Oral History Program Bill Love Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 8 April 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bill Love Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 8 April 2019 Copyright © 2020 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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 Hill Aerospace Heritage Foundation oral history project is a series of oral histories documenting the life stories and experiences of the board members of the Hill Aerospace Heritage Foundation. Board members recall their time in military service, as well as their memories of starting the foundation in 1983 and opening the Hill Aerospace Museum in 1987. Each interview begins with a brief life sketch of the individual board member, then moves onto their memories of the early days of the Hill Aerospace Museum. They discuss ongoing efforts to make the museum the premier location for preserving Utah’s Aviation and Air Force history and name important figures on the Board of Directors, base command, and museum staff who helped to make the museum an important influence in the community. ____________________________________ 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: Love, Bill , an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 8 April 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Bill Love 8 April 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Bill Love, conducted on April 8, 2019, at Hill Air Force Base, by Alyssa Kammerman. Bill discusses his life, his memories while serving in the United States military, and his experiences while serving on the Hill Aerospace Heritage Foundation Board. Reagan Baird, the video technician, is also present during this interview. AK: Today is April 8, 2019. We are in the Colonel Nathan H. Mazer Memorial Chapel on Hill Air Force Base, right in front of the museum. It is about three o'clock in the afternoon. I am here interviewing Bill Love for the Hill Aerospace Foundation project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman, and Reagan Baird is here with me on the camera. So, Bill, we're just going to start out with when and where were you born? BL: I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1961. I was born the month before the Berlin Wall went up. When I was born they didn't have that wall yet. There were rumblings of it. And if anybody knows any little bit about history, they know about Checkpoint Charlie and all the stuff that went over in East Berlin. And all that happened about a month after I was born. It's weird. And my brother got to be at the other end of it, because when Gorbachev came to the states in the 1980s, he got out of his car, walked into the crowd in Virginia and D.C., and started shaking people's hands. And he walked up to my brother so he was on the news. So we book-ended the Cold War. AK: Why were your parents out in Germany? 2 BL: My mom and dad were both in the Air Force and they were both Active Duty and were stationed at Wiesbaden. They met in Louisiana and they both got sent there. My mom was pregnant and she had me there. AK: So what was it like growing up as a child of a military couple where both parents were in the military? Were there times when your parents were apart or did the military usually keep them stationed together? BL: It depends. My mom got out when I was born. I mean, she could have stayed in, but she said she wanted to stay home and take care of her baby. She separated and my dad stayed in for thirty-one years. AK: Do you have any memories of Germany? Or was that just where you were born? BL: I have one. We were in a place called the Palast Hotel and I remember being in the lobby. And that's about it. I was really little, but, yeah, I do remember that. AK: How long did you guys live in Germany? BL: I think I was about a year and a half old when we left. People say you don't remember that far back, but I do remember the hotel. AK: What are some of your memories of your childhood? I'm assuming, you were just all over the place. BL: Well, we went from Germany to the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards. That's where my brother was born. We were there until I was seven and that's where all the aircraft were tested. You know, that's Mecca for Air Force jets. And just seeing neat things fly over my house. I mean, the XB-70, if you look that up, that's the first airplane I ever remember seeing in the air. And that used to go over our house all the time. I have a picture of it over the base and I can actually 3 see my house in the picture. But yeah, seeing all these special superduper test airplanes, you know, seeing the pilots running around the base, these guys were like gods to me because they would get in their car and go out to the flight line and fly that thing. It was really neat. It was special. I mean, I enjoyed being a military kid. It was fun. AK: What did your dad do with the Air Force? BL: He was a Medical Service Technician. He started out as an ambulance driver and he ended up in the emergency room and then in an admin, that kind of stuff. And when we were at Edwards, he used to be one of the guys that got into the ambulance and went out to the crashes and stuff like that. And then he later was instrumental in getting the National Emergency Medical Technician program started. And he has like a two-digit number for that. But yeah, he was in medical the entire time he was in the Air Force. AK: How about your mom? What did she do while she was in the Air Force? BL: She was an Intel Ops Specialist. She was a spook. I had an uncle who was a spy in World War Two and she was his sister. Everybody in my family went into these weird little secretive things. But yeah, she did intelligence operations. AK: What did she do after she left? BL: She taught English for junior high and high school, and retired from that. And she's just ABD (All But Dissertation) for a Master's, but she never did her dissertation. And she's from Puerto Rico, so Spanish is their first language but she taught English. So [laughs] go figure! But yeah, she got into the teaching end of everything, really. 4 AK: How many siblings did you have? BL: I have one brother. His name is Edward. He was born at Edwards and we tease him about that. I'm glad I wasn't born here cuz my name would be Hill. But yeah, he's fifty-two now. AK: Were you named after where your parents were stationed when you were born too? BL: No. I always tease him about it, but it just turned out that way. But no, I wasn't named after-- Oh God, my name would be Wiesbaden. That'd be terrible! But no. We were both born military kids. And there were running jokes that if you really hated your kids that you'd name them after where they were born. So, fortunately, no. AK: So since you were living on a military base as a kid, did you go to elementary school on the base? BL: Yeah. In fact, Irving Branch, who was the commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards when I was there, he died the year before my elementary school opened and they named it the Irving R. Branch Elementary School. But yeah, until I was in high school, all the places I went to school were on base. And we moved around when I was in Puerto Rico at Fort Buchanan, an Army post. I went to Army schools and I lived on Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine bases. And we went to Army, Navy and Air Force schools. So, yeah, it was fun. AK: Which countries did you live in as you were growing up then? BL: Except for Germany, we were always stationed in America. I lived in California, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. I also lived in Puerto Rico three times. 