[Interview Begins]

BLUMENBERG: There we go. Good morning. My name is Tom Bloomberg and I am not affiliated with any organization. And I am here today on July 29th, 2015 with Russell Howard Roberts, who was born in. We are doing this interview in Hayward, Wisconsin. So let's get started. Address. Some very basic biographical information I'd like from you. Where and when were you born? And tell me a little bit about your parents.

ROBERTS: My dad was a forester with the U.S. Forest Service. He was working in Kenton when I was born, which is about 70 miles from Marquette. My mother went to live with his parents until the baby came. And.

BLUMENBERG: And you were the baby?

ROBERTS: No, the little.

BLUMENBERG: Baby.

ROBERTS: He was a graduate of Michigan State University in forestry, 1931. And, we moved. We were in Kenton for a year or two years, went from there to Catholic Minnesota and from Cass Lake, Minnesota to Moorhead, Minnesota, where dad was in charge of the caucuses project, which was trying to get rubber from a plant somewhere related to the dandelion. You know, you break off a dandelion, you get that weight, right? Well, there's latex in there. And so they had a couple of years plant, which is related to the dandelion that they were trying to cultivate, and see if we couldn't make rubber out of it.

BLUMENBERG: I never heard of that. Yeah.

ROBERTS: Well, he he was in charge of that program over there. We went from there, to Ironwood and, and Michigan. I went all the way through school in Ironwood. I went to kindergarten and Moorhead, but then all the way from first grade through 12th in Ironwood. Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So you were back to being a Yooper.

ROBERTS: Are you happy and proud of that.

BLUMENBERG: And proud though? Did you have any siblings?

ROBERTS: My brother Tom, three years older than I was. And I have a younger brother born in 1945 and another 1 in 1950. So therefore, of all boys.

BLUMENBERG: So Tom was older than you? Yes. And then the name of the next one. Bill and the baby.

ROBERTS: Rick. Richard.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: Tom and Tom served in the Army.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, that was my next question. Tom was in the army?

ROBERTS: Yep. Bill was in the Navy on, on board, submarine.

BLUMENBERG: Oh.

ROBERTS: And Rick did an officer. He he got a high draft number. And so he went to school, right? To school, became an M.D..

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So Army, Navy and Air Force. You were in the Air Force? Yep. So you told me a little bit about the early days, but what were you doing then before you entered the service?

ROBERTS: I was in the service just a week after graduation from high school.

BLUMENBERG: And remind me again. What? When did you graduate from high school?

ROBERTS: 56.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. 56. Okay. And you went in right after that.

ROBERTS: I had, I had a actually a national partnership to, go get the community college that I was in. I was going to do that. And dad was transferred right at the time I graduated, and I didn't want to move to Minnesota. And a bunch of guys from my class, they were going to go in the Air Force and I said, well, I think I'll do that too. So I. Trying to write while I was still in high school, but we love for basic training in, well, about a week after I graduated.

BLUMENBERG: So you enlisted right after high school, right? And tell me why. Why was it that you chose the Air Force when your brothers were army and Navy?

ROBERTS: Well, Tom was drafted.

BLUMENBERG: Okay? He didn't have much choice. All right.

ROBERTS: Air Force, that promise of good technical training and the fact that there are several of my friends that were going in all at the same time, they promised we'd go to basic training together. So that was a draw as well. But, I would say mostly because of the promise of good technical training.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And did that, come true?

ROBERTS: It did I, I was. Electronics technician working with radios most around, around and around here. And he had a six month, six month training and and a radio.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Now, could you tell me when you were, getting ready to depart for your training camp or boot camp? What what was going on in your life at that time?

ROBERTS: Nothing of of much happens at all. I was just coming out of high school and so I hadn't much experience. I worked at Penney's the last couple of years in high school, but other than that, there was nothing really to hold me anywhere. And, I didn't know what I wanted to do. That was a big part of it. I was going to go to go get a college. It had I hadn't been transferred. I had just taken general courses. And I decided what what maybe I wanted to do.

BLUMENBERG: Right.

ROBERTS: When I, I didn't have much time to think about between graduation and the time I was in parks Air Force Base in California taking basic training. Okay, so my first ride in an airplane.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. There you go. What do you remember about your early days of training?

