1
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I'd like to start asking you a few questions if I could, Don, about your father.

2
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Not long ago we found out that your father actually put the project signed together and started the project.

3
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First what I would like to ask you is if you could describe your father, what he was like as a father, what he looked like, what he enjoyed doing.

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Well that's a tough question.

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He was 110% German and because I carry those genes too, his father came over from Hanover, Germany and we traced him back that way.

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So he had the mind of his own, you might say he could have been stubborn, but he was a very dedicated man.

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That's from our religious point of view, we're all race Catholics and he was too, of course.

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And so he had this mindset that he was a workaholic.

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He worked very hard trying to do what he thought was best.

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He was not a politician.

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As I expressed you earlier, he would be the first one to piss off the Pope for a conversation.

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He just said what he wanted and he had a very narrow lip and so he smiled but we didn't often see it.

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He was very dedicated to his work and he always talked about aviation and the monoclonal.

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He had a few close friends, not many.

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He was an automobile freak, he always loved the big B-Rex, the big cars.

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And yours and the spare time was working on him changing spark plugs and changing oil and doing mechanical things.

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Do you remember any of your father's friend's names?

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Yeah, there was a fellow by my name, Murray, who lived in Dayton, Ohio, that just kind of behind this house, the folks around it.

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Did he work at Pat's?

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No, I forget whether Mr. Murray worked in the right pat or not.

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But they would just joke along with each other and maybe the first ones that have a TV set would go very much black and white and flash way in the darkened room.

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There was another one, again, his name now, but they were kind of friends too.

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I think it was, honestly, Johnson, but I might be off the nut.

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But he had just a handful of friends and spent some limited times with them.

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What did he do with his friends? Did he travel together?

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Well, I think the Murray's that came out here in 1948, and went over the Pike's Peak.

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He just bought a brand new 48 Plymouth and made a trip out west for a couple of weeks.

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But that was about the only trip I remember with his family, as I recall.

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He didn't really take vacations.

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And the only time we got together as a family was once a while, Friday night, for dinner.

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Of course, there was a fish dinner in those days.

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Then, Sunday afternoon, was the family drive, which my brother and I would usually end up in hands and back to the car waiting for my dad to get ready.

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And so, it ended up swacking us back to this, we drove along and you, the family drive, ended up with a big family argument.

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But we would go to church Sunday morning, and then in the afternoon we had a family drive.

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And, uh...

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Did you have a big few weeks?

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Yeah, it was a big car, a big big truck.

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And of course, when he left the right path, he got the gel, but it was an unaccelerated chemical car.

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He had himself a nice big 1951 Cadline, a baby blue.

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Where did you go on your Sunday drive?

41
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Well, just driving in the areas in Bate and Ohio, not too far away, you'd be a hour-job drive.

42
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So on Sundays was about the only time you really got to interact with your dad?

43
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Yeah, and that was family time. Once in a while it would be a Friday evening dinner, some restaurant, a fish dinner.

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And then we'd go over to the Murray's house.

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And I'm trying to remember the other man's name, but we didn't see them as often as I think Murray was probably his best friend.

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He would talk once in a while about his work, but not too often.

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And he was always... Murray seemed to have a basement someplace in the house.

48
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He was always down there working on aircraft drives, his inventions.

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And then he started making his solid propellances, where he was pounding solid rockets down in the basement.

50
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Do you ever have any fear of me if something might blow up?

51
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Well, my mother was always concerned about that.

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And I used to go down and see him pound his rockets and then I saw what black powder was.

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And I used to steal some of that. And I used to have these little metal airplanes, you know, toy aircrafts.

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One time I went and got my little airplane with like a coarse air.

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And I got something with black powder and put it in a little paper bag underneath the wing.

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And then lit a fuse and unfortunately the fuse as fast as I was and it blew up in my face.

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So I was all blackened from my black powder.

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What did that do?

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He didn't know about it. He didn't know I stole some of his black powder.

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But the fumes, they always had the fumes down the basement working with testers, cement,

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these always building metal airplanes. And then plus working with black powder.

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And I think this was a cause of his cancer, right?

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And all those toxic fumes.

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And he was a workaholic. He worked at an abasement and noise and I was drawing and that was all his time.

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When he spent time with me, he would be talking about hydrals of effective wings and so forth and some very technical stuff.

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And I like a good sun, try to stay awake.

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But it was very few times that he really would be like a good buddy.

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And a couple of times being active in the scouts, he would come to some of the meetings where I would give a discussion about making plaster cast of animals.

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One of the scout group and one of the parents. And he would come to a couple of those meetings.

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And I did drag him out to a couple of camp meetings where we did some hikes.

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And he really suffered the most and he was not an out of doors man.

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And so, you know, sleeping in the tent and then eating some overcooked fried eggs in the morning or whatever.

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So I got some old pictures of him with a handkerchief on his forehead, sweating away in a little hike.

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But I think he went out about two camp meetings with me.

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And that was enough for me.

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And then he took me out to these smaller aircraft meets.

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He would have those Sunday with his flyers, rocket propelled airplanes when it was a kind of a sweat point to deal.

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And everybody would order that and take off the solid propellants and he would make solid rockets.

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And then he told me back in those days that the first ones were back in 1938.

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But when I was, I guess in grade school, I think some of these modern airplane meets and people would be flying gasoline powered motors and they could have his rocket engines out there.

81
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But he was always told me that the problem with solid propellants, they would get cracked and voided to them and they would cause explosions.

82
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And later on when they got into the space age rockets, he said that was a problem with the solid propellants.

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And that's where they switched to liquids.

84
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He constantly avoided the problem with detonation.

85
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Real tough question here, but I need to ask it.

86
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You say your father was a workaholic.

87
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Didn't really spend all that much time with him.

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How did you and Jim feel about that?

89
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Well, we had our outside friends that was a splintered family deal.

90
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He and my dad never got along too altogether.

91
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And there was always a...

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Maybe a reason?

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Well, I guess they had a different opinion.

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Jim finally went to West Point, got appointed to West Point.

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And he was very glad to leave home because he and dad didn't get along well together.

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And I guess I was his favorite, but he never did spend that much time with me.

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Because I missed the public contact at times.

98
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But he always had his projects, whether it was working in the basement and aircraft drawings, aeronautical and nature things.

99
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Or he was working on his car.

100
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And I get to hate to order projects because if I wanted to go place and place and people would make a couple on a project.

101
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And I was quarantined until I did some little work like that.

102
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So you actually went into the basement and do his workshops?

103
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Oh yeah, I was down there a lot with him at the time.

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But he was very busy and he talked very technical talk with me at the time.

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And for a lot of times he'd be working on his cars and vehicles and so forth.

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But he always had...

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He was always busy within himself and never had that much time for family.

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Of course my brother and I in grade school, we took piano lessons as we had our practice in piano at times.

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And my mother worked...

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What was your previous name?

111
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Merion.

112
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And she was a very good tennis player and she gave it up after she left college.

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And I said, well she should have kept it up and made her live longer I think.

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But I've done the same thing. I played a lot of tennis and I gave up eight years ago.

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I guess it's got to be a tennis problem.

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We do change as we get older.

117
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But as far as getting back to dad, he was just...

118
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He wasn't an easy person to get to know and our vacations would be...

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You ask about travel.

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We'd go to see his mother in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.

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And sometimes they'd drop us off there. My brother and I had forgotten such great weeks.

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We hated that because we had our cousins to play with.

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The farm we'd call it was just a big...

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Old family home where dad was raised and Ambridge been spending.

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And it was just an acreage, a lot of woods and all. It's not really a farm but we called it the farm.

126
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And it was down on a hollow.

127
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And we used to have to walk over to see our cousins and walk through cemeteries nearby.

128
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And it was our fun whole summer.

129
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So it was...

130
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But every time dad wanted to go someplace he wanted to visit his mother which didn't go long to her.

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My mother because his mother, my mother didn't get along too well together.

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She was a German matriarch and his crush.

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Her husband died when he was about 45 years old. He was a building in Ambridge.