5 And the longest decade of my life was the ten months I spent in Illinois. I lived there, but I don't claim that. It was the coldest place on earth [laughs]. But yeah, it was all military schools. AK: So tell me what led you to join the Air Force? BL: When I was growing up, I was a wing nut. I loved airplanes, everything airplanes, but for a brief period of time I thought I wanted to join the Army. And I was actually at the examination entrance station in El Paso, Texas. And I almost went across the hall, but I finally decided I'd better just stay in the Air Force because I loved airplanes. I didn't know what I'd end up doing. I wanted to run around the desert and, you know, blow stuff up, but I went ahead and joined the Air Force instead, and I ended up going off to Dugway on the cruise missile so I got to drive around the desert and blow stuff up. So I was in the Army, basically, but I didn't have to drill. So it was good. AK: So was that decision influenced by the fact that your parents were both in the Air Force? BL: Yeah. And then my brother followed me. We actually have history going way back. My grandfather was a Doughboy. My two uncles; one was a spook, the other one worked for Naval Intelligence, actually. He worked with Einstein. That's a true story! And my other uncle on my dad’s side was Army Infantry. He was in Patton's Army. He was killed over there and he's in the American cemetery in Florennes, Belgium. And of course, his mother, my dad's mother, is a Gold Star mother. So we have military going back at least a hundred years. AK: That's incredible. That's quite the legacy. 6 BL: Yeah. Big shoes to fill. Yeah. AK: So tell me a little bit about what you did with the Air Force. BL: I was on the ground-launched cruise missile test program in the 1980s. Europe had the SS-20 and the SS-22 missile and they were threatening NATO allies in Europe. And the Air Force answer to it was to take the sea-launched cruise missile and make it ground-launch capable. And I was on the test team, so we basically just figured out how to make it work. We were out in the desert out at Dugway, so I was officially stationed here at Hill Air Force Base, but I only came up here to report and to do admin stuff. The rest of the time I was out there. AK: How long were you doing that? BL: I did that for a year and then I got hurt and then I got medically discharged and I went back to New Mexico, which is where I come from. And then I stayed down there for a year and a half and watched a lot of MTV. And then I got another job out at Dugway as a contractor, so I came back. And then I came here. I married a local; I married a Terrace chick. So. Yeah. AK: So she was from Washington Terrace? BL: Yeah. She was a Laker. And I’ve been here for almost forty years now. AK: And you're still working on Hill Air Force Base as a contractor? BL: No, I went to work on base as an aircraft painter for a while. And then I went out and went to Weber State. Got my degree. And I've been doing the little contract things. I've done a couple of contracts here and I did one for Weber State and did stuff for Memory Grove Foundation down in Salt Lake, that sort of thing. So I've just been doing Preservation Foundation restoration work forever, really [laughs]. 7 AK: You said you got a major in history while you were at Weber State? BL: Yeah. AK: So did you end up doing a minor as well? BL: My minor ended up being Art History instead of Public History, which is what everybody gets, you know. Mine was Art History because I was an art major for a year and a half and I had enough classes to do my minor when I switched back over to history. So when I started out, the history that I wanted to be in was art. And then I realized that I had zero talent for it and I missed writing. And that's a weird thing. You tell an art major that and they look at you like you're an alien. “What do you mean you miss writing?” But I missed doing research. And I missed talking to people. And, uh, it was just a little bit too pretentious for me. So [laughs]. Now I'm going to hear about that! But it's true. AK: Tell me about some of the things you were involved in while you were at Weber State. BL: Well, most of it was just trying to gut out the classes of getting into college. You know, I was forty-one years old. And most of it was just, you know, keep my head down and study. But a lot of the neat stuff came when the internships came around. And Dr. McKay was working with the Curator and the Assistant Curator here at the time. And I got to come out here and actually get school credit for what I was already doing anyway. That was really cool. AK: When did you graduate college? BL: 2007 AK: Awesome. 8 BL: Yeah, I was forty-five. AK: Good for you. BL: I'm sure I was the oldest guy in the class. But, you know, it's one of those things where you'll be the same age if you don't do it as you will be if you do. AK: That must have taken a little bit of courage for you to go back to school, you know, since you weren't 18. BL: No, no. I was hungry. I was. I wanted to go to college so bad. And I didn't think I'd ever do it. And then when I went out the gate up here, I went out on a medical, which is an aggravation of what had put me out of Air Force Active Duty. So the V.A. sent me up here. I got a free ride through Weber State. I got a stipend, I got everything down to my parking passes paid for. And all I had to do was show up and get good grades. I mean, best job in the world. You know, you get paid to go to school. “Yeah, I'm there!” But yeah, I wasn't nervous about it at all. I just wanted to do this so bad because that was the one of the things on my bucket list that I hadn't done yet and I really wanted it. And that's that's the difference. You know, a lot of people that go in when they're younger don't really understand what it means to not get an education. So I got a chance to be a statistic. AK: Do you feel like going to school years later than the others helped enrich your experience? BL: Oh, yeah. Because when you get into it at that age, you've already been doing stuff that you like for a certain amount of time, if you're lucky, and you know that you want to stay doing it. And that's what I did. Like I said, I started out in history and I thought I wanted to do art for a while and that was probably a dumb thing to 9 do, but I got out of it before it was too permanent. But yeah, I was grateful for it. And I always saw the end, you know, I saw the last day of school and I saw getting that degree. I mean, I didn't have to to wonder what I was doing there. AK: What made you interested in studying history? BL: Well, being a kid at Edwards. You know, these historic aircraft, I mean, there's a really weird story that goes with that: In the 1940s, there was a place called Muroc. It was a town. It was Corum spelled backwards and these people named Corum owned it. And then during World War Two they started building up Edwards to test aircraft out in the middle of the desert, where nobody could see it. And they bought up all that land from the Corums that had turned into Muroc and there was the original base from World War Two--the rubble was still out there. And my dad used to take me out there when I was a kid and we'd go out and look around. And he did this to me, you know, this love of history is his fault. But it's funny because they did a film out there when I was a kid and I never saw it being made. But I saw it years later on YouTube and I heard a really familiar voice. And they were interviewing a guy back in the 1960s who thirty years later I worked for out at Dugway. He'd retired from there as a photo guy and he'd ended up at Dugway out there, running the photo unit out there. And so we had probably done this [crosses hands to symbolize crossing paths] and never known it. But yeah, this is my dad's fault. He took me out there. And then we went to Chanute when we were in Illinois. There was a museum, a little tiny museum. It was probably this big [looking around at the chapel]. And there was a guy out there who used to come and sign in in the 10 morning and disappear. And I was this twelve year old kid who had run my bike out there to go play in the museum because it showed all the different things they did at the bases, you know, missions, weather and maintenance and all this. And I used to pretend that I was running my own museum and there wasn't anybody else there to tell me otherwise. So it gets in your blood. I mean, look at this place! AK: Tell me about what prompted you to join the museum board. What was the story behind that? BL: Well, I came here as a volunteer. I came here the day it opened, May 1, 1987. And that little building over there with the fence around it, that was the museum. We had a half dozen airplanes. We had three inside and little exhibits and stuff that I worked on and built. And I got to see all this come up from that. And I started as a volunteer in June of the following year--June 1988. And I just jumped in at the deep end. I mean, there were people