[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is June 21st, 2024. This is an interview with Tom Blumenberg, who served as an officer in the Commission Corps of the United States Public Health Service from February 5th, 1983 to September 7th, 1985, and from October 10th, 1986 to November 30th, 2004. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the interview room on the third floor of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program.

I know Tom from various, veterans oral histories that he has contributed to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Collection and the Library of Congress, Veterans History Program. And I know Tom substantially more than the average veteran I interview. So, no one else is present in the interview room. Tom, could you tell me a little bit about where you grew up?

BLUMENBERG: Sure. First of all, Luke, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it, Dave. As you know, I've done some before, and it's nice to be on this side of the camera.

SPRAGUE: So, I hope.

BLUMENBERG: So. I hope so, too. So I grew up in Port Washington, Wisconsin. I was born in, in the early years. I know you know what, my birth date. But. Yeah. Yeah, around 1950. So I grew up in port, and it was, just a great place to grow up as a kid.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What did your family do there?

BLUMENBERG: My dad was a blue-collar worker, a machinist at the Wisconsin Electric Power Company in Port Washington. My mother took care of five kids. So, she was a busy woman.

SPRAGUE: Yeah, yeah. And, what schools did you attend?

BLUMENBERG: My grade school was, the Saint Mary's Catholic School from, first grade to eight. Then, my high school years were at the Port Washington High School, and I graduated in 1969.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, what led you to the decision to become a pharmacist?

BLUMENBERG: Well, I was working as, soda jerk in local a local pharmacy. I can say the name. It was, Bowman's Pharmacy at the time in downtown Port Washington. My sister had work there, and they were looking for some extra help. And for $0.50 an hour, I went down there and made hot fudge sundaes and stocked shelves and just hung out in the pharmacy. And, that's how I got started. And it kind of piqued my interest in the world of pharmacy watching, watching the two pharmacists as they worked in the in the back part of the store.

SPRAGUE: And by chance, do you happen to remember the name of the two pharmacists?

BLUMENBERG: The, the owner was Everett Bowman, and his partner was Wayne Huffman.

SPRAGUE: Yep. Okay. So, then did you decide immediately you were going to go to college to become a pharmacist?

BLUMENBERG: It was a complicated time in my life, but, and everybody's life at that point. So in 1968 or 69, I went with Wayne Huffman, the pharmacist, and he took me to a, orientation seminar here in Madison at the School of Pharmacy to see if it would be a good fit for me. And it got me interested, and I was impressed with the university and, you know, getting out of the small town and moving on. So that is what got me started in that path.

SPRAGUE: Okay. How did your, you mentioned, the time frame. How did the Vietnam War affect your decision to attend the UW?

BLUMENBERG: Right. So. So I had, friends in high school that, after graduation ended up in Vietnam, and they came back in boxes. They were dead. And I was a student thinking that at that point, I had a draft number of 19 of 68, and I thought my time was coming and I was going to Vietnam, so I delayed that as a student. I went and I had a major in partying my first semester at at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Okay. Yeah. And I did not do myself proud, but I, I had a black cloud over my head. And I think a lot of young men did at that time. And I said I was going to have fun before I did the next thing. So somewhere in that first semester, I realized that there maybe was a better way. And I had, the intelligence to stay in school and see what was going to happen. So I, I turned things around after that first semester and became a real student. And it sent me back a little bit. And in my sent me back a little bit in my, schedule, for graduation. But I ended up doing two extra summers and, graduated on time. So.

SPRAGUE: And what year did you graduate in?

BLUMENBERG: So I graduated in 1974. I I'll just back up a half a step. I went three years to the pre pharmacy program at UW and Milwaukee, then transferred to Madison and and graduated in 1974.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Did you meet anyone in college in particular?

BLUMENBERG: No, I actually it's a loaded question. I met somebody in high school. Okay. As a freshman, I saw a young lady, and we had a small high school. But I saw her, and I thought, I'm. I'm going to get to know her because she was beautiful. And well, I never did it until I was a senior in high school, but her name was Sandra Sandy McCauley. Her parents were owned a small general store in the town of Albuquerque. We called those people frogs because they lived along the river. And I took her to the senior prom. So after I went wilding, we we split ways after. After college started, she was in nursing school at, Saint Mary's in, in on the east side of Milwaukee. And I was at UW. But we we really didn't cross paths. And then when I straightened myself out, we somehow reconnected. And, I ended up marrying her in 1973. I was still a student. Yeah. So. Okay. And have a little love story.

SPRAGUE: Nice. So, you graduate with your a pharmacist degree or a.

BLUMENBERG: Bachelor of science in pharmacy?

SPRAGUE: That's out of science and pharmacy. 1974 74. And what did you do after that?

BLUMENBERG: So as part of my program, I was required to do one year of internship. And, you know, many people did their internships close to their, their hometown or family or whatever. And I had some adventurous spirit in me that I can't explain. But we want to I wanted to get as far as far away from family as possible and still do my internship in the state. So I ended up accepting a position as an intern at the Medical Arts Pharmacy in Ashland and in 1974.

SPRAGUE: Well, tell me about that, position as an intern there.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So, I was I was under the tutelage of, the owner and the pharmacist, and he was also a member of the state board of pharmacy at that time, which was a which was a bonus for me. His name was Leon Lewandowski. And Leon did a good job in a small pharmacy. And he he got me squared away in several things and got me prepared to take my board exam.

SPRAGUE: Now, that medical arts pharmacy in Ashland you had mentioned, or was that part of the, Indian Health Service for the Menominee Nation or what was.

BLUMENBERG: No. The the medical arts pharmacy was a contract pharmacy for the Indian Health Service. And at that point, and because of their location, they were serving people from both the bad River reservation, which would be east of Ashland, and sometimes the, Redcliffe Reservation outside of Bayfield.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So I get to meet some people I never met before, Native Americans. I had no idea who they were, what they were. But I got to know several of them on a pretty, personal basis and enjoyed their sense of humor and their outlook on life.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Do you think that was, the formative experience that drove your decisions going forward or in here?

BLUMENBERG: Well, it absolutely was. And part of the reason, because of the fact that, because we were a contract pharmacy, the the director of pharmacy for the Bemidji Area Indian Health Service included Ashland and the Red Cliff and the bad River reservation. So because we were doing contract prescriptions for those folks, the pharmacy director came in and he met me. And of course, he knew Lynn because he had made the contract with him. But he asked me what my plans were and what I was looking for, and I told them I didn't know and I was looking for some adventure. So we just let it go. But before the end of my, my internship, he touch base with me again, made sure that he had my contact information and we, we kept in touch after that.

SPRAGUE: And what was his name.

BLUMENBERG: His name was Tim Swoboda s.v. or B Oda Swoboda.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: And he was in Bemidji. In Minnesota.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Was there any other mentorship that he provided you with or things you picked up from him?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, he Tim, Tim was a great, PR guy for an Indian Health Service, and he knew that there were certain people that fit certain niches. And and I think he identified that in me. So that's why he he. Kept after me, but he he told me that more about the possibilities of Indian Health Service, where I could go or what I could do, how my pharmacy practice would, progress in the Indian Indian Health Service.

SPRAGUE: And maybe you could help me out here a little bit. So if you could help me understand the framework the Indian Health Service fits within public health service or not, are straightening out.

BLUMENBERG: So the Indian Health Service has one of the operating divisions of the Public Health Service, and I don't want to get into all of it, but the the, the chain, of command in the Department of Health and Human Services.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah. Did your, family members at all influence your decision to go into the Indian Health Service?

BLUMENBERG: My family members did not influence me in into the Indian Health Service, but, it might be time to show my picture.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. By all means. Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

BLUMENBERG: So. So the people that, influence me was my grandfather. This would be Otto Bloomberg and my father over here, Russell Bloomberg. And this would be young, I believe Commander Thomas l Bloomberg yourself. I'm a son of a son of a sailor, man. That's a Jimmy Buffett song.

SPRAGUE: So why don't you join the Navy?

BLUMENBERG: I didn't join the Navy, but these guys were proud, proud members of the United States Navy. My grandfather had served at 17. He enlisted in World War two, World War one, and he got it in write it as a young, young man. And, he also served in World War Two. And because of his experience in between as a police officer, he was a chief of police in Port Washington. He had some military police, experience when he went in and World War Two, he was stationed in, Bremerton, Washington, and he had shore duty as an MP, basically.

SPRAGUE: And you also shared another photograph with us? Oh, yes. Interviewer. Oh, yeah. Talk about this on camera. That would be great. All right.

BLUMENBERG: So this is a picture of both my grandfather Otto and my my father, Russell.

SPRAGUE: Arrows on the left side.

BLUMENBERG: Otto would be on the right.

SPRAGUE: It would be on the right. Okay. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: He is the chief petty officer. At the time, this was at Great Lakes, and my father enlisted, for World War two, and he went to Great Lakes. So both my grandfather and my dad were at Great Lakes at the same time. He didn't have direct, command over my father or anything like that, but it was it was quite, unique circumstance. Wow. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So did you have, like, a. I know you said that your family had the feelings that they had about Indian Health Service, but did you see it as a a continuation of service?

BLUMENBERG: Right. So my this continues back to my 68 draft number. Number 68 draft number. And because I stayed in, in the university and and became a real student, I was deferred. Well, I thought when I was going to retire, retire when I was going to graduate from pharmacy school or I'd still be called up. But then the Vietnam War was starting to wind down and things were changing. So, I did, I don't know if this sounds crazy or not, but I somehow had some remorse that I didn't serve, and that was in the back of my mind that I needed to do something. And, you know, I was still in my internship, and then this thing with the Indian Health Service came up, and I thought, you know, that's a way that I could I could serve my country. I could get into uniform. I didn't necessarily have to be in the one of the military services, but I could still serve, you know, and so that's that's how it got started.

