Oral History Program Christopher Lee Frazee Interviewed by Josh Thompson 03 November 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Christopher Lee Frazee Interviewed by Josh Thompson 03 November 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Frazee, Christopher Lee, an oral history by Josh Thompson, 03 November 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Christopher Lee Frazee. The interview was conducted on November 3, 2008, by Josh Thompson, in Frazee’s residence in Roy, Utah. Frazee discusses his life and the experiences he’s had. JT: Could you state your name and who you are? CF: Christopher Lee Frazee, that's who I am. There's our newbie interviewer right there...Tell me who you are, and where you are. JT: This is Josh Thompson, I’m a student at weber state and today I’m at Chris Frazee’s residence here in Roy and we're going to be discussing his life. Chris, could you tell me a little about the town you grew up in? CF: Actually I grew up out in the country, the nearest town was about 500 folks. We had a couple cats and dogs. I grew up in Massa County Indiana, and my high school had 600 total students, 144 in my graduating class. This was the graduating class of 1984. Small country town, basketball was king...still is. Varied farm community, plus a large portion of GM automotive kind of people that worked there back when the plants were still open very blue collar JT: Tell me something unique about the area you grew up in? Things that really sticks out to you, since you're now older and have been to other places CF: When you have only 600 people in your high school and you fill your basketball games with 5000 people; that's saying something about how seriously they take basketball in this state. We had up to 10000 people at basketball games sometimes. JT: Was that Alexandria? 1 CF: Yes, the high school I went to, yes. Bussed there, and that was 10 miles away. JT: In the snow? CF: Yes both ways. JT: Did you attend church or any kind of social groups growing up? CF: I was involved in everything. I have very eclectic tastes. I did all sorts of band, choir, but I was also an athlete. Did things like Chess Club; I did wrestling, football, baseball, on top of doing German club, drama club, choir, band; anything I could get involved in. One extracurricular activity after another. JT: Why so many? CF: It was out in the country; wasn't much else you could do, had to do something. It was before the advent of video games. So I always found things to try my hand at, to see what kind of things I might like later on in life. JT: Was there anyone outside your family who influenced you? And if so, how? CF: No. Not really. My uncle was one of my go-to guys. He was in the military; he was a wrestler, always really involved with music. Very outgoing personality, so he was like an older brother to me. He was my dad's youngest brother. We were only ten years apart. JT: Tell me about why you chose to join the Armed Forces? CF: I had a chance, a partial ride scholarship, to go to Indiana University in Bloomington. But I was just restless; I felt there was more to the world than Indiana. (Myself and) The rest of my friends all got together after we'd gone down to spring break and decided we needed to do something more with our lives and make a difference in the world. 2 JT: Was this a senior spring break trip? CF: Yeah. We all had different aspirations in that venue. We all ended up joining the military. Strangely enough, none of us joined together. We all joined different branches and at different times. But every one of us joined the military. Except one, he's still back there. I wanted to see the world, and I wanted to do it on my own dime, without having my dad pay my ride. That really bothered me, thinking about that. When my dad found out after I signed up ten months later because I'd signed up for delayed enlistment, and when my dad found out and he said, ''Well ok, what are we going to do about college?" I said “Dad I signed up for the Air Force, I leave February of'85...and he was ecstatic. He was very proud of me, puffed up; he said I'd done this on my own. You want to do your own thing, I understand that, respect that. My mother...my folks had been divorced since I was six...had quite the opposite reaction, since she got two brothers that had come back from Vietnam quite messed up, her view of the military was not a positive one. She threatened to shoot me in the foot to keep me from going. JT: And she was only about 5% joking. CF: Probably, yes. JT: So that was what kind of steered you away from college, you just wanted to have more of the wider experience... CF: Yeah, I wanted to broaden my horizons and do it on my own. Be my own person, make my own name. JT: Describe being...now you were initially stationed in Germany? 3 CF: Yes after my basic training in Texas and my initial training in Denver, Colorado and then my field training in Las Vegas I was stationed for two years at Hahn AFB in Germany. JT: And what was your specialty? CF: Communications, Navigations, and ECM stuff on the F16. Electronics. JT: What's ECM stand for? CF: Electronic Counter Measures. JT: Acronyms, not my strong point. CF: It's an Air Force staple, sometimes I forget not everyone speaks acronym. JT: Describe...How you felt when you moved into your first quarters in Germany. I mean, what was that like, you were what, 18 still? CF: I was 19. JT: By that point you'd completed all your training. CF: At the time I was 19 years old, I didn't know anybody. I met some girl on the plane over, we hung out for a while once I got to Germany, but that first time having a room....I shared it with two other guys in a room about the size of this one, roughly 15 by 16. We became very good friends. It was a little like the Animal House experience, you had a bunch of young guys, three floors of young guys and living near us was a bunch of young girls. It was just a lot of...Here I had lead this very country boy life and I had little experience in the big city and things like that and all of a sudden I was set free on my own with my own money, my room and board was paid, my food was paid. It was a really liberating experience. 