out here, all of whom are gone now. And I just kind of sat at their feet and followed them around. And they never treated me like a puppy, but I guess they could have. And I learned just, you know, all this lost tech. People would tell me things like, “You're going to know how to do this when you're our age and you'll be the only one who still does.” And there's a lot of things that I know how to do that I don't know anybody else who knows how to do them and it's just because I was in the right place at the right time and I just drank it up. And then the board thing came out last year. It was an invitation by the board to join the board of directors. I think we're down to two or three of the original members. All the rest have gone. Nate Mazer was one of them and so was John Lindquist, General Mark Reynolds, General Rex 11 Hadley. I know I'm going to be forgetting people, but there used to be a roster that was a page long and a lot of people that have come in behind them are from later generations. The World War Two generation built this museum, as it originally sat. And now Korea, Vietnam and everything has come after that. You know, Desert Storm, Desert Shield. So we haven't had that many volunteers from that Generation X. All of those guys are still Active Duty and they're still young and they're still raising families. And that's what happens once you retire: these veterans, they start trickling into places like this and like Fort Douglas and etc. Yeah, that's where a lot of the volunteers in the system come from. AK: Tell me about your memories of this museum starting out. What all did that take to start it? What were you involved in? BL: Oh, my. It was the Wild West. It really was. The foundation got this building up here, Building 1919, to use as a museum, and when I came out here, we had running water and electricity, and that was about it. And you just saw what you needed to do and you went and did it. So it took a certain kind of person to be a volunteer out here. I mean, hundreds of people came out here and they lasted a day or a week. And they just, “No this isn't for me.” And I was lucky enough that I knew when to talk, when to keep my mouth shut, and when to listen. And so a lot of the people that worked out here, they just kind of, I would just go from this to this to this to this [pointing all over the place]. I mean, two other guys and I restored the biplane and the other gallery in 1988 and 1989. And that was my first restoration project. 12 The last big one I did was, if you go into the back gallery, there's an orange and white flight test F-16 called Little Precious; and that was my last project. I didn't do the paint on it but I could have; I had done paint before. But I did all the layout on it and all the markings and all the research. And in the process, I ended up meeting the pilot who flew it, who was the squadron commander at the time and he and I are like brothers now. So it's these things that come about as a result of that, you know. You never know when you come out here and start volunteering where it's gonna take you. I mean, you'll have an idea of what you want to do, but people will come out and they'll tell you these really great stories and, you know, things that nobody's ever heard. And that's what keeps me coming out here. Not just the work end of it, but the people you get to shake hands with. I mean, we've had people out here that have done lectures that are aviation royalty. I mean, Gail Halvorsen, the candy bomber, he's been out here half a dozen times. We had Robin Olds, who was the fighter pilot's fighter pilot. We've had people that have flown, you know, everything up to and including--we've had Jake Garn out here three or four times. We've had people who've gone to space. And even if I'd stopped working on things out here, I'd still keep getting drawn out here just so I could hear the stories. The other thing I do is the AV for our lecture series. So I get to hear these stories every week and I can't get it out of my system. AK: Sounds very exciting. BL: It is, it is. 13 AK: Tell me a little more about what you did with the airplanes you worked on. What did that process look like? BL: Well, the Stearman came in a box. It had been dropped and smashed and the ribs were broken. And the dope and fabric aircraft, they have ribs inside them and then you put fabric over it. And I learned how to do that. Basically these guys open these old dusty books in their heads. And this is how I learned to do rib stitching and I learned how to spray dope and how to put markings on the aircraft and all that. And then later on, I learned things like sheet metal. And then I had to do layout because I'd painted aircraft. So two years ago when I got tapped to do Little Precious, which is my other child, I was pretty much to the point where I knew everything I needed to know in order to make that happen. But, like I said, it's just from sitting at the feet of all these guys. I can walk around and look at all these airplanes and I remember this guy, this guy, this guy. And it's been good to start when you're as young as I was because I have this great, big, huge storehouse of knowledge. And I'm still young enough that I can use it. You know what I mean? But yeah, it's everything from dope and fabric to composites. You have to make things, you have to invent things, you have to to scrounge for things and substitute things. We did a lot of strange things with the biplane. But you just learn all of this lost technology. I mean, we had a bent wingtip on one that was twisted and the trick to doing that was you soak it in a bathtub for a week and you put it between two two-by-fours and you park your truck on it and let it dry for a week. It's stuff like that, it's actually in a book somewhere. So you learn things and you put them to use, things that you haven't 14 thought about in twenty years. And I was doing that F-16 and there were times when the lightbulb would go on and I would think, “Oh! I remember when...." So, yeah, it's a really weird way to do business, but it's fun. AK: That's really cool. Is there any other work with the museum that you'd like to to talk about or highlight? BL: One of the things I really like the most about coming out here is the other volunteers. I mean, you have people that are from literally every imaginable walk of life and they bring all these different experiences. It's not like everybody does restoration or everybody sits at the desk. There's so much mission creep out here and so much bleed-over between the different things that people do, you just get to be a family. And, you know, it's great to be around these people and it's great to hear their stories. And it's like you were saying earlier about the World War Two generation, how your kids aren't going to know them; It's great to have known them when they were here, because even if they didn't have oral histories done--I mean, my head's full of stories. Really weird stuff that I was told and it's fun to carry that around because it's nice to tell them. You know, once in a while you tell the story and people are like, “Did that really happen?” Yeah it really happened. So, yeah, that’s the big thing is the volunteers; Being with your fellow volunteers. I mean, that's almost a volunteer position in itself because everybody works together and, you know, we're all pulling in the same direction, even though we're doing different things and being a part of that is really just as cool as working on anything. And there are people who come out here that don't work on anything. They just come out here for the social end of it to meet guests, 15 to meet other volunteers, to have this interaction. And if I ever stopped doing restoration, I won't have lost anything because I'll just go do this other thing that I was doing anyway, so. AK: Was your restoration work mainly on-the-job training? BL: Yeah. When I was in the paint shop up on base there was a saying that there's some guys who just can't paint, no matter how long they're in there. Well, there's some guys who just can't do restoration no matter how long they're here. And I was lucky in that a lot of the stuff I did was trial and error. And then you’d find a book--someone would donate this old dusty book--and you'd look it up in the book later and and you go, [gasps] “That's how I did it!” You