47128e107e3.pdf cd2ab238d19462ca59858d0d63ae7f4e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Carr, Jim. Interview transcript, September 26, 2017. Description An account of the resource Jim Carr spent 24 years at California State University San Marcos working for the Distribution Services team and was instrumental in implementing the first barcoded inventory tracking system for the University. Jim discusses his time working for CSUSM as part of Distribution Services and how his education and background led to him this job. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jim Carr Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Judith Downie Robert Sheehan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-09-26 Subject The topic of the resource Barcoding Distribution Services California State University San Marcos Fixed asset tracking San Diego State University Sustainability Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Diego (Calif.) San Marcos (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CarrJim_DownieJudith_2017-09-26_transcript License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> CSUSM history https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/0d373a6360c40c8b8d7efbbccfac3a2d.pdf 1f8b1ac558b508d18aa51c9e6a69f7b1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Toro, Albert. Interview Transcript, November 15, 2024 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Albert F. Toro Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Adel Bautista Marilyn Huerta Justin Gans Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-11-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Albert F. Toro Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ToroAlbert_BeyerJason_2024-11-15_transcript License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. San Diego Veterans History Initiative Description An account of the resource Albert F. Toro is a Chilean American who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, reaching his highest rank of E5 Sergeant. Toro described being drafted and deployed to Vietnam. As a Supply Noncommissioned Officer (NCO), Toro provided artillery units in combat zones with ammunition and food. Toro shared his life story as both an immigrant and veteran, including the ostracization and shame many veterans experienced upon their return from Vietnam. This oral history interview explores topice such as comradery, independence, military training, mentorship, college, recreation, fear, immigration, and veteran recognition. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Vietnam Chile United States Santiago (Chile) Monterey Peninsula (Calif.) Tan Son Nhut (Vietnam) Saigon (Vietnam) Củ Chi (Vietnam) Cần Thơ (Vietnam) South Vietnam Mekong Delta (Vietnam) South America San Francisco (Calif.) Los Angeles (Calif.) Torrance (Calif.) San Marcos (Calif.) Subject The topic of the resource United States. Army—Veterans Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Veterans—United States—Chile United States. Army—Noncommissioned officers Fort Ord (Calif.) Travis Air Force Base (Calif.) Community history Latine experience San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/2d4dd7cf7eecc1bdece894a77ead172d.pdf d270957793b0b26203436ee25f17f367 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rafael, Joel. Interview transcript, October 21, 2025. Description An account of the resource Joel Rafael is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician from San Diego County, California. Joel has been making music with his band and solo for over fifty years. He is well known for his writing and performance in the style of Woody Guthrie. In this part three interview, Rafael discusses the activities and dissolution of the Joel Rafael Band and his twenty-seven years performing at the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joel Rafael Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jennifer Fabbi Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-10-21 Subject The topic of the resource Songwriters -- United States Folk music Guthrie, Woody, 1912-1967 Folk music — United States — The Joel Rafael Band Folk music festivals—United States Music festivals—Oklahoma Woody Guthrie Folk Festival Baez, Joan, 1941– Communism—United States United States Merchant Marine Lynching—United States Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Salinas (Calif.) Los Angeles (Calif.) Austin (Tex.) Santa Monica (Calif.) Okemah (Okla.) Boley (Okla.) New York (N.Y.