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And he died from ruptured appendix.

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But the German attitude then, you know, you can't be sick and you're a sexual assistant.

136
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So he never did go to see the doctors or he died in the 45.

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But then his wife, my grandmother, dad's mother,

138
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then took over the family and raised seven children with an iron hand.

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And you can see the fear of God in her eyes anytime we got together.

140
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Because no one stepped out of lying from free to loaded because she'd given a yield.

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She was snooking real fast.

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But the family meetings there in Ambridge when we did the family would stay together

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and they'd get together and sing and when we would play the piano my dad used to play the drums.

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And so the musical would get together all the cousins and uncles and aunts and so forth.

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And then there was Horace had what they called the lunch at midnight.

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One of the host, one of the brothers would have the group over and he had to provide a big spread on the table at lunch.

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And if it wasn't enough, he'd be here from the other brothers and sisters.

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Sounds like the family I belong to.

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Whatever you put the food out, everybody shows up.

150
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So that was the extent of the family classification of visiting maybe old homestead and visiting his mother.

151
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We know your father traveled an awful lot on business.

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Were there any times at all that you can remember that you accompanied him on a business trip?

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You know all the business trips were the government and they were just by himself or some other people from like Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

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He did travel quite a bit though.

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I would like to mention some names and if you have any recollection, tell me about those.

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Have you ever heard of at the time, not recently, Colonel Howard McCoy?

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Yeah, I remember the name McCoy.

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Did he ever come over to the house?

159
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No.

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How about Albert Jarman?

161
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No, I've mentioned that.

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He did mention at times some colonels he worked for and they were very unhappy but they were the way they handled their end of the business.

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Did he tell you exactly what was going on?

164
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Was causing his unhappiness?

165
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No, well, he was a civilian and he always sought the military people and competent as far as being professional aeronautical engineers.

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And he was doing and trying to get down.

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As a sudden he was a very dedicated man and he believed in what he was doing and if anybody else differed with him they were wrong.

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Of course I'd say that to you for it yourself.

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Well, your father was a genius when it came to the last type of ratio aircraft and all kinds of other things.

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And I can understand why he would probably think that military engineers probably just couldn't keep up with him.

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Because he was obviously a very forward thinking man as far as designs and things like this.

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Is this kind of what?

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Well, it's out the military people were not really, I don't know their backgrounds but I doubted whether they were professional aeronautical engineers or physicists and so forth.

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Einstein had his friends with people too. He was the same way.

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And people didn't get along with Einstein either because he had his weird thinking.

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And he studied what other people were doing like it.

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And his patents about Horton during the design but he was up to date in what other countries were doing.

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As far as at the edge of aeronautical designs.

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He helped Blank aircraft and he used his chief's dress analysis and he helped them put together a better aircraft.

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And that's when Blank's son called me back in about 1990, back in the day.

181
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And he said his dad spoke grow and they got my dad's work with him.

182
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Do you remember the name?

183
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I had to forget his first name but it was Blank family and I think they were my mother.

184
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Doesn't some aircraft work up in Michigan at that time. It's about 1990.

185
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I think they worked with Blank in about 1938 or so.

186
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It was a downer work.

187
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But just like when dad started using his solid components in his model airplanes.

188
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That was such a breakthrough. Everybody else was using his gas and manju.

189
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And so he was doing something. He was about 20 years ahead of his time.

190
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Did he ever mention the Horton brothers to you?

191
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No. Down in the workshop or anything?

192
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No. As I said he rarely mentioned anything about work.

193
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I remember one Colonel or Major Sweet it was.

194
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He was one of his friends in the military and he was a glider pilot.

195
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And one of his aircraft makes, I thought of running down Colonel Sweet to see or Major Sweet to see if he was still alive.

196
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If he remembered anything about my dad's work.

197
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But they were, that was probably his closest friend in the military.

198
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It was one of the front of the army.

199
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Major Sweet took me up in the glider. They had the glider contest one time.

200
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And they stabbed me in the back seat of this glider and they pulled us off.

201
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And all of a sudden we started doing spins and they threw out a roll of toilet paper.

202
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And I thought what are you usually doing? I was maybe 12 years old at the time.

203
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They threw us out of the roll of toilet paper at the cockpit and they made two tight turns and cut the toilet paper twice with a wing tip.

204
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And the interval of time shows whether you win or lose. You're standing with the other glider pilots.

205
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Wow, I've never heard that.

206
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Yeah, and seeing that toilet paper roll out and all you saw the horizon and the ground all get mixed up together as you win in a tight spin.

207
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And then they had a dive on. This is all on the glider and got to fly within the target.

208
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And then another event was to land in the shortest period of time.

209
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Where you've ever been in the glider, you're sitting on a board and there's a skid in the nose and there's a small wheel underneath this board to sit on.

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And it's flying to the runway and they had this wire as your string pulled up.

211
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And as soon as you pass that, you're supposed to drop and land at the shortest distance.

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The spoilers up, which would kill the airflow in the wings and you'd drop like a rock.

213
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:38,000
Meanwhile, your rear end is on this board, which is right next to the ground.

214
00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:44,000
And it was quite a shock to have your rear end bounce up by your head.

215
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:49,000
And all of a sudden you landed in a short period of time and your eyeballs bulging out.

216
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:53,000
And of course when you started, they put me in this back seat with a parachute.

217
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:57,000
Because they said, here's this ring to pull and how to get out.

218
00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:00,000
Because the wing came off. Well, at that time I wanted to get out of the aircraft.

219
00:19:01,000 --> 00:19:04,000
This is the first time I've been in the glider or a sailplane.

220
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:08,000
And it was all high-performance stuff and in the contest.

221
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:11,000
So I didn't drop my cookies, but I don't know why.

222
00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:17,000
But I hung on and then they, after we stopped, they came to help me out and I couldn't get out of the aircraft.

223
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:19,000
So I was waged in with the parachute.

224
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:22,000
So, what if the wing came off?

225
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:27,000
I jumped out like in the movies. I'd know where I would have still sat in the airplane.

226
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:33,000
But that was his major suite. I remembered we went to quite a few glider meets.

227
00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:35,000
And that was a few times.

228
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:38,000
Did you ever personally make models yourself?

229
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:42,000
Yeah, I made my airplanes and of course since Dad was joined it.

230
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:45,000
And he was always inspecting my inferior work.

231
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:49,000
But I did quite a few of the bossa-wigging airplanes.

232
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:51,000
That was the thing to do in those days.

233
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:55,000
I think they were teenage or grades-on-age.

234
00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:00,000
Your father has a picture or photograph of himself.

235
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:04,000
What appears to be a flying saucer model.

236
00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:07,000
Can you tell me something about that?

237
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:16,000
Well, he did all this. He would tell me about all these investigations starting about 47 on UFOs.

238
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:25,000
And it was a year after he started the investigation, which was about July 1947.

239
00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:29,000
I think about 1948 he ripped this path.

240
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:31,000
And he made these model airplanes.

241
00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:37,000
One is a photograph you saw with the wings on it.

242
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:42,000
And a large body oval shaped body with wings on it.

243
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:46,000
Then he refined it to took the wings off and just made the state-wise on the back end of it.

244
00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:51,000
And he cheated. He used some wind tunnel tests of right path to prove his design.

245
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:57,000
So he kept modifying it to get it down to look like the UFOs he'd been investigating.

246
00:20:58,000 --> 00:21:06,000
So he knew it was a flyable thing because he actually saw these UFOs.

247
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:12,000
He visited so many people who investigated them and had sightings of them.

248
00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:17,000
And so he thought to himself, if someone else can do it, he can do it too.

249
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:23,000
And then his research of the slides that you have is going back from, I think, 1898.

250
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:31,000
In different countries like Russia, England, Sweden, their parabolic gliders.

251
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:36,000
Also parachutes, proven at such a design as practical.

252
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,000
And he talked about the flying wing.

253
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:45,000
But he said there's some instability with the flying wing, which I think the Horton Brothers of Germany did.

254
00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:47,000
And then the Air Force finally came out.