But the timeline, you might have another question about it, but the timeline was when I finished my, my, my internship and I took my state board exam and passed, I could not get directly into the, the service at that time and the public health service. The reason being is that there was. Reduction of big reduction in force because Vietnam was winding down. So a lot of people that were serving in military capacities, ended up going into the public health service in India, Indian Health Service. So they served a bunch of roles in public health service outside of Indian Health Service. Examples. Center for Disease Control, the Bureau of Prisons. National Institutes of Health. But they were still. They were still officers in, they they switched from their military affiliation to public health affiliation.

So I was basically blocked out, and I was I was blacked out from getting into the service. So Tim Sabattus and, well, bide your time. And those people are going to wash out over once they meet their commitments. And some number of them are going to move on and out of the service. And so I was biting my time and waited and waited and, eventually, eventually, it worked out.

SPRAGUE: So where were you biding your time up in Ashland? Was that the deal?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, I stayed in Ashland for several years, and, Leon, the owner, wanted me to buy into the pharmacy or didn't want me to buy into the pharmacy. I couldn't tell my wife. Being the daughter of a small business owner absolutely did not want me to buy the pharmacy, because she knew I would, then have a second wife. Because if you own a, business like that, you marry it. And so I, I listened to her, I listened to Tim's about it, and I still waited. And then, I decided to move on to a different, venue for myself, a more, more clinical. Situation. I tried a lot of things when I was at, the medical arts pharmacy. I worked in the nursing home. I did a little bit of work in, in, in the hospital. I did some consulting, and I just really couldn't find my niche in pharmacy.

I knew, like, I was not going to be a retail pharmacist, so I had to look elsewhere. So I thought I'd go to a more clinical setting, and I, we moved to Maryland, Wisconsin. I was still biting my time, hoping to get in at an Indian health facility. And, I had my eyes on the Menominee Tribal Clinic and Casino, Wisconsin. So this thing in Maryland was more or less, kind of a stopgap measure. I didn't I did, good work there, but I knew I was going to be there forever.

Eventually, one of the pharmacists at, Menominee moved off to a different circumstance. Then the chief pharmacist who had served, at Fort McCoy in the Cuban, not the Cuban, the Cuban immigrants that were at Fort McCoy. He moved from there to Menominee Tribal Clinic. So he was the chief pharmacist, and they were looking for somebody else. And that somebody else turned out to be me. So that happened in 1981.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And you went down to Fort McCoy?

BLUMENBERG: Nope. I was in, the chief pharmacist was from.

SPRAGUE: Fort McCoy.

BLUMENBERG: When he was doing his thing at Fort McCoy. And then he moved to Menominee Tribal Clinic, and that's where I ended up as his understudy.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And that was in 81.

BLUMENBERG: 1981.

SPRAGUE: Okay, okay. And, what happened next?

BLUMENBERG: Well, they had a nice clinical situation there, and we had a private, this is this is different for for most people, if they're watching this, they wouldn't, relate to this. But we had our private consultation rooms at as pharmacists, and we tried to do the best we could to provide comprehensive care for the patients. No. We a lot of times cleared up misconceptions that they had with, medical staff.

And if things weren't right, or if there was a miscommunication between the doctor and the patient, we would intervene on the patient's behalf. So I got myself pretty wound up about doing clinical pharmacy because I said that is what I was trained for. So I, I started to really enjoy that and knew that that's what I wanted to do as a career continue that. However, I also got into some. Things that made me think more of the broader picture the population health. And rather than doing one person at a time, I wanted to look at a broader scope and look at, what could I do for the entire population of the entire tribe or the entire clinic, rather than one person at a time?

So I decided I would try to maintain my position at the Menominee Tribal Clinic, and I did get a promotion because my predecessor left. So I was the chief pharmacist there and hired somebody else. But I decided I would work on a master's degree in public health and see if, in fact, that would open up any doors.

SPRAGUE: And when were you working on your master's degree?

BLUMENBERG: Well, I started in, 1983, and I was I was doing it through a program over in green Bay. So it was just taking one one course at a time. And then I realized that there was not really it was really not going to work out. So this gets a little bit, confusing now because here I am in, casino in Wisconsin, and I wanted to. I still had my sights set on becoming a uniformed officer.

So I was went through the process because there were some openings, and I was actually had my first call to duty at, Kinch, a little Michigan. And that's not on my timeline, but it was my first call to duty, and we, my wife and I went up there. This was, on the on the SAC Air Force base at at Kinch law and the su Sainte Marie tribe, or one of the, bands of the Sioux Sainte Marie Indians who had a clinic at, at that location. So we had, located ourselves in a house that was a previous officer's house on the SAC base. And I had a, date that I was supposed to, report for duty up there, at which time the Menominee tribal clinic administrator realized that I was actually leaving and that they were going to be in a world of hurt, without without me being there.

And I'm not trying to build myself up, but they they knew I was doing a good job for them, and they didn't necessarily want me to leave. They did not want to give me, position as a uniformed officer. So we were we were kind of butting heads a little bit, and I and I said that, well, then I'm going to cancel. And that's when they said, well, then we'll get you back. So my call to active duty was to cancel Michigan. And before we even reported for duty there, I was transferred to Menominee Tribal Clinic. So I was I was back at the same place where I started.

SPRAGUE: And that's it, the Menominee Tribal clinic.

BLUMENBERG: And so there I was, a commissioned officer, lieutenant in the United States Public Health Service, the chief pharmacy officer at that place. But I still didn't lose my, intention of looking at, population health. So that's when I started with the the the master's degree, and, by chance, picked up. Flier from the unit for Uniformed Services University and said, you know, I'm going to check this out. Nobody from the Public Health Service told me about it, and I, I, I researched it and they had a master's degree in public health program, and I applied for it. I had to take the GRE previous to that studied for that was doing my clinical stuff.

Other duties as assigned on these had small Indian health facilities included me doing search and rescue missions for lost child, along the Menominee River, responded to, forest fire that was there because they needed, traffic control and things like that. And so I had quite a wide eye opening experience. And seeing I can do a lot of things with this organization. Yeah. So I decided. After taking my degree and did my interviews at Uniform Services that was in Bethesda, Maryland.

And for those who may not know, we we call it uses the Uniform Services Unit, University of the Health Sciences uses. And that is located in Bethesda, Maryland, on the backside of the Naval Hospital. And across the street basically was the National Institutes of Health. And so I was admitted into that program, and in 1985, I was matriculated at the Uniformed Services University.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And so let's just back up a little bit and we'll tie back in here, okay. So you're getting your your position at the Menominee Tribal Clinic. Was that somebody above you in the food chain pulling you back to that position, or was that maybe your move or it was somebody else's move?

BLUMENBERG: Well, it was a combination. So, temps for Boulder was still involved, and Tim knew what I was looking for because he was also the consultant at the tribal clinic in Kushina. So he said, okay, you got a plan. You know what? You're you're shooting for population health and a master's degree, he said. But, the folks like casino didn't want a uniformed officer there. I can't explain that. But there was some politics going on at on the reservation at that time that included the takeover of the novitiate in Gresham, and people in uniform were kind of the enemy at that moment.

And even though I was in a completely different capacity, I think that's that was part of it. So Tim said, if you want to get in, he said, you're going to get a call to active duty, take it and move on with your life. I said, okay, that's what I'll do. And then, politics between the tribes happened and Menominee working through Tim Sabonis said, let's get him transferred back. So that's that's what happened. At that point, any reasonable person would have said, I'm, I'm out of here. I'm going to do something different. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did you spend any time up at Saint Marie or none? None. Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Other than getting myself organized, having my interviews with all the people in the clinic and being accepted into that position, I. I never really spent the day working there.

SPRAGUE: Okay?

BLUMENBERG: I was transferred before I got there.

SPRAGUE: Was there any, involvement with the loan repayment for college or not?

BLUMENBERG: Not for me.

SPRAGUE: Not for you. Okay. So, okay, let's go back to us. Us.

BLUMENBERG: You okay?

SPRAGUE: And, Bethesda, when you, did you leave Kushina or were you temporary duty or. How did that work?

BLUMENBERG: The intention was this is another reason I should have left when I had the chance. The intention was. And everybody was excited. I was the first pharmacist from the Indian Health Service to matriculated to the Uniformed Services University. And so I was being encouraged and everybody was excited, as excited as they get. And when the time came, they decided, no, they were not going to keep me on active duty. I would have to go in active duty. So I did not get my salary. I did get, veterans benefits while I was at the university, but it was, you know, minuscule for what I needed. I mean, they basically paid for my books. Okay.

SPRAGUE: How did you survive during that?

BLUMENBERG: Well, I had the, sugar mama and the fact that the woman that I married, Sandy, went to work, down in the district, and she worked at a hospital and in Washington, DC.

SPRAGUE: And it may seem like a stupid question, but you mentioned veterans benefits as going to school. How did that work with being part of the Indian Health Service? Help me out with.

BLUMENBERG: Right. So I, I qualified for the veterans benefits as they were at that time, and I was in active duty, but they still would give me a small amount of money to be going on to school.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What was that like, serving alongside the other uniformed services.