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Joel Rafael Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RafaelJoel_FabbiJennifer_2025-10-21_transcript Art and artists Community history https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/49655703ca9580fa7a280e4ff737314a.pdf 39f896b95a878e35d72cb83b35512638 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Galyean, Thomas. Interview Transcript, November 12, 2024. Description An account of the resource Thomas Earl Galyean was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He served with the 7-17th CAV as commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, securing landing zones for aircraft. Galyean then served as an Assistant S3 for the operations section of headquarters, ensuring that aircraft received their assignments. Raised on his family’s chicken hatchery in San Marcos, California, Galyean narrates his family history, his decision to join the U.S. Army, and his interest in helicopter flight. Galyean describes his experience in flight school, including reflections on media representations of military training and the Vietnam War. Galyean describes his unique role while serving stateside, forming a military response team to suppress riots in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Galyean meditates on the impact of controversial topics, such as the My Lai massacre, civilian casualties, and the rules of engagement. Galyean reflects on religion, comradery, family, and how the military changed his life. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thomas Galyean Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Adel Bautista Justin Gans Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-11-12 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Diego (Calif.) San Marcos (Calif.) Texas California Kentucky Vietnam Central Highlands (Vietnam) Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam) South Vietnam Laos Cambodia Chicago (Ill.) Brownsville (Tex.) Brawley (Calif.) Escondido (Calif.) Imperial County (Calif.) Sacramento (Calif.) Louisiana Alabama Arkansas Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Thomas Galyean Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GalyeanThomas_BeyerJason_2024-11-12_transcript Subject The topic of the resource United States. Army—Veterans Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 chicken farm U.S. Forest Service El Cariso Hot Shots Reserve Officers' Training Corps San Marcos High School (Calif.) University of California, Los Angeles (Calif.) helitack Loop Fire (Calif.) flight school Fort Wolters (Texas) Fort Knox (Kentucky) The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam We Were Soldiers hunter-killer team Bell AH-1 Cobra Pleiku (Vietnam) Phan Rang (Vietnam) Bearcat (Vietnam) napalm Fort Rucker (Alabama) Fort Hood (Texas) 1968 Democratic National Convention Gray Air Force Base (Texas) Ground-Controlled Approach Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association 7-17th CAV University of Virginia Qui Nhon (Vietnam) My Lai (Vietnam) free-fire zone return fire law school attorney Fort Polk (Louisiana) Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jason Beyer Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed James Robert Forster II OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=ForsterJamesRobert_BeyerJason_2022-11-22_access.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Veteran United States Air Force;Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975;Korea;aircraft mechanic;Staff Sergeant OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Forster II, James Robert. Interview November 22nd, 2024. SC027-070 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm Veteran United States Air Force ; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 ; Korea ; aircraft mechanic ; Staff Sergeant James Robert Forster II Jason Beyer Moving Image ForsterJamesRobert_BeyerJason_2022-11-22_access.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/ec56e576cd1e3f6843c0218021dd47d3.mp4 Other video English 0 Interview Introduction 0 69 Military Background Forster served in the U.S. Air Force and attained his highest rank of E5 Staff Sergeant. He served in Korea during the Vietnam War. United States Air Force ; E5 Staff Sergeant ; Korea ; Vietnam War 0 91 Youth and Enlistment Raised in Wichita, Kansas then San Jose, California, Forster had a high draft number, so he enlisted into the Air Force for aircraft maintenance training. Wichita (Kan.) ; San Jose (Calif.) ; West Valley College ; Kenny's Shoe Store ; newspaper delivery ; enlistment ; aircraft maintenance ; training 0 201 Training and Promotions As a crew chief and flight mechanic, Forster did maintenance for many aircraft. He also recalls his training instructors and promotions. crew chief ; C-97 ; C-121 ; C-47 ; flight mechanic ; McClellan Air Force Base ; Sacramento (Calif.) ; wing commander ; 552nd Air Control Wing ; airborne early warning and control ; North American Aerospace Defense Command ; instructor ; promotion ; Airman First Class ; Korea 0 431 Adapting to the Military Lifestyle Forster recalls his challenging unaccompanied tour to