Oral History Program Jack Magdiel Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 6 May 2021-5 June 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jack Magdiel Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 6 May 2021-15 June 2021 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Magdiel, Jack, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 6 May 2021-15 June 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Jack Magdiel which began on May 6, 2021 in his home in Bountiful, Utah. The first portion of the interview was recorded in his home, the rest was done through an email exchange that continued through June 15, 2021. Jack talks about learning to live with his ADHD, and how it had affected his life and career. He talks about his time at Weber State University and his subsequent career and life experiences. Alyssa Kammerman was present for the in-person interview, and Kyle Jackson helped with the email exchange. Also included are some of Jack’s personal writings at the end of the interview. JM: By the way, my real name is John. I go by Jack. I almost don't know how to respond when people call me John. When I was born, my grandfather was an immigrant from Norway at the turn of the century. He had a very thick Norwegian accent. I had a couple of teenage cousins and we were having some family function up on Capitol Hill, and my grandfather was very proud. I was maybe a year old or something, and he was introducing us. He was Yohn da first, my dad was Yohn da second and I was Yohn the "turd." So they've been calling me Yohn da "turd" for my entire life. LR: I like that. I'm really glad you shared it. All right, my first question is really simple, when and where were you born? JM: February 12, 1941. My parents were living in Ogden, they had just moved from Salt Lake and my mother's doctor was at Holy Cross Hospital up on South Temple in Salt Lake. Abraham Lincoln and I share that birthday, and we share a few other traits. Maybe it's somewhere in the stars or something. 1 LR: Like what, for instance, the traits? JM: Well, all my life through my first marriage, I was a very active Mormon and most of my siblings were not. A couple of them became alcoholics. Both of our fathers, my first wife and I, were alcoholics and so that had a very big effect. If you read books on adult children of alcoholics, it screws your life up a lot and people can have higher levels of suicide, depression is suffered and there's about five approaches, of adult children of alcoholics. One is the lost child, the clown, the alcoholic and all that stuff, and then the hero. It turns out that both my first wife and I had the hero response, which it was our mission in life to correct all of the difficulties of alcoholism from previous generations, all in our generation. We really did a number of our kids with religion. We did with religion to our children what our parents did with alcoholism. LR: Ok. So you were born at Holy Cross, but you were raised in Ogden? JM: Yes, my parents were renting a house on Monroe Boulevard between 24th and 23rd Street. In general, I was very lucky because my father was a very functioning alcoholic. He always had the job. He always brought home the bacon. And then we were fortunate that he was a mushy alcoholic. Some alcoholics get nasty and mean and abusive, but my father was mushy. My father, I don't know if you call it doted on me, but he was generally very proud notwithstanding. He was an all-around great athlete. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, he was all state quarterback at South High School. His yearbook is just full of Johnny Pictures. I have four siblings. Joan Rae is my older sister, born May 17, 1938. Janet was my younger sister, born May 31, 1945. She passed away March 2015 of 2 health problems. Geri is next, born November 22, 1947. She lives in the home my parents built in Ogden. Jeffery Arnold was a late in life brother born when I was a senior at Ogden High. He died in a motorcycle accident in June 2011. He and I were separated by age and so didn’t become close until the last several years of his life. We rode on a weeklong motorcycle ride about a year before his final ride. He was a natural stand-up comedian and would take over a room at any gathering. But early on, both my sister and I, my older sister, remember my dad would get home from work late. It was during World War Two. My mother had a job down at the train depot on 25th Street, so she'd have to be to work and he'd get home late and they'd start fighting. When you're a little kid and your mom threatens to leave and she's never coming home, that's not a good thing for a parent to do. It made it very insecure for us. On the other hand, I had a couple of siblings that dealt with addiction and I've had some beautiful experiences with recovery with a couple of them as well. LR: OK, so what did your father do again? JM: He worked for the telephone company Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph, that's back when it was the phone company. The thing that my father did that was super for me and it had an incredible impact on who I became now is that he used to take me to work with him a lot. We'd get in his telephone truck and go up to Huntsville because he'd get called up there. Later, when I got older, he'd get called out at night, something would break, so I used to go with him at night. As I reflect back, I wish I could talk to him now, because we were just the 3 typical blue-collar family. Dad went to work and mom, for the most part, did not work. As we got on she got different jobs and had to work outside the home. But I remember in the age range around five to eight, we always had dinner together as a family. That's really, really important I've learned. Back then, Dad would come home for lunch and Mom would have dinner on the table. But the good thing about it is he created a relationship between the two of us, that it was very important that I please him and generally he was typical of that generation. When you were bad, he'd make you get your own stick to spank yourself with. That turns out to be kind of common when you talk to a lot of people from that era. I never detected that he was ever abusive unless you call the psychological abuse of making a little kid get his own stick. So we lived on Monroe until I was about four or five and they bought a home down on Adams between 29th and 30th Street. It was a fixer upper. My dad was very smart and he grew up with my grandfather who was also quite smart, and they were in the construction business. My dad could fix anything. They bought this house and I remember it didn't have a basement, so he had to dig under the house and put a furnace in there. I remember that as a child. When I was in sixth grade, I was in some basketball league thing or something, and I hated every minute of it. My dad would always come to the games and occasionally after the game he'd try to coach me because at that point, I wasn't that competitive. I was just out there running up and down. So my father created this relationship with me that it was very important for me to make him proud. I know for several years, he worked in what was called the main office 4 down on 26th Street, just about Washington; that big white telephone company building used to be the central switching place when they used to have mechanical switches that would go when people would dial their rotary phones. There was a fellow that was the janitor down there, a student at the University of Utah going to engineering school. Sometimes my dad would come home and he was just glowing about this kid that was going to engineering school at the University of Utah. So that had an impact. So that was my father. My mother was a very outgoing personality, people liked both of my parents. Sometimes my mother did some things to me, to my brain, but I felt generally positive in my development. My mother would say things about my having an inferiority complex. It was interesting because maybe that's the way that generation described depression or being down or something. But anyway, she was constantly comparing me to one of my cousins, and I felt inferior to him and so I competed with him; not directly but if he accomplished something, like Eagle Scout, I would get my Eagle Scout. LR: What are your memories of your mom working at the train depot? JM: These are some of my earliest memories so I must have been about 3 years old. This was during World War II and Ogden was a major train station for troops passing through. Mom had a very friendly and outgoing personality and so made friends with some of the MPs who were stationed at the depot. I remember one in particular who became friends with Mom and Dad. He and his wife and kids came to our house a few times. His name was Morgan. This was also the first recollection of my parents arguing. It occurred 5 when dad would get home from work late when Mom needed the car to go to work. This was particularly hard on my sister, Joan, and me because she would threaten to leave and never come back. LR: You kept saying your mother said you had an inferiority complex. Do you know what she meant by that? Did you feel that way about yourself at the time? Did you ever feel that you were singled out from your siblings? JM: I don’t know why she said that or what it meant. I think I felt it was kind of a “putdown”. I don’t know what her motivation was. Maybe it was because some of the time she would compare me to my cousin. I generally felt I was less than he was. It’s funny because all of my siblings, me included, felt that I was “mom’s favorite”. I think this was due to the fact that I never argued with mom. I just listened to her and then did what I wanted. Equally important, I was “religious,” and being religious became Mom’s most important criterion for who she would value. I had excellent youth/scout leaders as I grew up. LR: Do you remember the end of World War Two? JM: Do I ever! My father played drums in a dance orchestra and so when the war ended, Mom got Dad’s bass drum out on the front porch and started banging it. Monroe Blvd was jammed with