255
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:51,000
I think they built two of them and they saw some pictures of them.

256
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:57,000
And they were very unstable, but they did build two of them and they flew them, I think, in the 1950s.

257
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:03,000
But he said there were certain inherent design problems and he said they would never work as a just a flying wing.

258
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:10,000
Did your father ever discuss with you his low aspect ratio aircraft design?

259
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:17,000
Oh, yeah. Many times he would talk about the dihedral and the angles and the low aspect.

260
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:21,000
And later on in life he got into stoles, short takeoff and landings.

261
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:23,000
That type of aircraft.

262
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:30,000
But he built these model airplanes and then flew them with both his rocket motors and then gasoline power.

263
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:35,000
He had seen them fly like they'd sit in a newspaper with a flying pumpkin.

264
00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:42,000
And he would fly them, hand glide them first and some of those would wobble.

265
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:47,000
But his concept was showing that with the right power plants.

266
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,000
He said the whole secret was having an up power plant.

267
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:56,000
And he was only using either a puller or pusher.

268
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:04,000
The rocket engines were in the back and that was being pushed in the puller when he had the gasoline engine up in front of his...

269
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,000
...flying ellipse or whatever you call them.

270
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:10,000
It was a parabolic design aircraft.

271
00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:13,000
Still kind of a pusher kind of shape.

272
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:17,000
And he flew that the shape was right and then he said by...

273
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:26,000
...and his patent, he says with various slots we could direct the flow of the engine with it down to the sides of the rocket.

274
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:30,000
And he says this way you could make 90 degree turns without any slippage.

275
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:37,000
And there's times when he and I would be out at night and we saw what he said with UFOs, these red lights up in the sky.

276
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:42,000
And they would make these 90 degree turns and say see that's what they can do without any slippage.

277
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:50,000
And then the Harriet jets and I thought about it when I saw those in Atlanta at air shows in the late 1980s.

278
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:56,000
The British Harriet jets were using somewhat the same concept by directing the flow of the jet engines.

279
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,000
I saw them hover and then take off.

280
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:04,000
But they were very primitive concern compared to what my dad had in mind back in 1948.

281
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:09,000
The Harriet jets were an improvement on helicopters and current aircraft.

282
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,000
But they still didn't have all the attributes of any patent show.

283
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:24,000
Did the Air Force at any time to your knowledge show any interest in your father's low aspect ratio aircraft?

284
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:26,000
Did they want it?

285
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:29,000
I don't know of any of that.

286
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:39,000
They did accept some of his designs like putting their little winglets on the refueling booms because they're having a lot of fighter crashers when they try to refuel them.

287
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:46,000
So he designed his little wings with kind of the booms and stabilized it to give it flying characteristics.

288
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:48,000
So it wouldn't look around.

289
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:52,000
And so he did a apparently $20 to $20 to that design.

290
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,000
And I remember that in the patent show.

291
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:56,000
More isn't an award.

292
00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:01,000
All this work he did under government's time, he couldn't have his own patents.

293
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:06,000
And so I don't know how he got some of these patents in his name.

294
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:18,000
But the biggest one is the UFO model is flying pumpkin seed or flying lipstick or he did it on his own apparently.

295
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:23,000
Were you with your dad when he tried out the flying saucer type model?

296
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:25,000
Oh yes.

297
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:27,000
Did you go to the wind tunnel pass?

298
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:29,000
No, no I couldn't.

299
00:25:30,000 --> 00:25:31,000
I never went to the wind pass.

300
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:33,000
He snuck in and did that after hours.

301
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:35,000
That's pretty cool.

302
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:41,000
I think he did some at Langley with his stalls.

303
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,000
He was modifying his own aircraft at the time.

304
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:50,000
And he flew them as gliders first without power planes.

305
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,000
And then he modified it, kept modifying it in knowledge.

306
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:57,000
So it got it down the way where the patent was supposed to be.

307
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,000
And the big secret is power planes.

308
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,000
And he said they have the UFOs that he knew about.

309
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:06,000
They had to come in with power and they could do this.

310
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:20,000
He said they used some type of magnetic field because when the UFOs got close to vehicles or rate of transmitters they cut off the car engines.

311
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:25,000
And you know it's the writings that you've seen people mention that too now.

312
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:32,000
And would your father was from talking to people who had a UFO sighting and that?

313
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:34,000
Would he talk to you about that?

314
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:35,000
Yeah, he would confer to me.

315
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,000
And not too much to my brother.

316
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:43,000
I don't remember my brother being around in some of his family meetings like that or my father and I.

317
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:45,000
And he would confer to me.

318
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,000
I don't know how much to his mother but I'm into his wife.

319
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,000
But she was not too concerned about all the technical aspects.

320
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:54,000
But I happened to be an eager ear.

321
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:59,000
So I would be someone he could talk to or through whether I was there or not.

322
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:01,000
This is talked in anyway.

323
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:09,000
And he had someone to be said he wanted to try out a theory and he would use me as a bouncing board.

324
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:16,000
Just as someone to talk to not that I had come back with any input when I was 13 or 14 years old.

325
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:22,000
Did your father ever explain to you that some of the things and some of the work that he was doing was classified?

326
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:24,000
Yes.

327
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:29,000
And specifically did he ever tell you what I'm telling you you're not to tell anyone?

328
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:30,000
Yeah.

329
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:36,000
I think he said many times was classified work and he's working on his UFO investigation.

330
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:38,000
He did a lot of travel.

331
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:40,000
He did mention Dr. Goddard's name.

332
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:45,000
And then of course when after the war they bring the German scientist Walter Von Braun.

333
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:51,000
He said he wasn't that much of a good rocket scientist but he was a good administrator.

334
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,000
And he says a better brains like Dr. Walter Lippish.

335
00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:02,000
He said Von Braun was an incredible man but he was a good administrator and he said there are needs for people like that too.

336
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:04,000
Let's talk about Lippish for a moment.

337
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,000
You said that Dr. Lippish would come over to the house.

338
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:10,000
Could you tell me about that?

339
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:17,000
Well I would just remember this is the story and time it was a big thing to have an enemy crowd come over the house.

340
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:26,000
That had mentioned about interviewing these rocket scientists and he thought very highly of them.

341
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:32,000
And there's a group of them I forget how many of them are 12 or so that they brought to the right person or a poor space.

342
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:40,000
And that was a big dinner I don't remember much about it because it was Dr. Walter Lippish was at the house and it was very pleasant.

343
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:51,000
And of course like most non-Americans everybody can speak more than one language so it was my English first and German of course English was very different too at the time.

344
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,000
So your brother spoke a lot of German in the house?

345
00:28:55,000 --> 00:29:04,000
No there's no German spoken but the doctor Lippish was bilingual and most people in other countries know not one language.

346
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:09,000
Americans only know one language and that's bad like that's English.

347
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,000
Very true, very true.

348
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:20,000
I have tried to learn French, Spanish, I just have no knack to pick up another language.

349
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:27,000
Well I learned Spanish by accident when I had a Texaco symbionic son from America I had to learn Spanish.

350
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:35,000
Well if you were in a bar drinking and you want to go to a bath you've got to do something that's a story.

351
00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:40,000
Did Lippish ever talk to you first one?

352
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:48,000
No that was just the one time I remember dinner and I was just in awe about having a foreigner sitting in the house.

353
00:29:49,000 --> 00:30:04,000
And at the time under Project Paperclip when they were bringing engineers, German engineers and scientists back to the United States there was a prisoner of war camp in Dayton at the time.

354
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:16,000
Obviously not all of these scientists or engineers were there most of them ended up in New Mexico at the right stand out of the Gordo area and a few of them stayed on at Wright Patterson.

355
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:22,000
Did you and your father ever visit the German POW camp there indeed?

356
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:28,000
No I never did there was a POW camp. I just assumed they all had their housing arranged for them.

357
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:38,000
There was never a discusser at the High Recall that there were prisoners of war they just repatriated or what you want to call it.

358
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:46,000
Did your dad ever talk to Marin and his wife about UFOs and what did your mother think about it?

