Mr. James O’Donnell
[Born 07/08/1920]
Interviewed by Alex Roth
Recorded on 11/03/2004 by Alex Roth
Transcribed on 01/15/2005-01/17/2005 by Alex Roth
[Interview starts at 003 on counter]
Alex Roth: Today is November 3, 2004, and the place of the interview is the house of Mr. O’Donnell. I am interviewing James O’Donnell. He was born on July 8, 1920. He currently lives at 7602 Derrick Place in Indianapolis, Indiana, 46219.
(Tami Roth, my mother, also attended the interview and takes part in a few questions.)
Alex Roth: Mr. O’Donnell, what wars did you serve in?
James O’Donnell: I served in World War II in the United States Navy.
AR: What was your rank in the Navy?
JO: I was what they called a Water Tender, Third Class, aboard the USS Indianapolis.
AR: Do you recall your first days of service?
JO: Yes. I was drafted and I was sent to – they asked me what branch of service I would like to serve in. I told the Navy, and so he sent me up to the Great Lakes, and I had a few weeks of training and then they sent me to Shoemaker, California, and the
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[USS] Indianapolis was at San Francisco, and they needed five replacements, and I happened to be one of the five that they sent me to – to the Indianapolis, and they – I went in as a Third Class Machinist Mate, but they didn’t have any openings in the Machinists Mates rank, but the Water Tender rank was open as a Third Class, and so they let me keep my Third Class and they gave me the Water Tenders rank.
AR: All right. So when you went to training at such a young age, how was that? Was it a--?
JO: Well I really wasn’t that young a age. I was 23 when I went in, so the training wasn’t too bad. It was cold up there, but that was the main thing.
AR: All right. Now, I read that you were in several battles. How was that for you?
JO: Well, it wasn’t too bad. We were – well, our missions mostly were bombarding. We operated with usually with – in that procedure, we usually operated with another cruiser and a couple of battleships. We more or less softened up the beaches for the landings – with the bombarding.
AR: Could you maybe describe some of your most memorable moments?
JO: Well, at Iwo Jima, I was watching a – I shouldn’t have been up on the main deck, but I was watching a tank go up the side of the hill there once and all at once you seen a puff of smoke and there’s no tank, there’s no nothing there anymore. It’s all gone. And then, I think one of the most memorable things was we chased the Jap fleet away from there and on our way back why, you know that’s where they put the flag up on Mount Suribachi, and you know, out at sea, you can’t see too far with the curvature of the earth, but from way out to sea, you could see that flag up on Mount Suribachi because, you know, that was up high. That was one of the most memorable things I think.
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AR: So, were there a lot of casualties in your unit from battle?
JO: But not until the sinking.
AR: Okay, so not from battle, but from the [sinking]?
JO: No.
AR: Okay, and while you were in service, how did you stay in touch with your family?
JO: Well, the only way you could stay in touch was by sending mail and then, you know, you didn’t receive mail too often, only when you come back and got into port someplace and maybe the mail would get to you then.
AR: So, how did you entertain yourself on the ship?
JO: Well, you played cards. That was about the only thing besides your duties. You was working. You usually worked a – four hours on and twelve hours off.
AR: So, was – or did you like your fellow soldiers and officers? Did you have a lot of friends?
JO: Oh yeah. The – you didn’t know too many on the ship. Why you knew your ones you worked with and that was mostly the ones you knew, because, see we had 1,197 men aboard ship, and you didn’t know many outside of your own division, and then you didn’t know all of them in your own division, ‘cause you worked with a certain group in your own fire room. And we had four fire rooms, see. So you knew the ones on your fire room and that was about it.
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AR: Was there a lot of pressure on the ship, like if you maybe didn’t do your job right was there…?
JO: Well, you did your job. And I – well, in our fire room, you didn’t notice any pressure.
AR: All right.
JO: ‘Cause we had a good bunch of men.
AR: All right. Did you and your crew members ever pull any pranks on the – did you guys ever do any tricks for the…?
JO: Oh, once in a while they would, but not very often.