cars honking their horns. I was just 4 and ½ years old at the time so barely old enough to understand. Both my sister Joan and I were aware of the war because we would play in the living room as if we were being attacked and we would call out the names of several uncles who were serving in the war, to come and save us. LR: How did WWII affect you at the time? You mentioned you and your sister would 6 play like you were being attacked. Was the war scary or exciting to you? JM: I was born February 12, 1941 just 11 months before the Pearl Harbor attack so was not aware of anything. By the time I began developing memories, WW2 was well in progress. So WWII was just the world I was born into so I didn’t know anything else. We were secure in our home so the war didn’t affect us. It just was the world as I began developing memories. I don’t remember “scary or exciting”, just life the way it was. Since my dad had a “critical” job and was able to be home with us, we were generally secure other than the developing alcohol problem. LR: What dance orchestra did your father play drums with? What venues did he play it? How long did he play? JM: He played in just a local 5-piece band. During the war years they actually played concerts at some of the military hospitals for the wounded war people. They were good. They were quite the showmen. They were doing a concert at a hospital one time and they had set up a false stage with butcher paper out in front of the band. During one of their numbers the trombone player secretly left the stage and climbed under the false paper stage and at the appropriate time stood up and broke through the paper and blasted out a super trombone solo. It went over big time. When I went to Jr High School at Central Junior High, they used to hire his band to play for our dances. It was really neat. He was good. Every once in a while, he would beat out a solo and it was super to watch. He could beat the hell out of those drums. He never learned how to read music so he simply played by 7 ear as he went along. Maybe this is why I like music better when they don’t read music—just play it the way you feel. I don’t remember his playing much beyond my Jr High days. LR: Did you play an instrument growing up? JM: I took saxophone for a short while in Jr. High but never did anything with it. This is an example of my ADHD and not being able to follow through. I did get a harmonica for Christmas back in 1968 and by the end of the day I could play several tunes by ear. Just looking at written music makes my head spin. I think I would like to play something if I could learn just by ear. Oh, that reminds me. Years ago, I got a clarinet for Christmas and by the end of the day I could play a few tunes even though I had never played a clarinet. I just figured it out. The following year they formed a Stake Orchestra and I played (sort of) in that. Funny thing, it made me cry. I felt I had done something to be proud of. LR: Let's go back before I forget. What were your parents' names? JM: Johnny was my father, of course. And then Mercy. Her name was Mercy Evangeline Dalabout. But she went by Marie. She was a Dutchman. Her parents emigrated from Holland. LR: So your father was Norwegian and your mother was Dutch. An interesting heritage. You've talked a little bit about your childhood, but there was a story that I was reading about, one of your Christmases when you got this pedal car that your father reconditioned. JM: Oh, yeah. This is what was neat about my family, they were from very limited resources. They lived through the Depression, my grandfather being an 8 immigrant, so the first three or four Christmases, my dad would just go out and buy used toys and refurbish them. I got this car, this little pedal car, gees I'd give anything to have that now because it had fenders like old cars used in that era, and it had a trunk and I could put a few tools in it. My dad refurbished it and painted it and it was brand new, and that's what I got for Christmas. I must have only been four at the most and I’d go up and down the sidewalk on Monroe Boulevard in that thing and I just loved it. A couple of Christmases later we moved down to Adams to the home that they had purchased, and that's where I got my first bicycle. It was a used bicycle that he had refurbished. When we lived on Monroe, there was a driveway on 24th Street and somebody had a bike with little wheels like this. I think I must've just gone over to learn how to ride it. I spent days going up in this driveway and back down and everything. So I've always loved mechanical things and bicycles. LR: You said had a lifelong love of mechanics. Were you the type of child that enjoyed taking things apart and putting them back together again? Or did you simply enjoy observing the way they worked? JM: Probably more the observer. I remember in elementary school we had a fad of taking apart clocks and playing with the motors. I do remember figuring out how they worked, however, and I do have a high mechanical aptitude. When my first bicycle got a flat tire, my dad fixed it with me watching and that was the last time he ever had to fix anything for me again. While I do have an aptitude, I hate fixing things including computers or anything else. When I was in High School my dad had an old surplus WWII army truck and I changed the engine in our 9 garage with a set of Sears Craftsman wrenches. I can’t believe I did it to this day. I was never a scholar. That's no understatement, but I always could grasp things quickly. I never felt like I was dumb. Let me go through the ADD part starting from the first grade. I was this cute little boy in the first grade, and the punishment for disruptive behavior was you have to stand behind the piano for five minutes. My very first day of school, I had to stand behind the piano six times. The funny thing is I don't remember it and in the first grade when you're starting to learn how to read Dick and Jane stuff, I never had any trouble reading out loud, but I still do have problems reading quietly. I've been in so many remedial reading classes. I think the reason why it never crossed my mind that I had ADD is because I never felt hyperactive. But in the fifth grade, when you start learning fractions, I learned fractions by sitting at my desk and staring out the window at the house across the street, and I was doing fractions in my head. One time my teacher, and by the way, my fifth-grade teacher is probably the only teacher that I had through public school years that I felt liked me or was concerned about me. But one time she made me stay after school because she wanted to make sure I wasn't just copying it, so I did, and she was satisfied. LR: What is the name of your fifth-grade teacher? And what did she do differently that made you feel like she cared or liked you? How was she different? JM: Mrs. Seager. Taylor Elementary School. I’m not sure. Maybe she just liked all her students. What is interesting is that after we graduated from Taylor Elementary and went to Central Jr. High, as we walked home from school, we 10 would often stop by her classroom before she had left for the day just to say hello and visit. I think she may have given me positive feedback and made me feel I might be a little smart. She is a person from my life and development that I would love to meet and give a hug to. That is significant. One thing I do really remember is that her husband was a Mormon bishop and when we were studying about the American Indians, she played a 16-millimeter movie for our class which depicted how the Indians migrated over the Bering Strait through Alaska. As I grew older, I thought, “Hum, that ain’t quite how I learned it in Church.” I think one thing that stands out is I had a sense of her integrity. I sensed she really did love her students. My sixth-grade teacher, I think, hated my guts because I must have been so disruptive. She was a typical school teacher with a “blue” personality (see Taylor Hartman’s book, “The Color Code”). At that point in time, I might have been the class clown or something. She took my desk and put it back in the far corner of the room, isolated me from the rest of the class. I still got through school, but I usually got pretty much straight U's, unsatisfactory in citizenship and stuff. But I played well with my peers. The funny thing about that, when I went to junior high school at Central Junior High School, I was a student body officer every year. I was vice president of the seventh grade, president of the eighth grade, and student body president in the ninth grade. I kept getting this feedback from my mother that I had an inferiority complex. Some of that stuff doesn't connect, you know, and then I got straight Us, but all these people voted me their president. So that was kind of an interesting dichotomy. 