BLUMENBERG: Right. So the Uniformed Services University is really the medical school. To put it succinctly, it's the medical school for the uniformed services, the best training ground for, for for physicians that are going into one of the armed services and the public health. Service. So most of my classmates were physicians, of course. Some were not. But many of them were Navy flight surgeons that were being required to have a master's of public health so that they could better look at population health, just like I was interested in. I did have, classmates that were from, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, the Israeli Air Force, and, you know, many other, you know, the armed forces for the United States. Of course.

SPRAGUE: This might seem like a. Were you in uniform at the time?

BLUMENBERG: I was not, because I was in active duty.

SPRAGUE: Oh, okay. Yeah. So civilian clothes.

BLUMENBERG: So I was a civvy.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. And everybody else was in uniform, so I was a real odd duck. Okay.

SPRAGUE: And how did that conversation go?

BLUMENBERG: Oh, they they, you know, people wondered who I was and what what I was, but there were a few others that were, nursing public health nurses that were trying to do the same thing that I was. And they were they were and never had been, in the military in any, any way. So they, they would still, allow them to get into the university, of the university. So decided. Okay, so I wasn't the only one, but that was one of the few. So, yeah.

SPRAGUE: So you get done with your master's. Where did you go next?

BLUMENBERG: Okay, so I did a two year masters and a little over a year. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we we did the thing I, I did a little bit of work at, NIH, with some of our computer things, and, it was an intense program, no doubt. I split my time between epidemiology and health care administration, and then I did some work at the Indian Health Service headquarters, which is located in Rockville, just north of Bethesda. I guess it would be north. Yeah. So I worked under the chief of, pharmacy services for the Indian Health Service there, and we just worked on some computer programs trying to get all the facilities up to snuff and get their, demographics in their database.

SPRAGUE: And that would have been about 1986, right?

BLUMENBERG: 1985 86 I, I was ready to move on. So. Okay, I graduated.

SPRAGUE: What program or what computer we're using in 85 to do that work.

BLUMENBERG: It still had that funky sound. So I don't, I think it was one of the early, early models we worked on, on things that they had at the university. But then when we went on the NIH, in the NIH computers, we had these huge mainframes that we were working off of.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So just curious.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So yeah, it was it was the, early ages of real computing there.

SPRAGUE: So maybe real trail tapes or big floppy disks. Do you remember.

BLUMENBERG: They, they, they went I think reel to reel and at Uniform Services, I think they went that that on to niche.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: And the Indian Health Service had their own I don't know what what they had there.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Any internet connections or anything really.

BLUMENBERG: None. None. Okay.

SPRAGUE: So okay. Moving ahead.

BLUMENBERG: Can you imagine that.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. No I can I was alive. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: Oh you were like yeah absolutely. Yeah yeah. So I graduated.

SPRAGUE: Yep. Yeah. Graduated with a master's in public history.

BLUMENBERG: Master's degree in public health.

SPRAGUE: Public health. Sorry, sorry. That that.

BLUMENBERG: That you're the historian, right.

SPRAGUE: So what happens next to you?

BLUMENBERG: So we decided to take, a little break. My wife and I decided we're leaving the East Coast. I had made the decision to. I wasn't going back in Indian Health Service. It was not going to happen. I said they jack me around and off, you know, here I am. They didn't pay my salary. And they said they would. And they moved me to, catch a loan and move me back. And they said they're they don't have the organizational skills that I was looking for. So I decided, Tom Bloomberg, you know, master of public health with a pharmacy degree, I could just write my ticket and go somewhere. So I started interviewing on the East Coast and I'll just name one.

So I went to the, state of Vermont, and they had a position for an epidemiologist, and they liked my background, and they told me what the, salary was. And they said, well, is that like, part time or. They said, no, this is, this is the full time salary, and I can't tell you the numbers, but I think it was like 20, $25,000. And I said, well. You know. Then I started thinking maybe the Indian Health Service wasn't so bad. So I looked at my options again, thought about Bureau of Prisons, and thought about staying at NIH or going to the CDC. And I decided, I think Indian Health.

So I arranged to get myself, reactivated. And that was after after my little vacation. And I had to make a decision because it was September and it was either, two choices, Bethel, Alaska or, Navajo Country. Chinle, Arizona, in the north east corner of Arizona. Bethel at that time was served, for supplies, was by a barge system, and the last barge had left. And I would have to get all of my supplies, including food, toilet paper, and whatnot, to be flown in from Anchorage, which was about a thousand miles. So you can imagine, the cost and whatnot. I was looking forward to Alaska, but.

SPRAGUE: Maybe not that much.

BLUMENBERG: Maybe not that much. So then I decided upon Kinley, Arizona and the middle of Navajo country. And so I reported there in, 1986.

SPRAGUE: In the fall of.

BLUMENBERG: 86, I think I got there September. October.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And that was, on the Navajo Nation.

BLUMENBERG: Navajo. I was the assistant chief for clinical pharmacy. It was a comprehensive, facility. Everything from, having patients helicoptered in or out from there. But we had a very busy emergency room, an extremely busy outpatient clinic, and then a full hospital, a pediatric ward, intensive care unit.

SPRAGUE: What was that like, moving to Arizona?

BLUMENBERG: So I thought I knew a little bit about the native population serving at, you know, in Ashland and then my time at, at casino. But being a Navajo was different because, we were definitely the minority there. So we we learned, you know, what it's like to be in that position. There were there were plenty of non-natives that worked at the hospital, but when you went out into the community, you were you were you were the only ones. So it became very clear to me. The first time we went to the grocery store, it was called Bashas Grocery.

And, we're in this huge store, but it's also a general merchandise store. You can buy a cowboy hat there. Lariat. Supplies for branding your sheep whatever you needed. But I saw some of the patients that I served, and they didn't like eye to eye contact. Like, you know, like you and I are looking at each other now, that was, culturally that was not, approved thing there. But I caught out of the corner of my eye some people that I had taken care of, and they made it a point to walk all the way across the store to give me the Navajo handshake and say, hey, welcome. Good to see you. And I thought, wow, this is this is something very interesting.

Now, the first week on the job there, I, being the clinical pharmacist, I was, I was trying to get my a handle on all the functions the pharmacy did there. And one of the first places I went was, intensive care unit. So you have the beds raised up high, and there were two patients in there at the time, and I was being, oriented by, and the Navajo chief pharmacist. His name was Richard Draper. And we walked into the intensive care, and he he really wasn't that comfortable in intensive care or the hospital setting. He was more of an outpatient pharmacist. He was a Navajo.

But we walked in there and he didn't and didn't give me any warning. But I hear some singing and chanting going on and I'm thinking, is this like in, loudspeakers or what's going on? But on the far bed closest to the windows, on the floor on his Navajo rug, was a medicine man who spent three days and three nights praying over that patient. And so it was an eye opener, and it made me realize this is a really a different culture, a different world for me. And I was going to have to shift gears in order to, you know, get up to speed and be culturally sensitive and. Try to work with what was available.

SPRAGUE: What, what other that you're willing to share and that are okay to share were other things that you noted that were things that were different from what your experience had been, that you're able to share.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Well, there's a there's a lot of things. I mean, you know, if you're in downtown Madison, I drove in today. I did not see any dead horses with their legs up in the air along the highway. I did not see, herd of goats crossing the highway with, Navajo shima. Grandma in her native dress with tennis shoes on, following the sheep and the goat herd across the highway. Those were things that we started to witness. And it was that and good fortune that my.

You know, when we're there. Because. And that was their first language as Navajo was not English. So, especially the older people, they were not comfortable speaking English. So it was natural. So I always worked with an interpreter and my interpreter. His name was Louise Claw, and I call her Weezy and Louise. Weezy and I still have, connection to this very day. But we became friends and they incorporated incorporated us into their family. So my wife and I became, we became the first non-natives to attend Thanksgiving and with the Clore family, and we had no idea what to expect. But if you want to hear about it, we went out to the sheep camp up on Claw Canyon.

There's pictographs, on the canyon wall. There is a Hogan that's next to the the the sheep camp, which is a stone building. But the Hogan was boarded up because that's when there were smallpox going through the Navajo Nation. And they didn't know what it was, but they knew it was bad. So somebody died in there. They boarded it up and never went back in. Grandma, said the Thanksgiving prayer and Navajo, and it was so long, I almost passed out. But she said it all in Navajo. But, and I found out later she was so appreciative that my wife and I could be the first non Navajo non-natives to share Thanksgiving with that family, and there was probably 50 people there at that time. Yeah, that was really special. Wow.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Other experiences in terms of, your practices as a pharmacist and general things.

BLUMENBERG: That.

SPRAGUE: You would do or not do.

BLUMENBERG: Well, because we worked with interpreters, you know, we were always, it was trying to walk a fine line because wheezy was a very personable individual. And we'd get in these rooms and she'd start talking. I said, wheezy, we got, you know, we got we got work to do. We? Well, she was chit chatting, and I didn't understand it, of course, of the few Navajo words, and I knew it didn't get me very far. But, so there was always a time pressure there. I'm going to just lay out the fact that the Indian Health Service was always short staffed, so we never had enough people to do the work.

So, we especially commission officers were being we were being squeezed, you know, how much more can you do? Do more, do more, do more in less and less time. And I did not function well, hurrying and hurrying and hurrying because there was a lot to learn and a lot of connections to be made with people. If you gave them the time, if you brushed them off and tried to do this in, in, in, in quick, offhanded way, that word would get around and it wouldn't serve me well.

SPRAGUE: What? Yeah. What were your hours at work? What was that like?