AR: Okay. Did you take any photographs from your service?
JO: No. I don’t recall taking many. I never had a camera out there with me.
AR: Did you ever keep a diary?
JO: No, I didn’t.
AR: All right. Do you remember when the USS Indianapolis went down and what happened?
JO: Yes, it’s very vivid. I was sleeping back on the fantail, which is the back part of the ship, and it was nighttime – just after midnight – and it felt the same when then when the torpedoes hit as it did when we got hit with the kamikaze plane. It’s like it bounces you up and down about three times. And, of course, it woke you up right away. We were sleeping. And you look forward and all you could see was a big ball of fire. And you always wore a little rubber life preserver. And around the ship in bags they had Kapok life jackets, so we went to the bags and got a Kapok life jacket, and by that time, the ship had turned over on its side and was going down bow first. We walked to the side of the ship – down the side of the ship – and went down between the bottom of the ship and the shaft to go out where the propellers are, slid down the bottom of the ship, took a few strokes away, looked back and all you could see was the back of the ship going down like the pictures on the front of the ship – book – that’s the way it was. That’s how fast it went down. It went down in about twelve minutes.
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AR: When it first happened, when you heard it, did you think it was something really serious or did you…?
JO: Well, it turned over on its side so fast, it just kept, it knocked all the communications out, so you couldn’t tell to shut the engines down. It just kept plowing along, and your gonna sail right straight down.
AR: About how long did it take to…?
JO: It went down in about twelve minutes.
AR: Twelve minutes?
JO: That’s not very long. Well, you know, if you were waiting on me, twelve minutes is going to be a long time. Sometimes twelve minutes ain’t too long.
AR: Um-hum.
JO: And when you got in the water, this fuel oil, you know, out of the tanks, where they burst, you know, it got in your eyes, it just burnt you real dry – real bad, got in your throat, you start throwing up, got in your nose, you couldn’t hardly breathe, you know. It was just bad.
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AR: Um-hum. So, could you maybe describe, while you were stranded on the ocean for such a long time, what was going through your mind and--?
JO: Well, you was hoping and prayed a lot. You know, you was hoping that somebody’d come along and rescue you. You thought, well, you know, we was supposed to meet this other ship for gunnery practice and when we didn’t arrive, you’d think, well, you know, they’d wonder where we were and send somebody out to look for us. But apparently, you know, they didn’t and we just kept hoping that somebody would come along, you know, and it was just a fluke that they did find us. This guy’s on submarine patrol, and he’s playing out a new antenna – because you gotta realize now that it’s not like the modern facilities. You didn’t get thousands and thousands of miles with your radios like you do today. And he’s playing out a new antenna, but able to get better mileage out of his radio stuff, see. And he happened to be looking down and he sees an oil slick. Well, normally, a submarine when it went down left an oil slick. So he thought, oh boy, I got me one. He come in real low with his bombay doors open ready to dump a couple of mine charges when he seen guys waving their hands. And that’s when he pulled up and notified his base, and they sent this PVY plane out, and he landed in the water and got fifty-six guys out of the water. And on his way out there, he passed over a destroyer – the Cecil Doyle – and the Cecil Doyle turned and headed out there without orders, you know, and he transferred his men onto the Cecil Doyle the next day – the ones that he had rescued. And the guy that was in charge there, that was the commander of the Cecil Doyle, was a fellow named Graham Clater who later became Secretary of the Navy under President Carter. You know, the ship has got so much about it – it was President Roosevelt’s ship before the war. He went to foreign countries and entertained dignitaries on it. The fellow that was the pilot of the PBY plane that came out there and landed was an attorney from Frankfort, Indiana. He was a survivor of Pearl Harbor. He was on the Sacramento at Pearl Harbor.
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AR: So do you still know anybody from the USS Indianapolis?
JO: Oh yeah. We have a reunion every other year. We’re having a reunion next year at the Weston Hotel, July the 21st through the 24th. There should be some guys come back. They’re thinning out though. You know, a lot of them are real bad health and don’t get around too well. You know, a lot of them it brings back too many memories, they can’t stand it, you know.