4 JT: What city was this? CF: Hahn Air Base in Germany, it was about 45 kilometers southwest of Frankfurt. In the Mosul river area. JT: How were you treated by the native Germans? CF: At that time, in the mid-eighties, America was still very much loved. Of course, there's always been a population of Europeans who find the Americans to be, well, the UGLY Americans to be to be very loud, boisterous and out of control. But I spoke the language, I took four years in high school and I made a genuine effort to keep speaking the language when I was there and I was very easily accepted. I'd go to the Gasthauses and they'd recognize me and talk to me. I'd try talking to them, at least make the effort and they were very open and very friendly. JT: Gasthaus? CF: It's like a pub, a public house. Whole families go in there, they eat dinner, drink beer together, talk about football, soccer for us. That's where they socialize quite often. It's like the center of a small city. The one city I acclimated to was a country city, maybe 4000 people. It was rural Germany and the houses you see on TV were exactly what we were living in. Rolling green hills, farm folk for the most part. It was great, I loved it. JT: Ok so your small town Indiana, and now you’re in small town Germany. What was the thing that changed for you in Germany? What was the first thing that you were like "Wow, that's kind of made me different!"? CF: Just the exposure to a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures across the United States, and then actually I would go whole weekends where I would to a larger 5 city, Mordok, which was probably 30,000 people and I would spend the weekend at hotels. Back then it was one American dollar was equal to about 3 and half German marks, so you could go on about fifty dollars for a whole weekend and food and beverages and entertainment. So I would just go to these other cities with my friends, we'd go down there and visit and walk around and see a lot of the river communities that had built up, and the wine tasting and wine fests and get exposed to all different cultures. Not only Germany like I said but a lot of other Americans. JT: How as the discipline on base, the overall feel? Was it very rigid, or was it more of a... CF: They had an NCO on duty through the weekends. Military was always really strict, you cross this line, you're going to pay this price, but of course we were adults and we were allowed a certain amount of latitude. In the military you're always on duty, so you conduct yourself with a certain amount of discipline, but at the same time, hey it's the military and there's this certain of culture that goes along with it. JT: Did you ever go to Berlin? CF: No but I did go to Munich. Right then the Iron Wall wasn't down yet. The Berlin wall was still up, there was a lot of check points you had to go through, and I didn't want to get that exposed...But I did go to real Oktoberfest down in Munich, which was outstanding. I went to Frankfurt; I stayed up there a month one time on duty. I got to travel to Italy for a month; I got to travel to Spain a couple times. Took the busses and the trains all around the area... JT: Now we're in the depths of the Cold War...This is Ron Reagan, the Evil Empire we're up against. Did that add anything to your psychology or affect how you thought? 6 CF: I should have mentioned this before. In the eighties, right after Jimmy Carter was president and the country had this kind of feeling like we'd lost our direction. Ronald Reagan came in and we were really energized and it was very upbeat in the eighties. Things were going well and people didn't muck around with America. They generally said well, here's a president who will put down the iron glove, but he's very personable and everybody got along with him and I was very proud to be an American. You're over there in another country and your meeting people and the government's taking care of you and you're doing your duty and it’s just a great sense of well-being. JT: Of course, one of the first things Reagan did was get the hostages out of Iran CF: Well of course at that time, that's all we knew. He lined up, and as soon as he was President, within virtually a couple weeks all of a sudden the hostages were coming home. No deals. Of course, everything that has been revealed since, maybe there was trade for arms, blah, blah, blah, instigation of the war between Iran and Iraq...but at that time we didn't know about it, and we were happy. And we were proud of Ronald Reagan and proud of the United States. If you wore your uniform and anybody saw you, you were treated like gold, at airports, it was awesome, and you could have done no wrong. JT: And I remember this too, I grew up in the eighties too, a couple years behind you, and there was this respect for the military establishment and the armed forces in general. The Eighties was like where we recovered from Vietnam and re-discovered our selfesteem as a country. CF: We found a direction again, I believe. JT: At what point did you become involved in Desert Storm and how did that come about? 