359
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:49,000
I don't remember any input.

360
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:58,000
They never did seem to discuss it. That always used me as a confidant. It was never seem to discuss at the dinner tables.

361
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:06,000
It was always when he and I were at a wire cell which was usually the basement outside of my working on this car or something like that.

362
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,000
So it was not a family discussion.

363
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:18,000
Was there any UFO case that your dad investigated that he was very very excited about?

364
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:28,000
We're always interested in certain things and is that but every once in a while there's something that really jumps out and a person really gets super excited.

365
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:36,000
I'd say about every trip he came back and decided about every side he saw and he really believed that the UFOs were real.

366
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:45,000
He went into a lot of investigations and they were funny things. Some use of pydation made a bad photograph of it.

367
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:49,000
So 80% of the investigations were those.

368
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:57,000
And people asked me about the little green man that's like Patterson Air Force Base but we had a funeral basement.

369
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,000
No my dad's drinking buddies.

370
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:07,000
I think with dad's nature that he was very serious and very truthful.

371
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:11,000
And he confided in me all the sightings he saw.

372
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:17,000
And he's visited to Homburgoto and New Mexico and Dr. Goddard and Walter Von Braun and all those people I met.

373
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:20,000
And he never hid anything from me.

374
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:23,000
Now he's never wanted to bring home paperwork.

375
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:25,000
I never signed any classified documents.

376
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:29,000
I never signed any work other than his own engineering drawings.

377
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:35,000
So in those days it's different than the industrial espionage done today.

378
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:42,000
I think all those people were very security minded and they did not bring papers home.

379
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,000
That's why I don't think you'd find any documents lying around.

380
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:56,000
Did your dad ever mention to you a report that supposedly was done by the project sign team,

381
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:02,000
which he was the civilian head of, called the estimate of the situation?

382
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:09,000
No I didn't find out about that until later but he did make a comment that he sent a report to Washington.

383
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,000
And later I found out this was called the estimate.

384
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,000
But he talked about that it was his report.

385
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:18,000
And later we find there's no signatures.

386
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:23,000
It's always these other people who are signing things from which is always irritating.

387
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,000
But he did make the report and he said it went up to Washington.

388
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:36,000
I'm going to say it's probably May or June of the time of year for him, 48, 49.

389
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:43,000
And he was very upset that Washington shut it down and made no comment about it.

390
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,000
So I'm real clear on this now.

391
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:52,000
Your father told you about a report that he made and sent to the Pentagon.

392
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,000
Did he mention any names on who he sent it to?

393
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:57,000
No, he said it was hushed up.

394
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,000
But he didn't give you a title of this document.

395
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:07,000
But later on when you first heard about the estimate of the situation, then you kind of put two and two together.

396
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:10,000
Yes, that was probably when your dad's report.

397
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:12,000
Yeah, he put the report.

398
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,000
Going back you asked me the other question about his investigation of UFOs.

399
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:25,000
He would go to one site where something had been landed and it was blackened grass and had high sulfur smells.

400
00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:30,000
And he had one several occasions where he investigated sites like that.

401
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:38,000
And he told me one time he thought the aliens or the UFO occupants could actually be insects.

402
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:40,000
I don't know.

403
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:42,000
Did he give you a reason?

404
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:52,000
No, I was going to say because I thought that because in the ufology there have been others who think that UFOs might even be animals.

405
00:34:53,000 --> 00:35:06,000
Well, that's what I was alluding to I think that when he found these burnt areas with high sulfur smells he thought it could have been like the old dragons over here in the ufology group.

406
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:19,000
There was something that was animal like or the insect like because he knew what the pressures had to do with standings and these vessels he traveled in.

407
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:30,000
But if you look at some of the old UFO movies and you always have these little creatures in these helmets and if anything looks different than you and me we think it's weird.

408
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:33,000
Of course I'm sure this creature is looking at us.

409
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:35,000
I think it's weird.

410
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:41,000
But he definitely believed that the UFOs exist were real.

411
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:47,000
He definitely believed there was something that maneuvered them.

412
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:50,000
It was real whether they were like or insect like.

413
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:59,000
But if you look a little bit different to a stand the pressures of space they could look as soon to be like insects.

414
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,000
The hard shell and we would look different on us.

415
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:06,000
Makes a lot of sense.

416
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:11,000
But he never mentioned anything about adoption of people any investigations.

417
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:22,000
These were sightings were state police officers Air Force pilots who investigated commercial aircraft pilots and he knew that they were telling the truth of their sightings.

418
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:28,000
Was there ever a time that your dad told you about going to Newfoundland?

419
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:30,000
No.

420
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:32,000
Investigating sightings?

421
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:38,000
He mentioned he went to a lot of different places but I don't remember Newfoundland.

422
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:45,000
But he did say was amazed how the electric motors or I mean car motors were stopped.

423
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:47,000
These anti-magnetic fields.

424
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:49,000
What did you say about that other than it was just anti-magnetic?

425
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:57,000
We thought there was a strong magnetic force that would drive in these UFO vehicles.

426
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,000
And had to do with magnetism and anti-magnetic fields.

427
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:11,000
And to fly all these distances always felt that you had to change matter to go other distances to space.

428
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:19,000
My dad thought they had to be very strong power plants in his vehicles to make him perform as he did.

429
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:24,000
Typically he always used the deal making a 90 degree turn around and he slippaged you.

430
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:33,000
Do you remember your father ever talking to the press or the media or seeing photographers at the house or anything?

431
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:39,000
No. The only ones I saw were those newspaper clippings where they interviewed him in Richmond, Virginia.

432
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:41,000
Thank you.

433
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:47,000
My call, my associate, ran across a newspaper article dealing with your mother and your father.

434
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:50,000
Back in 1932.

435
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,000
They saw an unidentified fine object.

436
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,000
Did your parents ever talk to you about that?

437
00:37:58,000 --> 00:37:59,000
No.

438
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:01,000
I'd like to read it to you.

439
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:03,000
If I could.

440
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,000
It's kind of abbreviated but almost all of it's there.

441
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:16,000
In October 1932 the couple, your mother and father, saw such an object one evening while driving near Plainsboro, New Jersey.

442
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:18,000
He reported.

443
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:22,000
At first they thought an aircraft was crashing nearby.

444
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:29,000
Then the craft leveled off, flashed away at high speed, emitting a changing blue-ish-green light.

445
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:34,000
On returning to his home, he immediately sketched the object from memory.

446
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:42,000
Later he said former New York congressman L.G. Clemente reported he had seen an object at about the same time.

447
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:51,000
Loading estimated the object he and his wife had seen was about 100 feet in diameter and 500 to 600 feet high up in the air.

448
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:59,000
He said the object gave off a weird light like looking at a firefly that appeared to change shape.

449
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,000
He said he had seen nothing of a similar nature since.

450
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:07,000
And your father or your mother never talked about that?

451
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:14,000
I never remember at all my mother saying anything about the UFOs or data they're talking to in my presence.

452
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:16,000
Do you think he might now?

453
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:21,000
Yeah, I guess so. I don't see why. You know, I wouldn't.

454
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,000
So he saw many of the sightings and interviewed people.

455
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,000
And most of it was secondhand.

456
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,000
He and I had looked at some back in the skies at night.

457
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:41,000
He was intensely interested in all the interviews he went on, especially the ones that were authentic.

458
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:44,000
And he really bleeds the whole thing.

459
00:39:45,000 --> 00:40:00,000
Did he ever explain to you now when he came back from investigating some of the cases, how he arrived at whether he thought it could have been a joke or a hoax or why he thought certain ones were off-divided?

460
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:12,000
Well, because the people he talked with, the credibility of them and the scientists that he was, he could see through the elxes that he'd say,

461
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:18,000
well, these are just funny photographs. There was a saucer pants and a two-up in the air.

462
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:28,000
And the people he talked with had a lot of credibility to speak to people, airline people, the aviation, air force people, and talk to us.

463
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:32,000
They had no reason to give them false information.