AR: Um-hum.
JO: So, we’re all a bunch of old men.
AR: And I read also in the book that there were sharks all around. Could you maybe describe that?
JO: Well, if you didn’t stay in a crowd – in a group – if you was out there by yourself, the shark had you. You could look down underneath you all the time and sharks were there. I don’t know what the deal was. They didn’t seem to bother the large groups so much. They’d get a guy once in a while, but - and after so long a time, the guys would say, “Oh, there’s an island over there”, and they’d swim away, and you’d never see them again. They’d say, “There’s a ship over there”, they’d swim away, and you’d never see them again. And a guy would say, “I’m going down to the mess hall to get a drink”. He’d dive down under the water, swallow a bunch of that salt water, about four hours, he’s gone.
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AR: I read that your ship at one point was carrying the atomic bomb.
JO: When we got hit with the kamikaze plane at Okinawa, we lost nine men and had twenty-six injured. We went back to a small island, Idshima, I think it was. That’s in the book, I cannot think that’s what the name of it was. And we – they buried the men on the island over there, and they put a patch on us, and we came back to the United States in the middle of a cargo fleet, and that’s when we were repaired. And we were in San Francisco, and the atomic bomb was ready to go then, and they chose our ship to take the atomic bomb over. And we thought we took both of them over, but we come to find out later that we didn’t. And we did 29 knots going over to the island of Tinian. That’s where we took the bomb. That’s the one that the “Enola Gay” flew and dropped on Hiroshima. But we understand that they flew one over there. They wanted to be sure that at least one of them got there.
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AR: And wasn’t it a secret mission?
JO: Well, I guess it was, ‘cause we traveled all by ourselves.
AR: All right. And do you have any other things you would like to share about the…?
JO: Well, we took it to there and when we were – liberty was over at six o’clock on a Sunday morning, and this truck backed up with Marine guards all around it. They threw the hook over and they put these two big crates in the hangar deck. Our Marine guards – we had thirty-nine marines aboard ship – our Marine guards were put around armed. You couldn’t get close to those boxes. And the two couriers with this iron cylinder – with this uranium or whatever it was, and it went up to the captain’s cabin – now we was a unique ship ‘cause we had two captains quarters. And these two couriers were in that other captain’s quarters that one of them never left there. If you went to dinner, I was there, if I went to dinner, you were there. One of them never left, and so there was somebody there, and as we understand it, the orders were to get there as fast as you can. If anything happens, say you _____ + ______ + _______.
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AR: Do you recall when your service ended?
JO: Well, I - normally when you get sunk like that you get home right away.
AR: Um-hum.
JO: Well, due to the fact that they dropped them bombs, Japan decided to surrender. So, part of our group when we were picked up went to Pelielu, the hospital there, and part of us when to Samar. I went to Samar in the hospitals there. About two weeks or three weeks, they regrouped us at the hospital at Guam. By that time, Japan had surrendered and they sent all the ships to Japan. Like I say, normally you would’ve got home right away. But they sent all the ships to Japan, which was right because some of those poor guys had been prisoners of war for two to four years. Get the prisoners of war and bring them home. So I didn’t get home until the end of September. And I got thirty days leave, took two days traveling time in front and back. But when I got – my time was up and I reported back to the Federal building. I – the guy says, “Well you might as well go on home. You’re not leaving ‘til tomorrow.” I says, “Well, you got any idea where I’m going?” He says, “Yes, you’re going to the West Coast for new construction.” See the war had been over and this is the end of November now – or the first part of November – and I thought well they’ll send me to the [Great] Lakes, you know, and I’ll get out. And, anyway, they sent me back to the West Coast for a new ship. Well, you might – well you might not realize it – but, at that time, a lot of guys are getting out of the service, and all the confusion, and transferring guys here, there, and the other place, you know. Like guys have maybe six months yet to do, putting them on a ship so they can go out to the islands and pick up some guys and bring them back home, you know. And then their six months is up, and they can get out. Now they put some other guys on there. That’s the way it was, the confusion. You’ve seen it in school, the confusion, how it is. And sometimes out on the football team how it is sometimes.