Korea, which strained his marriage and included harsh weather. He appreciated the military’s reliable chain of command. Forster tells a story about refusing to let a colonel fly his airplane and how the chain of command supported his decision. unaccompanied tour ; Korea ; Sacramento (Calif.) ; winter ; monsoon ; chain of command ; non-commissioned officer ; full bird colonel 0 615 Reflections on Serving in Korea during the Vietnam War Forster was part of the replenishment of relieving the Air National Guard from Korea. Most of his work entailed flying passengers and mail. In hindsight, he reflects on how much better he had it than the aircraft mechanics in Vietnam. Navy ; USS Pueblo ; North China Sea ; Air National Guard ; Korea ; Frontier Airlines ; Braniff Airlines ; American Airlines ; Transamerica ; Douglas AC-47 Spooky ; Agent Orange ; Osan (Korea) ; Kunsan (Korea) ; Gwangju (Korea) ; Daegu (Korea) 0 749 Camaraderie and Recreation Forster’s fondest memories with his military comrades were in the bar they set up in the barracks day room. The bar was their main place to recreate when off duty, although some did Taekwondo and other activities. He also mimics a Korean houseboy who took care of the common areas. camaraderie ; friendship ; non-commissioned officer ; Air Force Times ; flight engineers ; flight mechanics ; day room ; barracks ; bar ; the Airman's Club ; beer ; recreation ; Taekwondo ; Korean ; houseboy 0 909 In-Flight Emergencies Forster recalls flying over Japan at Mount Fujiyama in a C-47. It was during a severe winter storm with strong winds, and he almost ran out of fuel. in-flight emergencies ; pre-flight ; Mount Fuji (Japan) ; C-47 ; Tokyo (Japan) ; wind ; storm ; winter 0 1007 Socializing with Locals, Sea Survival School, and Interactions with the Second Chinese Air Force in Taiwan Forster had great experiences with local people. While in Sea Survival School in Okinawa at Kadena Air Base, he saw flying missions to Vietnam, including an SR-71. He also recalls flying to Taiwan to pick up a C-47. He was very impressed by the “Second Chinese Air Force.” Japan ; Okinawa (Japan) ; Korea ; locals ; Sea Survival School ; Kadena Air Base ; SR-71 ; inspect and repair as necessary ; Taipei (Taiwan) ; Taichung (Taiwan) ; Second Chinese Air Force ; gunship ; C-47 ; C-119 ; C-130 0 1315 Ending Service, Returning Home, Readjusting to Civilian Life, Work, and the G.I. Bill Forster drove across the country from MacDill Air Force Base to San Jose, California. He recalls returning home during the height of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. In his words, “There was no welcome for the returning veteran.” Nevertheless, he went back to school, met his wife, and got an MBA using the G.I. Bill. He worked at an insurance company and had a Farmers Insurance agency for 10 years. MacDill Air Force Base ; Tampa (Fla.) ; San Jose (Calif.) ; parents ; veteran ; protest ; college ; sociology ; wife ; marriage ; Farmers Insurance ; insurance agency ; G.I. Bill ; National University ; Master of Business Administration 0 1484 Continuing Friendships and Veterans Organizations Forster lost track of most friends from military service. He joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) but left because they could not decide whether he was an Army veteran or an Air Force veteran. friendship ; Portland (Or.) ; Veterans of Foreign Wars ; Army veteran ; Air Force veteran 0 1532 Reflections on Life After Military Service Forster talks about his wife, his children, his grandchildren, and his travels with family. He says military service taught him that “your word is your bond.” CSU San Marcos ; San Diego (Calif.) ; Sapphire Princess Cruise ; Caribbean ; Disney World ; COVID ; El Cajon (Calif.) ; school 0 1656 What People Should Know About Veterans and a Message for Future Generations Forster encourages anyone enlisting in the military to be open minded. He says military service can include many positive experiences, like travel and education. Forster recounts how his training could have an aircraft maintenance career, but he ultimately chose the insurance business. military ; veterans ; Air Force ; Korea ; Okinawa (Japan) ; Taipei (Taiwan) ; United Airlines ; Chicago (Ill.) ; aircraft mechanic ; insurance business 0 Oral history James Robert Forster II served in Korea as a crew chief and flight mechanic for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War and reached his highest rank of E5 Staff Sergeant. Forster recalled the challenges of an unaccompanied tour to Korea, the strains it put on his first marriage, as well as his return home during the height of the anti-war movement. He praised the education and experiences he gained from military service, including travel, recreation, training, and the G.I. Bill. After military service, Forster worked in the insurance business and met his wife at university. He reflected on his family, travels after retirement, and the life lessons he learned from military service. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:06.325 My name is Jason Victor Beyer. I'm a graduate of California State University San Marcos. Today I will be interviewing James Robert Forester II. Today's date is Friday, November 22, 2024. We are located inside the Kellogg Library at California State University San Marcos, located at 333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, California 92096. My relationship to the interviewee is that we are both military veterans. The names of the people attending this interview are the interviewer, Jason Victor Beyer, the interviewee, James Robert Forster II, Marilyn Huerta, and camera operator, Adel Bautista. Today's purpose of the interview is to conduct an oral history. Please state your full name, first, middle, and last name. 00:01:06.325 --> 00:01:09.344 James Robert Forster II. 00:01:09.344 --> 00:01:10.775 Your branch of service. 00:01:10.775 --> 00:01:13.025 United States Air Force. 00:01:13.025 --> 00:01:15.775 The highest ranked you attained. 00:01:15.775 --> 00:01:18.015 E5 Staff Sergeant. 00:01:18.015 --> 00:01:23.314 And the war or conflict that you served during your time of service. 00:01:23.314 --> 00:01:31.685 During Vietnam—actually in Korea, but that was during the Vietnam conflict. 00:01:31.685 --> 00:01:38.105 Thank you. So today we'll begin with your biographical details. Where were you born? 00:01:38.105 --> 00:01:40.215 Wichita, Kansas. 00:01:40.215 --> 00:01:44.515 What was life like in Wichita, Kansas for you? 00:01:44.515 --> 00:01:59.155 I attended elementary school till fourth grade, and then we moved from Wichita, Kansas for a job transfer for my father to San Jose, California. 00:01:59.155 --> 00:02:04.245 Does your family have any past affiliations with the military? 00:02:04.245 --> 00:02:11.444 Yes, my uncle, my father, my grandfather—each of them served in the military. 00:02:11.444 --> 00:02:16.175 Did that play a role in your joining the military? 00:02:16.175 --> 00:02:39.405 I was a student at West Valley Junior College (West Valley College) and not doing well academically. The draft came around in '67 and my number was high, so rather than be drafted I joined on delayed enlistment into the Air Force so I could get training. 00:02:39.405 --> 00:02:44.145 Did you hold any jobs prior to entering the military service? 00:02:44.145 --> 00:02:54.155 Yes, I sold shoes for Kenny's Shoe Store and delivered newspapers—those kind of things. 00:02:54.155 --> 00:03:04.544 When and why did you choose to join the military? So you said you weren't drafted, but why specifically did you choose the branch of the Air Force? 00:03:04.544 --> 00:03:21.395 So I could have aircraft maintenance schooling. I spent nine months in tech school after basic training to learn aircraft maintenance. 00:03:21.395 --> 00:03:33.544 For your early days of service, what is your most vivid memory, both the best and worst parts of training of your time during school in the Air Force. 00:03:33.544 --> 00:04:07.034 I had to learn different aircraft in their operations—the engine, the airframes. As a crew chief, I was responsible for all of those things to ensure that they worked well. I worked on C-97s, I worked on C-121s, I worked on C-47s, and flew for two years on C-47s as a flight mechanic. 00:04:07.034 --> 00:04:12.525 What was your first assignment like after basic training? 00:04:12.525 --> 00:04:55.415 I was sent to McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California, and I was assigned to the Wing Commander of the 552nd Airborne early warning and control wing's squadron commander. So I was a crew chief on that aircraft. It was different than the airborne early warning that the C-121s did for NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), but all we did was make sure that that airplane is ready when the wing commander wanted to go somewhere. So we spent a lot of time cleaning and prepping. 00:04:55.415 --> 00:05:00.095 Do you recall your instructors while you were in training? 00:05:00.095 --> 00:05:03.555 Not by name. 00:05:03.555 --> 00:05:05.884 Do you recall what they were like? 00:05:05.884 --> 00:05:31.204 They were demanding, because what we did people's lives depended upon, and they wanted to ensure that we as the airmen understood how important it was for the aircraft to be air worthy and safe for flight. That's what we were taught and instilled in us. 00:05:31.204 --> 00:05:42.485 Did you qualify with equipment such as vehicles, aircraft, radios, weapons? If so, what was that training with that equipment like? 00:05:42.485 --> 00:06:19.574 We did total—(Forster coughs)—total airframe, from ensuring that the aircraft was ready for flight—it was fueled, it was oiled and it was pre-flighted so that when the pilots came to the aircraft, it was ready to go—as close as it could be. 00:06:19.574 --> 00:06:25.105 Did you receive any promotions, and if so, could you tell me about them? 00:06:25.105 --> 00:07:11.704 I was promoted to Airman First Class probably when I went—when I was assigned to Korea. That's E4, and you have to pass a test. You have to demonstrate competency on the equipment, understanding of the aircraft system and systems. And then once you've done that test, then the promotion is awarded, but it's not awarded until you've earned it. So each promotion was based on merit. 