BLUMENBERG: So we're we're we're on duty 24 seven. So if, depending upon our staffing level and whatnot, we'd get called back to the emergency room and eight times a day or night. And, you know, we had a regular procedure for dealing with major emergencies. But, you know, we had normal clinic hours that started at maybe 7:00, and then outpatient clinic would wind down at five, but usually it went to six and then to do hospital. Bottle rounds and the intensive care unit. And then if something happened in emergency room, it would be 7 or 8, you know, just dependent. Every day was different, but it was it was a busy time. Yeah, yeah.

SPRAGUE: What, what what did you do in your downtime?

BLUMENBERG: We explored, first of all, we we did a lot of activities with the family, and they, they showed me a lot of the Navajo way, so we we were. I think the bird is blessed to go to, healing ceremony that, again, no non-Native had ever attended, in my knowledge, for one of the uncles of the class. And this ceremony entailed, going out in the middle of the night to a place in the Nez Lini Valley. And there was, a little Hogan set up an excited building that was traditional for the Navajos, and the patient uncle was inside. Inside there was a, medicine man who did sand painting.

Outside, there were dancers in regalia that, you would only imagine seeing in National Geographic or someplace like that. And when we first walked in, we, my wife and I were, came a little bit late in the ceremony. We came when they told us to, but it was not when it first began. We got there and somebody met us at the entrance, so to speak, and said, you're not welcome here. You are not welcome here because you're a Bellegarde. Bellegarde of being a white person.

And I said, well, wait a minute. I said, I said, my brother. We considered him. My brother Norman Clore invited me and he went and got Norman Clore and he he dressed down a guy and said, this is my brother. You will treat him as my brother. And after that, probably 200 people came and gave us a Navajo handshake and said, welcome. Thank you for being here at Uncle Ceremony. Wow. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I must have been pretty powerful.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So there's there's drumming going on and singing and dancing and food. And it's different in some ways than how we deal with, very sick patients in our health care system. It's usually somebody off alone in the hospital or in intensive care, and maybe a family member and everybody else is off to the side. They came out and force the entire group. Family came together just to offer support. Even if uncle wasn't going to survive, they wanted to be there and make it a family event.

SPRAGUE: And and and, Claus got a respect for the family. CLA ors or CLA ors.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Claw CLA is stuck.

SPRAGUE: Okay, okay.

BLUMENBERG: So one more. Yeah. One more, cultural thing that we didn't get to experience in other places is that this is going to go back to my next place. But I was reassigned to speak Apache Land while I was on duty there, I got a call from wheezy, who was my technician in Navajo, and she said, Tom, she said Gwyn is having her period she's having here, Colonel die. And for a colonel to a young lady having her first menses, there is a ceremony. And she said, you have to be here. And so the Sandy, we said, well, okay. I said, when does it start? Well, it started in two days.

And of course I'm a commissioned officer and we can't just walk away. Luckily, my supervisor was Native American and she said, you need to go. So I got my my leave passes and everything set and away we went to the Canada and we spent time in the Hogan with the young lady and her sponsor. We were honored to be there.

I got to, take part in the daily ceremony of her running longer and longer and longer distances through the desert, and I was the one who was designated to call. Out the good spirits and bring them into this young lady Quinn, and call out to the bad spirits and said, you stay away from her. This is her kennel down, and it's very important. So we did that and then back into the gone. And she there's a hole here, a brushing ceremony and a lot of things that details that you don't need to know. But it was very, very touching to be there.

SPRAGUE: So you're at Shanley and then you are reassigned to sip a Q.

BLUMENBERG: Right. So I'm still looking trying to look at the big picture. Right. When I was a Navajo, I only had one opportunity to do a little bit of epidemiology. And we did descriptive survey of Navajos with Bell's palsy. And I worked with a neurologist on staff, and we, we did this thing together, and it really didn't amount to much other than the fact that, yes, a lot of animals get Bell's palsy, and you needed to do more studies to figure out why or what this what was going on. But that was my only chance to really get involved.

So I decided then if there was an opportunity, I'd keep my eyes open. And that's when, an opening at the Civic Health Center in, Apache Land in Arizona came open it, and it allowed me to be the the facility unit director, the, the health director of the clinic, and of course, being the Indian Health Service, I was also the pharmacist at the same time. So I had double duty to pharmacy. And then in my off time, I do clinic administration.

SPRAGUE: What were the results of working? Those two positions at the same time?

BLUMENBERG: Well, you see this gray here? Well, I had a lot to learn, and I learned a lot at Navajo, and I had a lot to learn. And so I met people on different levels there. So I was still doing one by one patient care. But on my other hat, I did the community thing. So I was involved with public health. We went out in the community. I went to all the not that there were many, but there was businesses. And I wanted them to know that who I was and what was going on, and that as a, public health facility, we're willing to help them if they had needs. I'll just tell you a little bit about the clinic.

A little different than the clinic here. We had, rather a comprehensive little place for the size of the, community, maybe 2000 people. And, the structure, which is really small and way too small for what we were doing, but we had, EMTs that were housed in our facility. We had a small emergency room, we had optometry, we had a dental unit, we had a hearing unit, we had social services, we had behavioral health. We had, one on one clinic and, a pharmacy service. And so that's all rolled up into one.

So the way that we approach patient care was a little bit different there too. And because I was then the boss so I could make some decisions, I said we got we got some difficult patients here and we're not. In my mind, it was not acceptable to just treat them as a single entity, like a pharmacy or medicine or dental. We need to integrate this. So we started having patient staff ins. With all the different people combined, getting together and looking at the situation, let's associate a social situation of this person. Do they need help with behavioral health? Did they have some dental issues going on? And we and we addressed the person as a whole. And I think if anything, that was my big accomplishment. Accomplishment. There is we had staffing for, well, the five years that I was there.

SPRAGUE: Kind of a holistic approach, very holistic.

BLUMENBERG: And and then of course, I got started with, native medicines when I was at Cucina. I didn't mention that, but it took me a couple of years there. And finally the medicine woman took me out into the field, and I learned the medicines that we used at Menominee to treat in the old days. And I said, well, maybe there's something that we can, you know, use in our own practice. And I had a display case in the pharmacy and we put up the plants, identified them, and had the Indian names on them, and just started to get into that a little bit.

SPRAGUE: What was, so that's all the way back at that casino?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What was that interaction like where this medicine woman was explaining to you what what this was what was that like?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, they she actually had her own little pharma, pharmacopeia. So she had like, in her mind, but I think it was written somewhere, the plants and the genus and species and whatnot, and how they used it in their, in their previous practice when she still she still used it, but they were more and more going into Western medicine and taking pills out of a bottle. And, you know, it was for me, it was, very interesting just to get around the reservation and see things there. And, you know.

SPRAGUE: Was there any prohibition on her sharing that knowledge with you or was it.

BLUMENBERG: No, it was it was her decision.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: So and it took a while. She kept me at arm's length saying that we don't know about this guy. Yeah. And so then I tried to do the same thing at Subcu, and it took a while, and I did, I did get my foot in the door there, but, a funny thing that associated with that is I because of my community activity, I'd go to the nursing home. The pharmacy served the nursing home and the patients, if they couldn't get into clinic, we'd go up there with the physician and the pharmacist and take care of the patient needs.

But I'd go up there and just sit with the elders because the elders had the power there. And it was fun to be in that power structure. And these older people in the nursing home and, they were welcoming to me and they said, you need to drink, you need to drink some tea with us. I said, okay, let's let's have it. So they gave me some tea and. And little did I know, it turned out for me it was a diuretic.

So I for the rest of the day I had to use the restroom. And I told my secretary, I said, I said care. And they said they gave me some tea up there. I can't believe she said, oh, that's Mormon tea. She said that. He said that time she called me white Tomtom. He said, that's, that's going to make you pee all day, and I did.

SPRAGUE: What was the was there a related health or benefit that that was that the tea was for.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So they used it in patients that you know, before we showed up, they used it for patients that had congestive heart failure to, to rid the body of excess fluids. And. Yeah. So.

SPRAGUE: Okay. In terms of, did you get what experience did you have with Apache cultural differences versus Navajo or were there North maybe there was. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: You know, there definitely were. So each tribe was different. So, you know, my little slideshow, which I mentioned when I went through that, it kind of goes through how each tribe looked at us a little different and interacted with us in a different way. In Kushina, I was allowed to eventually do home visits with a public health nurse, and in Navajo, I could do that.

But in Apache land it was much more difficult to do that. They, for some reason, didn't want, white people in their in their residents. So that was one of them. And, and and yet they, the Apaches were much, I guess less warm would be a characterization. But the Navajos were really friendly and gregarious and easy to get along with. The Apaches were a little more difficult, but once I'd been there a while, they they took me under their wing, you know.

SPRAGUE: And, both time both, at the Navajo Nation and then the Apache Nation. Were you in uniform at that time? Are you in civvies or. How did that work?

BLUMENBERG: We were in, uniform.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: And so working, working khaki khakis was the main thing because it only made sense. I mean, we were in the land of red dust, and, you know, you wouldn't want to wear summer whites or anything like that.

SPRAGUE: So do you think it would have, did the uniform have an effect on the reaction of those native peoples, or was it not a factor where they understood who you were or what.

BLUMENBERG: They understood who we were because there was a succession of Public Health Service officers there. But on specific cases, like the family, on Navajo, Uncle Thomas Claw was a Navajo code talker. And in Norman Claws residents, there was a little memorial to Thomas because he had passed Thomas Claw, who was, I believe he was a marine and a Navajo code talker. And so they they revered people in uniform. And as a matter of fact, at all, the tribal powwow was one of the very first songs and dances is to honor veterans.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What were, some of the special people that you remember from the Apache Nation?