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AR: Yeah.
JO: And, well that’s the way it was then, see. And so finally I did get transferred into the new construction pool, and I get in there, why the guy says, “Well I can’t use you, you got too many points.” So, back in the receiving ship pool I go into, and they finally sent me back to the Great Lakes. See, you got out under a point system in World War II. You got so many points for this and so many points for that and so many points for the other thing and everything, and in the time I was in, a week less than 23 months, I was within a half a point of having enough points to get out. So they sent me back to the [Great] Lakes, and I got out in January of ’46 – the first part of it.
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AR: So you would get a point for…?
JO: Well, you had a point for so many of the battles you were in, and a point for so many being overseas, and so I _______________ ?portant?. How many points you got for each thing, I don’t know. But, what I seen and all the battles I was in and everything, I had within a half a point of getting out, in a week less than twenty-three months. The ship gained ten battle stars, which was for the number of battles we were in, and I’m entitled to five of them.
AR: All right. And, when you sent you went on – you had like a thirty day leave, what would you do during your leave?
[Interview interrupted by a telephone call.]
JO: Well I came home, you know.
AR: You would come home.
JO: Yeah, I came home and was home with the folks and my wife and everything. Of course, the war was over then.
AR: And when you were--. When you free of service, what did you go on to do?
JO: Well, I was working at Allison’s when I went in, and when I come back, Allison’s was on strike. I didn’t have a job. So, the fire department had applications out for the fire department, and I put my application in for the fire department, and I got appointed to the Indianapolis fire department, so I spent 35 years on the Indianapolis fire department.
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AR: And had you gone to school before you went in the service?
JO: What school are you talking about?
AR: Had you gone to college?
JO: No. No, I didn’t go to school. Graduated from high school, went to work. Worked all the while I was in high school.
AR: So you were a fireman.
JO: thirty-five years with the Indianapolis city fire department.
AR: And do you still have any close friends from when you were in the service.
JO: Oh, well yeah, you do. There’s none around here. See in the fire room I worked in, there’s only one other fellow that made it. He lives down in Texas. And he comes up to the reunions. And I know some of the other fellows now, you know, since we’ve been having the reunions and things, I’ve met a lot of the other fellows now, and I know some of them and everything. The ship just had so many on there, you just didn’t know too many. Unless you were in a position where you moved around the ship, you know, where you would come in contact with them. Otherwise, you didn’t.
AR: Um-hum. Has your experiences affected your life in any way, ‘cause not too many people have been through that?
JO: I don’t think so. No. I’ve seen an awful lot.
AR: Um-hum.
JO: I mean it affected a lot of the guys. You know, they don’t want to talk about it. And everything, I go around schools and talk and just like interviewing with you and things like that. It don’t bother me, but a lot of guys, they just don’t want to talk about it. It bothers them, you know.
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AR: Um-hum.
JO: It don’t bother me. I must be nuts.
AR: And is there anything – any other striking moments you would like to add or any other information?
JO: No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve covered most of it. It’s a – we were 100% casualties. Everybody received a Purple Heart, you know. And a lot of the guys are still not well from it, you know, I mean, a lot of them in wheelchairs and everything. It’s always right here – it never leaves. You know, I can picture the whole thing right now. You know. There’s probably some instances you’ve had in your lifetime already that are still up there – you can see them all the time.
AR: And – Oh, did you receive any other medals or any credits or…?
JO: Well, you can – there’s other medals and things like that. The Asiatic/Pacific ribbon with five stars, you can have that, and there’s different medals for different things, but I never did try to get them.
AR: That’s really it, unless you have any other…Oh, were you ever a prisoner of war?
JO: [Shook head no]
AR: You weren’t? Okay. Well, thank you for letting me interview you.
[Interview officially ends at 503 on counter.]
[Mr. O’Donnell called my mother in from the other room so he could show us some things.]