ROBERTS: It wasn't fun.

BLUMENBERG: It wasn't fun.

ROBERTS: It wasn't fun.

BLUMENBERG: And why is that?

ROBERTS: That you're awfully regimented. And, your time and thoughts weren't your own. You're told. Told what? Time to get up. What time to go to bed. What time to go to meals. What, what you can do during that time. And we never got off base. I was only at parks for four, actually, four weeks and basic, but we were there for five weeks. And then, because I wasn't going to a six month school, we only had the four month, four weeks of actual basic training and then was transferred to Scott Field in Illinois. And that's where I took my training. And then we, we we had a couple hours of schooling, basic training type things. Every afternoon, while we were at Scott, I had been in ROTC in high school. Oh, okay. And so I had a. Fairly good knowledge of military training and tactics, that sort of thing.

BLUMENBERG: All right. So let me back you up a step when you were at. Is it Park.

ROBERTS: Air Park, surf Air.

BLUMENBERG: Force base in California.

ROBERTS: Pleasanton, California.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And that first four weeks, what did that consist of? Mostly PT.

ROBERTS: Bivouac, military. What do they call it? Military customs. Whatever. Just basic, basic training and military life.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And then after four weeks, you were shipped to Scott Air Force Base, right?

ROBERTS: Yep.

BLUMENBERG: And that was was that specialized training or.

ROBERTS: Yes. Yeah, that was what we learned. We learned electronics and how to repair radios.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Okay, then, how long did you spend at Scott?

ROBERTS: Six months.

BLUMENBERG: Six months. And then what happened.

ROBERTS: When I went to Korea?

BLUMENBERG: Wow. That one fast. Yeah, I did. Well, let me let me back you up a step. What? What do you remember about your instructors at either at, your your time at parks or at Scott?

ROBERTS: What I can remember was a long time ago. Tom. Right. But, for the most part, we had pretty damn good instructors. And, we learned a lot. Became, I can't say proficient, but at least knowledgeable in electronics and, fixing these these radios. Well, that's about all I can say, I guess.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And that the specialized training that you received was in electronics and you said you were fixing radios. What type of radio was it.

ROBERTS: When you got into the into the radio school? You went into one of two areas, either of which is high frequency. That's mostly ground to ground.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: Or you get into VHF, UHF, which is grown to air and and just by chance, I ended up in RF, which was the, ground to ground, transmitters and receivers.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So that was your specialized training in h f high.

ROBERTS: High high frequency. Okay. VHF and UHF were very high in the ultra high frequencies.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, then tell me about, how you adapted to the military life coming out of, out of the U.P. and, you mentioned PT and physical training. What about the barracks, the food, social life, things like that.

ROBERTS: Well, there was no social life at parks, okay? We never got a pass. We never got off base during the time we were there.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: Food was good. I, I have to admit to all the way through the Air Force, we ate well, and we had plenty to eat.

BLUMENBERG: So that's a little different than what I've heard from some of the others, I'm sure. Maybe your case for a different or easier to please.

ROBERTS: That that that part. That's part of it too.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Okay. So I know that you, mentioned that you were in ROTC. What about the part, being the physical regiment, part of being going through your training? Was that an issue for you or.

ROBERTS: No, not at all. Again, the the the part we took, as I recall, was maybe twice a week for an hour.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: I can't, I can't really tell you what we all we did to take up that time for, for 4 or 5 weeks, but, it was not overly strenuous. Not not not to the way the Marines was or even the Army are. It was. It's hard to be told what to do and how to do it. Every minute of the day. And, I remember one time when we left the barracks for the day for whatever was taped or whatever it was. We had to have our bed made and and everything cleaned up, and I need somehow or other, I left my shorts hanging on the bed. But when we got back to the barracks, I can remember RTI Airman third Class. Brown called me in his office. He lived in the barracks with everybody at the office and bedroom and chewed my book royally. And when I came out of his office, I had my shorts over my head.

BLUMENBERG: Well.

ROBERTS: I never left them out again.

BLUMENBERG: That's right. I can imagine that's a good way to remind you of that. Well, my next question was going to be about life in the barracks. And you have already told us one story. Is there anything else about the barracks that you remember?