00:07:11.704 --> 00:07:17.264 What was the hardest part of the military lifestyle for you to adopt to. 00:07:17.264 --> 00:07:21.074 Unaccompanied tour to Korea. 00:07:21.074 --> 00:07:23.764 Why do you think that was? 00:07:23.764 --> 00:08:07.735 I just got married in Sacramento, and it was my first time overseas. And, unaccompanied tours are hard on both parties of the relationship. It was—the work in Korea, it has a severe winter and a severe monsoon season in the spring. And operating aircraft under harsh conditions is a challenge all in and of itself. 00:08:07.735 --> 00:08:13.514 So combined with the weather conditions, it created an even harder hardship— 00:08:13.514 --> 00:08:16.074 Yeah. Yeah. 00:08:16.074 --> 00:08:21.865 What was the easiest part of the military lifestyle for you to adopt to. 00:08:21.865 --> 00:08:36.375 I liked the hierarchy. You know that the chain of command works and if you follow the chain of command that everything will go smooth. 00:08:36.375 --> 00:08:46.375 What were your interactions like with people you encountered while you were doing your stateside service? 00:08:46.375 --> 00:10:15.904 Each of the NCOs (non-commissioned officers) that were teaching the aircraft maintenance and the specifics of it were concerned about the airman's capability of teaching and learning complex systems and working within a framework to make the aircraft airworthy. And I took that extremely seriously. There were times when the aircraft was not ready to go. And in aircraft maintenance records, you can red "x" it if there's a safety issue. I did—had a full bird colonel in Korea who wanted to take my airplane for some kind of flight. I told him, "Sir, you cannot take this airplane. It's grounded." And I—the reasons for it were in the aircraft maintenance records. He said, "Well, I wanna take it." And I said, "Fine, let's go to the wing commander. We'll go to the wing commander, and if you can convince him that you can take this aircraft, then it's safe even though I told you it's not safe—you go right ahead." He did not go to the wing commander. (Forster coughs.) Excuse me. 00:10:15.904 --> 00:10:21.924 So you served in Korea during while the Vietnam War was happening? 00:10:21.924 --> 00:12:29.683 Yes. The Navy lost a ship called the Pueblo in the North China Sea. And the military was staffed by the Air National Guard. So I was part of the replenishment of relieving the Air National Guard from Korea so they could go back to their jobs in industry. I met pilots from Frontier Airlines, Braniff Airlines, American Airlines, Transamerica—and that's why I went to Korea. I didn't realize at the time that it was a blessing that I was sent to Korea rather than to Vietnam, because my aircraft in Vietnam had a name called Spooky. It was mounted with a Gatling gun, a .50 caliber machine gun, and a spotlight in the back cargo door, and it flew night missions only after Agent Orange had been defoliated. I didn't know at the time that I had a much better position—job position—than, you know, just—I was just flying passengers and mail from Osan to Kunsan to Gwangju to Daegu, like an airliner route. So we did that in the morning and had lunch in Daegu and then flew back in the afternoon. That was basically what we did. But, you know, I didn't realize, like I said before, that the—(Forster coughs)—duty in Korea, while harsh—(coughs)—was way different than what I would've experienced had I've been sent to Vietnam with all my other fellow aircraft mechanics. 00:12:29.683 --> 00:12:39.865 What was your—did you create any friendships or camaraderie with people that you served with while in Korea? 