know, without even-- so you have to have kind of a talent for it, I guess. I'm not saying that I have a talent for it, but there are some people who can just go out and fix anything. And I'm somewhere between not being able to fix anything at all and being able to fix everything. And a lot of it you just pick up, you know? “Did this work?” Or you ask somebody else, “Have you ever tried this?” And inevitably someone will say, “Oh yeah, I did that and it didn't have good results.” So, okay, I'll do something different. But it's really great to just be able to be trusted. I mean, because if you work in collections and that kind of stuff, you're holding history. You know, when I was working in the library here at the museum, I had an original copy of the G.I. Bill. There's an original copy of the S.A.T. by a guy named Stanford who was in the Army Air Corps and invented the S.A.T. And you're holding this original stuff in your hand. And people will go through their grandpa's garage and say, well, this will either go in the garbage or let me go see if the museum wants it. And 16 then you see this stuff sitting on the workbench like and you're like oh, my God, you know what this is? So it's always a wild ride. It is. AK: So you mentioned that there were sometimes maybe nonconventional or strange ways you had to make the restoration work and get these airplanes to come together. Would you tell me a few of those stories about what you had to do? BL: Um, well I told you about the wingtip... AK: Yes. BL: We had a situation [laughs, shakes head]...The government guys that work with Dean Korth, he measured one of the top wings and he ordered-- and then he measured one of the bottom wings. And we were ordering the fabric. They came in sleeves; You order them from a factory and they stitch them together inside out--they’re just like a pillowcase. And then you put them on the airplane and then you get them wet and then they shrink and get all puckery, and then when it flattens out, you start putting dope on them and sanding them and it comes out a strong--thickness wise the fabric has of the equivalent aluminum would be. And they don't weigh anything; two guys can pick up a whole wing. And he measured this one wing and we got four sleeves and on the top wing, one was bigger than the other. So one sleeve went on just great and the other sleeve would not fit. So what we ended up doing was taking a hacksaw and cutting the trailing edge of this wing all the way down and then getting in there with a file and filing out about a quarter of an inch of wood and then bringing the trailing edge back together. And in doing that, we shrank it enough to get that sleeve over it. And that's not in the book. I mean, you'll never read that anywhere. We sat there for days like 17 three dunce's. I mean, we sat in the chairs and we just looked and, “Well, what about this?” “No it's not going to work.” “What about this?” “No, not going to work.” So, yeah, we finally ended up splitting it and removing a bunch of wood and then gluing it back together and it worked! So, yeah, just weird stuff like that. I mean, a lot of these aircraft parts aren't made anymore. A lot of times you have to make your own, like the National Museum of the Air Force and I think the Smithsonian also, when they make a part to replace something they'll either measure it or make it off blueprints. They'll put a roll stamp on it, saying it's a replica part so that you know it's not original. And we've done a little bit of that here. We just had to invent things. You know, “Maybe this will work, maybe that'll work.” And a lot of it is weird. I mean, I was working on, I think, the A-26 and I was having a really hard time with something, I don't remember what it was, and this guy walks up to me and says, “Yeah, well, we used to do it this way.” And just like that.” “Oh! Okay. I never would've thought of that.” But people would come in all the time and give us this really obscure advice. And that's how we finished a lot of aircraft. I mean, a lot of stuff doesn't come with any instructions. The F-89 out there, when that was put together in 1989 or 1990 a tech sergeant did it and he didn't have any instructions and they were interviewing him and he says, “Well it was a question of this looks like it goes there, you put the whole airplane to get it like that, and it's still sitting out there.” But yeah you have to get creative. A lot of it's lost technology. I mean, you walk around the Jenny in there and you'll see cord, you know, actually a leather-stripped cord that's been wrapped around 18 struts and then soaked with lacquer. And there's one end in here and the other end just stuck in the way at the bottom. All of that is lost tech. It really is. I mean, you can't find it anywhere. The guy who we got that Jenny from restored it. And he's been gone for probably thirty years now. And he got the knowledge from a guy who got the knowledge from a guy who, you know. So, yeah, you just have to get creative. I mean, if they're not going to fly, there are a lot of things that you don't really have to worry about. Where the aircraft in here, they had to be put together just so. But some of the other stuff just came in in pieces. I mean, we've gotten things from people, companies in other states that restore this stuff for a living. And you look at some of this stuff and you go, that's pretty ingenious. You know, it didn't come that way. But, “Oh, yeah, that's pretty smart” and you just file that away and use it later. So. AK: So with the airplanes you've worked on, where did they originally come from? Were they from old airplane crashes? BL: One of them was. I think the A-26 had a ground handling accident. And the Stearman was one of the one that, at the end of World War Two, they filled the big hangars out here with Stearmans and sold them I think for $500 bucks a pop. They stacked them on their noses, you know, just like that all through the hangars. And that was one of those Stearmans. It ended up as a crop duster and I think the Air Force Museum got it. We restored it here and they were going to take it, but we ended up being able to keep it. Little Precious, my F-16, that airplane has more history with this base than anything in this collection. It was built in 1979. It was a lab rat for General 19 Dynamics. It was white, and then it came out here and they put the orange on it and it flew around here for about thirteen years, and then it was retired in 1995. In 1997, for the 50th anniversary of the Air Force, Dan Isbell, who was the pilot, talked them into putting it up on the pedestal at the west gate where it stayed until 2010 I think it was. After 9/11 they started moving everything around, they wanted the gate to be further back. So they wanted everything moved and we got it back. And but it has been here almost its entire career and it's been a gate guard. Usually those things that go up on pedestals, they corrode away to nothing and they get chopped up. This thing got stripped, put up on the pedestal, taken down from the pedestal, completely restored, and now it's out in the gallery. That in itself is as rare as anything. And Dan told me it never was bent. It was never tweaked. It never had any hard landings. Everybody who ever flew it was a test pilot and he said that it was the truest F-16 he ever flew. He comes out and he just, uh [pretending to cry]. But we had a few that have been from crashes. The B-24 was a crash. The P-38 was a crash. I think those might be the only two I could think of. But a lot of times when these things are written off, the Hill Aerospace Museum Foundation will go out and recover them. That's how we got the B-24: they went all the way to Alaska and dragged this thing onto a barge in pieces and brought it back here and then they restored it in California and brought it up here. So yeah, some do crash, but a lot of times we have pieces from aircraft that have crashed and a lot of times they're so mangled that you can't really do anything with them. 20 So I mean, that P-51, it's three airplanes worth of parts. Stuff like that. I mean, the B-17, when we got it, it was taxi worthy, but they couldn't fly it. A guy would run the engines and we bought it and brought it up here and everything. And everything was in Portuguese because it had been in Brazil. So it's fun. But yeah, some of the aircraft