ROBERTS: Oh, you just remember a lot of GI parties and scrubbing and and on our hands and knees with scrub, brush and wooden, all wooden floors. These these were old barracks and, they had to be you had to be able to eat off the floor. I don't remember that much more about that four week stint at, at parks. They kept us busy. I remember that, and, we found out that military life was a little different than civilian life here.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, then you left parks. But when you ended up in in Scott Air Force Base, go through the same thing. What was what was a life like there?

ROBERTS: Well, I got to tell you about the life between parks. Oh, Scott.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. There was something in between.

ROBERTS: Because we we, had been living in Auburn Bay barracks, rather austere and regimented. And they put us put me on the Santa Fe, San Francisco chief with my own little. Room on the train with a bed chair, and and went all the way from San Francisco to Kansas City on that train would go on three days, and it was wonderful.

BLUMENBERG: You had your own space.

ROBERTS: Oh, I had my own space. And no one told me to make my bed. No one told me to do anything. And then we got out of Kansas City, switched over to the Wabash Cannonball and took that on into Saint Louis. And then they picked us up, my boss to go to Scott Field, and that's where I started my electronics training.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, well, that's a good memory. Yeah. Have you had any train travel since then?

ROBERTS: Yeah, I, I, when I went to Korea, I took a bus out to, Oakland. But then when I came back from Korea, I took I had, I had a train train ticket from Oakland to Minneapolis. Okay. That was, that was a little more austere. That was just bench seats or you just seats rather than compartment.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, so you said you left Scott, and that's when you were getting ready to leave for Korea. Right? Okay. So from Scott you went to back to California.

ROBERTS: Back to California. Okay. I had had to leave. Might have been 30 days. I can't remember now, but I had lived between the time I finished school and left for Korea.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: I think I had 30 days or maybe three weeks, something like that. And I went home for that period and, and jumped on a bus, took the bus from Minneapolis to Oakland and from there to Travis, I think Travis Air Base and, from there to Korea. Okay. It was an interesting story there. We we were at Travis for maybe a week. We're waiting for our turn to come up to get on the plane to head for the Far East. And we got to know, got to know a few of the fellows, which. Sure, until that, before we left. And one fellow in particular from port Indiana, and another wonderful amount of Michigan, we turned around. Together before we left, and let it be known when we went to find out that we were going to. When we were going to go, let my folks know when we were leaving on such such a day. Well, it turned out that one of those astronomers from Oregon and I was in that same group. We got to Travis and he got on an earlier flight, and I think it 12 hours ahead of us. And that plane had mechanical problems before they landed at Lulu. They had mechanical problems again before they hit Wake Island. And that's the last thing I ever heard from that plane. I don't know. They never found, never found any flotsam nor never found a trace of that plane. Well, of course, my folks and my girlfriend knew that I was leaving that day. And of course, they would never come on this Air Force plane transport plane that had gone down in the Pacific. And of course, they thought I wasn't sure, and I didn't think to call it didn't think anything about it. They had asked us if we had seen anything, and we flew over that same area and no one had. Well, the Red cross mom or dad called the Red cross to find out if they could find out anything. And I think it took them 2 or 3 days before they confirmed that I had landed. It touched your car and was safe.

BLUMENBERG: Wow. And that is an interesting story. And and lucky for you.

ROBERTS: Just just luck of the draw that I ended up for. And later plane.

BLUMENBERG: Right.

ROBERTS: But they that plane had mechanical problems all the way over.

BLUMENBERG: That is an interesting story. Yeah. Okay, now you're in Korea and you said the name of the base, but I.

ROBERTS: BioNTech p o n g t a e k. Okay K six.

BLUMENBERG: All right. And what type of memories do you have of your experience here in Korea?

ROBERTS: Are two types of memories. One. I got tangled up, if that's the right word, with an orphanage. And right now, right outside of young tech, I've been most of my off duty time. If I would know my mom when I was out there working with or visiting with the kids. And, there was a group of us that that. Spent much of our spare time out at the orphanage working with the kids. The kids would come in on some Sundays. Some Sundays they had a very accomplished choir. Yes, I sang in harmony and and, I just that's what I spent my time at and all was there.