JO: Here’s a piece of the kamikaze plane that his us at Okinawa. A fella got a big piece of it. It was still on the deck, and he cut it off into small pieces and gave some of us some.
JO: Here’s a Purple Heart. Everybody received a Purple Heart. And here’s the letter showing you that it’s really mine.
[Pause in conversation while examining the Purple Heart and letter.]
JO: And this is the Peace Medal we got after the war. Of course I never did send in for any of the other medals we was supposed to get.
AR: And was this given to everyone or was this…?
JO: Yeah. Anyone that served.
[Pause in conversation while examining the Peace Medal.]
JO: Open that up and put the paper in there –
Tami Roth: Oh yep.
JO: and then the other medal on top of that.
TR: All right.
JO: Here’s a bunch of bills I had on me when I was out there in the water, got all oil soaked and everything. I just kinda keep them as a memory. You notice that one and the five? You notice anything any different about ‘em?
AR: They, they look a – this one definitely looks a lot different than the one right now.
JO: Look up at the top part of it.
AR: Oh. The silver certificate. What is that?
JO: We used to have silver certificates. In other words, they were backed by silver instead of - just like they are now, just.
JO: Have you seen the Monument down on the canal walkway?
AR: Which Monument?
JO: Our Monument.
AR: I think. Yes, I think.
JO: Well, that’s just a picture of it. Front and back. The names on it and everything.
TR: Did you have this [looking at US bills] in your pocket?
JO: Yeah. I had them on me when I got all oil soaked out there in the water. And this is a telegram my wife got. You’ll notice the date she got that. She didn’t get that until the day before they announced that it was coming out in the paper.
[Pause while examining the telegram.]
JO: Here’s something for you.
AR: This is for me?
JO: Um-hum. Stick that on your refrigerator or someplace where you got some medal.
AR: Um-hum. Thank you.
JO: Here’s something for you to keep.
TR: Thank you.
AR: When your wife received the telegram, had – did she know that the ship had gone down – ‘cause they hadn’t reported it yet?
JO: No, it didn’t come out in the paper until the day after she got that.
JO: I’ll stack ‘em away – if you’ve looked at them as long as you’ve wanted to.
TR: Alex, I was thinking you should write down ________ - World War II, then you should see what it [looking at Peace Medal] – see it actually says “World War II”, and you might want to right down in your notes what is says on here – “Freedom from fear and want. Freedom of speech and religion. United States of America.” That’s kind of a neat - You might want to write that down here. It’s pretty cool. You want to?
AR: No.
TR: Oh, okay.
JO: These are the films when I go to the - this one here I ?put? a thing on the museum. We’re gonna try to build a museum, you know. If we got funding. This is a film I usually show when I go to talk if they wanta last that long. It’s about a 30 minute film – have you seen that film, The Indianapolis, Ship of Doom?
TR: I haven’t.
JO: Well, I mean, it’s been on the air – and a – it’s a – about a half hour. It’s cut, you know. But it’s good for people who don’t want to listen to long to stuff, you know. Especially when you go to schools. The kids are all – you know. And watching it – and I tell my story ten or 15 minutes and then question and answer, you know, and – it’s educational to listen to some of the questions –
TR: Yeah.
JO: they ask.
TR: Really?
AR: And you said they might be making a museum?
JO: Yeah. We’re working on that right now. We just started trying to get some money. You know, that’s gonna cost a lot of money. I don’t know whether I’ll be alive by the time they get all the money and do it, you know. And they’re looking at buildings and locations of maybe having to build and stuff. I think it’s gonna – it’s gonna take a lot of money and you know. And the way the money situation is now, it’s hard to come up – you gonna have to get of these foundations to come up with something.
JO: Now, you want the rest of the tour?
[Mr. O’Donnell showing and telling about photographs around the room.]
JO: This is – here’s the monument.
AR/TR: All right.