out here have had a hard time on the ground. The B-47 out there is going to the Air Force Flight Test Museum. That was back east somewhere in an airport that got hit by a tornado. So it got all mangled and twisted up and then we ended up with it. AK: So you mentioned before we turned the camera on that you had worked on some smaller archival collections such as the Eccles' collection with Weber State. In a way, this kind of work sounds like you’re processing a large scale collection, if that makes sense. So in a way, you're still processing collections... BL: That's exactly what we're doing, yes. AK: How do you feel that those smaller collections at Weber State helped prepare you for the work you've done with Hill Air Force? BL: Well, I actually did it in reverse order. I did the collection here first and then I did that one. That one was actually amazingly interesting because after you start-- and it's like the work here--you start and the deeper you get into it, the more invested you get and the more invested you get in the people that you're reading about. It's really weird because then all of a sudden someone disappears out of the picture and you know who they are. And you know that they're gone. Melissa, up there in Weber State’s Special Collections, she used to tell me about how she did a collection once where she really was in it with these people. And then one 21 of them was suddenly gone and she realized that he had died. And she just was sad about it because she was so invested. And that's the way it is here. I mean, with this collection, you know that all this stuff belonged to somebody once upon a time. Like, “He put this thing on, he got in his jet and then he went and he fought.” So it's like I said, it is backwards, but this really did prepare me a lot for doing that kind of work. And that's kind of the way I processed it is how they do it here. AK: You said you had some memories behind the preservation of this church building that we're sitting in right now. Is that correct? BL: Yes. AK: Can you tell me about some of that? BL: Yeah, they picked it up on the base. Well, it had been built in 1943 with the first slew of buildings that they built at Hill Air Force Base, and they used it up until when they built the new chapel. It burned in 1945 right up here [pointing at the ceiling]--there are some burned beams up in the ceiling that weren't badly damaged enough to take the whole church apart and do it over so they're still up there. But Nate Mazer, who was a foundation member and one of the ramrods of this whole museum, he bugged them about restoring it. He was one of those people. He was like this tall to me [points to his eyebrow] and he had this big booming voice. He'd walk into the break room and go, "Friends! Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your ears." Everybody loved this guy. But you didn't say no to Nate. You just didn't. And when he went up on the base and said, “We're gonna get that chapel for the museum,” they just said, “OK.” So the Navy 22 Seabees brought it down here and they restored it. They did a lot of woodwork in here. And I remember walking in here, having that door open and there wasn't power in here yet and there was just this cloud of sawdust floating around in here. And these guys were cutting all of this up [pointing in a circular motion at the wall behind him]. I think I told you, during this remodeling part, they took the original wood and they made plaques out of it. And I got one, which is cool. But this chapel-- you come out to this place and you can see all the people that used to be here. You know, we've lost this many people [motions to the pews with name plaques on them] out here since I've been out here. We’ve lost a chapel full of people. And it's really neat to be connected to it like this, because I've been in here so many times for so many things that I can't imagine what would have happened to this place if it hadn't been brought out here. And then the little barracks building that's behind the chapel came with it. And this was in a Tiffany video back in the 1980s, as was the Ogden Mall. And it's preserved, like I said, almost exactly the way it was. And you can walk in here and except for that wall [points to wall behind the pews] it looks the same as it did. So this right here [motioning to the entire chapel], this is our biggest artifact, actually. It's just not cataloged as such, but you're sitting in an artifact. AK: Tell me about some of your memories of working with the original Museum Foundation people you mentioned General Reynolds, and Nate Mazer, and-- BL: [Laughs] Oh. Yeah. Well, we put together an airplane with three forklifts, three pallets and three mattresses once. And I really wish I'd taken pictures of that. We 23 did things that I can't believe [laughs], I can't believe we got away with it, but it was back in the day when everybody that was out here was out here because they had a real passion for it. I mean, they had a vision for what they wanted this place to look like and what they wanted it to be. And we still have that vision. The current foundation is no different, but they're building on what a lot of these guys started. I mean, we had guys running all over the world looking for different aircraft, you know. Some of the aircraft we got, some of them we didn't. But if there's one word that you have to use for this place, it's not really "passion," it's "vision," because everybody that comes out here and stays, they all know what they want. I mean, we don't go into these foundation board meetings and argue about anything because we all know what has to be done. And it was nice to be around a group of people who are all pulling in the same direction. You know, you've probably been around organizations where everybody sits and fights for an hour. We never did that. Ever. And we still don't. And I've been a member of a couple of other foundations and one down in Salt Lake, the Memory Grove Foundation, and we went from pooling our change for stamps to running along trying to keep up with this project as it kept picking up speed. And this place was the same way and it was all because of vision. Everybody knew what they wanted and so we're all gonna cooperate. We're all gonna do our special things to make it happen. And that's still what's going on here. We're going to have another gallery and this museum is going to get bigger and we're going to have more people. And what you're looking at now, it's 24 gonna be like thirty years ago: what you're looking at then bears very little resemblance to what you see now. Thirty years from now, it's gonna be the same situation; you won’t be able to recognize it. This [motions to the chapel] will still be here, it'll just be moved across the street. AK: What was one of the ways that you had to raise money for these big projects, especially in the beginning? BL: A lot of it was chasing donors. There's a book in the office, it's a big, thick, green book; it's the Utah Foundation book and it tells you every person that will donate money, and that changes as people die off and as people replace them. But a lot of it has to do with the winning of hearts and minds. I mean, you tell people about this place, you advertise it, it's on buses, it's on all kinds of different media. It's on TripAdvisor. And people come out and they will sometimes, you know, put money in the box, and that's fine. And sometimes they won't, which is also fine. We're also one of the few museums that doesn't charge. The National Museum charges, most of the other museums charge. We've never done that. So everything that we get, we raise through word of mouth. And, you know, every once in a while--a guy came in here one day and he took five $100 bills out of his wallet and just stuck him in the box. You know, things like that happen. Another guy came out and wrote us a check for forty thousand dollars one day. He just said, "I have a checkbook, how much do you guys want?" And we said, "Well," and he says, "How's forty grand?" And he wrote the check and handed it to us. So that's how you do it. You make it attractive to people. You make it interesting. I mean, you go into the museum 25 now and you see all these different exhibits and there's timeline-type things going on in there. And it's just the more you know, the more you're invested in this museum