BLUMENBERG: Did you teach them how to sing?

ROBERTS: No.

BLUMENBERG: No, no, they. I know you have a good singing voice. I don't know.

ROBERTS: All of that, but. That way it was. It would work and go to the orphanage. And again we ate. We didn't eat quite as well in Korea as we did back in the States, but, we ate what we used in. The kitchen used to put together a great big pot with leftovers. Lots of soup. Not many. Not many of the guys really did much with this soup. It was not. It would palatable, but not really good. So every night we would take what? Leftovers from the big kettle like this. We took what was left of that soup. We all go to the orphanage and you could see over time those kids put on weight. Yeah. So it was it was really a good, good thing. Made several trips to, to, Seoul. So at that time, I still got a picture of. At that time, there were no modern buildings in the building. Were all still shall follow. Shall old, and, beat up the road up there was dirt until we got to Sudan, which was about 30 miles from Seoul. A lot of 30 miles were blocked up, but all the rest of the world was all gravel.

BLUMENBERG: Rough shape.

ROBERTS: Rough shape? Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: No, you said that you were at Pyong Tech.

ROBERTS: For a year.

BLUMENBERG: And you told me about the orphanage. What? What about your duties with.

ROBERTS: The base was down here. We were. I worked up on what they call a radar hill. Okay? It was on hills west of the base. Or they had a radar station and the radio station. I worked at the course in the radio area, and, we maintained communications, with other bases and with the planes. That's where I started working on. I said I went to school for half. Right. Well, they needed UHF for VHF more than they needed HF. So I got my first, my feet wet, on some of the UHF and VHF equipment there and. We work shift work for the most part. Seems to me, as I recall, I spent more time on just days and spent some time on shift work, but mostly on days, and worked at five for roughly an eight hour, five day week, and weekends. If you if you work on shift work, we can go to the we're out to the orphanage or we had a softball and softball teams, organized sports, was excellent. Pheasant, duck and ghost hunting.

BLUMENBERG: Really?

ROBERTS: While I was there, I bought the shotgun. I'm still shooting today at Remington. We mass rate 70. And, I used to spend a lot of time in the fall hunting either pheasants, ducks for years. Oh, yeah.

BLUMENBERG: Tell me about some of the friendships you developed where you were serving.

ROBERTS: The one from Korea for the most part lost track of shortly after. Is they are. I, transferred back to the States. Had some good friends over there and a few that I maintained retained. Connections with for a while, but, kind of fell off after a while. Retain some more lasting connections with some of the fellows. I was at Michigan when I got back from Korea.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, okay.

ROBERTS: But. Seemed like the friendships were rather transient over there. And in the Air Force. You go over there for a year and two weeks later someone else may come. You don't move as a unit like you do in the Army. And so you're there for a year. Year? Some of the fellows you work for may have just three months left. And so what you did, there wasn't a unit cohesion like there is in the army.

BLUMENBERG: So that an impact on, the way you would develop friends because they were rotating in and out.

ROBERTS: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Okay. We, I remember we used to do the enlisted men could not buy liquor, could not have liquor in Korea. There was a emblem where you could or could drink beer, but you couldn't get liquor. Well, one of the traditions over there was when you got your orders to go back home. You had a fake mole ribbon that you tied around your orders and you carried around in your sleeve. Well, the fake mole ribbon was that little ribbon you find on a bottle of secret reveal. Okay, so we would get one of the encores or an officer to buy a bottle for us. How we remember how we managed to do that. I can't remember, but that was the only time we were legally able to have liquor was when we bought that bottle to kind of tie that ribbon around our orders that we put on our sleeve and carry around.

BLUMENBERG: So you're the second person that I interviewed that mentioned fig moss.

ROBERTS: We won't we won't go into what?

BLUMENBERG: I guess we can guess. When you were in Korea. What type of contact did you have with family and friends back in the States?

ROBERTS: For the most part, just letters. I when I went on R&R to Japan, I called home. I can recall it was like $15 a minute to, to make a long distance phone call back home. Sure. I didn't call once when I wasn't in Tokyo an hour, but otherwise it was. It was just letters.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Then, you had mentioned earlier, Russ, that you did some travel to Seoul. While you were there. Did you do any other travel while you were in, in the country?