11 LR: What prompted you to run for student body officer? What was it about Jr High that made you want to run for SBO? JM: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I obviously had some self-esteem. I must not have had an inferiority complex. I guess I needed to prove something to myself and I had a friend in my neighborhood who used to put me down a lot. Maybe I was trying to prove something to him. I found this Eagle Scout ring on eBay last summer, and I'm an Eagle Scout because my cousin Roger, who was the city attorney, got his Eagle Scout badge. They were up visiting my mother and bragging about Roger. I wasn't an Eagle Scout, and I thought, “The hell I'm not?” I had a super adult leader at the time, one of the people who formed my character and who I became. He encouraged me and I got my Eagle Scout badge and it was very formative. That thing got me through engineering school in effect, because if you can get 21 merit badges, you can do anything. That's what it did to my brain. LR: You mentioned that you had excellent youth and scout leaders growing up. What were their names? What did you like about them? How did they impact your life or the way you saw yourself? JM: Harold Strand was my Explorer Scout Leader, (14-year-old scouts), Bishop Sterling Rose and Bob Spencer were two of the youth leaders as I was growing up. Harold Strand is the leader who began encouraging me to achieve my “Eagle Scout” badge. Becoming an Eagle Scout was one, if not the most important event that formed the foundation of who I became. I remember when I first looked at the requirement to achieve 21 merit badges as the main 12 requirement, I said to myself, “Yeah sure, why don’t I get 21 merit badges.” It looked insurmountable at the time. So when I achieved it I felt there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish. My self-confidence soared. It was a major factor in not even questioning going to engineering school—I could do anything. One of the saddest things in the history of our country is the failure of the Boy Scouts of America. Up until recently, it was a factor in getting an appointment to a military academy. I would say it is the most important factor in any achievement I have made since. Harold was a member of the Snow Basin ski patrol and so he went to Snow Basin every Saturday and I rode up there with him every week and got to ski all day. I even got to go skiing with Harold before he died. When we got on the chair lift that day our combined ages were 150 years old. One of the joys of my life is that I got to take Harold and later Bob Spencer and his wife for a ride and out to lunch in one of my big trucks before they died. I gave them hats, and other Right Way Trucking gear on these outings. The other factor in these adult leaders is that when I went on outings every year with them, there was no drinking or smoking. I was impressed with the difference of when I went hunting with my dad and his friends, the contrast was so dramatic that I decided that I was going to follow the non-drinking lifestyle. I had a great three years at Ogden high school, got probably C's and one of my best friends had the same mental disorder I do. Bart Nielsen, I don't know if you ever heard of him. He's the head emergency room physician at Davis 13 Hospital. But anyway, Bart and I were in auto mechanics together, and one time the teacher said, “There's an old car in there. I need you guys to roll that car out.” So we rolled it out. We backed that like this and then we rolled it down the whole length of the garage, like tipping it over, end-over-end, the whole length of the garage. Bart and I did stuff like that. LR: What was your favorite subject in high school and why? JM: Short answer—messing around, because I was pioneering the new concept of ADD. Seriously, Physics. I had a really good teacher and physics is really fun. LR: When did your love of physics start and what was the teacher’s name? JM: Newell Budge was my High School physics teacher. This is where I really started liking physics. He must have been a good teacher. I do remember liking the class and this probably lead to my interest in engineering. LR: So were you in the student body at Ogden High in any way? JM: No, what happened was, it's really interesting. As I look back on it, I was very slow going through puberty and my voice hadn't changed. When I went to Ogden high school, I was still a little squeaky. Here's what else was so fun about Ogden high school. I went in to Ogden high school as a sophomore, five foot one, 105 pounds. I came out six foot one and 125 pounds. So I was about that thick and about this long and it was kind of fun. I think my voice was starting to change when I was a senior. So it was kind of hard to impress too many girls. LR: Having ADHD, how did you manage to graduate from high school? JM: I do remember a deep desire to achieve eventually. When some of my friends were taking “easy” classes, I deliberately took hard math, physics, etc. just in 14 case I decided to go to college. Maybe it had something to do with pleasing my dad even though at the time that wasn’t too important. Then again, even though just having fun with my friends was important, I think this demonstrates a depth of thought/character I must have had. This is where I think DNA plays a major role in who we become. I have become fascinated with the role of DNA/environment plays in who we become. LR: You mentioned believing that DNA helped give you that drive to graduate High School. Why do you say that? Is there a specific family member from whom you may have inherited that drive? JM: I don’t know. In the last several years I have become fascinated by the role of DNA vs environment. I really believe we have less control of who we are than we think. I really don’t know of any family member who could have contributed the DNA. One of the most amazing things, however, is the difference in siblings. The difference between my siblings and me could cause you to wonder how they all came down the same birth channel. When you have children the difference is even more pronounced and then come grandchildren. When I was really devoting my time to religion, is when I started to question this. To some a “testimony” just comes naturally. In my case, I always had questions. I handled it by just stuffing my questions and going about my responsibilities in the church. Following the divorce, I finally had to embark on my study. LR: How/when did you meet your first wife? JM: Karen’s big sister and my big sister were friends. When we both got old enough 15 to go to “Mutual” they introduced us and from then on promoted a romance—12 years old. Pretty soon we became the darling couple in the Ward in which we were growing up. Many of the women in the ward, I think, began having a vicarious romance through us. I remember occasionally when we were “fighting”, some of the ladies in the ward were visibly shaken to the point of tears. Karen was a year behind me is school so when I moved from Central Jr High to Ogden High, we kind of didn’t date but then when she graduated and came to Ogden, we began “going steady.” When I graduated and went to Weber College, she was still in High School. We ended up getting married after she graduated from high school in September, 1960. I have sometimes wondered if escaping from our alcoholic homes may have played a role. I believe biology played a role and the Church’s strict stance on not fooling around before marriage had some influence. My Bishop at the time really tried to convince me to go on a “mission”. We decided to get married. Think about this. We met when we were 12 years old. We pretty much only dated each other until we eventually married and we were to make an eternal commitment from that and with that experience. The amazing thing is we were married for 36 ½ years. LR: How many children did you have and what are their names? JM: Son John David Magdiel, Dave 1961. Son Kenneth Robert Magdiel 1965. Daughter Niquel Magdiel 1968. LR: Why did you start attending Weber College? And how did you continue after your first “D” in math, when it would have been so easy to give up? 16 JM: I always knew I was going to go to college. Make something of yourself. Weber College was in my home town of Ogden. My first “D” in math came in the spring of 1960 and we were planning our marriage in September of that year and I simply was distracted and not paying attention. This was before I had a clue about ADHD. The second “D” came in the fall of that year right after our marriage and I was distracted again. I also ignored the rule you had to have Analytical Geometry as a prerequisite to Calculus. That was the class I got the first “D”. Why did I not just quit? I really believe that DNA plays a role in who we become. I believe the influence of my father was a factor—I didn’t want to disappoint him. By now, we were expecting our first child and that was a factor. I did not want a menial job to raise a family. “I was better than that”. When I was at Weber College, kids don't know what they want to be when they start college. I was going to be an architect one quarter and then I decided I was going to go into civil engineering. Then I got to physics, and once I got to physics at Weber College, gees my head just exploded. I just love it. I love math. That red book over there with the Black Label on it. It's one of my favorite books. The teacher of physics at Weber at that time was one of the best teachers I've ever had. I think his name was Paul Huish. LR: Why did you say your Physics teacher was the best you ever had? JM: Professor Huish was simply a super teacher. He made physics come alive. I also started Physics as I was recovering from my “Ds” and so this was the turning point in my life where I began to learn how to learn. I found Physics so 17 interesting. It also helped me realize I really might be a little smart. I’ll give you an example of ADHD: Bart got a year behind me when we went to Weber College and started going through college. He was too busy still playing around and drinking beer and stuff. Finally, he shows up at the University of Utah Engineering School one year behind me, and I was at the top of the class. I was smoking thermodynamics and all of the serious math stuff. I couldn't do some of the stuff where you just had to read and memorize it. So he shows up a year behind me and he's the top guy in his class, graduates with a degree in engineering, goes out and works for six months. He said, “I don't want to be an engineer, I want to be a doctor,” so then he went to medical school. That is so typical of ADD. LR: ADHD made it so hard for you to focus/learn; how did you figure out a learning style, which then allowed you to get the education you wanted, including a master’s degree? JM: ADHD is a two-edged sword. ADHDers can hyper focus when they are interested. I think Prof. Huish was such a great teacher in Physics that I just got super interested. Physics is the foundation of Mechanical Engineering so from then on I was playing in a real fun sand box. LR: What college did you get your master’s degree from? JM: University of Utah, College of Engineering. LR: You mentioned there was some trouble getting your master’s thesis accepted. Tell me about what happened and what was your thesis about? JM: Instrumentation associated with the compression of granular solids. There was a 18 graduate assistant on the thesis review committee and he