464
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:41,000
To your knowledge, did your father ever investigate a case where a UFO was observed by a military?

465
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:43,000
Yes.

466
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,000
What did you say about that one? Do you remember when this was?

467
00:40:46,000 --> 00:41:00,000
Well, this is a... Most of the time when he came back, he had talked to air force or army people, or state control, or at least qualified people, airline, commercial airline pilots.

468
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:07,000
So he talked to those people and knew that what they saw were real.

469
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:13,000
And all the sites he'd seen to fit together, they all had similar circumstances.

470
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:28,000
They'd make fit-fields and car stops and so forth, and flashing blue lights, and how they could move so fast and get away, or hover year in aircraft, and disappear very fast.

471
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:37,000
Did your father ever cue the air force or the army, or whatever he had ever recovered from these objects?

472
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:46,000
No, he never mentioned that. And I think if there was something like that, he would have told me because he was treated in confidence, everything else he saw.

473
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:55,000
And his viewpoints. And is there any crashes or green people he would have mentioned?

474
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:05,000
Because everything he was doing was under secret clearance at that time, all the investigations and the whole project.

475
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:16,000
He was very... And something like that, he wouldn't have been able to hold it in. He would have to tell me about something like that.

476
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,000
He would have to tell you? He would be able to keep something like that?

477
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:30,000
Yeah, because he told me about all these other sites. And the most remarkable ones were the sulfur fumes in the burnt areas. He couldn't explain that.

478
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,000
So the occupants might be insect-like?

479
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:44,000
Well, that's what he thought. It was a high-fusion sulfide fumes. That's what related to the insect you're having.

480
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:54,000
But he said normally, if a flying machine like that, the propulsion would land in place naturally with the wind-grass.

481
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:03,000
I want to get back a little bit back to the right field or right palace.

482
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:14,000
After the Army Air Corps switched over and became a separate body, known as the United States Air Force, then you switched all the bases, switched over to Air Force Base.

483
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:25,000
So it became right palace and Air Force Base. Are there any recollections at all that you have of ever going on to the base or visiting your dad's office?

484
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:39,000
No. I never made it to his office. I don't recall being on the base. I've been by it, but I've never been on another side of the office.

485
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:49,000
I got the impression he was happy to be away from the right path and go on in the spare time.

486
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:56,000
I feel very forward to being home on his own, to doing his own work.

487
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,000
He liked to do the traveling though, didn't he?

488
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:01,000
Yeah.

489
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:11,000
You stated that you had never heard the term project sign mentioned before, that you had always known it as Project Blue Book.

490
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:12,000
Yes.

491
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:20,000
After my file, I keep the has Project Blue Book, but not of which I've been keeping it.

492
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:26,000
Did your father ever mention a project called Grudge?

493
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:31,000
No. It was all the new names I found out last year too.

494
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:32,000
Not Grudge.

495
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:40,000
So I've taken it then that your father talked to you about some of the things that he had to worry about.

496
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:47,000
He really never gave you names, but just what went on and some of the exciting things about it.

497
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:55,000
He mentioned the only name was the officers in charge, and he had to work through it as a colonel.

498
00:44:55,000 --> 00:45:00,000
Did he ever mention a captain, Robert Schneider?

499
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:01,000
No.

500
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:05,000
Miles Gough?

501
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:16,000
It's interesting that, that, uh, White Vandenberg, who was the commander of the General of the United States, sent the estimate up,

502
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,000
it's finally important. He called it, it's finally important.

503
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:20,000
Yeah.

504
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:25,000
Let me ask you for a second real quick. I really want to make sure I got this.

505
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:30,000
Your father, by himself, wrote the report.

506
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:31,000
Yes.

507
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:35,000
That's what he told me. It was his report.

508
00:45:35,000 --> 00:45:41,000
The reason that's important is that it sheds an awful lot of new light on things.

509
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:49,000
Because we've always assumed that the report itself was the whole scientific report.

510
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:56,000
And this might not necessarily be so. So this is something you really have to start looking into.

511
00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:01,000
See, my dad always told me it was his project and he was directing this project.

512
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:08,000
And that memo in July 1947, which is where the Englishman called in, to start the investigation.

513
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:10,000
Right, with Dr. Charles Carroll.

514
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:15,000
And then the rest of the time, he said it was his project, his report.

515
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:24,000
And once he got back to Ray Pat in 1955, he never again mentioned the books.

516
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,000
Do you know why?

517
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:33,000
He was very upset in 1951, I think that was when he was put in the 50-51.

518
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:41,000
And then he got, you see the personnel reports, had them start getting on bad ratings.

519
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:47,000
And then he made a deal about getting Ray upgraded.

520
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:54,000
And then he got eased out, just like any other corporations, you know, running out of somebody else.

521
00:46:54,000 --> 00:47:00,000
So they eased him out, the best one he got into, was Pennexile Chemical Company.

522
00:47:00,000 --> 00:47:05,000
But he came back to Ray Pat one year after General Vannevar died.

523
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:06,000
Vannevar died in 1954.

524
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,000
He died right back in 1955.

525
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,000
Very interesting.

526
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:13,000
Did he ever tell you why?

527
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:14,000
No.

528
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:18,000
Did he become a little more secretive at that point?

529
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:26,000
No, and then when it was Langley, and of course I think Michael thought maybe he was assigned to Langley,

530
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:35,000
near Williamsburg, to help train the astronauts and let them do what they could and enter the UFOs.

531
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:40,000
But it's never discussed when he was out to Langley, and he never mentioned the story.

532
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,000
But it's also what the astronauts are trying to do.

533
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:51,000
But he never again mentioned the UFOs when they were dying from cancer and the sea, or a lot of the other things.

534
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:56,000
He was so dedicated to it, you know, he only had his report, he was 47 or 50.

535
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:58,000
And they just all of a sudden?

536
00:47:58,000 --> 00:47:59,000
They stopped.

537
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:00,000
But his report went up to...

538
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,000
Did you order to ask him?

539
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:03,000
No.

540
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:12,000
He didn't want to discuss it, and he was so heartbroken that his report to Washington got squelched and he got hushed up.

541
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,000
He didn't mention that so much time.

542
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:19,000
Did he say that he felt heartbroken?

543
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,000
Did he ever go into detail on that?

544
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:23,000
No.

545
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:24,000
Because it was such a great...

546
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:29,000
Well, none of the stories he told me about all those chips.

547
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,000
This is a major project, John.

548
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:39,000
You believe there's something there that was real, there was an aeronautical breakthrough from the pure professionalism.

549
00:48:39,000 --> 00:48:42,000
He thought that was better than sliced bread.

550
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:49,000
And they were on the frontier of new aerodynamics, of potencies.

551
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:50,000
All the wax.

552
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:53,000
And all of a sudden it was put down.

553
00:48:53,000 --> 00:49:08,000
Okay, so immediately after he sent his report and Vandenberg chatted down, did that also affect your father's attitude as far as designing aircraft again?

554
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:16,000
Did he stop designing aircraft and go off to do other things at that time?

555
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:25,000
I guess, looking back, you're probably right, because I never knew he got laid off in a priori from the right path.

556
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,000
And the personnel director doesn't show it.

557
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,000
He shows indications.

558
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:34,000
All of a sudden his ratings are going down.

559
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:36,000
And I've seen this in the corporate life.

560
00:49:36,000 --> 00:49:38,000
They've put the pressure on him.

561
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:43,000
So one way or another he got out.

562
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:50,000
But when we moved to New Jersey, I never saw him do that much more work than the darn boys.

563
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:55,000
I see he was doing more house projects out there, other things like that.

564
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:59,000
So he just really kind of seemed to you to lost interest?

565
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:04,000
Yeah, and then at that time he took up flying with 50.

566
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:09,000
And then when he died in Winsburg, he had his own airplane there and he bought it in the garage.

567
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:25,000
And he was taking the wings off and making stole, short take off the landing, and trying to modify his aircraft and spend more time than that than actual design or graphic technology.

568
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:32,000
It's been those last few years more than short take off the landing aircraft and doing it on the fly.