ROBERTS: Yeah, but it was pretty much day trips. There was a, a park I guess we'd call it a park, you know. And so on was a big shooting pool. And I can remember there were probably 3 or 4 times that we got to do some that have got a bunch of guys together and went up and went swimming at this, at the swimming pool. Just as a diversion. Travel up to full. Several times, both on pleasure and on. Work related. Like I say, asshole was just totally bombed out. That was 57. I got there in March of 57. Left in March. 58? The war was over in 53, but. Roads. Bridges were still bombed out. We had we had detours to get around bridges that had not even been fixed yet. One, between two and so on and so on was bombed on I first got there was about a six mile detour to get around. Our main base in Korea was K55, which was only about six miles north of Bomb Tech. But to get there, it it was born an hour and a half because of this detour. For the first I was nine months I was there. They got the bridge fixed while I was there. But the bridge, the roads were all gravel. I still I can still picture that as a little village. As we went through, they were straw huts, but that's all they were. They. I can remember dogs hanging in the meat market. And, and they would make, pasta. They would make pasta and they would hang it alongside the road for sale. And of course, the trucks and everything going by that dust would fly and and get on this stuff. The people in Korea at that time did not know well at all. At all. And, I see pictures of Korea now. My daughter in law is over in Seoul right now. Okay. Business. And I'm anxious to talk to her. Sure. But. The people are more or less just surviving.

BLUMENBERG: So you had, obviously had a lot of contact with young people while you were doing your work on your free time at the orphanage, but what what other contacts did you have with locals?

ROBERTS: Not really very much at all. The, there was a language barrier. There was no shopping. No, no, nothing to go in and buy, for souvenirs, that sort of thing. The people there just survived. So there was no store to go to? No, no, nothing like that. As a diversion, the, the German club would. Oh, maybe once a month or something. Yeah, probably once a month. Would bring a bunch of girls in to put on a show. Okay. They were working ladies, and. And they had a little dance afterwards where you could at least make some contact with, with a female, which. LED to other things?

BLUMENBERG: Yes.

ROBERTS: First of all, the guys, but, it it was just a diversion.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Then do you have any other memories that you want to share about your time there in Korea?

ROBERTS: One interesting thing was. While we were there, there was a small fire at the orphanage. One of the boys that burned badly. They're talking about. They were one of the Crips. And then the soul wanted to go up, and he needed blood. You know, several of those not up to give blood. Whether they used our blood on them or whatever, but just to give blood. And I got up, we got up there and got tested, and I'm a positive. What was I? I don't know. Anyway, they couldn't take my blood because. Because they don't have positive over there.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So it wasn't not usable at that time.

ROBERTS: It was not usable. Very, very few people would say it was a positive blood type. Well, I don't know, but that's just the way it was. And. Just trying to think if I didn't make. I can't remember any particulars about the trips to Seoul. Again, there was no shopping in Seoul either. It was. It was a little better than than out in the boonies. But. Not not not a shopping trip at all.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, well, then your time ended in Korea, and you had mentioned earlier that you ended up back in Michigan.

ROBERTS: Yes, yes. At Empire. 20 miles west of Traverse City. Right on Lake Michigan.

BLUMENBERG: Empire is that Empire Air Force base.

ROBERTS: Yeah, well, actually, an Empire Air Force station AC and squadron air crash control in the morning. Okay. Squadron. It couldn't be considered a base. It was just. I think there were maybe 150, 175 people there. And his sole purpose was part of the early warning system. Early warning system. Part of the connection with the do line. Early warning. Looking for Russian planes coming over, the old coming down our way. And, well, there's a memory I have from Moscow. From Korea. Tom. Well, I was there. The main plane that we had Air Force had was the F-86 subsonic. And they were flying around all the time as the North Koreans kept breaking the armistice. They brought new equipment and got new equipment, a new plane and. Finally, the United States, felt they had to retaliate or call us out, and we brought in. At that time they called the Century Series F-100. Previous to that was that 56. And well, they call it a century series because it was F-100. They were supersonic. And from our base on beyond tag, we could very easily see Radar Hill where I worked. And. I remember one day a couple of F100 came in and they used to. We used to ask them to come in and give us a radar. Radar antenna check. So they bother us and, oh, probably 150ft above the antenna. Well, and and these two RF 100 broke the sound barrier over the hill. That's the first time I ever saw it. I had heard the sonic booms, but as a plane breaks the sound barrier, it forms a funnel shaped, dense cloud. Or. Or you can see it anyway. And, and, as it approaches the speed limit of the sound barrier, this, that there's this funnel shaped thing. It kind of grows and recedes. And then when they break the song barrier, it disappears with the sonic boom. That funnel disappearing.