is the one who rejected it. By then I had accepted a job in Dearborn, MI with the Ford Motor Company, I was flat broke, and so I just left and took the Job. My second son was born shortly after we got to Michigan. After a while, I begin to think I should get that taken care of or I might never get it. So I simply had a secretary retype it. I didn’t change a word. I sent it out to the University of Utah, scheduled a new defense, flew out and it was approved as originally written. LR: What was your first job after graduating? JM: Ford Motor Company, Dearborn Michigan. LR: What were your duties for your job at Ford? JM: The first two years were designated the “Graduate Training Program” which consisted of several assignments of three to six months in various engineering departments designed to give me a look at where I might want to work and where I could be of value to Ford. It was a great experience and for a “kid” who loved cars it was like getting out of school and going to Disneyland for two years. I had access to all kinds of cars including competitor models. Occasionally another young engineer and I would each get a car and meet out on the “East/West” straight away and have impromptu drag races. It was really fun. I had access to a super-hot Mustang with a 390 high performance engine. I took it out on the handling course several times. It was so powerful, you could steer the rear end with the throttle and the front with the steering wheel. I could take corners so fast, smoke would come billowing up past the window from the front tires 19 smoking. It was also fun because if you lost it, you would just straighten it out, go across the field and get back on the road. One time I took a couple of my “Mormon” friends for a ride and scared the heck out of them. When I say my life story is going to be titled Riding the Yo-yo because I have been very financially good, and I've actually been bankrupt. So I've been up and down and a lot of it is just some of this ADD. At my 25-year high school reunion, I was doing fine and I had this old ‘56 Ford convertible piece of junk I traded that green pickup for, but it was a piece of junk for years. Finally, I got to a point where I think, “I can restore that,” and so I did. I spent about a year restoring everything and that car was unfreaking, believable. I finished it the day before my 25-year reunion. It had pipes, gees it was a bitch. At the picnic out in North Ogden, I went up in the parking lot and got it. I rounded up a bunch of the girls from my school. I think there's nine of the chicks from high school saying I wasn't mature enough, so I went up and got it out of the parking lot and I rounded up all those chicks and we put them in there and I came down into the picnic area wrapping the pipes. My wife at the time, she was sitting down there, she couldn't believe it. But that is a really nice car. I've got a picture of it, almost a professional picture of it. I've got an album over there that shows the frame and it shows the body through the entire process. Back then that was back in 1984 maybe. It cost nineteen thousand dollars and that's a lot of money and that's a little bit of money now. Anyway, at the end of the two years training program, my ADHD kicked in, we wanted to move back our west and so I took a job with IBM in Boise, Idaho as 20 a sales trainee—Marketing Representative. LR: Before we go any further, I want to ask about your memories of the death of President Kennedy. JM: I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in ME181, Aerodynamics, and when the class ended, people were beginning to gather in the hall. We worked our way into an empty classroom and someone must have had a radio so we all suspended whatever we were about to do and just started listening. John Kennedy was so charismatic and I thought he was super. I was still a somewhat liberal democrat at the time. I was too busy thinking engineering and didn’t take time to think politics. When I went home of course we watched it continuously for the next several days. I bet it was a week before we could begin to function and get back to school. As I reflect on the divisiveness of our present time, I think back to the 60’s. The race riots in Detroit, Los Angeles, and other places. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy—unbelievable. LR: What do you remember about the Moon Landing in 1969? JM: During the decade leading up to the Moon mission, I was in engineering school. I loved thermodynamics which is the foundation of rocket science. So I was super interested in news of space. By 1969, I had quit my job with Ford Motor Company and had taken a job with IBM in Boise, Idaho. On the day of the landing I was at a customer location and we were all watching. It was exciting. It was all the more exciting to me because of my engineering background. I understood it. I understood the math 21 and the Physics. LR: When talking about the moon landing you said you were at a customer's business. Talk a bit more about that experience. Was it a sales call, was the customer already watching the coverage, what were the conversations like? JM: I was at a customer’s place of business. I think they must have had a TV because it was a big deal to watch. I was helping the customer install a new IBM computer for their business. It was a very positive feeling on everybody’s part. This occurred at the end of the 60’s following the assassinations and riots, etc. and so was a great piece of positive news following several years of very bad news and great political divisiveness. LR: You mentioned that quite a few events from the 1960s correlated with events going on today. How did those events impact you then and how are they helping you face and interpret the challenges of today? JM: We lived in Dearborn, Michigan when the Detroit “race riots” happened. We happened to be driving down a major thoroughfare in Dearborn, a close suburb of Detroit, and we were the only car on the road. It was like a weird movie, no other cars. Then several days later, we were traveling to the Mormon Pageant in Palmyra, NY and our route took us through downtown Detroit where we encountered a Police car followed by a military truck full of armed soldiers. We went this way so we could cross a portion of Ontario, Canada because it was shorter. The correlation was that the 60’s was as divisive if not more so than now but for a different reason—race. 22 I see that for different reasons, divisiveness has always been with us. I see a correlation between human behavior and animal behavior on the Serengeti—every morning we wake up and there are predators ready to attack us—in our case the predators are everything from criminals to politicians to whatever, preying on our stuff, thoughts, and freedoms. As with animals who must be vigilant, we must be vigilant to protect our interests. LR: Were you worried about being drafted for Vietnam? How did the Vietnam War affect your day-to-day activities? JM: I was exempt from the draft because I was married. I was also in school. So the Vietnam War didn’t really affect me directly. I have always had an interest in flying. I took the Navy pilot test back at Weber College and so every summer a recruiter would fly through Salt Lake and one time he took me for a ride. I loved it. He did some aerobatics and that just excited me more. I considered joining when I graduated but by then I had one son and a second on the way. Also I had many job offers to go to work as an engineer. It seemed like the more prudent thing to do with a family. LR: During this time the Cold War was at its height, how did this affect your home and work life? What would you tell your children if they had questions? Would you run drills with your family? At work? JM: My only memories of the Cold War were from my elementary school days where we would hide under our desks to protect us from nuclear attack. Other than that as I grew older I did become a news junkie and so read a lot about it. I was just a child during the Korean War and was aware of the 23 development of jet airplanes. This is probably where the Cold War began. Following grade school, I really don’t have much awareness and it did not affect my family as we began raising our kids. LR: Working for IBM. What was your specific job? You mentioned that “At the time, IBM workers were seen as being as smart as God.” Why? Did that help boost your confidence in your ability to succeed? JM: This is one of the classic examples of ADHD. Three years at Ford Motor Company was about the extent of my attention span. Also as a teenager we had taken a family trip to California and happened to visit an Uncle who was in sales. He had a much better home than my parents and more importantly had a brandnew Chevrolet convertible company car. That registered. Sales. So after a Master’s in engineering I decided I wanted to be a salesman. IBM at the time was recognized as the greatest sales organization in the world. This is all because of the leadership in the founding of IBM, Thomas Watson. They had an incredible training program—two years of class interspersed with time in the field with senior “marketing representatives”. Having gone through the training and eventually being promoted to the Marketing Training center in Los Angeles, I can say there is some question that it could be brainwashing. We did come out of training with above average self-confidence. My IBM experience is foundational in who I am today. I witnessed some of the most incredible leadership. During the 60’s and 70’s you had to ask yourself, where do they get these people? One of the mentors of my life is John Sailors, the manager of the Boise office who hired me and coached me in my 24 early training and development. IBM is where I learned the fundamental principle of business or any profession. I came to the conclusion that the hardest part of any endeavor was to learn the questions. Questions are the foundation to all progress in any field. LR: Why is John Sailors a mentor? JM: John Sailors was the Branch Manager of the IBM Office in Boise and the person who hired me into IBM. He was one of the most committed