BLUMENBERG: Oh. So, Jerry. Jerry Lee, who was the, housekeeper at the facility, would be one. The person that I say saved my life. Karen Gatewood, who was my secretary, and she'd see me running in from the pharmacy, who would come over and say something. And, I'll just try to give a characterization of Karen. You ever see the movie, or the TV show Northern Exposure? Well, the doctor had a secretary there that had a very straight face and a very, very interesting sense of humor. And I would say Karen had that same type of sense of humor, but I loved her, and I still have connections with her.

SPRAGUE: And, it sounds tell me about being both the administrator and the pharmacist and that workload.

BLUMENBERG: Well, it's you know, you just I knew that I was in for it when I took the job. Right. And I didn't think it was going to be as busy as it was, but there were a lot of administrative things that I ended up being on the health board at in my position at the hospital in white River. So that kind of goes into the next thing. But because of my position at Cpq, I wanted to have, I was allowed to have input on the hospital board to make decisions about what happens when our subcu people have to be transported to the hospital in white River. How are they handled? Are they handled differently? Why are they handled differently? Things like that.

So I was quite, I had to be quite an advocate for the the people and the community. And that was that was my that was my job. But it took me away from the pharmacy, which I had to have backfilled, and nobody wanted to go to Subcu because it was so far away. And the people that had to go there, it was an extra, added an extra two hours to their day, and they had long days anyhow. And.

SPRAGUE: And I noted on your, set of medals you had, a ribbons, you had a couple, I call them remote or unaccompanied tours. Was that.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So they had a funky system for. What they called, isolated duty. And isolated duty was when you were assigned to a facility that was x number of miles from civilization, so to speak, and, both Navajo and Apache. subcu. I qualified there. We were probably 40, 45 miles from white River, which was the so-called big city, but that is where the hospital was, you know. So anyhow, they had isolated, isolated duty ribbon for that.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And, you had mentioned, during the pre-interview that when you left, the Apache Nation, their their goodbye to you. Tell me about.

BLUMENBERG: That. Right. So I did a lot of things on the reservation in a lot of different ways. And so the, tribal chairman at that time was named Ronnie Lupi, and Ronnie Lupi was actually from the community of Subcu. Well, because I had made my connections, they wanted to give me a nice sendoff. So they close the clinic. They had a meeting in, the only big facility in the place was, the gym next to the community center. And the whole community showed up for, for, going away and and Ronnie Lupi and the politicians came and and Ronnie being a tribal chairman and, I guess he got the word on me.

And he did Apache drum songs for me. I think he did three songs and drums. And then he leaned over to me and said, Tom, he said he he call me Tom white. Tom. He said, Tom, you'll be back. And by that time I was so burned out on doing those two jobs and that amount of travel, which took me a little over an hour to travel to the clinic one way every day. And so I did that, plus my regular duties, and I was burned out, you know, and I said to myself, when he said that, he said, there is not a chance when I'm coming back. But I thanked him anyhow and then went on my way.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. So where did you go next?

BLUMENBERG: Well, in between time, I got, I was still working at Subcu, and I, had, a bout of mass, which they diagnosed much later, but I basically could not move around for a while. And I was diagnosed at the University of Arizona in Tucson. And I decided because I was my brain was affected. I was decided, first of all, I have to back off on taking 2 or 3 jobs at once. I do one, but I also thought that fly fishing would be very healthy because I could stand in cold water and it might help my recovery. So I worked on getting a transfer to, Blackfeet in Montana, which is on the edge of, Glacier National Park.

SPRAGUE: I know exactly where that is.

BLUMENBERG: So that was in 1992. Okay. And, I was assigned to Blackfeet Indian Hospital.

SPRAGUE: And, that must have been another shift culturally. And where you were living.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So living was, you know, Arizona with high desert and Arizona with beautiful red rocks and this and that. Now that we moved up to the prairie and, 12 miles east of, the Rocky Mountains and in Glacier, Montana. Yeah. So we we lived in, Air Force housing that they took from somewhere in North Dakota and moved it over onto the hospital grounds there. And then they put up chain link fence, and we lived on the hospital quarters that was called, Peel Hill. And that's where we lived.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: And I was, at that time, I was assistant chief for clinical pharmacy there and eventually became a chief there. But so much happened while we were there that it was just really a blur.

SPRAGUE: So what was that that happened that made it a blur?

BLUMENBERG: Well, we got to know the people in it. Yeah. The Blackfeet people, and they were fine, and everything was good. And we got to really know some people personally and got invited to their their homestead. And they were Indians, but they were cowboys at the same time. And, unfortunately, my wife got a position there, and I can't talk too much about detail, but she was working in the operating room at the hospital, and there was, timekeeping irregularities. And she became a whistleblower. When that went back to headquarters, they came by and basically wanted to, sweep it under the rug and they said, that's not right. And then we started getting threats to our health.

At which time I said, I need I need to get us moved out of here. So the Indian Health Service, I had served two years there. And then they said, okay, well we understand we're not going to do anything about this other situation, which I thought was wrong. And they had people come in from Washington DC to look at it and it was wrong. But they did nothing. So I said, we I can't I can't be here. And if my wife is going to be threatened or I'm going to be threatened, they said, we need we need to leave. And so chief pharmacist, Colonel Bloomberg, no, Indian Health Service was scrambling to figure out what to do with somebody like me, with my rank and, my experience and what I was looking for. And they said, well, we have this place in Arizona called white River. And, I had been the white River, and the chairman of the tribe from white River told me I'd be back. And I went back. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So what do you think about the tribal chairman telling you that happening? Do you have any theories on that?

BLUMENBERG: I think that he knew more than I think. Yeah, he. He was a wise man, and I still have, I still have a soft spot in my heart for him and for that reservation, because they gave me another chance here. So. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So then you went back. You went to white River.

BLUMENBERG: I went to white River. So 50 miles from. So I knew the people. I knew the administrative staff. I knew some of the pharmacy staff there, and they knew me because of my previous position. They'd come in and out more as an admin. I've never worked in the pharmacy there. So, you know, this was going to be different. I was going to be, involved with the pharmacy for sure, but trying to do administrative things on the side.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. You had mentioned, during the pre-interview phone call. What one of the things you had mentioned, two things were quality assurance and safety management.

BLUMENBERG: So I mentioned that I had this thing with Ms.. And I do, credit, having one job and, fly fishing to get me a little healthy. So I couldn't walk and stuff and move around. But I was at white River and part of my duties there was working in the emergency room. And, at one point, I realized I couldn't any longer keep up to speed with what I was doing, because I had lost some of the dexterity in my extremities, and it was important to be able to calculate doses in your hand and be able to drop the medicines as fast as you could and get the right doses and this and that. And I didn't make any mistakes, but I realized that it was a matter of time, and I said, I can't do this duty anymore.

So the public Health service, Indian Health Service was, very, very gracious. And in that they looked at me and said, we can still squeeze something out of this guy. We can still get some blood out of this beat. So they made me into a safety officer and quality management guy at, at the hospital. I still poked into the pharmacy and did things there, but, my main duties were, quality management and, and safety took, took up the majority of that time.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about, you were also part of the tribal Emergency Response Commission, right.

BLUMENBERG: So they needed somebody who was kind of a type a guy that had to get all of the different entities on the tribe to try to work together. And it's hard to do that with any organization. But, the tribe had their own school system. They had their own public works. They had their own airport. The hospital was there. The school system, the water treatment system, fire service, police and sheriff's department.

And they needed to all work together to address emergency response. And for some reason, the my predecessor wasn't able to get everybody on the same page. So they said, you're going to do it. So I said, okay, I'll do it. And I, I knew many of those people from my different stages in, in working life there and knowing the, tribal chairman, I think opened the door and I, I think I got everybody working together the way that they needed to. And, yeah. So it worked out.

SPRAGUE: And this was with which of the two nations.

BLUMENBERG: So this was, White Mountain Apaches and White River. Okay. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And, tell me about, earning your, quasi related, your field medical readiness badge.

BLUMENBERG: Right. So that actually came a little bit later.

SPRAGUE: Later.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. Yeah. So what.

SPRAGUE: We can come back to that?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Okay. So what happened? White River was in charge of the the emergency response, and, we did things like look at the dams and look at the water system and look at, places that would be, likely to have a major disaster. So the dam system, for sure. One major highway ran along kind of the west side of the reservation that went down into the salt River canyon, and a lot of big, trucks went through there, 18 wheelers hauling petroleum products and whatnot.

And if there was a flip over or something like that, it would definitely affect the reservation and in a lot of different ways. So we looked at those things, but then we also focused on, fire management because this is, mountains in Arizona, 5000ft in Arizona, and fires there. Wild fires were common, and they hadn't had one previous, in my previous life there. But we started looking at the schools and with the, the entrance and exit to the school system and what, what systems that they had in case there was a fire to either, stay in place or to evacuate. We identified several places that needed some tree work to keep 200 foot, 100 foot ponderosa pines from flopping over on the highways and blocking the way. So that tree work got done. And, emergency response in the schools was practiced.

And in the community, sawmill and the airport, we all worked together and did some tabletops and houses going to work. Guess what? We had a fire. And the way the way it happened is I was just strolling down to get myself a cup of coffee in administration, and there was a bunch of people looking out a window and they said, Tom, look at this. There's a fire. I said, has anybody notified 911? So I flipped from my administrator hat to safety hat and incident command hat and said, okay, I'm the boss right now. With the help, the hospital administrator was right there, but she was a local person, and she was swept up with the event that was happening in front of her.