BLUMENBERG: Disappears.

ROBERTS: But it but it was neat to watch a plane break this on their own. That was pretty new stuff back. And.

BLUMENBERG: And you had visual inspection of it?

ROBERTS: Yes. Yep. I watched I watched it happen. Yeah. Another time, we, I was all used to go back and forth between radar and radio once in a while. We knew guys there. And when we weren't busy fixing radio or why we find something to do. Walk over to Radar Park. One day, I was just leaving the radar hill, and I looked over and a plane crashed. Oh, probably 20 miles north or south of the hill. And big explosion and lots more coming up. Well, I ran over to tell the guys and and the radio part of the of the, complex there that, the plane had crashed. Well, as I was going across, I tripped and fell and there were a bunch of sandbags. There was a ditch near the sandbags line, the line, the ditch. And I tripped and fell and landed on my chin. You can see the scar. I tore that open.

BLUMENBERG: And trying to learn and.

ROBERTS: Trying to learn, trying to let people know that there was a plane crash. So.

BLUMENBERG: And you still have memories of it tonight?

ROBERTS: I do.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: So a few times over there we were. We had to go on guard duty, especially Mayday, Mayday. I remember was one time when we went on on pretty much full alert. That's a that's a communist holiday. And, so we were actually, issued live ammunition to, and we have a 24 hour guard. I'm going to say probably 4 or 5 days around. And so it was on the part of our base that was what was important was what's up on the hill. And so we, we, we would guard the perimeter of that, with live ammunition for that 4 or 5 day period.

BLUMENBERG: To how many people were guarding the perimeter at.

ROBERTS: That? Oh, there's the perimeter of the hill. Probably isn't over ten acres total. Baseball is a writer and radio. Complex. So there will probably only be a half a dozen guys that would be patrolling that fence.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: And nothing ever happened that I recall. But then I one time, I was on guard, put on guard duty, and I had a garden guard. The article and NPR tech contact was maybe a mile or so from the maze, the village of Pyong Tech, and I had to go and guard the article The railroad yards. I can't remember what Artiole stand for. Rail transportation. Whatever. And, we were issued live ammunition for that, and I, I was all walking through that railroad fairly good size yard. And bunch of kids came running into it up to the to these the rail cars started climbing over the cars, and they had not given us very good instructions as to what we ought to do. I think they just our presence there wouldn't take care of any problems that might, might happen when those kids started climbing over the rail cars. I figured this was not a good thing. So I took my rifle shot, shot three rounds in the air. Well, it disappeared right now and and never did find out if cars were or what was in them or what, but, it was the only time I shot the shotgun over there, and. As a deterrent or anything.

BLUMENBERG: So your presence did take care of the problem? No. Right. Okay. Anything else about Korea?

ROBERTS: No, I guess, but pretty well pretty well covered. It was. It was. It was an experience to be that close to Korea in those 3 or 4 years after the end of the war. You could sure use when we were out and running. There was a Russian tank that was laying off the side of the road. We'd find pieces like that around that had not been cleaned up yet.

BLUMENBERG: The scattered about.

ROBERTS: Scattered about. Yeah, yeah.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, then you're back to the Empire at the station. Yeah. And while you were in it, how much time did you spend there?

ROBERTS: Two years.

BLUMENBERG: Two years? Two.

ROBERTS: Your little over two years.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And your duties? There were.

ROBERTS: Fiction.

BLUMENBERG: Similar to what you were doing.

ROBERTS: Oh, yeah. Fiction. Radios.