IBMers I have ever known and also happened to be a great “coach” for a young salesman in training. At the time, he used to be quite overbearing and I didn’t like him sometimes. But from my life perspective now, he was a great coach/mentor/trainer and influenced who I have become in terms of sales skills, goal setting, and selfconfidence. It’s like you really can’t appreciate the IBM training and how it gave me and others so much self-confidence that we all had the attitude we could do anything. (Like starting a trucking company with no experience.) LR: You mentioned that the new-hire training at IBM was almost like Brainwashing. Could you expound on that? What was training like for a new IBM worker? And how long were you at that job? JM: IBM training at the time was more intense and higher pressure than my entire educational experience. During my first 10-week classroom training in San Francisco, they actually fired a couple of people just to let us all know how serious they were. For example, when an account had multiple offices, each office was assigned a local Marketing Representative to service that account. I 25 was assigned to such an account that was controlled out of the Salt Lake Office of IBM. As the Boise representative, I had to call the Salt Lake Office to get approval to order a keypunch machine for the Boise Office. I called Salt Lake and asked for the Salt Lake representative and was informed he had quit. So I called his manager who before he became a manager in Salt Lake had been one of my instructors in my Sales Training class a couple of years before in San Jose, CA. I had developed a fun friendship with him when I was in sales school and so I asked him, “What happened to ‘so and so?” He replied, “So and so had jello balls. If you want to be an IBMer, you’ve got to have ‘big brass balls that clang together when you walk down the street.” This was so typical of the incredible level of self-esteem with which we came out of IBM training. There were no limits to what we could do. I worked for IBM for eight years—five in Boise and three in Los Angeles as a Marketing trainer. My ADHD kicked in and I decided I wanted to own my own business and we wanted to move back to Boise to finish raising our kids. When I quit, I started a small print shop in Boise. One of the funny things, I was meeting with a paper salesman before we opened and I asked him, “What kind of paper should I stock?” He said I ought to stock so many reams of this and so many reams of that and finally I had to stop him and ask him what a ream of paper was. That is typical of the IBM training. We simply didn’t understand what we couldn’t do. I started a printing business and I didn’t even know what a ream of paper was. IBM surgically removed our can’t/no button. While I was learning the printing business, another ex-IBMer stopped by 26 my office on the way home from work. He was working in downtown Boise at the Department of Education. He said, “Did you know the government will write us a check if we start a Student Loan Guarantee Agency?” I said, “The hell they will.” Neither of us had a clue what that meant. Over the course of 1978 to now, we raised over $240 million dollars in student loan funding. Following a 10-year lawsuit with the US Department of Education, we won a suit in the amount of approximately $12 million dollars and that became the source for the scholarship funding at Weber State University and others. LR: You keep saying that you believe DNA plays a role in who we become. What traits do you believe you inherited from your family? Do you feel like you descended from a long line of hard workers and achievers? Or is the desire to please your father hereditary? JM: Based on my personal experience I believe we have far less choice in who we become than we think we do. After raising three kids, eight grandkids, and five great grandkids this is reinforced. It’s hard to believe they came from the same parents—infinitely different. There are 23 chromosomes and the number of combinations of 23 chromosomes is mathematically 23 factorial. That means there can be 25,852,016,738,885,000,000,000 variations of people. It helps to explain that siblings following each other through the same birth channel can be so different. My theory could be completely wrong but it helps me walk through Walmart and try to make some sense of people watching. I don’t know the answer. I know there are some similarities and some 27 traits you can see in some of my progenitors. I have read countless biographies of great leaders and achievers and it is amazing how similar they are. I just stumbled across a personality profile of me from a test I had taken a few years back. It is amazing. My first thought in reading it was, “somebody’s been reading my mail”. LR: How did you get diagnosed with ADHD? JM: When I was hospitalized for clinical depression, ADHD came out as a result of scoring 100% on some written tests from a textbook written by Dr. Edward Hallowell. I was going through that depression and having come from an alcoholic home, you could not get anything through these lips that would affect my brain. Finally, they talked me into Zoloft and Zoloft worked a little bit. I was living with my first wife and we were still very religious. We had a home up on the hill and they'd come over and lay their hands on my head and bless me and everything. Finally, I just said, “Look, none of this is working,” so I went and checked myself into the University of Utah neuropsychiatric clinic. It turned out to be a great learning experiences because I was in there with people who had failed at suicide and I was in there with this. It's funny, this is what happens to me almost anywhere where I go away, I always end up with the outliers and all the people that I really started enjoying were the smokers. I hate smoking, and the smell of it, ugh. So where did I spend all of my breaks? Out on the hill with the smokers. One of them was a gay kid from a hyper Mormon family and he had rainbow colored hair and had combed it in a big spike. So we called him Spike and he 28 became one of my really fun friends because occasionally I would talk to him. That's where I learned a lot about gayness, you know, that it's not a sin. This is my opinion. Anyway, Spike. I was out on the hill with him at the hospital one time and we talked about gayness and he really enlightened me. He was probably 19 or 20 at the time, but he told me, “Think about it Jack, who would choose to be gay?” Well, you know, that makes so much sense. At the time they were still trying to, down on South Temple, they were still trying to come up with programs to help these poor sinners and so forth. For example, some years ago, my wife worked for a printing company that was contracted to print brochures to “help” people who were “gay” to overcome their gay behavior. It was called the “Evergreen Society”. I am happy to report that the LDS Church has taken a more enlightened position in dealing with homosexuality and gay issues and I doubt that the “Evergreen Society” still exists. That was one of my enlightenments. LR: How did the diagnosis of ADHD impact your life at first? How did you process that information and learn to manage ADHD? JM: I didn’t take any action from the diagnosis at the time. I just attempted to live as I had all my life. I did find it interesting, however. LR: Was it hard for you to accept the fact that you had ADHD at first? JM: No. I did read several books on it and found it interesting learning of all the successful people who lived with it. It did provide some understanding and did help going forward. I did still have some depressive episodes. LR: You mentioned that finding out you had ADHD provided you with “some 29 understanding and did help going forward. How so? JM: In the last couple of years, I have developed a real interest in psychology and how we come to be who we are. I came to the belief that we have less control over who we are than we think. This involves religion, use of alcohol and other drugs, intellect, etc. Growing up in an alcoholic home I developed what has been called in one of the books as the “hero response” which is basically a person who recognized the pain caused by “drinking” and comes out with the determination to correct these maladies all in his/her generation. My response to never touching alcohol was so strong that it took several months to convince me to take an antidepressant medication when I really needed something. I wasn’t about to take anything that would alter my mind. Another discovery has been that not taking alcohol is not a higher moral strength as many Mormons, including myself in earlier years believe, but that we are just as programmed not to “drink” as people who become alcoholics are wired to become alcoholics. I believe that we come so “wired”—ADHD, intellect, and many others that discovery of who we are is so important. How else do you explain Joey Alexander, the 11-year-old Jazz prodigy? The last several years of discovery have been so rewarding. I think I would like to meet with a professor of psychology to get their views. LR: You mentioned you found it interesting, the diagnosis and living with ADHD, will you expand on that? How is it interesting to you? JM: I just had a super week with one of my grandsons who is super ADHD, didn’t graduate from high school, and is making his living in his own business writing 30 computer programs for his customers. ADHDers are 300% more likely to start a business than neural-typical people. As an example, his cousin, my grandson, is a graduate of West Point and is flying helicopters around Washington, DC for the Army. They are seven months apart in age. When they were about 10 years old I really didn’t know who was the smartest. The difference is ADHD in one and not the other. LR: How did you come to really understand your ADHD? JM: This was when I was an adult, when I was going through terrible depression and getting ready to lose my home and everything, in 1992. I was 50 something years old by then and we had been married for a long, long time. LR: You mentioned meeting and befriending a gay man while you were a patient at the psychiatric hospital. What was his name? How did he change your perspective on the LGBTQ community? JM: He was a young man about 19 or 20 and had strange multicolored hairdo combed in “spike” fashion so we, the other patients, just called him Spike. He took it in good humor. I had always wondered about “gayness”. I grew up in the era when they were just “queers”. Mostly they stayed in the “closet” so we really didn’t have much contact. As our culture became more open about LGBTQ and I became more enlightened I became more accepting to the point that I did not accept it as a “sin” but more of a condition. Spike and I had a neat conversation about his experience growing up in a Mormon family and the difficulty it caused in his family. 