00:12:39.865 --> 00:13:31.000 Yes. Each person you get to be friends with and you learn who's friendly, you know? And the senior NCOs were really good. We had a crew of flight engineers, or flight mechanics, who—they were called—we were called the Bush Airline. And I gave you a copy of the article that was in the Air Force Times, talking about the Bush Airline. We just talked about the mission that we did in Korea, and, um (long pause)— 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:32.000 —Um— 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:34.835 —I just drew blank. Go ahead. Ask me another question— 00:13:34.835 --> 00:13:40.065 —No worries. What did you do for recreation or when you were off duty? 00:13:40.065 --> 00:14:34.225 Oh! In our barracks, we had a day room, and we set up a bar in that day room. And that picture that I gave you—of me with the Olympia beer can—I was helping run the bar in the barracks. So whenever we were not flying and not scheduled to work, we were able to drink right there. We didn't have to go to the Airman's Club. We had our own thing, and we stocked it with beer, and that's that kind of thing. It was an off duty place to recreate, I guess. Some of the guys went to Taekwondo, some of us just did other odd activities. 00:14:34.225 --> 00:14:40.000 Do you recall any particularly humorous or unusual events during your off time? 00:14:40.000 --> 00:15:09.845 Well, there were so many amazing events at the bar. You know, you have to send people home—say, No, you have to go to your bunk. You can't stay here anymore (Forster laughs). But we had a Korean houseboy who took care of the common areas, and he took care of our bar. And he says, "You keep it clean" (Forster mimics accents, Beyer and Forster laugh). 00:15:09.845 --> 00:15:23.000 When you would fly on missions or in the aircraft, was there anything that you did for good luck while you were—before or after the flight? Or did it just become common that— 00:15:23.000 --> 00:16:47.404 —It's common. You do the pre-flight, you ensure that the aircraft is capable, and then you just go. We did have in-flight emergencies on several occasions. One time we were flying over Japan at Mount Fujiyama, and the wind was really severe. And the aircraft that—C-47 doesn't fly very fast. Maybe a hundred knots. You know, it's not much more than a hundred knots. And the winds were 80 knots, so we weren't making much ground speed. And the aircraft—you're flying at 10,000 feet, and at the top ceiling, and the mountain is higher than where you're flying. And when we landed in Tokyo, that particular flight, I dipped the tanks and we had, like, a very small amount of fuel. I don't know the exact amount, but it was almost out of fuel. So, but that was a severe winter and severe storm, and we flew right through it. 00:16:47.404 --> 00:17:03.365 So, what were your interactions like with the local cultures and the people you encountered while you were in Japan ; Okinawa, Japan ; or in Korea? 00:17:03.365 --> 00:21:55.865 The local people were great. Let's see, we'll talk about—in Japan, they brought us—the base flight brought us our fuel, our oil, our in-flight meals. And they're real accommodating, you know? Whatever you want—they bring you hot coffee, whatever, out to the flight line. In Okinawa, we—because I was flying people and over water, you had to go to Sea Survival School. So I was at Sea Survival School in Okinawa at Kadena Air Base. They—(Forster coughs, long pause). When the Sea Survival School was going on, part of it was we were dropped in the ocean in one-man life rafts. And the shark repellent is discharged around your life rafts, and you're left there for, I think it was eight hours—it seemed like forever. But the most important part about that is I was able to observe aircraft operations from Kadena Air Base. They were flying missions to Vietnam from Kadena. I saw an SR-71, which the military never admitted existed until recently. If you wanna see an SR-71, you have to go to the aerospace museum. That's where one is available for you to see. But they would—it just had two tails, and they would bring it out of the revetment, and bring (it) to the end of the runway. And they did very little run up time. They didn't want anybody to be able to see that aircraft, because obviously they didn't want it to be known that it existed. So they do—(Forster coughs)—a short run up, and then take off and stand it on its tail. And it was out of sight—less than a minute, just gone. And I found out later that those were flying bombing runs to Vietnam. (Forster coughs.) So then, another time—that was the Sea Survival School. Another time we went to pick up an airplane from the Second Chinese Air Force I.R.A.N. (Inspect and Repair As Necessary). It's done in Taipei, Taichung—or "Taichay," Taichung—but Taipei. Anyhow, the Second Chinese Air Force did extensive overhauls for military aircraft. When we flew in there, we went in to pick up one C-47. That was not a gunship, just one of ours. And I saw a whole line of C-47 gunships, C-119 gunships, and C-130 gunships that's a sign that the Second Chinese Air Force was doing—it's a major overhaul. They take everything off of the engine, they—engines off—and then they put it back together, and they have really high maintenance standards. When we got the engine and engine runup after it came out of the inspection, there was no oil leaks on—a recip (reciprocating) engine is notorious for a lot of oil leaks, not a little bit, but it is always leaking something somewhere. And the Second Chinese Air Force did such a good job that we had clean engines—when brought it up, opened the cowling up, was clean. Our engine people rarely did work that good. You know, so I have a great deal of respect for the people from the maintenance facility at the Second Chinese Air Force. 