and the more you want to see it succeed. I mean, people come out here and say, "I came here the day it opened. I remember this and that," you know, and now they're at a point in their lives when they start being concerned about their legacy, which is how this whole place got built. I mean, the World War Two generation built it and a big part of it was the legacy. So a lot of that money comes from them. Now, we're in an age where you have metrics where you can measure how well your ads are doing and all that kind of stuff and so we structure a lot around that. And we have people on the board and that is what they do. And you attract talent--I don't know what I'm doing on it, but--you attract talent, and, you know, talent is what raises funds and funds are what keep this place going. And we bother the Legislature every chance we get. AK: Yeah. I feel like the museum definitely instils a sense of patriotic pride in everybody who visits there. Do you feel that it's been a pretty important part of the community, especially nowadays? BL: Oh, sure. Yeah. The farther away you get from an event like World War Two or Korea or Vietnam, the more is lost. I mean, there are people coming up now who don't have any idea about anything regarding history. And it's kind of a weird thing to even imagine that because I'm so different from that, that they're like aliens to me. I can't relate to that. But a lot of this is having a place like this. I mean, even off the freeway, people see it and "Oh let's go see that." And everybody comes in here and they all learn something and then they take that 26 with them. "I read this at the museum, I heard this story at the museum." "Well, let's go check out the museum." And that's how it goes. You can't let any of this stagnate, you know, because they say that so many thousand Word War Two veterans die every day and all of that's lost. So if we can get as much of it as we can, here, where we can safeguard it, and any other field museums, that's for the next generation. And it has to keep going because there are organizations that were made up of World War One veterans and World War Two veterans. And there have been hundreds of little aborted museums that have come and gone. And veterans’ organizations that have come and gone, they've had their last meeting. We had one here a couple of years ago. This unit from World War Two, from the 8th Air Force, had their last reunion here. And it's important that these stories get retold. I mean, we have a lecture series, “Plane Talk,” and that's what that's about. People come and tell these stories. And we used to have dozens of World War Two vets come in and tell their story. And now, the last one we had was about a month ago. And every time we have one, I think "that's going to be the last one." So we have all of that saved and recorded. And we'd like to ideally have it in a searchable-type thing. I mean, right now we have so many that it would be an undertaking, but it would be nice to be able to have someone come in here and ask about this event or this person and just be able to search it from there. And it'll come. But a lot of people just say, "Ah, another museum." You know, I mean, depending on who you talk to in the legislature, they're either all for it or they just don't care. 27 We've had situations where--General Hadley used to call it the Bountiful- Dixon line. He said, once you drove past Bountiful, nothing up here existed and you'd have to fight for every penny you got. And so that's kind of what we're dealing with. But it's legacy-type stuff. I mean, this is huge. And then in 1994, I remember reading a story about a reporter who went to the 50th anniversary of D-Day and he was over in Europe. And he was saying that the scary thing is that in twenty-five years, there's going to be half a dozen of these guys and they're going to be ancient. And a lot of what they know is not going to be remembered. And that stuck in my head, and I always try to absorb the stories. But that's this year. That's June 6th of this year. So it comes fast and we can get everybody to talk about it. We've had people come out here that tell stories that they've never told their families. That's the interesting thing. We had a guy come out here one day who had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and he was totally unresponsive. And his two sons brought him in here to look at a helicopter that he'd flown. And that guy jumped out of his chair, he jumped up in the helicopter, and he talked for ten solid minutes. And then they had to take him out and put him back in his wheelchair and then they left. But that's one of those things that my buddy of mine and I, we're like, “That's a story.” We wanted to get him for Plane Talk, but we couldn't because he just wasn't up for it. I probably rambled a little bit with this, but there is a lot of history here. And I'm trying to save as much as I can, so that when I'm sitting in the gallery talking to the next guy that's twenty-six years old, I can say, "This guy told me this story and this guy told me that story." And 28 then he'll tell, and it'll just keep going. So it really is oral history in the most correct sense. AK: That was not rambling, that was perfect. BL: [laughs] OK. AK: Do you have any other favorite memories or impactful memories that you'd like to share? BL: I worked out on the gallery one day and we had an earthquake. All the aircraft that were up in the air, they were doing this [making a swaying motion side to side with his arms and hands]. It was really kind of cool. It was the day that Len Randolph, who used to be the weather guy at Channel 4, he was a former Naval Aviator and he came out here in his flight suit to do a weather forecast, you know, at 6:00 in the morning. And he came out here just in time to see these airplanes doing this [swaying motion with hands, this time more like waves on the ocean]. That was kind of cool. A lot of it has to do with the people that have come out here. A weird story: We have a P-38 out here. There was a fighter Ace in World War 2, his name was Richard Bong. And he was killed flying an F-80, which we have here also. But he was, I think, the leading P-38 Ace, or one of them. And we were going to get a P-38 out here. We'd pulled it down from the tundra. They were restoring it in California, and his sister was still alive. Her name was Joyce Bong Erickson. And our director at the time wrote her a letter and said, “We are going to have a P-38 coming out here. Who would you please come out and be our guest of honor when they bring it?” And she never heard back. So one day 29 my daughter and I--she was about this big [motioning about 3 feet from the floor]- -we were driving down the road to come to the museum and they're pulling this airplane ahead of us. And it's a P-38 with the outer wings off. But they're on a trailer, they're pulling this thing down the road. It came off a C-5. They were gonna bring it down and put it together. And there was a tour bus following us. So this thing pulls into the parking lot, we pull into the parking lot, and then the tour bus pulls into the parking lot. This is about a year and a half after the letter was written. And everybody piles out of the bus. And I'm standing there in my volunteer shirt, and this lady walks up to me and says, “You know, my brother used to fly these.” And I said, “Really?” And she said, “Yeah. You might know who he is. The name is Richard Bong.” I said, “Oh, yeah, I know exactly who he is.” So she says, “Yeah. It's really neat to be able to see this airplane.” So I said, “You need to talk to our director.” So I take her into the office. And I said, “Carol, this is Richard Bong's sister.” So she jumps up and says, “You got my letter!” And she goes. “What letter?” She says, “I wrote you a letter telling you to come and see the P-38.” She had never gotten a letter. She says, “Well, what are you doing here?” She says, “We were going on the freeway and we saw this airplane so we thought we'd stop and look.” And it’s stories like that, you know? And I got a picture with her with my daughter when she was little, but it was one of those very strange things where things come together. She was here anyway, even though she'd never gotten a letter. That's one of those really funny stories. And that's actually the best one that I can remember. But we've had a bunch of really strange things. 