31 I got to tell you, my incredible experience with race, racism, that I have to show a picture of my, I call her my daughter. She's from South Africa and she is the absolute, most beautiful human being God put on this earth. LR: You mentioned wanting to talk about meeting your “daughter” from South Africa. How did you meet her? What was her name? How did that influence your attitude toward race? JM: Her name is Denise. She is the most charming person you will ever encounter. She is about the same age as my “DNA” daughter. She is beautiful. The blessing to me is that little did I know when my DNA daughter was being born in Boise, Idaho, I was getting another beautiful daughter being born in South Africa. Denise has had no effect on my attitude about race—well maybe reinforcing my attitude which is zero racism. My attitude was formed years ago. As a commitment to authenticity, I will write using the terms that were prevalent at the time of my experiences. Integrity is very important in any of my writings. These terms do not reflect my current views. The first racial recollection occurred when I was approximately three or four years old and was walking with my mother downtown to the bank in Ogden, Utah. “Don’t put that penny in your mouth, a n****r 1 has touched it.” My next experience at about age five was asking my mom what those seats in the Paramount movie theater were up there and could we go sit up there? “No, those seats are for “colored people”. I had no idea what a “colored” people was. Then as I was old enough to go to work with my father, I began to wonder why 1 N****r refers to the racial slur nigger. Jack was not comfortable using the actual term. 32 there were no n****s working at the “phone company”, Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company, where my dad worked at the time. Ogden, Utah was an example of apartheid as deep as South Africa. Even as a child, I was aware that n*****s could only live between about 31st and 27th streets and Washington Blvd and slightly west of Wall avenue. They could only work at “the railroad” or some menial jobs. As I look back, I think my parent’s generation was the most racist since slavery. So this was my beginning in racial understanding. As I progressed to Jr. High school, I had my first direct encounter with n*****s. Our school took students from several elementary schools including some from the “n***** schools. Coming from the east side of town, I was at first afraid of them. Then we all progressed to Ogden High school and I got to know some. One, I kind of liked. But I never got too close or really became friends with. Racism didn’t affect me, because I never interacted with people of color growing up. Then on to Weber College in 1959. I don’t remember any blacks there at the time. And on to the University of Utah College of Engineering, I don’t remember any there. This was the 1960’s and the beginning of real racial unrest. The race riots in Detroit and Los Angeles occurred just as I began my first job with Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. We took a trip to the Mormon pageant in Palmyra, New York and drove through downtown Detroit on our way during the riots and saw large military trucks, full of soldiers with bayonets fixed following police cars. It was surreal. There were two approaches to addressing the race issues at the time—the 33 militant, Malcom X, and the nonviolent Martin Luther King approach. Then about 1968, I left Ford Motor and joined IBM and moved out to Boise, Idaho. During the 1960’s, IBM became a corporate leader in ending racism in the company. Racism for me was never a big deal. It didn’t directly affect me. I went to San Francisco for my first 10-week school. As it turned out there were several black students in the class and this was my first experience with educated, professional blacks. I have always been attracted to “different” people in any group situation—probably due to my innate curiosity about everything. These blacks became my best friends and teachers in the class. Two of them actually lived in San Francisco and one had a big “flesh colored” (black) Cadillac. The other was sort of a “black panther” supporter instead of the “nonviolent”, Martin Luther King type. These people became my teachers. It is especially interesting that the “Black Panther” became my closest friend and teacher. Living in San Francisco, he invited me out to his house to watch a of Malcom X video. I was so impressed. It was so similar to my own church teachings at the time that we are all responsible for our own progress through life—don’t depend on anyone else for your progress but yourself. You are responsible for yourself. I challenged Al on discrimination. We used to walk about 5 blocks from our hotel to the class. He said okay watch “so and so” tomorrow on the way to class and I will make a comment about a goodlooking white girl and watch the reactions. It was real. While nothing was said, there was a reaction to a black guy commenting on a white girl. I would often spend hours discussing discrimination experiences and 34 current events of the racial tensions. It’s probably where I developed my understanding that enlightenment is always the answer. The more I associated with these friends, the more I learned and the more enlightened about race I became. Enlightenment is the answer to most things. Over the course of years, I became more enlightened as blacks and other ethnicities became members of my family. I have a special great granddaughter. Just a fun aside, at the end of the class, my wife came to San Francisco for a brief vacation and my one friend insisted that I take his “flesh colored” Cadillac to use for the time with my wife. Denise joined our family through a relationship with our son about 10 years ago. Denice is black and the most beautiful and charming person on the planet. She instantly lights up any room she enters with her charm and personality. It turns out she is about the same age as my “DNA” daughter and has become as much a member of our family as any member. She is beautiful beyond words. Richard Bach, author of the book “Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah” said it best, “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” So this was the beginning of my learning and current feelings about race. I make no distinction in friendships or love based on race. It has become a great enlightenment and blessing of my life. LR: If you’re comfortable would you talk about your divorce? JM: My first wife Karen and I were very active in our Mormon Ward as teenagers and so had bought into the concept of eternal marriage. We were very active in 35 church programs, prayed, paid our tithing, and were true believers. I had just finished, sort of, my first year at Weber College and we got married right after Karen graduated from Ogden High. We were married for 36 ½ years when Karen decided to separate. At the time I was going through a period of severe clinical depression. It is very hard to live with anyone who is clinically depressed. Following our separation, I bought a used truck and camping trailer and just lived in different parking lots at night and tried to work as a life insurance salesman. That really did not work out. You cannot sell life insurance if you are clinically depressed. I finally got a job camp hosting in the mountains, minimum wage, and this is where my healing began. For the next two years I worked in the camps in the summer and had a job in a Target store in the winter stacking shelves. It was embarrassing to meet people who knew me and knew of my previous professional life. But here is a case where ADHD helped. ADHDers develop real resilience and this resilience helped me to begin to heal. Once I came to understand what ADD is, and where I learned that is I was in the psychiatric hospital up at the University of Utah being treated for depression. I don't know if you've ever been clinically depressed, but I'm telling you, I've had like 20 major surgeries. I had the flesh-eating bacteria that almost took that arm off. I would take any physical surgery or any physical ailment, ten to one over being clinically depressed. It's more than just being not having a good day. Clinical depression is you cannot function. It's also extremely hard for your spouse, I don't know if I'm telling you stuff you may already have 36 experienced, but it's really hard for a person to live with depression. My current wife, Barb, she was in a bad marriage. We were both married for like thirty-six years in our previous marriages and we didn't know each other. And then we each got divorced. LR: How did you meet your current wife? JM: Following two years of “camping” out in my trailer, I had healed to the point that I became interested in “girls” and dating. I learned of singles dances and went to one. It was really difficult to ask anyone to dance but I made it and at the end of my first evening at a dance, I met several “soul mates”. I came alive again. It was so fun. It was like being a teenager again. I met Barbara, my current wife, at about my third dance. My goal for that night was to get 3 phone numbers. I made it. But I didn’t get Barb’s just then. Another fun thing that night was that Karen was there at that dance and was coaching me on how to approach ladies. I wasn’t “bright enough.” It was also