7 CF: It was about seven years into my enlistment. I was stationed at Hill Air Force Base. JT: So you re-upped then? CF: Yes, I re-enlisted. I was stationed at Hahn AFB. Iraq had invaded Kuwait, we decided to step up and take some action, and people may disagree with this now. JT: It doesn't matter, this is your opinion we're talking about. CF: I was...very happy to go over there. I always wanted to do my part. I was willing to go TDY and do this and do what was required of me. My son had just been born, and... JT: You were in the Guard at that time, you were still active? CF: I was still active. I was active duty. Now this is a story that people may have heard of. The place we stayed at was called Kobar Towers and it is the very same building that got blown up ten months later. They pulled up a truck next to it, and detonated a bomb right next to that building and some of my friends in the United States Air Force were lost...and some of my friends that I still know, you know, still talk about how they were there to help drag the bodies out. JT: So this happened right after you left? CF: Right after I left. The only time I was involved...or exposed to any kind of real danger, was we were playing basketball in the compound and somebody had climbed up on a hill and started taking shots at us, and actually shot up the backboard while I was playing basketball. The Saudi Arabian government actually beheaded him the next Saturday and offered to all of us to come down there and witness it as part of the event to show that they delivered justice. I...I didn't want to see it. I had friend that went down, 8 he did see it and to this day he still has nightmares. It's not our culture, and I didn't want any part of it. And I'm glad I didn't. JT: So were you in Saudi the whole time... CF: Yes, I was in Saudi. That was the base we were stationed at. JT: How did you feel about Saudi Arabia as an ally nation? CF: Well… JT: Compare and contrast your relation to the Saudi people with the German people. CF: They barely tolerated us, there was a lot of dislike; we weren't allowed off the compound most of the time. They were generally very rude to us at checkpoints. They'd make very unprofessional comments that we couldn't understand. There'd be a lot of jeering from them. You know they almost made us feel like they were doing us a favor, more so than we were doing them a favor and it didn't really feel like an ally situation either. There was a lot of tension...lot of tension. JT: That's fair to say. So at what point did you arrive, was it early in Operation Desert Storm or later on? CF: It was still Desert Storm. We were still flying live missions into Iraq. Of course I was working on the F16s, we were flying bombing missions. We were writing things on the bombs as presents to Saddam. It was still...I was still proud to be there. We felt like we were doing the right thing. The general consensus of everyone over there. They were missing their families. I had a newborn son and wife that I was missing, but I still felt like I had to do my duty. I was still paying my call... for my requirement to be there. JT: When you got there you felt that way, and when you left you felt the same. 9 CF: Yes. JT: How long were you over there? How long was your tour? CF: Five and a half months...l got to come home two weeks early, because they had offered me a six year tour to Germany when I got back. My then-wife decided she didn't want to go back to Europe, she's English, and she said my son wasn't going to able to go either. She wanted to stay here in America; she didn't feel real comfortable going back over there. She said I could go, but I didn't want to go without my family. That's what I wanted was my family. I stayed in the area (Utah) and I had to get processed to get out. A really cool story is...l was wearing my desert camouflage on my civilian flight. They loaded up a 747 right there at the base with a bunch of military guys flying back. I flew back with mostly army, there some marines, some air force...and all the way back we were treated by the flight crew, with just the utmost respect. It was very nice. That didn't really sink home to me, but I got off the plane in Philadelphia and I had to wait three hours to catch a connecting flight. I didn't have any civilian clothes to swap into so I'm still wearing my desert clothes and the minute I got into the airport, people were coming up to me, shaking my hand, saying thank you, buying me drinks. I got on the plane from Philadelphia and I swear to you every person bought me a drink on my way back, including the pilot. The gears are coming down in Salt Lake International. The pilot comes up, (they'd already moved me to first class). Pilot came up and said, "Here, I'd like to buy you a drink." I said "Well you’re getting ready to land, I still got a beer. He interrupts me and says, "No, I need to buy you a drink" He thanked me very much for my service, and I got off the plane and there was a lot of people there. JT: Was there a lot of military on the plane for your flight home? 10 CF: No, I was the only one. It was a special way they brought people back; they were moving me ahead so I could get my paperwork done, to get out of the Air Force and...I'll never forget that experience. I was elated. JT: So, was it almost kind of anti-climactic, now you're out and moving back into the civilian world after you'd been overseas for how long? CF: Well, I was only over there about 5 and a half months, and I was two years in Germany, but I got out of the Air Force then as part of the military cuts in the early nineties that President Clinton signed into effect to reduce our department of defense personnel, to become more slim. And it was hard to