JO: And that’s the ship. That’s another picture of the monument. That’s the ship we come back on – the USS Hollandia. In 1995, I was lucky enough to get the Man of the Year, from the (Indianapolis) Star. I got the Hibernia’s – I got the Co-Man of the Year on that. Ah, what else is there? Oh, you know the fellow that dropped the bomb, Colonel Tibbets? I got my picture with him. That other fellow in that other picture over there, that’s Carl Peterson, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. The ones that beat the guys the other day. What the heck is that one up there? Oh, that’s the Irish Festival, there. I got chairman of that. There’s Evan Bayh when he was the governor. We presented him with one of the things.
AR: Do you know about how big the ship was?
JO: 610 feet long, 67 feet wide, took a ?draft? 24 feet. Had 8-inch guns, main battery, 5-inch guns, 40’s and 20’s. Had nine 8-inch guns. And that is the last sailing. We used to have two catapults – to fire the airplanes off of. And the last sailing we only had one. They took one off. See that fellow in the red coat there? That’s Kimo McVay. That was taken at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. when we was over there trying to get the captain exonerated. And that’s Julia Carson and – they – that Kimo – he’s died. He was the promoter for Don Ho in Hawaii. Yeah, he was the promoter for him. He – Kimo just died about two years ago. He’s got one other son living in Washington, D.C., Charles the fourth. See he was Charles the third – this one that was captain of the ship. His dad was an admiral and his grandfather was an admiral. He would have been an admiral, you know. He committed suicide. Yeah, he kept getting hate mail from people – you killed my husband and everything. His wife kept hiding the letters and everything. Finally, when she died of cancer, well he found all the letters and everything, went out and committed suicide.
TR: Now he was the captain of what – of the - ?
JO: Of the ship – the [USS] Indianapolis. And he was – he was destined to be a captain – or an admiral, you know. He was really good – whatever – you know. I mean, he’d been coming right along.
TR: They blamed him for - ?
JO: It wasn’t his fault.
TR: No, of course not.
JO: No – see when we left Guam, he asked for an escort. Because we had radar, you know, above water. We didn’t have no sonar – underwater detection. That was only on destroyers and destroyer escorts. And they had sank one of our destroyers out there – same spot where we got sunk – about four days before that. They didn’t tell him that the subs were out there. And when we didn’t arrive when we was supposed to, their excuse was a combat ship may be diverted someplace else. Just took us off the plotting board. So, you know, everybody was just covering their own fanny, you know. And it was all a big thing, and none of them got nothing but a little reprimand, you know. The captain was the fall guy. And the whole sad thing about it is, of 700 ships that we lost in the war, there was one court martial. So that don’t add up. It’s all politics – all politics. You know. Why he had to be the fall guy? Don’t make sense. You know, it ruined his career and everything.
TR: You don’t have – you called it sonar on the ships? If you don’t have that, you can’t tell where the subs are, right?
JO: Sonar is the underwater detection for subs, yeah. Or for missiles or anything.
TR: That’s not his fault.
JO: No. It’s just sad, you know, but that’s the way life is, you know. That’s just too bad. I don’t know. I don’t know why things have to happen that way. You know, and I was just very lucky, you know, to be able to come back, you know. We were just – well, I don’t know whether you heard us talking or not. Went overboard, you got all full of that oil. It got in your eyes. The fuel oil just burnt real bad – your eyes. Got in your nose and you couldn’t hardly breathe. It got in your mouth. You started throwing up, you know. And – I don’t’ know.
AR: You guys did not have anything to eat or - ?
JO: No. No. Another day or two out there, I don’t think they’d found anybody. It was just about as – I told you it was just a fluke we were found. You know. I don’t know. I think some of the guys, you know, I mean I’m sure I hallucinated out there too, you know. They’d say there’s an island out there. I don’t know if you heard us talking or not. They’d swim away, and you’d never see ‘em again. There’s a ship. Swim away and you’d never see ‘em. Dive down under the water, swallow a bunch of that salt water, about four hours, they’re gone.
TR: Do you have any other questions?
AR: No. That’s it.
JO: He’ll think of a hundred of them when he goes home.
TR: He’ll listen to the tape and think, “Oh, I forgot to ask this” or –
JO: Well, he can call me up.