BLUMENBERG: Then when you get out of the service that you love from.

ROBERTS: Empire, I love from there. Yep. Okay. Got out in June of 60.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. And how were you received then? By your your family? Obviously, you were already back in the States, but.

ROBERTS: Yeah, it was kind of good. I got home from a couple a week or so after I got out. Then I hadn't met my people near Empire Old Town called Glen Arbor. They ran a. Dine at a little restaurant, and attached to that restaurant was a gas station. They wanted that gas station all summer long. It was totally a tourist town. So, when they knew I was getting help, they'd ask. They asked me if I would run the gas station for the summer. That's right. In conjunction with the dine in. I said sure. So that sounds like a good idea because I had lots of friends in that area. Base was there, so I ran this gas station for the summer and then that fall and matriculated it. But then she stayed at that time, Missouri State College.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

ROBERTS: I'm going to be an electrical engineer and, went to school there for all of 60 and went back and ran the gas station again for the next summer. Went back to school, still in electrical engineering, for a second year. And then we could only get two years at Bemidji.

BLUMENBERG: This was the GI Bill.

ROBERTS: No, I did not have the job.

BLUMENBERG: Oh, you did not know I was.

ROBERTS: I was between.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, that was.

ROBERTS: In between.

BLUMENBERG: That's right. There was a.

ROBERTS: Gap.

BLUMENBERG: A blank blank spot there. Yep.

ROBERTS: Yep. So then after two years of Bemidji, we had to transfer down to the University of Minnesota to, to continue in engineering. And about that time, I was getting a little not disgruntled, but I wasn't sure engineering really was what I wanted. And I ended up switching into forestry. Okay. And one of the best movies I ever made. Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Well that's good. It's a good time to find out. Exactly, exactly. Not after a 30 year career. Yeah. So you graduated from Minnesota? Yep. Yeah. What year was that?

ROBERTS: Well, I, I went through graduation in 64, but, I had a couple of correspondence courses through Finnish because having transferred out of engineering into forestry, there were some courses that I had missed, humanities courses that we didn't have taken in engineering because it was such a poor load anyway. So I had to make up a couple of courses by correspondence. So I went through graduation in December of 64, but I didn't get my degree actually until spring of 65 and went to work for Owens-illinois over and, and, Tomahawk, Wisconsin, and, I guess I started in April of 65.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So you were doing your forestry work first in Tomahawk, Wisconsin? Yep.

ROBERTS: And then I was there for three years, and then we opened a new office in Ironwood, and I took over that new office environment I felt familiar with the area had lived there most of my life at that time. So I, manage that that district office from 68 until 76, 76. We closed that office and I moved back to Tomahawk. What is this? Information you want to share after the service.

BLUMENBERG: I'm trying to figure out what you're doing after the service and you're out of there, so the rest of your life is interesting also.

ROBERTS: Well, I while I was at Bemidji, I tried I tried to stay in the reserves report to have a two year obligation after the four year active duty, and they had a whole half a dozen or so Air Force people who were putting in there, trying to put in their time as reservists. There was no formal program. It was, it was all officers except me, as I recall. And they somehow kept this thing going. But, we met once a month for an evening. Don't even remember what we did. And then I this summer, first summer, I was out, I spent two weeks at Grand Forks, for active duty for two weeks. And then I didn't see any real sense in continuing in the reserves, so I just stopped going. There was no, they didn't follow up on the obligation at all after the two years while I got my discharge. So. But I would I would like to have stayed in the reserves, pool. Got my 20 years here just just as a supplement. Right. And it was kind of fun to go on and, on to, active duty. You didn't. You didn't have to have any responsibility. Didn't have to worry about, anything. It just keeping in train and keeping in train and so on. I, I kind of enjoyed that.

BLUMENBERG: So that didn't work out. It didn't work out. You know.

ROBERTS: So I, I ended up with, with, four years of active duty. Must have been made maybe must have been two years of reserves, or a year and a half a year. And then I just didn't do anything after that was too hard to get to any place, I suppose. While I was in Michigan or in Tomahawk, I could have gone to an Army National Guard, joined one of those and, completed the the, years of service, but didn't, didn't interest me. Right.