569
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:43,000
Do you recall if your father ever received any kind of special attention during the war years from scientists or high-ranked military people?

570
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:47,000
Did you mention any kind of guise?

571
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:54,000
You know, I've been selected to do that, so I've been selected to do that, or they've really enjoyed my work or whatever it is.

572
00:50:54,000 --> 00:51:00,000
I'm not talking about after 1948, I've talked about that too many points that way.

573
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:07,000
Those days are on two clear earthquakes, but I know he did some traveling during the war.

574
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:09,000
And what did he do?

575
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:11,000
Did he ever tell you?

576
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:16,000
No, I just don't know if I tried to trips. He flew in an military aircraft.

577
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:24,000
I brought you the information on the hydro bomb because your father mentioned that he worked on the hydro bomb.

578
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:29,000
Did he ever talk to you openly about his work on the hydro bomb?

579
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:34,000
No, it wasn't until I saw some information about that a couple of years ago.

580
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:38,000
The information I saw never did explain what an hydro bomb was.

581
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:41,000
He never mentioned that.

582
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:45,000
He never mentioned anything about it.

583
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:49,000
And of course he started up the jet propulsion laboratory too, which I didn't know about.

584
00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:52,000
He's been in the Virginia at that.

585
00:51:52,000 --> 00:52:01,000
He only talked about the UFO project primarily.

586
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:05,000
Any other work with his model aircrafts?

587
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:08,000
Aircraft and building.

588
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,000
Your dad obviously gave a little help.

589
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,000
He had about 120 slides that he used.

590
00:52:14,000 --> 00:52:18,000
What kind of lectures did he give, and who did he give these when he talked to?

591
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:23,000
I didn't really know those until I got them from another, I think.

592
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:31,000
And then I had them in storage for 30 years until I dug them out of the storage I had in here.

593
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:34,000
And that's the first time I look at them in years.

594
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:39,000
Did your dad ever say what groups and then he actually talked to you?

595
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:51,000
Now, back in those days he mentioned Dr. Goddard, Walter von Braun, and a nice miss slideshirt picture of Goddard Air Force Base.

596
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,000
But he never mentioned the slides.

597
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:59,000
I didn't know if they existed until I got them after he died.

598
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:04,000
And I didn't realize all the patents he had made either.

599
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:10,000
I know he had the patent attorney who was always running back and forth with him too.

600
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:15,000
I want to ask you about displaying self survival again.

601
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:26,000
There are two models we carried with us for several years and they both got broken up, I think in the last movie.

602
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:40,000
The one with the first rocket model, Scrubblings with a regular commercial body and then the UFO type model.

603
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:44,000
How big was it actually?

604
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:50,000
I guess it was probably about two feet high.

605
00:53:50,000 --> 00:53:52,000
And from the photograph all we have is black and white.

606
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,000
Did he paint it in any specific color?

607
00:53:55,000 --> 00:54:02,000
Maybe he had some bridge and then it was also with fabric.

608
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:07,000
A regular also type.

609
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:11,000
In other words he would make a general structure out of bulk of wood.

610
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:13,000
Framing and all.

611
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:15,000
Tissue.

612
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:18,000
Did he show the engines?

613
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:28,000
He had a rocket mount in the back of the other models where you'd see the passengers and he'd have a gasoline part motor.

614
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:33,000
A regular motor.

615
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:39,000
Was the model itself that he had so that he could separate it so that you could look inside of it?

616
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:45,000
No, just the front where you'd cover up the engine, the gasoline engine.

617
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:51,000
The rest of it was all fabric.

618
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:57,000
Well it was three dimensional but you couldn't take it apart.

619
00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:04,000
Some models people don't think they can take apart to say, well here are the CD arrangements.

620
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:07,000
Have the power planned?

621
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:11,000
Well he couldn't operate the slots that he wanted to direct the power.

622
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:17,000
So the plane would wobble a little bit unless one fast enough.

623
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:23,000
You could imagine that he could have the sufficient power plan that he talked about.

624
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:27,000
That the aircraft could do all things he talked about.

625
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:32,000
Because it was being ellipsoid it had like a leading edge around the whole circumference.

626
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:38,000
So that's why you'd go in any direction and it would be like a point of plane.

627
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:45,000
So we know that your father kind of went on base after hours to check out his design.

628
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,000
Well whether it was after hours or any time or do some print or whatever.

629
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:56,000
But he used the facilities at Wright Madison to the wind tunnel and then to check out his design.

630
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:59,000
I think that's really neat.

631
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:03,000
Did this model actually fly?

632
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:10,000
Did he put actual small solid rockets or engines or gasoline engines or anything?

633
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,000
Did he actually see if it would actually fly?

634
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:17,000
He actually flew them and I saw them fly both with the rocket motors and the gas engines.

635
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:19,000
And they just wobble a little bit?

636
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:21,000
Yeah, wobble a little bit.

637
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:28,000
But then it would fly and take off and land in the gasoline engine and fuel works onto it.

638
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,000
Or the rocket motors I just meant to.

639
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:34,000
So do you remember how the gasoline engines actually work?

640
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:38,000
I mean was it kind of a thrust or was it propeller inside?

641
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:45,000
Well it just propelled a little bit near the front where the passenger in the steering wheel and the passenger would be getting motor sitting there.

642
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:47,000
It fell out of front.

643
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:50,000
It didn't operate just like any other model airplane.

644
00:56:50,000 --> 00:56:56,000
Now the pump can see, was that the actual toy?

645
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:59,000
The pump can see what the press called it.

646
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:04,000
I think that's originally Virginia, the press report, they call it the flying pumpkin seed.

647
00:57:04,000 --> 00:57:06,000
But that was the actual flying model.

648
00:57:06,000 --> 00:57:07,000
Okay.

649
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:12,000
All the models he made, either they flew or he broke them up and built another one.

650
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:14,000
If it didn't fly, he didn't show it around.

651
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:17,000
Because everybody wanted to say, well, can you sail?

652
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:20,000
He'd take it up and sail through the air.

653
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:26,000
So the model of the flying saucer looking for a pump can see whatever.

654
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:31,000
Did he design that or just for it to be a toy?

655
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:38,000
Or did he design that to maybe show the scenarios?

656
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:42,000
Well each side could be a production type of aircraft.

657
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:45,000
The crew is a feasibility that was viable.

658
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:50,000
And aeronautical, you sound, that's why he made that intensive for a patent.

659
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,000
If you go through it and read that, there's a lot of technical jargon in that.

660
00:57:54,000 --> 00:58:02,000
But from that, he proved the patent by its actual flying model, both as a ground power and whip power.

661
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:06,000
But he also, he thought it would also make a good toy?

662
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:09,000
No, no, he never thought of it as a toy.

663
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:14,000
It was just an engineering aeronautical breakthrough.

664
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:21,000
And he thought of it being the answer to a family aircraft.

665
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:24,000
He talked about that down the road.

666
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:26,000
This would be a family way to put it.

667
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:33,000
And some of those drawings show three or four people, family people, sitting in front.

668
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:34,000
I think...

669
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:36,000
He didn't like to replace cars.

670
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:42,000
That would be a light aircraft that everybody could use.

671
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:47,000
Because you wouldn't have the problems of airfields.

672
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:49,000
You could land it in your backyard.

673
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:57,000
That's what it said because the propulsion plant and the way you don't need to take off the runway is right.

674
00:58:57,000 --> 00:59:00,000
It would be a hovercraft.

675
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:03,000
That's the kind of use it was.

676
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:06,000
That's a family vehicle.

677
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:12,000
So that's what he envisioned it as.

678
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:19,000
So he's trying to put something that he investigated under a private blue book, a private sign, as UFOs,

679
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:21,000
to make a practical application.

680
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:24,000
And this was an aeronautical breakthrough.

681
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:29,000
Big based on his forward thinking designs prior or during the war, prior to the war.

682
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:43,000
And then when the UFO phenomenon, the plane disks, started being observed in 1946, beginning of 1947,

683
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:46,000
then he thought, wow.