30 We've had people that hadn't seen each other in 40, 50 years. We had two World War Two guys that flew in the same aircraft that came here for two separate events and ended up in the gallery together. That was cool. So yeah, this place is more than just you know, wood and steel and aluminum. There's a lot of deep personal things that happen out here and to be able to watch that is cool. It is. And you never run out of stories. I mean, guys come out and they tell you things that you can't believe it's true. A guy I used to work with, he said, yeah when I was in the B-17 in World War Two, our outfit borrowed a B-17 from Nate's outfit and then we ended up getting shot up and we had to land it and we had two parachutes on the aircraft. And so everybody else jumped out, and our flight engineer tied one to this post in the aircraft and he threw my parachute out one window and threw his parachute out the other window and stopped the aircraft. And I'm going, "Should I believe this?" Well, about a week later, he comes with a picture. He said some infantry guy on the ground had seen it happen and took a picture of it. So no matter how crazy the stories you hear out here, you don't challenge them on it because crazy things happen. Yeah, that's one of one of my favorite stories. But yeah he says, “yeah here's my picture.” Because I kind of looked at him and he says, “You don't believe me, do you?” He said, “I'll bring you a picture.” So, yeah, there's a lot of that going on out here. There's a lot of stuff that's so obscure that it's been forgotten. Like Nate was in a unit at Wendover. He was one of these groups pictured right here [pointing to airplanes in stained glass window behind him] on the train to Wendover that's flying right above our heads. He came from Philadelphia. He 31 was actually a Golden Gloves boxer or a Junior Olympic boxer and he joined the Army as an Army Ordnance Officer. And then, of course, he ended up flying a lot of B-17 missions. I mean, he was a Jewish guy and he changed his last name to McMaser because he knew what would happen to him if he got shot down. He wasn't supposed to fly anyway, but I think he flew nineteen missions in B-17s. When he was training out of Wendover, he trained with Clark Gable, and they said there was another actor, I can't remember his name now but he was really famous at the time. And there was another guy who looked almost exactly like him, and the two of them switched uniforms just to see what would happen. And for three days, nobody noticed. So, yeah, there’s just these really bizarre stories and it's stuff you'll never read in books. But World War II was a war and so a lot of really bad things happened, too. Dean Korth, who I worked on the Stearman with, he said that his worst memory of World War Two was during the time that he was in a mortar unit: they put that thing in [motions putting ammunition into a cannon and then shooting it out] and they shoot it over the hill according to their coordinates. They were on a road and it went around behind this mountain and you couldn't see the other side of it. And they were told to fire for effect over this hill. And when they went around to see what they had done--this was in April of 1945--they found motorized artillery pieces like they had been on the back of the truck, being pulled by horse teams, being led by Hitler Youth. They had no soldiers left. They had no fuel for trucks left. They had ended up pulling these things like plows to try and get from here to there. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen year old boys. And he said that was his 32 worst memory, that they had killed everybody with those mortars; the horses, the people, everything. But he said it had gotten to the point where that's what Hitler had left. And you'll never read that story. He also told me about going to a concentration camp where the prisoners had one particularly evil SS guard and they had thrown him down a well and they had thrown rocks on top of him until the well was full and they couldn't find this guard. And everybody said, “I don't know where he went.” It was stories like that. You know, it was war. And they said after that, the French, wanted them gone right away. You know, he said, “You don't hear these stories, but it takes you two years to get home after the war's over and they don't want you there anymore. So they're grateful until the parade's over and then it's time to get on with their lives, rebuild their country.” So there are a lot of stories like that, too. AK: So what do you hope that the community takes away from the museum when they come for a visit here? How do you hope that it will impact the people who will come and see what you've done? BL: Well, I hope that they can see just in this small museum, just how big aviation history is. I mean, you walk into the museum and you start following the timeline, and here's these guys who were flying the Wright flyer. And in most of these people's lifetimes, they were flying B-17s and B-29s. So the technology went from nothing to radar in two generations. I mean, it's really cool to walk through here and by the time you get to the back of the gallery, you're thinking, “this happened within some people's lifetimes!” For example, my grandma was born in 1895 and so she got to almost live in two different centuries! And there were no 33 airplanes when she was born. And then to go from no airplanes to 747's in her lifetime is just crazy! We have a lot of stuff in the collection that has come from different things and some of it comes from the 20s and the 30s. And you can just lay it all out on the table and say, “OK. Back in my day, airplanes were made of wood.” You know, that kind of thing. To go from wood to composites in one lifetime is amazing. I mean, I don't think there's any kind of tech that has progressed so fast in such a short period of time, except for maybe computers. And it's all been discovery; It's all been learning the hardware. I mean, yes our 71 was built with slide rules and so was the shuttle. So, yeah, to see just how far stuff has come in such a short period of time... I mean, the Centennial of Flight was in 2003. I was at Weber State University at that time and I got to do outreach, which was fun. But to think about how far this has all come in 100 years. I mean, 100 years is a flyspeck in history. You know, in a millennium, it's just nothing. It's a tent. And to have come that far in so short of a time, it's just incredible. So for museum visitors to actually be able to see hands-on examples of that in our museum, because you start walking in there and there's a replica of the Wright flyer hanging from the ceiling and then the Model-E, and then Jenny all made of dope and fabric. Then you get back in the back gallery and you've walked for ten minutes and you've gone from that to the SR-71. I come out here still and I'm just amazed at what we have, how much we have, and the linear exhibit of everything. You know, how we got from this to this. And I think if people get a taste of that--and we hear people visiting here say all the time, "Yeah I 34 came out here when I was five. I came out here when I was four." And they never forgot it. We had a girl who went to Northridge and she went from that to go into the Air Force Academy to being an instructor pilot in 4 years. She's going to fly the U- 2 now, the spy plane. And this is what did it: Coming out here and seeing all this stuff. It gets in your blood. And a lot of people don't understand, like this chapel, a lot of people don't understand just how much happened in Europe here in World War Two and then Japan. And you can stand and look at all this stuff and realize, you know, this is just like little snippets. But to have that much history in so small a space, that's the takeaway, that there really is a lot to be learned by coming up here. I mean, because there are museums that are just visible storage. You know, you just have stuff on display. There's one at Weber State University at the Lind Lecture Hall, but we're not going to talk about that. But yeah, I hope that they take away a sense of what we're all doing here, which is a love of history. AK: Absolutely. Well, wow, I hate to end this. But is there anything else you want to share before I ask my final question? BL: Um, bring