00:21:55.865 --> 00:22:02.045 Do you recall the day your service ended? Where were you when your service ended? 00:22:02.045 --> 00:22:20.105 I was at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, getting an "early out" to go to school. I drove cross country from MacDill Air Force Base back to San Jose, California. 00:22:20.105 --> 00:22:21.884 So you returned home? 00:22:21.884 --> 00:22:25.144 I returned to my parents' house, yeah. 00:22:25.144 --> 00:22:28.983 How were you received by your family and community when you— 00:22:28.983 --> 00:23:54.743 —By my family, fine. By the community and not for (redacted)—excuse my language. I have a tendency to be pretty frank. There was no welcome for the returning veteran. None. You know, it was at the height of the Vietnam War, the protests were going on, and I was going back to college, and I ended up in a sociology class called, Introduction to Marriage and Family. That was the only class that I could register for. And, having gone through a messy divorce while I was in the service, I was not a real joiner. You know, I was good time guy, but I didn't want anything to do with serious things. And, I ended up with—the marriage and family instructor had the class divided into groups, and they had one group with six women and me, and I ended up in that group and met my wife there. We will be married 52 years on December 9th. So, it stuck. 00:23:54.743 --> 00:24:03.265 How did you readjust to civilian life? Did you go back to work? You said you went to school. What did you do after school? 00:24:03.265 --> 00:24:24.414 I worked for an insurance company for like almost 10 years. I trained insurance agents. And then I went into my own insurance agency. I had a Farmers Insurance agency for 10 years. 00:24:24.414 --> 00:24:28.000 Did the GI Bill affect you while you were going to school? Did that help you go to— 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:28.664 —Yeah— 00:24:28.664 --> 00:24:28.674 —school? 00:24:28.674 --> 00:24:44.025 Yeah. Yeah, I went to National University, completed my—what was left of my VA, and completed my MBA on the GI Bill. That was what, '78? 00:24:44.025 --> 00:24:50.194 Did you continue any friendships after this service, and if so, for how long? 00:24:50.194 --> 00:25:04.105 One of my friends is still in Portland, and I've lost track with almost everybody else. 00:25:04.105 --> 00:25:07.243 Did you join any veterans organizations? 00:25:07.243 --> 00:25:32.144 I joined the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). But when the VFW couldn't seem to get their act together, and they couldn't decide whether I was an Army veteran or an Air Force veteran, I stopped doing business with them (Forster laughs). I said, If you don't know who I am or where I come from, I don't need to be here paying you dues (laughs). 00:25:32.144 --> 00:25:41.154 How has your service impacted your life, your community, your faith, and your family? 00:25:41.154 --> 00:27:09.605 That's—that's a big bunch (laughs). My service affected my life. I always had strong beliefs. I was fortunate enough to meet a strong woman who was able to help me in my shortcomings. We raised two kids together, one of which graduated from here (CSU San Marcos) in 2005. The other son is a tax auditor for the city of San Diego. And, we travel together. We were just recently on a Sapphire Princess Cruise to the Caribbean. We had a ten day cruise, and then we went two days to Disney World. And the kids are really important, and we just—our first granddaughter was born during COVID time. She's five years old, and she just started private school in El Cajon. I don't know if she'll ever go to a public school again. But— 00:27:09.605 --> 00:27:15.105 What are some life lessons you learned from your military service. 00:27:15.105 --> 00:27:36.694 About, your word is your bond. You need to be accountable for the things that you say, and you need to stand by your words and be complete with everyone that you deal with. 00:27:36.694 --> 00:27:46.855 What message would you like to leave for future generations who will view or hear this interview? 