find work at the time; I actually ended up taking a bunch of temporary jobs. JT: So how’d that work? Were you told, “Well you’re not needed anymore.” Were you given an option; how’d that work? CF: I was given an option, I had to go to Germany or I had to get out. JT: So you couldn’t stay here in your current position? CF: Right, right. It was something, all of a sudden you know, I went from being in the military, this great, steady job, no worries, that I’d bought a house with under my VA loan, I’d done everything. And then it was crickets in the job field, there was just nothing to do. I did temporary jobs, production all over the place, a concrete plant. I ended up working at the dog food plant out on Wall for ten months before I got hired on by an airbag company called Morton International. It was a different world, I was really set back; I was almost aimless. I would just go to work, at the dog food plant, I’d work 4 12’s; rotating days off and it was horrible, horrible. 11 JT: And did this cause stress in your life? CF: Sure it caused a lot of stress in my marriage, because I started going to school to get some kind of degree so I’d have a better chance of getting a job, and I was working overtime and my then-wife was starting up her daycare business and that was very stressful for her, trying to get everything rolling, and there was just a lot of stress going on in my marriage. JT: You started to look for education options at the time? CF: Yeah, at the ATC I was taking some electronic courses. I was there for quite a few months. JT: So you were trying to build on what you’d learned in the military. CF: And transfer it over to civilian. JT: Describe how you first met your wife. CF: I was in Germany, and like many young Americans over there at the time we tended to want to bring some of the culture back with us and became enamored with some of the local populace. I met Heike maybe six months after we got there and we dated for a year and a half and got married right before I was to leave Germany and then she came back over with me. Met in a bar to be honest, an NCO club on base, and it went from there. And it went quickly downhill once we got over here. JT: What attracted you to her? CF: She was very beautiful; red hair. I loved her accent. She spoke fluent English and she had a good sense of humor. 12 JT: It’s hard to beat a good accent. What do you want to accomplish now? You’ve had this big military experience in your life, you came back, and you eventually found your way… CF: And now I work for the Air Force as a civilian, doing the same job, expanded duty of course, I have a good job there. That’s a good question. I’ve got to admit at this point in my life I’m doing a little soul-searching about what I want to do next. My son will graduate from high school in a year and a half, what will my direction be then? To be honest I don’t have one. What do I want to be when I grow up, at age 43? JT: As an ex-military man, by most accounts the first war in Iraq was deemed a “success.” It was a very different war. It was portrayed in the media very differently. We were in, we were out, which I think was one of the keys to the positive perception. What do you think the current conflict in Iraq, our reasons for being there, and how it is different from the first war in your eyes? Is it different or just an extension of the same thing? CF: It is different. I was a little bit let down that we could’ve driven all the way into Baghdad and been done the first time. It was something that always bothered me. JT: The lack of eliminating the Republican Guard? CF: I think this is when we started to let the media dictate or help dictate our policy. People back here, once we had broken the back of the Republican Guard were like, it’s time to go home. It’s time to leave. We don’t need to do that, they’re out of Kuwait. The fear that there’d be a negative spin on the military and our involvement there. Instead of finishing the job and being done with it and probably providing stability because we would have 13 been there, instead we pulled back and did a barricade around Iraq for ten years after that. JT: What were Bush Senior’s reasons for doing that? Was he thinking, “We’ve just liberated Kuwait?” CF: He started to receive pressure. We’ve reduced the Iraqi’s as a threat; we’re just getting out now. Like I said, a negative spin was starting to develop, and I don't know if he was worried about his legacy, what he would be seen as later on, or if it was because reelection was coming up and he'd already done the "Read my lips, no new taxes" and already turned around and added new taxes, so he knew he was on a leaking boat. I'm not really sure. But anytime you let the press control your policy and start living by the polls...you start losing moral authority JT: Moral authority, Credibility? CF: And your belief in what you're doing. We could have done it. Yeah, we had some collateral damage, but it's a war. Nowadays it's like the media is counting coup, and they're checking, like "Look we found twenty more civilians you killed, instead of focusing in on what's really going on, their more focused on the negative, it's almost like they want to dictate the path of the government, and that's not what the media is supposed to do. The media is supposed to report it, and that's it. And I just feel that the media is way too involved in saying what we're going to do. JT: Are we talking about the first conflict? CF: No. I'm talking about the new one. The new one now there's embedded reporters, their reporting everything...and I think loose lips sink ships. I just don't understand reporters 14 reporting the things that they