your friends. We need to keep word of mouth going with this place. I mean, TripAdvisor called it the number one destination in the Ogden area for five years in a row. So if we can keep that going. Tell two friends. I mean, now with Facebook, there's no reason that everybody can't come here. But, you know, we built this to share. We didn't build it just for us. We built it for everybody. So everybody that wants to come out here needs to. 35 AK: For my final question I wanted to ask: of all the things that you've been able to be involved in and accomplish while volunteering with the museum and on the museum board, which accomplishment are you most proud of? BL: Little Precious, the F-16. Because I grew up on Air Force bases and I've seen a couple dozen gate guards. When the airplane is decommissioned, they take landing gear off it, they take the cockpit out of it, everything that isn't nailed down and they stick it on a pole. And those don't normally don't come back. And to have had an opportunity to save that. Nobody complained as much as I did when they painted it the wrong color. It came out grey when they put it back up after they took it down to be painted. And I complained about it till the director said, “Do you want to take this project?” And I'm like, “Yeah!” So two years of my life is sitting out in the gallery. And I did it for the museum, but what I didn't know at the time is that I actually did it for Dan Isbell, the pilot. He's had a lot of injuries in his life. He survived a plane crash, he survived all kinds of different things. And I think I added ten years to his life to come out and see it. So that was the big one, because so to many people it's such a fixture out here on this base. Everybody who's come to work remembers seeing this thing on a stick out there and to be able to bring it back and not just to have worked on the outside, but I put a cockpit back in it and and tons of research, just making sure. I had to invent a lot of things to make this happen and to have it come off the way it did. And we never really had any problems. I mean, we had a lot of weird things like we painted it in a rainstorm. That's a fun story. But to be able to be handed something like this and to never burn out of it, you know. I mean, 36 there was so much work involved and it just never felt like work. And at the same time that I wanted it to be done, I didn't want it to be over. So, yeah, that's the one. I thought that the biplane was great, but that was small potatoes compared to that F-16 and it looks like you could get in it and fly it. I mean Dan sat in it and he says, “This is exactly the way I remember it.” And it was just like building a full size model. And that's the one that I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing. And you realize that when this thing was designed people were wearing bell bottoms and they had mutton chop sideburns and computers didn't exist, you know, it was the 1970s. And to be able to bring something back like that and it looks modern! It's like any other aircraft out here. You look at the B-17, it looks like it could have been built yesterday, but the guys who flew it are mostly gone now and pretty soon, you know, 20 years from now, that Little Precious will be the same way. All those guys will be gone, and maybe me. And a lot of other guys who do restorations out here, they also have a favorite. And that one's my favorite. But as far as the sheer experience of it and all the people I got to meet and all the things I got to do and to be basically cut loose on this, because, you know, a lot of times there there are certain situations where you don't want certain people doing certain things. And I was trusted with this. Nobody looked over my shoulder, nobody told me what to do. I just made it happen. I just saw the end and just went for that. And I hope that of everything I've done, I hope that's my legacy because I'm crew chief on it now. So that's kind of my baby. I don't dust it, I wash it with water and towels, and you know, dry it and make sure it doesn't have any spots on it, stuff like that. I'm kind of crazy about it that way. 37 And you know, everybody else has their favorite airplane. We had a guy out here named Jeff Holm, who looked for all the world like George Bush. People used to come up on the street and say, “George Bush, George Bush!” You went to London and people just mobbed him. "Why is this guy out here walking around by himself?" But he has the F-105 out there. He flew that airplane in Vietnam and he restored that. The OV-10: I told you about the mattresses and the pallets and the forklifts. Randy Roberts flew that airplane and that was his baby. I'm just one of many guys that has one that was just their baby. Ray Marquardt, the black A-26 in there, that was his baby. He flew in that airplane. There's just a whole long list of people that have done exactly what I did. Like I said, Little Precious is my favorite, but I'm just one of many guys. I mean, I haven't done anything out here in my 31 years all by myself. Everything out here has been a team effort. You can't just run off all by your onesie and do it. We had a guy out here who worked on the B-29 for years and he never got anything done. He would sit out there under it and just talk to people all day long. And the reason he never accomplished anything is because he didn't want to work with anybody else. And that's a good way to figure out that you're never going to get anything done unless you become part of a team or a crew. And with Little Precious, we had the 388th come out and switch canopies on it for us, we had a paint crew come out and do the layout. They'd run along behind me and spend ten minutes painting and then they'd go home for the day. All kinds of different units would just come 38 out and help, you know, and nobody was in charge. But by all the training you have, I guess, you just know what to do and you go do it. And a lot of aircraft out here have been put together out of love. The P-47 that's in the gallery in there, Don Pince, Steve Hatch, and Bob Arnold did that aircraft and it was so corroded that we took big handfuls of this corrosion and put it in a box and took it down to the capitol and tried to talk the legislature into giving us some money so this wouldn't happen to any other aircraft, because when it got here it was so corroded that they were scared to put the gear on it because they're afraid it was just gonna collapse. And those guys that restored that, nobody was in charge of that; they were a team. And if they need something from me or from anybody else as we're working on other stuff, we'd go help them. There's nobody out here who is a self-centered island of one. So, I mean like I said that that is my favorite restoration, but strictly speaking, it isn't mine. I was supposed to be in charge of it, but as it was, I didn't have to tell anybody anything. We just knew what we're supposed to do. And that's the way it is with everything out here. You almost never have somebody out here who has to be led around by the hand. They just come out here, they see what they have to do, and they do it. And a lot of people who come out here as volunteers, most of them know what they want to do and they're good at it. We rarely ever have somebody come out here that doesn't know what they're doing and is a danger to themselves or anybody else. We have a Trinity Bomb out there that was in a movie once and I dragged that thing all over the place to be worked on. I mean, I took pieces of it to Weber 39 State and had it painted in the auto shop up there, I had several people helping with different parts of it. I wasn't really in charge of it, I just ended up with it. And like everything else, it was a team effort. Some will walk along and say, I think this would look better this way so I say, “OK, done” and readjust. There were no egos involved out here. There never has been an ego thing out here. And I think that's one of the reasons why we do so well. There have been museums and other places in this country where it has turned into a headbutting contest and I can think of at least two that aren't around anymore as a result of that. So anyway. Yeah, long answer. So sorry. AK: No, it was perfect. Well thank you so much for allowing us to interview you today and for meeting us out here. BL: You're welcome.