an example of her need to control my behavior over the past 36 ½ years. LR: What other jobs did you have between IBM, Student Loan Business, and Right Way Trucking? JM: Right out of IBM, I started a small print shop in Boise Idaho. We were living in California at the time and I always had the desire to “own my own business”. I became aware of the printing business and felt I could capitalize it myself and we wanted to move back to Boise so we packed up and moved to Boise. This is a great example of the audaciousness of IBMers. I didn’t even know what a ream of paper was. 37 This worked for eight years until the ADHD got me and I sold it and then did the worst thing, professionally, I went into the life insurance business which was a failure for me and led to the depression which led to the divorce. LR: Tell me the story of getting your trucking license after only having driven a couple of times with your friend. JM: Following my marriage to Barb, I worked with some telephone contractors selling small businesses a contract to save them money if they would sign on for several years. This was going to a strip mall and going door-to-door and selling contracts. This was all I was doing when Barb and I got married. Fortunately, they didn’t pay me regularly and that prompted me to go for a ride with a friend in his big truck to Seattle on January 1, 2002. He let me try driving somewhere in Oregon and it was fun. So I decided to buy a truck and start a trucking company. (IBM audaciousness and what I have come to call EPD, Entrepreneurial Personality Disorder) So I took the written test for my CDL, Commercial Driver’s License, so I could legally drive when he was with me. We took two more trips together and I felt I could take the driving test. I scheduled a test ride with an examiner, and told Rulon I was ready to go out and learn how to back up and the other things you need to do. I called Rulon to see if we could go out that weekend and learn those things and he said, “Oh, I’m in Seattle”. My choice was to reschedule the test but I decided to go out and take it because I could learn a lot. It turned out that I passed the test on my first try without any training. I had to fight back laughing when the examiner said, “well you done good” and he passed me to 38 drive a big truck. This is one of the reasons I say, I have lived the “funnest” life in the history of lives. A couple of weeks later Rulon and I picked up a couple of loads of dog food in Ogden and drove across America in tandem to Columbia, MD and then for the next week drove other loads to New York, Florida, Texas, Washington, then back to Bountiful. That’s it. That’s how I started the Right Way Trucking company. Right Way Trucking was the best and most creative job I have ever had—including IBM. LR: Why did you start Right Way Trucking? Tell me about the challenges of starting that business. JM: I was under employed selling telephone contracts and getting paid was more challenging than doing the work. I needed “real” employment. It turns out that ever since IBM, it has been really difficult to work for anyone else. Even at IBM, every other manager I had was either super or incompetent—in my view. I am basically unemployable. In my foundation principles for Right Way Trucking, one of them says, “it has to make sense”. The challenges of starting Right Way Trucking included making it up as I went. I had to learn everything as I went—truck driving, business management, accounting, marketing, finance, and everything else to make a business successful. My engineering education and my IBM training were key to the success. LR: You mentioned Hyper-focused, did this help when you started your trucking business? JM: Yes. I could do spreadsheets on my computer, PowerPoint designs for my logo 39 and of course Word. It provided me with an excuse to work long hours. I analyzed my guts out. And I learned the trucking business. LR: What was it like starting a business with ADHD? JM: ADHD was an asset. ADHDers are three times more likely to start a new business than neurotypical people. They don’t start out to do daring things, they just process risk differently. I believe some of this comes from the constant negative feedback as they are growing—if you would just pay attention, you need to focus, did you hear me? I told you, etc. This contributes to their resilience. Almost everything that we use today has been created by an ADHDer—Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and on and on. ADHD can be a two-edged sword, however. Some of the bad symptoms are depression, a higher suicide rate. That’s why it is important to get an early diagnosis. Much of the pain can be averted with greater understanding. LR: How/when did you meet and become friends with Brad Mortenson? JM: I was on the board of directors of Student Loan Fund of Idaho called Adiuvo. Following a 10-year lawsuit with the U.S Department of Education, we were awarded a settlement in the range of $12 million. Being a non-profit corporation, we had a choice to give it to the IRS or form a charitable foundation which we did. Part of that formation requires a certain portion to be given for charitable purposes. We decided amongst us board members to divide these contributions and choose to whom we could donate our share. I chose to split my contribution to my two alma maters, the University of Utah College of engineering and Weber State University. 40 Brad Mortenson was the person at Weber I was directed to work with, and we established a real friendship. On one of our visits, I met Brad in one of my new trucks which were state of the art, at the time, with auto-shift transmissions and so I was able to let him drive. Brad is typical of the “leadership” type of people with whom I really enjoy working. When the last president resigned, Brad called me and said he thought he would apply. This is such a display of entrepreneurial leadership rarely seen in a university. You can see why I do enjoy meeting with Brad. Brad is among a very few University Presidents with such entrepreneurial leadership who have driven an “18 wheeler”. I’ll take credit for that. Anyway, when we as a board of directors formed Adiuvo, we decided to set our scholarships to help people get out of school because several of us had developed needs for funding at the end of our education. We wanted to help people who had proven themselves and needed a boost to finish. Each year I would call Brad and offer him $100,000 for a free hamburger. He would come to Bountiful, we would go to lunch, have a fun visit, and I would make my contribution. Our contributions have been reduced in recent years, but I still have fun with Brad when I am able to visit and deliver our check. It has worked out well. I have many thank you letters, some even emotional, of beneficiaries. My participation has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. LR: What do you hope your legacy is? JM: I have had the luckiest life you could imagine—even with some of the depression and failures, it’s been fun. As I reflect back some of it came from setting goals and following through but some of it just happened by accident. When I say that, some of the accidents happened as a result of meeting some goals. I really enjoy associating with educated and achieving people. I am 41 impressed with leaders who are smart. My “motorcycle gang” is an example. These were people in their mid-60 to early 70’s. One was a successful money manager, another was a medical doctor, another a very prominent attorney, and I was a successful entrepreneur building Right Way Trucking. I sometimes wonder, am I still trying to impress my dad and make him proud? President Brad Mortensen has become one of my favorite friends. During his inauguration one of the slides in the presentation was a picture of me standing by one of my trucks announcing a new scholarship program patterned after the one we have been funding. It is designed to help students get out of school at the end and therefore is only available to students who have made it through their first years and only need assistance to finish. While my achievements have been modest by standards of very successful people, I probably have achieved a little. I am proud of the plaque on the wall at Ogden High across the hall from the classroom where I got my first “D” and at the entrance to the “Administration Hall” where I spent some time meeting with the principal. When the restoration of the Ogden High School building was beginning, I stopped to walk through the building one day while riding my motorcycle. I was dressed in my motorcycle leathers, etc. and so was challenged many times, “Can I help you?” One of the challengers was Alan Hall another Ogden High alumni. We talked about the restoration and the fund raising and I got the idea to approach Adiuvo to see if we could provide some funding. I was able to get Adiuvo to make a $100,000 contribution and so it gave me “naming rights” which I was able to have a plaque mounted on the wall. 42 It was really fun in that the wall was to the administration wing of the main floor because I did have to answer regularly for numerous “misdemeanors” as a student to the administration. This was particularly fun, also, because it happened to be my 50th year reunion of my class of 1959. So all of my high school friends touring the building for our reunion saw this plaque as well as the plaques by the auditorium showing major contributors. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was the son of a “blue collar” worker and a mediocre student while in high school. I have always endeavored to never make any distinction in how I treat anyone based on perceived educational, social, economic, religious, racial, or any other perception. I intend to have a culture in the Right Way Trucking Company that reflects this simple belief. 