684
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:52,000
Yeah, I'll probably assume that the UFOs are the persons with the best quality designs.

685
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:55,000
I see discrimination citizens.

686
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:57,000
I think that's it.

687
00:59:57,000 --> 00:59:59,000
I mean, of course.

688
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:07,000
But now he was able to assemble a data, but he went back as far as most of the most in the sightings of UFOs.

689
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,000
That's back in a thousand years.

690
01:00:09,000 --> 01:00:13,000
Did your dad actually do a lot of reading too and a lot of research?

691
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:19,000
He did research back in most of the most, I think, that era that was.

692
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,000
That must have been a thousand years ago.

693
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:23,000
Can you call it a thing?

694
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:26,000
Yeah, I think this was shortly after he was born.

695
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:29,000
But he did a lot of research that way.

696
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:31,000
He was early after he was born.

697
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:33,000
I'm sorry, I said you were doing an interview.

698
01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:35,000
It went right over my head.

699
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:38,000
Mike, you need to be here. This is great.

700
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:40,000
But he was a...

701
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:43,000
Now, he did all that research, you know, that was something there.

702
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:45,000
And I chatted Mike.

703
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:47,000
Well, why cover just 100 years of UFO sight?

704
01:00:47,000 --> 01:00:49,000
Been going on for centuries.

705
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:51,000
And that's what people forget.

706
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:53,000
Even though they've been perused.

707
01:00:53,000 --> 01:01:00,000
All those cartons and rocks, they thought they could only be done by geophedals.

708
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:03,000
Yeah, gouging out the rocks.

709
01:01:03,000 --> 01:01:07,000
And some of the sketches they show look like people like astronauts.

710
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:10,000
Yeah, they look like astronauts.

711
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:14,000
Did your dad, after 1950...

712
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:19,000
Did you ever see your dad reading any books that were coming out around that time?

713
01:01:19,000 --> 01:01:22,000
No.

714
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:27,000
I don't remember ever seeing a book on UFOs in those days.

715
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:30,000
And I never did see dad, you know, take a book.

716
01:01:30,000 --> 01:01:34,000
A book I'm trying to read here with Rich Long-Lake.

717
01:01:34,000 --> 01:01:40,000
It was not a book where anything he read had to be a technical journal.

718
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:42,000
And he just kind of...

719
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:46,000
It was like a scientific sponge.

720
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:49,000
He just assimilated information into it.

721
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:51,000
And he talked to people.

722
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:54,000
And you see the... he was turning their brains inside out.

723
01:01:54,000 --> 01:01:59,000
He wouldn't ask a question unless we wondered what the right answer was.

724
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:03,000
And he just assimilated information to everybody he talked to.

725
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:10,000
And so when he talked to these gerontologists and Dr. Goddard and anybody else,

726
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:15,000
he was just bringing it all in like his friends and trying to put it into perspective.

727
01:02:15,000 --> 01:02:18,000
Which, in my opinion, was something practical.

728
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:24,000
He was not going into theoretical stuff as much as what's practical and useful.

729
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:29,000
So he would not build a... the punk-conceit or uro-told model to be a toy for kids.

730
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:35,000
Even something they could do. They could fly and have to have a vacation.

731
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:41,000
And all of his inventions apparently just had to bring what's for the protruding crew.

732
01:02:41,000 --> 01:02:50,000
And of course his brother, Herb, who was an engineer, he designed the first gentry, again...

733
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:54,000
gentry visitor. The thing that helped the spaceships.

734
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:58,000
I can't believe I hate to design that thing, but...

735
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:05,000
And he had his own engineering firm, and his business firm, down the tube.

736
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:08,000
Did your dad ever help?

737
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:12,000
No, they were doing two separate areas.

738
01:03:12,000 --> 01:03:18,000
When they got together, they would talk shop once while, you know, in their summer vacations.

739
01:03:18,000 --> 01:03:20,000
But Herb was very intense, too.

740
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:24,000
And Dean Arburt believed in the idea of this?

741
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:28,000
I don't know what he talked to his brothers about.

742
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:33,000
But Herb was more of a practical art.

743
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:39,000
And I guess Freddy was a go-between in the side of Uncle Buddy Charles, who I know is the youngest.

744
01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:43,000
So I don't know how much they had to fight it to have him.

745
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:47,000
To Charles, but I'm sure Fred would have stood in for it.

746
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:51,000
And his other brother, John, he's older now, he's had some health problems.

747
01:03:51,000 --> 01:04:00,000
But I think both are between Fred and Charles, both in the military and in the day of the jailbreak.

748
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:05,000
So that's the family of unions, you know, nothing was...

749
01:04:05,000 --> 01:04:12,000
They had some newspaper clippings and all on the tables, you know, for each of the brothers in the background.

750
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:14,000
And I guess that's the attitude of the squad.

751
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:17,000
How conceited you are those who are...

752
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:21,000
But not much was ever mentioned in the family of unions.

753
01:04:21,000 --> 01:04:23,000
More about that.

754
01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:28,000
And as my uncles, his brothers, never confided in me.

755
01:04:28,000 --> 01:04:31,000
I mean, I think about it so much when we were brothers.

756
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:34,000
And just a couple more questions.

757
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:41,000
What was it about your dad that just acquired out of school?

758
01:04:42,000 --> 01:04:52,000
I guess his dedication to his work, but...

759
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:58,000
I guess more to his ideals than he had set for himself.

760
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:03,000
He wanted to be a perfectionist in aviation.

761
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:09,000
And it's unfortunately what the age of 50 before he was done with flying.

762
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:11,000
Because then he could really feel it.

763
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:18,000
The simulation of all his workers, he very flew, you know, non-technical type of aircraft,

764
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:27,000
like the Longer Champ, the Type J-5, the P-A-17, which he had me flying, and flew out of the van.

765
01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:35,000
And I was flying his 5-J-3, he's a big green span, and he had this P-A-17,

766
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:40,000
which was a very short coupled airplane, a few-star-all-head short wings.

767
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:45,000
So when you cut the power, it just glided like a brick.

768
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:51,000
And when you took off or landed, you had to walk the pedals because they'd run up to roti.

769
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:54,000
So he just airplane me up and air and everything.

770
01:05:54,000 --> 01:06:01,000
But he wanted me to solo it, and I made three landings, and I got out, and so I think I got back up.

771
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:03,000
Because I bounced all over the place.

772
01:06:03,000 --> 01:06:05,000
That work fits ideally, Ed.

773
01:06:05,000 --> 01:06:13,000
He wanted the perfectionist of aeronautical science, and do as much good he could for the advancement of that science.

774
01:06:13,000 --> 01:06:22,000
So all his work, he won 110% in turn to prove ideas, prove hypotheses, and do that type of achievement.

775
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:28,000
And that was his role and my ideal.

776
01:06:28,000 --> 01:06:39,000
Everything else aside, his dedication to his ideas, his work was just a major goal, a thing that was secondary, a friend was secondary, a few things.

777
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:45,000
He really loved this work, and worked it to prove something.

778
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:54,000
And as a man, you couldn't buy him off an idea.

779
01:06:54,000 --> 01:06:58,000
And that's what he got in his problems with the superior all the time.

780
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:07,000
He said, this is right, and let the old juror and the VJava orders, you know, and down the torpedoes, he was going through his point.

781
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:13,000
And he was so sure what he did, and he was looking back, and he was never wrong.

782
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:16,000
Anything he said or did.

783
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:26,000
Do you think that this might have been one of the reasons that later on in the 50s, that his evaluations might have started to go down?

784
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:33,000
Because obviously his evaluations that we had in the past were excellent, above excellent.

785
01:07:33,000 --> 01:07:35,000
And there was that slide.

786
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:41,000
I think it was named Rogers, who reevaluated for him, and got him back up to be ready.

787
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:54,000
But I think he had the personality conflicts there, and I probably, I've got the views that people up in Washington put the pressure on him to get him out.

788
01:07:54,000 --> 01:08:03,000
Because it was all of a sudden, he was a hard-headed warrior for years there, and all of a sudden, once the estimate situation, his report went to Washington,

789
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:05,000
it was when they put the kibosh on him.