00:27:46.855 --> 00:28:42.505 I would like everyone to realize that when you go into the military or you go into an unfamiliar situation and you go with an open mind and an open heart, you're going to learn things that may not be in the book. They may not be—(Forster coughs)—what you think you should be, but you need to listen to your heart, I guess. But you need to learn from people who offer their knowledge. And it may not always make sense. It's important to be open to new opportunities and apply yourself. 00:28:42.505 --> 00:28:58.204 Thank you for taking the time to share your recollections of your military service. Is there anything you've always wanted to share about your service or veteran experience that you never had before? 00:28:58.204 --> 00:29:01.095 No, I don't think so. 00:29:01.095 --> 00:29:05.414 What do you wish more people knew about veterans? 00:29:05.414 --> 00:30:29.144 That they are people who have the same wants and aspirations as you do, but have chosen to go into the service for whatever reason they go there. But they end up benefiting much more than they expected because you learn from life experiences, you learn from positive experiences. In the Air Force, I didn't get to see a lot of the world, but I did see a lot more than most people do. You know, in my experiences of going to Korea, or going to Okinawa, or to Taipei to the overall facility. All of those are learning experiences, and each one you meet people who are really important to the operation, to the aircraft, to the people. And they have a tendency to consider that it's important that you understand the reasons why you're doing something as well as doing it well. 00:30:29.144 --> 00:30:36.944 In your unveiling of the journey, what are the lessons learned from your military experience? 00:30:36.944 --> 00:31:43.934 There are so, so many. You know, I just, I learned a skill that I did not know before I went in. It could have taken a job—a job, um, what I wanna say—a job, uh, United Airlines—I was offered a job when I came back from the Air Force. One of my friends, my parents' neighbors was a corporate attorney for United Airlines. And he says, We can send you to Chicago to our maintenance facility. You can be an aircraft mechanic there. And I just met my wife and I said, My desire to work in harsh environments again is not something I wanna do (Forster laughs, coughs). So I turned him down, and I ended going into the insurance business. 00:31:43.934 --> 00:31:45.535 Thank you for your time today. 00:31:45.535 --> 00:31:46.535 Thank you. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the &#13 ; creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. &#13 ; Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=ForsterJamesRobert_BeyerJason_2022-11-22_access.xml ForsterJamesRobert_BeyerJason_2022-11-22_access.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/19 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Forster II, James Robert. Interview November 22nd, 2024. Description An account of the resource James Robert Forster II served in Korea as a crew chief and flight mechanic for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War and reached his highest rank of E5 Staff Sergeant. Forster recalled the challenges of an unaccompanied tour to Korea, the strains it put on his first marriage, as well as his return home during the height of the anti-war movement. He praised the education and experiences he gained from military service, including travel, recreation, training, and the G.I. Bill. After military service, Forster worked in the insurance business and met his wife at university. He reflected on his family, travels after retirement, and the life lessons he learned from military service. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-070 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-11-22 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource James Robert Forster II Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jason Beyer Marilyn Huerta Adel Bautista Subject The topic of the resource United States. Air Force—Veterans Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Aircraft mechanics United States. Air Force—Noncommissioned officers West Valley College (Saratoga, Calif.) McClellan Air Force Base (Calif.) Kadena Air Base (Okinawa-ken, Japan) MacDill Air Force Base (Fla.) National University (San Diego, Calif.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Korea Vietnam Wichita (Kan.) San Jose (Calif.) Sacramento (Calif.) North China Sea Osan (Korea) Kunsan (Korea) Gwangju (Korea) Daegu (Korea) Mount Fuji (Japan) Tokyo (Japan) Okinawa (Japan) Taipei (Taiwan) Taichung (Taiwan) Tampa (Fla.) Portland (Or.) San Diego (Calif.) Caribbean El Cajon (Calif.) Chicago (Ill.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. James Robert Forster II License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving image Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. San Diego Veterans History Initiative Community history San Diego Veterans History Initiative Veteran experience