So I had to, usurp her, authority and became incident commander and said, okay, you call 911 and you do this, and you do this and you get the medical director down here, we need to get this going, because that fire looks like it's coming toward the government quarters and the hospital. So everything started to happen, and, I could someone I could turn over my, my incident commander's hat to the people that really knew how to deal with fires and, you know, they they took over. But I still had to deal with everything in the hospital. So we had to evacuate the hospital quarters, over 90 some houses there. We had to evacuate about 2000 people from, community to call rainbow. And that's where the fire started. And if you know anything about wildfires in the West, they all have a name.

This one was called the Rainbow Fire. So the rainbow fire was roaring, and we got these people evacuated. And that was part of my deal. We had practice in evacuating the government quarters, how to get people out, how to keep the hospital running. We had an evacuation of patients. We had land evacuation patients. We discharged a lot of patients that were able to go back to their homes. If they were going to a safe place, then because of the way the situation was unfolding, we had to really shut down the clinic and keep only, the emergency room open. And so those were decisions that we were making with a hospital administrator and myself and the clinical director and facilities management. So we did that, and the fire raged for three days.

And, it, it eventually it got its way to what they called the Cradleboard school, which is the one of the schools that we had done, the tree cutting and, practice drills and this and that, and we got everybody else safe and so on. So that fire, the Rainbow fire had no casualties. Nobody got injured except from one firefighter and a minor thing in camp not fighting the fire. And I was able to cross the fire line many times and visited a lot of the places and got up in the helicopter right after the governor did and looked at the damage and figured out what was next. In the meantime, we had Red cross shelters set up and food service and emergency room, and we were dealing with agencies that came in from the outside the United States Forest Service, all the, firefighting entities from around the communities in the state came in and I helped organize, just the logistics with them.

SPRAGUE: So that what was I mean, were you were you exhausted at that?

BLUMENBERG: I was exhausted, you know, I did this because I needed to rest, right? So, so after three days, I actually got out on the second day, crossed fire line, got home, got a couple hours rest, and then went back down. And, you know, very few people could cross the fire line because it was actually going up the mountain toward the community up there. And by that time, everybody knew who I was. So I, you know, I had my credentials and whatnot and got back down to the hospital and started to reorganize with, Forest Service.

SPRAGUE: And this would have been in 99 and.

BLUMENBERG: 1999.

SPRAGUE: Help me out.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah! 99.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Fall. Summer. Winter.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Probably. Fall.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Late summer. Early fall.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So then I was thinking, you know, I'm going to get burned out. Not, I'm not directly burned, but trying to do all this stuff. So I said, you know, there's a big thing coming up called the, hospital survey, the Joint Commission of Hospitals, and I really didn't have an interest in doing that. That's the way things were with administration at that time. And they said, you know, maybe it's time to move on. And was also, it was also time for me to try to get back closer to my family because we had parents that were aging and having some health problems.

SPRAGUE: Tell me, what was the medal you received as a result of your service?

BLUMENBERG: Oh, yeah. So I kind of blow that off it. It's it was, you know, it was, meritorious service with valor, which, I was really surprised to get. But, I don't want to say I deserved it, but when I looked at what I did and I tried to remember what I did, it was, yeah, I did.

SPRAGUE: Then I have to ask, meritorious service with valor is, I mean, the valor device on a on a meritorious service badge. That seems pretty unusual to me.

BLUMENBERG: Unusual for sure. I think I was, maybe the second pharmacist that ever received one in the public health service. And most pharmacists don't get this. They get they got plenty of things to worry about, but they don't get to serve with valor. And in the circumstance that I was in. So, you know, there was a big write up. I am actually the clinical director, and the hospital administrator did the write up explaining what the circumstances were about, why I should receive this and what I did and how I crossed the fire line. And, you know, whether I saved people's lives or not, I don't know, but it went as smooth as possible for a major, major disaster, you know?

SPRAGUE: And, what was the reaction of the native peoples?

BLUMENBERG: So. Yeah. So both, the, the folks at white River were obviously like that. Excuse me.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Go ahead, take a break.

BLUMENBERG: When, you know, the evacuations were taking place and all that. Nobody's happy about being evacuated. Right. And the hospital staff was not happy. These were not everybody, but many of them were commission officers. They were all displaced, were very little resource as far as other places to go on. There was on the reservation, there was really nothing. They had to go to other communities.

So nobody was really happy with all that. But the fact that nobody really got injured and that we were able to maintain service, and then we got all these people evacuated to different places, either up the mountain to the hospital or down to Phenix, the Indian Medical Center there. The airport was a busy little airport, but that they we were we were flying people in and flying people out. And a lot of things are happening. So the word got out that we did a good job. And because of that, they were appreciative, you know, and then once the hospital gradually started opening, you know, things went back to normal.

And they, you know, they just said, okay, that's part of it. Let's let's go. I still have my hands full because I was dealing with the what they called the Barry unit. And I can't even tell you what that acronym is anymore, but it's the Forest Service people that come in after a fire and they say, what's going to happen now? Well, the wildlife was moving down the mountain. The insects, and snakes were coming down the mountain toward the hospital. And they need to try to stabilize the the mountain. The hospital is situated right next to a mountain, basically. And they were worried about washouts and things like that. So I still worked with them and and tried to keep them safe and, looked at their maps and said, yeah, that's a good plan. So let's go with it.

SPRAGUE: What, you also involved, and that assignment on the Strategic National Stockpile a little bit.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. And that that came that all came a little bit later. Okay. So I've had. Yeah. No that's fine. I maybe didn't have the.

SPRAGUE: was that it in the next.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. My next assignment.

SPRAGUE: So let's go ahead. Let's go to Bemidji. Oh okay. So.

BLUMENBERG: yeah. So they, they, I'm going on a fishing trip and I'm going to, Canada. And I drove through, northern. Wisconsin, and I stopped at Cooter, a clinic in downtown Hayward, and I introduced myself and said, I am. Here's who I am. I'm right, not white River Service Unit. And I said, I need I would like to get back to Wisconsin because of my family situation and whatnot. But by then I had rank.

So I had five stripes and they said, we, we we can't use anybody like you in our little clinic. So I said, okay, that's I'll keep looking. And I was still looking for reassignment. I waited and waited and then, out of the clear blue, I got a call and said, you're reassigned. They said you got two weeks to get from, like, from white River hospital to my call to active call to duty at, like Craig in Hayward. I said, okay, so what happened? So they talked to me and they said, well, we had to get you more billet responsibility.

So I was going back to having two jobs. So I, I was the chief pharmacist, and I as that I served on the clinic health board and my because of my involvement in emergency response and preparedness. I got to work with the tribal entity there that dealt with that and also the Northern Lights Public Health Consortium. So they they found some other activities for me to do that would supported my, my billet. And then I was transferred. So I left my wife in Arizona, of Arizona, and I went to Hayward and she stayed back and sold the house. And then we got back together.

SPRAGUE: So that would be about, 2004, maybe.

BLUMENBERG: 1999.

SPRAGUE: 99. Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So in 1999, I'm at lacuna and trying to get involved with those things and get used to a new, community and the culture. And, we still had a private consultation room. So I was doing a lot of one on one thing, but then I had my responsibilities for emergencies outside and looking at population, population, health. And, you know, I'm trying to think how this went in 2001. The twin Towers were and I was on duty and I couldn't believe what was happening. Somebody over in the dental said, hey, we got the TV and look what's happening. I said, no, this just can't be real. This is this isn't just a fictitious. This is something.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: Well, there wasn't. And it started me and in my emergency response capacity to kind of focus on that. So I got involved with the National Disaster Medical System and took training, specialist training from the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and got that in 2001. The, anthrax scare occurred in Washington, DC. And, public health officers and Indian Health Service officers were, assigned to that duty to get the medication to all the people that could have been exposed or not.

But it made me think that I should I could have another role. I needed at least four hats at one time. So. So I started getting involved with the disaster medical system, and I had, quite a bit of specialized training through them on how to deal with these situations. But then in 2004, an opportunity arose and I was trained. I was selected as the second person in the state of Wisconsin to be trained at the Strategic National Stockpile program at the center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about that.

BLUMENBERG: So there was one person from every state and then one from each territory and a few additional people. But we were we were being guarded. We were considered as national assets at that point because everything that was going on, we were we were assets, you know, assets in the military. Right. So we're just human beings that serve a purpose. But we were considered. Assets of a certain level. And we were, we were being guarded by, U.S. Marshals Service while we were going through our training. And, part of the training was to go to one of the actual stockpiles.

There's 12 in the United States, and I can't tell you where they are, but one of them was near Atlanta, and we were put in a blacked out bus. And with the federal marshals, went went to the the stock actual stockpile so we could see what it looked like. And we were trained on how each component of that stockpile worked me with a pharmacy background. I kind of focused in on, medication issues and controlled substances and things like that. But I had a broad picture of how logistics of this thing would work. So I had that training, and then I was sent back to the country. And here I had all this knowledge and I, I so I thought, well, maybe, you know, the state really sent me there. It was their. Their interest, along with the tribe that that allowed me to go and get their training.

So I said, okay, I'll help the state Department of Health and Human Services out. And it was a back up to the guy down here on one West Wilson Street. And if he needs a backup, I'm I'm available even though I'm in the boonies, you know, and I'm like, I said, I'll be your northern, contact in state. So I worked with them on that program, but I was still a commissioned officer at that time.

SPRAGUE: In that, national stockpile. What was it exactly?