BLUMENBERG: There was an airbase and U.P. at that time also.

ROBERTS: Oh, that one just about the time I, I was finishing up. Right? Yeah. We when I was stationed in Traverse City, our our main base was. Kinross, as I recall, right south of Saint Marie. That's where I met where I got went up for final processing when I got old. And. I don't think Ken Ross is there anymore. And and I know council has close.

BLUMENBERG: Control of.

ROBERTS: Clover. That's, all the old buildings are being used. There's a sawmill up there and several things up there.

BLUMENBERG: There's a prison there.

ROBERTS: Is there? Yeah. I never got to control. Oh, never got there.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. That was that was a sack base.

ROBERTS: Yes. Right. Yeah. What is it actually a Gwyn? Okay. Yeah. That was that, in fact, quite a bit more. My mother would more, but, yes, that was a fact. Base back in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Must've closed late, late 80s or something, like, I think.

BLUMENBERG: Early.

ROBERTS: 80s, early 80s.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.

ROBERTS: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, we had the money into that and and didn't use it very a lot.

BLUMENBERG: Right. All right, then you're back in Tomahawk and you, were working in forestry.

ROBERTS: Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: And did you retire from the war?

ROBERTS: About the time about, let's say, 86 or thereabouts. On. I was purchased by Great Northern proportion. Okay. At least those are woodlands and so on. So, I then went to work for Nickel Newspapers, which is a part of Great Northern Nichols and. They transferred me down to. Where we live in Grand and Wisconsin Rapids. But the, the mill, the mills were in Port Edwards and and Noosa. Okay. And, while I was there, from 88 to about 92 or 3, then Great Northern Wisconsin was purchased by Georgia-Pacific. So I worked for Georgia-Pacific that they you see, we got to the point where we were putting putting the name of the company on Velcro because we were we were sold off. And I kept telling people that it because they wanted to get to me. But, Georgia-Pacific took the company over and I'm gonna say about 94. And so I work the rest of the time was with, Georgia-Pacific and retired from Georgia-Pacific. I had a great four years with them. Oh, good.

BLUMENBERG: And and what what year was it that you retired?

ROBERTS: August of 96?

BLUMENBERG: 96. And then you moved to Hayward after moved.

ROBERTS: To Hayward in May of 97? Okay. To be close to the market for sure.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, I know that you're an active guy. So what? What? I know you're involved in a lot of activities in in the Hayward area, but are you a member of any of the, veterans organizations here? Yeah.

ROBERTS: You've heard of the. What are they going?

BLUMENBERG: Veterans Response Team. Yeah.

ROBERTS: You're thinking call it. They call it. Veterans emergency. I can't remember the name. I guess I'm a member of that.

BLUMENBERG: I think the Veterans Emergency Response team, I think that's what it's called.

ROBERTS: Vets. It's this. So it's vets. Okay. But yes, I'm a member of a member of that. Okay. I, I do use the veterans of the VA health health system.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Well, that pretty much wraps it up then. Here, here. Here you are in Hayward. And and me too. But I have a couple more questions. The time that you had in the military, how did that impact your. Your life and your career?

ROBERTS: I think it teaches teaches you a lot of self-discipline. I still think that I can tell people who have been in the service and who haven't been in the service. Just in their general personality is a general way of doing things. My son, when he graduated high school, tried to get into the Navy and they wouldn't take him because as I had, was so bad. So. And I and I'm proud of the fact that he wanted to do that.

BLUMENBERG: He tried.

ROBERTS: I'm a I'm a little bit chagrined when I see the number of people. Who have not served. I think that that everybody should have that obligation to live in this country. Right.

BLUMENBERG: So that is a message that you can leave for future generations that, people need to.

ROBERTS: Serve you, you, you all you owe to your country for good. But for what we have.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Any other message that you want to leave us with?

ROBERTS: No, I think that's about it.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Rested. And I want to thank you for spending the time here with me today doing, interview with the Veterans History Project. And I thank you for your service.

ROBERTS: I don't know how you're going to write all this up. I don't envy you the the, having to do that.

BLUMENBERG: I have some I have some practice. Thanks. Okay.

[Interview Ends]