did. Everybody gets CNN, everybody gets Fox News all over the world, why are you (the media) out there telling what our movements are, what our actions are, what the morale of our troops is. To me, I have a hard time with that, that's a real problem I have with today's conflict. JT: What do you feel about our reasons for being in Iraq compared to the first war? Are they any better, the same? CF: I think there was a little bit of sleight of hand going on. Saddam was telling everybody he still had weapons. He had these weapons of mass destruction, he was laughing about it, kicking inspectors out all the time. To me at that point, that was enough reason to go in. JT: That's right; he was expelling U.N. inspectors, not agreeing with the terms. CF: Moving things around, not letting them in facilities. What he was really doing we now know today was trying to bluff his strength, trying to feel like he was the stronger man, he felt that we would pull out and he would have the illusion of these weapons, but we bought into it whether we saw through the illusion and used it as an excuse to go in and finish the war or if we didn't know and we went in...Either way, there's an ambiguity in there that allows people to say "Wow, President Bush lied or misled us or our intelligence was poor or whatever. The truth is Saddam Hussein had the weapons and he'd use them. To me that was enough. There was already a UN resolution in place...1041 I think it was? In 1992 it was drafted up, that all weapons of mass destruction had to be destroyed and accounted for. He defied that, he defied that till the day he died. 15 JT: So while there's been little subsequent evidence of the weapons of mass destruction, the fact is that he did nothing to dissuade anyone from believing it. CF: He helped create the illusion. Everybody forgets that I think, everybody thinks we went in there for the oil. It costs more to get oil now than it did before we invaded. We knew that. It wasn't for the oil. Maybe it was to create an American base in the Mideast or what have you. The truth is, he was defying the UN and since then the UN has just been a laughing stock, nobody listens to them. They seem to be to be, well, mostly on an America is evil kick. I have no confidence in the UN as a whole myself. JT: Because of their opposition to the second Iraq conflict? CF: Because of their opposition since then, yeah. JT: What are our reasons for being there now? CF: For still being there? I think we're trying to stabilize and project our power in an area that has a resource that we need, as well as an ally that we try to protect...that's Israel. I have nothing against the Israeli people, but I know that that has always been. JT: Has the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein. Have they made periodic threats against the Israeli state? CF: No, just to all their neighbors in general. He was very aggressive. Before we put up the embargo and the naval barricade around his country he was very aggressive towards his neighbors. JT: Do you feel the military has prosecuted this war in the best way they can? CF: No. I think they have allowed themselves to be hamstrung by the media. By perception and by polls instead of doing the job and getting out. Any time you worry too much 16 about hearts and minds, instead of making sure you get the arms taken care of and the corrupting influences, then you allow yourself to (indecipherable) which is what Vietnam ran into, same kind of situation. JT: The Surge was passed over we'll say, popular objection if nothing else. CF: It was, and the Surge actually worked. You ask Petreus, you ask anybody. You don't see much going on about Iraq. But I talk to people who are coming back from there, I still work at Hill Air Force base, and it's a totally different world over there from what most people realize. The checkpoints are almost all gone. Sodor City, it was once a bastion of resistance, the site of continual gunfire every night and every day. Now it's not the case. They've worked to get more people involved like the tribal chiefs. They help diffuse Sunni verses the Shiite problem, which has always been a problem long before we were there and long after. JT: Don't forget the Kurds, nobody likes the Kurds. CF: Nobody likes the Kurds. Kurds want to be left alone, but they go after other people, they're aggressive. JT: What is our endgame in the current conflict, and how does it differ from our goals in the first war? CF: Our endgame in the first war was to pull back and contain Saddam until he'd collected and disposed of all his material. JT: Basically swatted his hand when he reached out for the Kuwaiti prize. CF: Right, we drove him back. Nowadays, I can't really say. It seems like we're waiting on the next election, and what the next president wants to do. By all poll results, it looks 17 like Obama's going to be our president and he claims to be getting the troops out of there. I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I know we have put a lot of time and effort into training their military and their police force and it’s really done a lot of good. JT: And help set up their government too. CF: Help set up their government. We've helped them rebuild their infrastructure. I think at some point, years down the road, people will look back and say, "You know they really did help out" I think twenty years from now they'll say that. If we get out of it and Iraq stays stable and non-aggressive, but a strong presence in the Middle East. If crimes against the Kurdish people and the other factions that he outright persecuted. If that's gone and doesn't flare up again, then someone will look back and say the United States did the right thing. It wasn't popular, but they did the right thing. A lot of people push for the timeline, when are we going to get troops out. Again that comes back to asking why you'd give that information out to anybody. Why would you tell the enemy when we're pulling out our troops? All you have to do is wait until this day, harbor your arsenal and strike after that. JT: I think maybe you can have a timeline; I debate whether you should advertise that to the world. CF: You can say these events have to take place before these can occur, but not actual dates. JT: It should be event based, this isn't planning for someone's education fund, it's a matter of life and death. CF: Our country's life or death; our culture's life or death. 