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

SPRAGUE: So roughly.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So it's hard to explain it, but it is an enormous stockpile of medical supplies that included things like, respirators, emergency medical equipment, medications, vaccines, antidotes, anti-venom, and, a lot of miscellaneous, sundry items like bandages, splints, things in that would be used in case of a major, major overwhelming disaster situation, something that a locality would look toward their state. And if the state couldn't help them, they'd look toward the strategic national stockpile.

SPRAGUE: And, what did the. I'm assuming it's the Likud nation. Yes. What what did they think of this? Or what was.

BLUMENBERG: They? You know, that was beyond what they were thinking about. I was I was still on the local level, dealing with emergencies and through the Public Health consortium, because of the anthrax scare, all the public health systems around the state were gearing up for mass clinics, and I was trained in that at the, in a variety of ways. But part of my, training at University of Maryland included mass clinics set up and and how you manage that?

SPRAGUE: So, in oh four, I have that you retired from the Indian Health Service.

BLUMENBERG: And burger was relieved of duty in November 30th, 2004.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Honorable discharge. Honorable discharge. Okay. I was due for another transfer.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: And I knew what I was going to be getting into in the next place. And I really wanted to go there, but I didn't want to wear all the hats again. So I decided to take a discharge and do something else.

SPRAGUE: So tell me about 2004 after your retirement. Looks like, at some point you decide to open your own business. What was that?

BLUMENBERG: Right. So and with this training that I had and being a pharmacist, I, I thought I could, you know, bring some income in by doing a little bit here and a little bit there. So I started what was known as officially by the state of Wisconsin, the Bloomberg Consulting LLC. And I was basically I don't want to yeah, I was basically would do anything if it fit in my interest. So I continued doing work with the Northern Lights Public Health Consortium. I continued doing a little bit of emergency work with, that Cooter tribe. I, Continued, doing a little bit of pharmacy work at the, hospital in Hayward and, and at one of the local pharmacies there.

SPRAGUE: And what was that like, owning a business as opposed to working for the.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So it was good because I was my own boss. Yeah. I didn't have to fill out leave slips, and, I had other headaches. Of course, I had, you know, tax paperwork and whatnot, but I really didn't employ anybody else I was looking to. But I never got to that point. You much earlier, you mentioned something about what computer I was using at at, at, Uniform Services University. Well, I was trying to do a lot of my work out of my home using a computer there, and we did not have an adequate computer connection, so it made it very difficult for me to work together with the state, downloading big documents and things like that. They just it just didn't work out very well.

So I was I was doing that and I was trying to fit in in the pharmacy world and I, you know, came from a totally different 20 years experience with, patient care. And so I tried instituting some of my weird ideas about looking at the patient as a whole. And I tried to do that in the hospital in Hayward and opened up to my eyes. And the same thing at the local pharmacy. They said, what? What is going on with this guy? You know what? Why does he think they said, well, it's, you know, it's your health and I'm interested in it. So let's look at all these aspects. So I continued doing that until it it didn't work out anymore.

And in 2006 I got hired by the I'll just back up. I was working on my own, but I contracted with the, Liquid Array tribe as their emergency guy. And I was a liaison between the tribe then and the Northern Lights Public Health consortium. It was in 2006 that I actually got hired by the Northern Lights Public Health Consortium, and I was, their training and education coordinator, and I focused in on, mass clinic and what they called the interim pharmacy stockpile, which would have been the management of the Strategic National Stockpile after it hit the state borders.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And was there like a particular spot that the northern, the northern Lights public thing centered out of?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So it was, center it out of my, my house. But, the consortium itself was mainly public health nurses from four different counties, and I can't tell you was Douglas Bayfield. Douglas Bayfield. Sawyer and Douglas, Clark, Mayfield, Sawyer and, either Iron or Southwest. I can't think of the name of that one. Rice Lake. That barren could be Barren County. Yeah. So so those four counties, all the public health people, again, we were involved. The public health people were involved in trying to get the communities to understand and all the entities.

So we were doing with dealing with the fire service, sheriff's departments, police departments, school systems. And how come and the hospital systems, if they had one team to manage, a large scale disaster, and how how we would be able to fit in or help them with dealing with that. So I did that in 2006 and continued at that for, several years. 2008, I was actually hired as a contractor for the Department of Health and Human Services at the state of Wisconsin. And I was I was again helping out with, interim pharmacy stockpile, dealing with the strategic stockpile as it came into the state and how it would get to all parts of the state if, if it was needed.

SPRAGUE: Did you have any, jumping ahead, but not too far. Any thoughts? When Covid struck, how, what state the public health system was in and where your, your piece had to do you have any opinions on.

BLUMENBERG: I have some opinions and I'd probably be put into jail sooner. Later if I voiced them, but I won't. And. Well. So. So here's here's.

SPRAGUE: It's up to.

BLUMENBERG: You. Here's the deal. So when I was at Usis, we actually I was in public health and I was looking at the big picture. We looked at, everything from my epidemiology, my epidemiology. Epidemiology to how you would, manage a large health care system like one for the entire United States. So that was part of what we were looking for. Part of that was how would we respond to a pandemic, a large scale disaster of any sort. And we had tabletop exercises practicing that and just going through what it could be just just within the school. We weren't we weren't integrated with other people at that time. But so we practiced that.

And I had been trained at the Strategic Strategic National Stockpile, so I knew it was there and I knew what it was there for. Part of what they had at the Strategic National Stockpile was antivirals and masks. Okay. Now go back, flip up to 2020 when when the pandemic hit. And, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the response. It was like nobody ever heard of this before. And they said, we don't have a plan for a pandemic. And I said all the states had plans. Uniform services had the plans. What happened to them? Strategic stockpile had the plan, but it was never implemented. That's my opinion. That is my opinion. I was not on the inside at that time. Right. But I was I was a more than casual observer about what was happening. And I said, this is not right.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Other roles in public health service that you'd like to share going forward?

BLUMENBERG: I really I really, after my time, I, I got, I think the contracts started to petered out after anthrax and people weren't that interested in, the bioterrorism aspect anymore, and it it didn't appear like, the some of the, some of the counties were falling away from having their reserve medical cards and things like that. So I thought, well, you know, maybe, maybe it's time to just step away.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So I didn't quite step away but I, I did I did retire by dissolving Bloomberg Consulting. And then I signed on with the Sawyer County Medical Reserve Corps as a coworker consultant. That wasn't being paid. But yeah, I was part of a group that continued that work. And I did that until we moved out to Hayward.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Tell me about your decision to move out of Hayward.

BLUMENBERG: So my, I mentioned my health concerns, and, we got a little bit of a thing with, Alzheimer's disease in both my wife's family and mine. And I have my own health issues, which I'm dealing with quite well, but, the the, future is uncertain for all of us. Of course. But, we decided it would be a good time to make a move and get ourselves positioned. So if we didn't need extra help, we would be there. So we decided to move to West Bend, closer to relatives and in, facility that offers some options if more health care, if any, or more health care is needed for either myself or my wife.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So we're we're living in West Bend and we're living our happy life.

SPRAGUE: You know? Yep. Tell me, backing up a little bit back in Hayward. Tell me about, the how, Hayward High School Veteran's Day concert and, quotes for valor.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So Hayward was, was interesting because I, was one of the few, excuse me, commission officers around there. There was a National Guard unit in in Hayward, and the veteran service officer that, was there. So I just went down and introduced myself and said, this is who I am. And these are some of the things that I've done. And, you know, I have an interest in helping veterans. And so I got involved in a few activities. Well, one of them was starting to interview people for the Veterans History Project, and.

SPRAGUE: Well, let's talk about that.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. So the Veterans History Project in Washington, DC, the Library of Congress, and how I got involved was through a gentleman when we were visiting Hot Springs Village in Arkansas. And he.

SPRAGUE: And what was his name?

BLUMENBERG: His name was Meeks. Jeff Meeks and Jeff and I met and we talked about our backgrounds. And he said, you know, you could be doing some of these interviews. I met him in our church, and our pastor was actually, chaplain for the Air Force. So Jeff Meeks and the pastor and myself, we kind of connected because we all, had some connection with veterans. And I wore a uniform in the past or a uniform. Anyhow, the Jeff Meeks said you could start doing some of these interviews like I do. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, well, I can have you come in and see what what this looks like. And it turns out Jeff Meeks himself had done 200 interviews of World War Two veterans. So he, he he hasn't he had a long history and a lot of practice.

And he actually did my interview for the Library of Congress and nothing against Jeff, but he was not very well prepared to deal with somebody from the Public Health Service not prepared like you are. But he didn't know what questions to ask, and he kept thinking that I was the same as military and that I was somehow carrying a weapon. And our mission was different. I was not weaponized, although I could have been. At any time. Based on the president's decision. But, my mission was different. And anyhow, that that interview didn't, really go as well.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about, Colonel Karen Lloyd's interview.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So how did that influence you?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So? So I started doing. Interviews for veterans in, in Hayward. And I started with my own family, actually. It's a good place to start. So I had to actually, I actually, I had a colleague, it was a sanatorium for for the Indian Health Service. I did him first and warm it, warmed up with him and then started doing my family and started getting a little bit more comfortable. And then I really started thinking this was going to be something I wanted to do. I didn't want to get bored. And, I was doing interviews and connecting through the Veterans Service office and eventually through the Library of Congress. I saw Karen Lloyd. Me I can't remember what her position was. You might have it. But she was she gave a presentation and said, we really need, more people to be doing these interviews. And she really wanted to focus on women and Native Americans.

The Native Americans have a history, even despite their long history with the U.S government and how they were treated in serving at a higher percentage rate than any other group in the in the United States. So I took Karen Lloyd's interview and I said, you know what? I can I can find some veterans that are on the liquid array reservation. I still had connections there. So I did several of those, and including one woman who was, a woman who was also a veteran in World War Two.