TR: Yeah.
AR: All right. Well, thank you again for everything.
JO: Oh, that’s all right. I – you know, I wished I’d a put a tape or list of all the places I went and all the interviews I’ve given and everything. You know, I never talked about it until – outside of the family and stuff like that – until about 1990. And that’s when a bunch of business men in town wanted to raise enough money for the monument. And what they were gonna do, they were gonna throw little parties and invite the men with the big checkbooks, you know, that could right the check. And they asked me if I would come and tell my part of it. So finally, after persuasion, why I said, well okay. So that’s when I first started. And I’d like to know how many times I’ve talked and things like that. I talked up at Perry one time. I forget who was up there when I talked. I talked up there before.
TR: Didn’t you tell him your grandma knows him?
AR: Judy Marschalk or Judy Sholly.
JO: Who?
AR: Judy Marschalk-Sholly.
TR: She works at Capital Center. And – for Browning Investments – it’s now C.B. Richard Ellis. But she gave us your name, and she’s married to Colonel David Sholly. He’s a retired Army Colonel. But they – she said, I think you’ve been in to give talks where she works several times – or book signing.
JO: We go downtown all the places down there. What store is she?
TR: She’s with the property – the company that manages, I think it’s called Capital Center. The one that has the North Tower and the South Tower. She works for the management company – property management company. Judy Marschalk.
JO: I don’t know her. Probably might know her if I seen her.
TR: Yeah.
JO: But, yeah, we’re at the Union Planters building now. We were in there today. Yeah, we – we’re gonna be there today, tomorrow, and Friday. And – oh, you need to see my book. It’s – it’s full.
TR: Oh, for your – your appointment book?
JO: Yeah. And Monday we go to someplace up in – oh no, we’re supposed to go to Avon. Somebody there. When we go out of town, you gotta pick us up or take us. And we’re in Carmel Tuesday, and then we go to the telephone building Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Bank One the next week, Tuesday through Friday. Then the next week’s Thanksgiving. We’re not going anywhere that week. And the next week, we go to Capital Center. Yeah, we’re booked up all the way to Christmas. I go with the guy that paints these pictures, John Gromosiak. Yeah, he’s taken those.
TR: That one’s really good.
JO: Yeah, he painted that and that.
AR: Are there any memorials in Washington, D.C.?
JO: No. Not of ours. No – there’s one in Broomfield, Colorado, that John designed. And that’s where the fella that’s on the back cover of the book, you know, he’s the head of our organization. He lives out there in Bloomfield. And they – John designed a monument. They built is and put it out there. Yeah, there’s about $150,000 in that thing. Took a long time – about five years to get the money. Yeah.
TR: It’s nice to have it up though.
JO: Oh yeah. Yeah. This museum would be nice if we can get it. I mean, John’s got a lot of ideas for it and everything, you know. The whole thing about it is, the young people today just take things for granted. They think this stuff is just – figure that’s the way it ought to be. They don’t know that it cost an awful price to have it this way. Why them poor guys – a guy today – was it today – no – anyway, I talked to a guy that just came back from over there (Iraq). He was – he had twenty-nine years and was called back in. He was in the reserves, you know. National Guard. And he was over there. And he says these young guys that are in there are really sharp. But he says the weapons they got now are so sophisticated, you know. And it isn’t even funny. And he says – and of course I think the thing that bugged him was some 19-20 year old sergeant, and here is with all that time in, you know, telling people what to do. But – he said – you know – I think he was ready to get out. I says, “You ought to be getting out.”
TR: Yeah, twenty-nine years. That’s a long time.
JO: Of course, he might be called back up again too, you know, it’s hard to say. I would think his tour of duty would be over with. Of course, I don’t think they’re gonna get that ever settled over there. You know, even if they killed that – what’s his name?
TR: Osama?
JO: Yeah. If they even get him and kill him, I don’t think – that’ll just rile them up that much more. Yeah, I think they stepped on a beehive over there.
TR: Yeah.
[Tape ended.]