18 JT: I was told at the beginning of the conflict that to not agree with the war was to be selling out our men and women overseas. I never subscribed to that, because it's a politician telling me to support a war. I support soldiers, individually, because I believe philosophically that a soldier's life is always hard. They need support. They are there because they believe...and it's kind of like I believe that they believe, but I'm not going to. CF: You support their beliefs. JT: Yeah, I support their efforts. I'm not going to sit there and burn a flag and talk about Yankee scum. I support our military, but I don't support the war. However, it gets kind of muddled when we have a lot of private, contracted security forces. CF: Blackwater. JT: Blackwater, and any number of others. They are just the ones that I know about. And now I get murky. It's one thing for me to support my boys, but when we're talking highly paid mercenaries, whose moral value is the same as any mercenary. CF: Mercenaries is exactly what we're talking about. JT: Then I feel conflicted, I feel very conflicted. CF: We had no business bringing in American contractors with their hired thugs, hired mercenaries; however you want to put the term. To put them in the conflict, in an aggressive area where they're trying to earn a buck, where they're trying to make money...What we should have done is brought, maybe, Australian contractors or German or Russian contractors over, so it'd have been a third party there wouldn't have been that stigma, that murky area. It made us look as a whole country, we were 19 mercenaries, because all of a sudden we're having to extend our hand to protect the mercenaries from actions too that are going on over there...But then they're given a free hand to operate on their own judgment. JT: And of course, the military in general is going to have to be held accountable indirectly for the actions of people that are not under their direct command. CF: Correct. Yes. JT: I think that's one of the things that have made this conflict murkier. I'm not sure how I feel about that. CF: I'm not at all supportive of the private contractors being over there. JT: When you get into the contractors that are being paid to rebuild the country's infrastructure, I think in the years to come we're not going to find out a lot that we really like about that. CF: I wish we brought in China or somebody else like that was an ally of us that wanted to work with us. JT: That didn't want to provide troops, but could provide some engineers. CF: Those American contractors, to the forces that were looking to push America out would represent military, so they'd be targets as well, so that would lead to conflict between the two. They should have made it another party that was a big mistake. JT: That was a very interesting point; I thank you for bringing it up. In your life, what do you regret, what sticks in your craw? CF: What do I regret? 20 JT: Do you have one big regret? And this is one you don't have to answer if you don't want to. CF: No, I think my biggest regret was once I found a good job after I left the dog food plant, I became very Type A and worked and worked and believed that my whole life should be defined by my work and my family should just automatically support my belief, and that's all I should have to do is work. So I lost...Lost a relationship with my family. I lost sight of what was important. JT: Did you feel you had to work that much, just to support the family? CF: Initially I did, but then I got to the point where I loved working. When I went to work, all my stress of being at home, and trying to build a house, or whatever were doing at the time, I can't remember off the top of my head...and not being there to help my wife, and not being there for my son...I was always working, I mean seventy-plus hours a week, plus going to school. When I was off work, I didn't want to do anything for anybody else except kick my feet back and have a beer. That would be my one biggest regret; it took me a long time. I got therapy to the point where you work to live, you don't live to work. That first part, living to work, cost me a lot. JT: I went through that phase, at a similar time, the difference being I didn't have much better to do; I just got addicted to work. I had the same failings, I was just lucky enough to not a have a family at the time. CF: They loved us, they were like "you guys are here; you're helping us out.” JT: Oh it was very reinforcing; it was a source of esteem. You'll pay me double-time? 21 CF: And it led to promotion. I got paid back for that, but there's a point where you have to decide, well I'm making money and we're doing ok, we don't have to have this extra money can instead do this together. JT: The law of diminishing returns. This has been Josh Thompson from Weber State, and Christopher Frazee and I'd like to thank him for the interview, and signing off. 22