790
01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:09,000
And he was a Berksman.

791
01:08:09,000 --> 01:08:11,000
And again, he actually witnessed the story.

792
01:08:11,000 --> 01:08:12,000
Yeah.

793
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:13,000
He saw the deterioration.

794
01:08:13,000 --> 01:08:14,000
Yeah.

795
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:23,000
And then we went to a mixed cell chemical company, and I worked there in the summer job, and it was the highest day when they moved to Heights down in New Jersey, and then in Princeton.

796
01:08:23,000 --> 01:08:28,000
And there was nothing but a munitions factory.

797
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:32,000
They made 500-pound napalm bombs there.

798
01:08:32,000 --> 01:08:42,000
And I worked in New York, putting together stands for, you know, oak planking, with 500-pound bombs.

799
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:46,000
And he was the director of Jet the Pulsion, but they didn't see anything.

800
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:50,000
They made fireworks, and they made napalm bombs.

801
01:08:50,000 --> 01:09:01,000
And I think the company probably hired them there and gave them a good pay to influence in Washington trying to get some contracts for, you know, government contracts.

802
01:09:01,000 --> 01:09:04,000
But I never saw any, there's no jetting, anything else there.

803
01:09:04,000 --> 01:09:06,000
I'm the director of Jet the Pulsion.

804
01:09:06,000 --> 01:09:09,000
It was a very kind of, very small office there.

805
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:13,000
A typical little factory munitions, hard crack.

806
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:19,000
And then when your father went back to write letters, did that surprise your mother also?

807
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:24,000
I don't remember getting the vibes.

808
01:09:24,000 --> 01:09:34,000
The man, they went back to Ohio, of course, I guess a few friends there, and Fury took quite a cut in pay.

809
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:38,000
But I don't know what happened to unexplored, whether the country went bankrupt.

810
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:40,000
I think they had some financial problems.

811
01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:44,000
And so he kind of trekked back into the right path for security.

812
01:09:44,000 --> 01:09:52,000
And he always talked, rather than being a civil servant, working for the government, he says, add to stability and security.

813
01:09:52,000 --> 01:09:57,000
And he was always looking to be retired when he was 65.

814
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:02,000
That was his whole goal, to be retired.

815
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:08,000
Talking about that, did he ever interview you after retirement, what do you want him to do?

816
01:10:08,000 --> 01:10:11,000
What is his goals and dreams might have been after?

817
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:12,000
No.

818
01:10:12,000 --> 01:10:13,000
I don't know.

819
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:14,000
I'm not sure.

820
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:19,000
No, no, it's, many years before he died, he was, he really got a kick out of flying his own airplane.

821
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:25,000
And actually, during the aviation stuff, and he was there, hands on.

822
01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:29,000
Except, but he always liked his security.

823
01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:34,000
He never showed any bitterness going back, but he was very thankful, got the job back.

824
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:43,000
And then, I don't know how it worked out, but he got the transfer to mind, and they were agreed to do it.

825
01:10:43,000 --> 01:10:47,000
And he liked Williamsburg, and he liked his work at the NASA.

826
01:10:47,000 --> 01:10:52,000
He was on the US Air Force, and I was on the officer with NASA.

827
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:57,000
And he had a very good boss there.

828
01:10:57,000 --> 01:11:02,000
That's kind of like the French name, but he, I can't say what it was.

829
01:11:02,000 --> 01:11:08,000
But he was very happy there, because I remember dying at the hands of the time.

830
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:22,000
It was interesting how he didn't seem to get back to the right path right after his nemesis pathway back to the early days of the four.

831
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:27,000
But being a, you know, a son that you're talking about, you know, for transitions.

832
01:11:27,000 --> 01:11:28,000
Wait, wait, wait.

833
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:33,000
When you say his nemesis Vandenberg, did he ever talk about Vandenberg?

834
01:11:33,000 --> 01:11:34,000
I mean, how loud?

835
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:42,000
No, he just, that was in Washington, the people, and later I found out who Washington made the war in the last few years.

836
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:47,000
But he never mentioned that name, he just said Washington.

837
01:11:47,000 --> 01:11:50,000
And he always kind of disliked Washington.

838
01:11:50,000 --> 01:11:56,000
Yeah, well, because they, that's the only time he'd mention Vandenberg because it's important.

839
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,000
Did he ever mention a Dr. Charles Carroll?

840
01:11:59,000 --> 01:12:03,000
No, I don't recall that name.

841
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:12,000
Yeah, he could have, but you know, in so many years, you know, the major military member was Major Sweet.

842
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:16,000
He took him out to a ranch, and I know this name.

843
01:12:16,000 --> 01:12:17,000
Yeah.

844
01:12:17,000 --> 01:12:20,000
When I was in Civil Air Patrol, I just bought the stories here.

845
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:30,000
When I was in Civil Air Patrol, a pilot came in to our local air show, and he was in a bi-wing aircraft.

846
01:12:30,000 --> 01:12:33,000
And I said, well, I'm not sure.

847
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:35,000
Uh-huh, uh-huh.

848
01:12:35,000 --> 01:12:42,000
And I've been used to flying, but never did I ever get back on the ground, and I'd lay for a while on the ground.

849
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:46,000
And I must have walked across that flight line like a bull following a jelly.

850
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:59,000
I was just glugging, this guy didn't move, he was in, you know, barrel holds, and put a ground, you know, and it was, oh, so I can imagine, you know, what was going on over the glider.

851
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:02,000
Yeah, those bi-plane give you a trip.

852
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:08,000
Oh, all the wind, brushing, the base, the noise was deafening.

853
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:16,000
Matter of fact, I got my oldest son, where at Costa Rica, I got him a flight in an stearman bi-plane.

854
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:25,000
And, uh, fortunately, there wasn't enough time for me to go up, because I didn't want to go up in a stearman, but my son did, and he'd be on a jet-flight.

855
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:36,000
And, you know, going back to Einstein in Princeton, where my folks lived, I almost ran over Einstein, he was a comrade at the literature store.

856
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:46,000
He walked between two parked cars, had a bottle of whiskey in the paper bag, he stepped right in front of my car, and there was a stearman college at Harris State.

857
01:13:46,000 --> 01:13:53,000
And he just slammed on the brakes, he was right in the hood of my car, and he was looking at me and I said, oh my God, I must kill Einstein.

858
01:13:53,000 --> 01:13:56,000
Did your dad know Albert Einstein?

859
01:13:56,000 --> 01:14:04,000
No, I don't know if he did or not. But he was there in Princeton, and that's when my dad, first-year-old, I'm like, I can't look at him.

860
01:14:04,000 --> 01:14:10,000
But he, because MC squared, I almost got squashed with a flipper bottle in his hands.

861
01:14:10,000 --> 01:14:13,000
I couldn't even say anything.

862
01:14:13,000 --> 01:14:16,000
Well, good to history.

863
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:19,000
Mike, Mike, just, Mike's just gonna love this.

864
01:14:19,000 --> 01:14:28,000
I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna get to a good physicist or a good library and find out, just a series of unified particles.

865
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:38,000
I read briefly about it, but I think there's, he was on the threshold of how we can go to speed.

866
01:14:38,000 --> 01:14:43,000
It's like Jonathan Levenson and Segal said, speed is speed there.

867
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:47,000
You have to think about that. That's what space travel is all about.

868
01:14:47,000 --> 01:14:50,000
It has to go faster than speed of light.

869
01:14:50,000 --> 01:14:54,000
Well, obviously you've read about this, so let me ask you this question.

870
01:14:54,000 --> 01:15:00,000
If you're in a car that can go at the speed of light, what happens when you turn the headlights on?

871
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,000
It's dark.

872
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:08,000
Don, God bless you and thank you very, very much. I appreciate it.

873
01:15:08,000 --> 01:15:10,000
Thank you very much.

874
01:15:10,000 --> 01:15:12,000
Your father was a remarkable man.

875
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:13,000
He was.