43 Addendum Fairness on the Serengeti: It was recently noted that only the slowest gazelles were being eaten on the Serengeti and this just didn’t seem fair. The damn lazy cheetahs were unfairly picking them out because they were easier to catch and didn’t require as much effort. This made meals easier. And because they were being eaten at a higher rate, their numbers were unfairly declining and they could not experience the joy of mating and parenthood. Only the fast ones could. This did have an interesting beneficial side effect, however, in that the “speed gap” seemed to be shrinking— the gap between the slowest and the fastest gazelles. In fact the herd actually seemed to be increasing in speed and health without the slower weaker members of the herd. Also with fewer gazelles, the grasses seemed to be healthier with less grazing. But this was also unfair to the slower cheetahs. They found it hard to catch the faster gazelles and, in many cases, went hungry for days—sometimes even starving to death. So they depended on the slower gazelles just for survival. And over time, it was noted because of this problem, the slower gazelles were being eaten at a higher rate, there were fewer of them and therefore fewer to eat by the slower cheetahs and they were becoming sicker and weaker at a disproportionate rate and even dying and missing the joy of procreation and raising young. This problem coming to the attention of Morley T. Orthnockerson, director of the institute of animal fairness at the Bureau of Serengeti Animal Affairs, 44 prompted him to order a study to address this issue. If this goes on, pretty soon all we would have left on the Serengeti would be the most privileged of both gazelles and cheetahs. And so a study was ordered and produced by the aids to Orthnockerson and presented to the entire Bureau of Serengeti Animal Affairs. The study did indeed note that the weaker, slower and less healthy of both the gazelles and cheetahs were in decline. It was noted, however, that the general health of both gazelles and cheetahs seemed to be improving but at the expense of the slower and weaker of both species. And because of this, only the fastest and healthiest of both species were able to breed and this was exacerbating the decline of the less privileged of each species. What to do? Emma Z. Batshithead, a 28-year veteran of the bureau approaching retirement, proposed a speed limit. Following a lively discussion, it boiled down to how could you communicate this limit to gazelles and cheetahs. Would it need to be posted in two languages since very few of each species spoke the other’s language? Then it dawned on the committee that neither could read and so the two-language issue was mute. By now it was time for the normal break and so a recess was called and the thinking process was put on hold until following the break. Following the break Frank Dickheadson, a member of the study team suggested that maybe we could form a team of Park Rangers and train them to mildly tranquilize the fastest of both species. This would slow them down, and make it fairer to both the slower gazelles and cheetahs to compete in this highly 45 unfair competitive environment. But how do we fund it? Jane Juggs, noted that one of her neighbors, Bob Bastardeyes, worked at Tantalizing Tranquilizer, Inc. and his company had connections through their “K” street lobbying firm and was a heavy donor to the upcoming campaign of Bob Fartcheater in his reelection bid for his 12th term in the US Senate. (I did say 12th term and Senate—it’s damn near that absurd). He was sure that Fartcheater could bury an amendment into the upcoming military appropriations bill to cover the costs and that it could be funded immediately. There would clearly be no opposition because everyone knows that these amendments are never read by either the Senate or the House because it is common knowledge that they all have enough shit in their own closets that it’s best to just vote for the popular military appropriations bill. This pleased Orthnockerson. The 3½-year study was a success. The plan was implemented and several years later a study was ordered to measure the efficacy of the program. Here are the findings. • The tranquilizing did have the desired result of slowing down the fastest of both species. • It was noted, however, that there had been a dramatic decline in the birthrate of the cheetahs and therefore fewer of them. • The survivors, it was noted did tend to be weaker and sicker. This could be greatly reduced with the judicious use of antibiotics however. • Because of the fewer and sicker cheetahs there was a dramatic increase of the gazelle population and in fact more of the weaker, slower and 46 unhealthy members. • The unhealthy gazelles problem could be solved with the judicious use of antibiotics on the gazelles. • Because of the greater numbers of gazelles, more grazing was causing a depletion of the grasses. • This problem could be solved with a program of supplemental feeding of the herd. • While the tranquilizing program was considered a general success, it would require more study to address some of the unanticipated consequences—fewer healthy cheetahs, expanding herd of less healthy gazelles, and depletion of the grasses. And so Orthnockerson, director of the institute of animal fairness at the Bureau of Serengeti Animal Affairs, ordered a new study to address these issues and set a deadline for completion of 2 years. He did not rule out the need to employ outside experts as consultants. Oh, Did I fail to mention, Orthnockerson’s retirement was schedule for 19 months from now? He already has offers to work as a consultant to the department. A bureaucracy once formed will live in perpetuity. It will create studies and work forever to justify its existence and budget. You cannot improve a society by tearing down the strong to benefit the weak. If you try, you end up hurting the weak. If the present government programs to address the “income gap” could work, why is the gap growing since Obama took office and has been working his agenda? I’m thinking of the government’s messing 47 with the money supply and its impact on the growth of the stock market and making the “rich” richer while not improving job creation and helping the “poor”. I’m thinking of the help Obamacare is providing the 30-year-old single mother employed by the rapacious employer, Walmart, who has been paying $40 per month for her healthcare from Walmart with access to 24,904 doctors and the new “affordable health care” by Obama, which will cost her $205 per month and provides access to 9,807 doctors. What am I missing? I’m just a humble truck driver and may tend to rely more on empirical evidence than the advanced degrees and world travel of some in this email chain. But can someone help me to understand how I and anyone else can be better off with less freedom? I am in awe of the choices our society is giving me every time I go to the supermarket. I hate broccoli. But if you like it, go for it. That’s the beauty of choice. Is a rapacious capitalist really worse than a rapacious politician? All mischief begins when one person or group of people attempt to impose their will on someone else. Unfortunately, big government liberals seemed to have missed school the day this was taught. Fairness can never work until you kill the last of the fast running cheetahs. At that point you will achieve equality of mediocrity and all will live at a lower, fairer level of existence. Do we really want of system of bubble up poverty and mediocrity? Do we really want to be ruled by mindless, unaccountable bureaucrats? Jack Magdiel 48 What are we saying before we open our mouths? What are we saying before we open our mouths? Are we even aware? Does it matter? I am a “child of my IBM training from the ‘70s”. In the ‘70s, IBM was the pinnacle of corporate image. IBMers were expected to wear suits, white shirts, and conservative ties. I don’t remember it ever being written but it was understood. Violate it and you would probably be corrected. I once wore a very conservative white shirt with hardly noticeable light green embroidered stripes. My manager commented “what a nice looking shirt to wear on your last day of work”. While no hostility, the message was clear, don’t do it again. Other behaviors were just as understood. Never disparage a competitor. I once commented to a more experienced associate that they had too much invested in our training to fire us over such a thing. His comment, “they have a lot more invested in their image”. And so I was indoctrinated into the importance of image. I found that when I had my “IBM uniform” on I could often cash a check without showing ID. Approaching a door to a restaurant or other business, other people would always defer and expect me to enter first even though I was much younger than they. Coming from a “blue collar” home, I was often embarrassed and tried to defer. But I was learning the importance of image. The way you present yourself 49 sets the tone of the rest of the encounter. And over my professional life it has been a recurring experience. I know the importance of what I say is very much impacted by how I dress and how I appear. Do I want to start low and work my way up or present myself as a credible professional? The more experienced I became, the more I began to like it. I even grew to the point I began to play with it. If I had an important meeting, I would dress “up” for it. Times and styles have changed since then but the principle hasn’t. As on the Serengeti and in the animal kingdom, it is a natural “instinct” to make instant judgements. Is this the leader, part of the herd, or a meal? And even though we seldom wear IBM suits—some still do, we still make these judgements and dress is still a part of this judgement. As we began to grow Right Way Trucking, this image thing was still there. From the very beginning, before I took my first load, I invested in nice shirts with our logo embroidered. As we began to grow, these became “uniforms” for the people who worked with us. Our equipment was professional looking and maintained and stood out on the road. They drew attention. This made recruiting easier. I was walking through the super market one time and a person approached me and asked, out of the blue, “are you the owner of Right Way Trucking”? He asked because I looked like the owner. It still works. 50