SPRAGUE: Bertha.

BLUMENBERG: Bertha.

SPRAGUE: Bertha Smith.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Bertha Smith. Yeah. And her brother and her brother. Yeah, it was Richard Smith. And he they were interesting characters. And I got to know them on a different level. And they had their own museum, their, veterans museum on the reservation at Liquid Array. And I got, I got some I use that as my interview place, location. And I did several interviews of, of Native Americans there. Okay. And I got to know several, Native Americans and veterans on a really a different level because of that.

SPRAGUE: Including the, interview. And you talked about it a lot during the pre-interview. Tell me about, earning the trust of native communities.

BLUMENBERG: Right. So, you know, it was it was probably not like anybody else. If you're, you know, spill your beans about your life story, you know, who is this guy? Why is he asking me these questions? Who cares? What does it matter? And so I tried to I tried to approach not only my my interviews, but my pharmacy practice and my my work in the communities the same way. And that, I've got a background and people trust me because of that background and because of my track record and because what I've done with other native communities, and they trusted me. So it was kind of a waterfall effect in the spinoff. And it it took a while in every place for them to say, okay, we know this guy is okay, and we're going to we're going to trust him. And it it opened up so many opportunities for me that I can't even tell you all of them.

SPRAGUE: Why do you, why do you interview veterans?

BLUMENBERG: You know, I think it's because I'm a veteran. I think I have, learned so much about. Ordinary people who have done extraordinary things in their life. And some of them did nothing extraordinary. But they served, and they thought there was nothing to that, and that didn't deserve any recognition. And I felt different.

SPRAGUE: What's the toughest part of interviewing veterans?

BLUMENBERG: The. The toughest part is, for me is those people that had, combat situations that were, unpleasant. But, I guess that's the easiest way you can see it. And if they had to relive something that was not settled in their own mind or their own heart, it was it was very difficult for them. I met a whole group of Vietnam veterans in Hayward, and I was more than willing to interview them individually, and not a single one was able to. And I came to their group meeting and told them who I was and what I was about, and they knew my track record and the things that I had done for veterans. And, it just didn't happen.

SPRAGUE: I will add, I understand.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah, I'm sure you do.

SPRAGUE: What's the most rewarding part of talking with these veterans?

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. Well, I've made. I've made friendships, on a completely different level. And you know as well as I do that many people don't like to talk about that, and nobody seems to think that they're interested in their previous life or what they did after their service. And I was interested. So I, I have, made some terrific friends through the years, unfortunately, you know, because of their age and many of them have passed. So that was rewarding. But the fact that I got to open the doors for some veterans to say, listen, I'm putting your stuff in this museum, whether it's in Washington, DC or the museum, at Liquid Array, or the Wisconsin Veterans Museum here in Madison. I'm, I'm, I'm putting your information in there and people are going to be interested in. Yeah. So that was very rewarding.

I mean, I've, I've had I've had some other rewarding experiences while serving that were, for me, extraordinary. I'll just give you one example. I, I befriended, one of the previous tribal chairmen at the quarry, and his name was Raymond Wolf. And through a very interesting way, I knew part of his family. I was given temporary duty when I was in Montana. And I went to Poplar, Wolf Point, Montana, and, in the clinic there. And I just worked during the holidays when nobody else wanted to work, and somebody else needed a day off. So. But my pharmacy technician there was her name was McLemore. And I said, well, that's an interesting name. I don't know anything about it. But we became friends and I didn't think anything of it.

I went back to Browning and did my thing. I ended up in Lakota Ouray, and one of the, first people I met was a woman named Tulsi Wolf. But it turns out that her middle name was me, clammy. And I just asked her one day and my little consulting, consultation room, I said, hey, don't see, I said, I, you know, I got some medicine for you, and we got to talk about something, but what about this me clammy thing? She said, oh, she said, you work there? And she said, that was my niece. Well, that family found out that I worked with the niece. And then I got kind of incorporated into the Wolf family. Well, Ray Wolf was a veteran. Ray Wolf was a tribal chairman, and he eventually passed, and I was, in uniform and went to his funeral. And through some weird glitch, this was at the Spooner Veterans Cemetery. I was asked to present the the flag. Yeah. Wow. So I presented the flag to Dorsey, and it was the hardest thing I ever did. Wow. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah. So that was that was a big one. Most most pharmacists don't have that chance now. Most officers don't have that chance.

SPRAGUE: What advice would you give someone who is just starting out? Interview veterans.

BLUMENBERG: I think the best advice I could give would be to, get to know them. I know you do, pre interviews and and I do that, but I do it in my own way. Because most of the people I interview or people that I run into on a social basis, and I get to know them a little bit by a little bit by a little bit, and then they become comfortable with me and they. Yeah. So I think for me that's the most important part. And saying don't. Don't disregard the fact that your service was not heroic or anything like that. You served. And that's important.

SPRAGUE: So I would, like to personally thank you for the interviews you've contributed.

BLUMENBERG: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: To the Wisconsin Veterans Museum oral history collection and, your contributions, both as a private individual and as a volunteer helping us here. So we are very grateful for that.

BLUMENBERG: I'm happy to do it. And I wouldn't have met you otherwise. And meeting you is by chance, also listening to the radio. And I heard somebody on public radio being interviewed from the museum here, and I said, I wonder if those, interviews I did for the Library of Congress would, would work down at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. And sure enough, I got in touch with you and started sending you material and how overwhelmed your people.

SPRAGUE: No, it's it's all great stuff. And and we're appreciative of it. And we're always appreciative of making sure the northern part of the state is, represented as well.

BLUMENBERG: Right.

SPRAGUE: You, changing changing gears here, you, helped support the documentary Invisible Corps. Tell me a little bit about that.

BLUMENBERG: Okay, so my support was minimal. I'm, just like I talked about, but I did, give them a little bit of money to get things rolling, and I was one of the, you know, several officers that did that. And there was a feeling. Because every few years, depending upon the political winds, somebody tries to go in and disband the United States Public Health Service. And I think part of it is because they don't understand what what the core of the public health service is all about, or the Indian Health Service or all those operating divisions under the Health and Human Service.

So they wanted somebody to put together a program that would explain some of that. And the and they came up with this idea of a documentary called The Invisible Corps. And I had nothing to do with the production of it or input or anything else, even though I thought I had some good ideas. They never asked. They did ask for money, and I thought it was a worthy cause. And they put it together and I just. I can't give you the statistics, but it's been shown on, many public TV stations around the United States, including Wisconsin. And I've forwarded to pharmacy schools and other people that I know that might have, interest in it or that it might influence new upcoming pharmacies and, considering the public health service as a career.

SPRAGUE: Couple other quick questions about the public health service. If there's one thing you could tell all of America about the Public Health Service or Indian Health Service and one sentence or one short paragraph, what would it be?

BLUMENBERG: It's got to be two sentences.

SPRAGUE: Okay? Two sentences is fine.

BLUMENBERG: So first of all, and it's public health. Oh, I don't want to get on a soapbox here. But first of all, public health is not a bad thing. Public health is here to help the population. Whether it impacts you as an individual in a negative way is another issue. I think we can address that after the cameras off.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: But we're helping. My second sentence after saying about three. We're here to protect, promote health and serve the population in the best way we can. And Public Health Service officers are in many locations around the United States that you would never, never think of.

SPRAGUE: Did you? And you had talked about this a little pre-interview. Tell me about being ready to deploy.

BLUMENBERG: So, yeah, those days, those days are gone. I'm not deploying anywhere anymore. But prior prior to that, after my, especially after my training with, national disaster Medical system and. The Public Health Service was trying to figure out a way to get, very mobile force that could respond in short amount of time, 24 to 72 hours to any disaster, and not going through all the details. They've done that.

But most of it happened after after I left the Corps in the middle of anthrax, they were still trying to sort it out. How can we, as a Public Health service officer, round up body's assets to go to these sites, even though we're scattered all over the United States? How can we can congeal a group to respond, whether it be, hurricane in the Gulf or the anthrax in, Washington DC or Ebola virus over in Africa? They they needed to figure that out. And they now have developed, a reserve Corps that is readily deployable, either to go directly to the area that's impacted or to backfill for people that have been trained and are willing to go directly to the location of the disaster during the anthrax outbreak or event.

I was tapped to go to Washington, DC, but because of my position, they couldn't find backfill for me and I could not. I could not respond and I felt terrible. I was highly trained. I was ready to go, and yet I couldn't because there was nobody to do my work back at Lake Erie. So there was just no backfill. And they've tried to address that.

SPRAGUE: Getting to the, the deployment issue. And, and when you were on active duty, what, did they have physical requirements, like for public health service?

BLUMENBERG: So every year we took the Army physical fitness short physical fitness course and every, every public health service officer had to either pass it or get up to snuff. Okay. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: How about, silly question, but just curious more than anything. Did you did you have to qualify with a weapon or not?

BLUMENBERG: I did.

SPRAGUE: Not. Okay.

BLUMENBERG: I would have been happy to. I was, I was I asked to, my qualifications came on the clinical side of things.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BLUMENBERG: So, you know, I didn't. I wasn't asked to, shoot an M-16, but we went to boot camp at the Clinical Support Center in Phenix, which I eventually became an instructor at. But that is how we tried to get young officers up to snuff on clinical aspects, but more specifically, clinical aspects that were of a cultural nature because it was different for every tribe. It wasn't always easy, but people that were just coming in, just like I did, had to go through some sort of orientation to, get them up to snuff, snuff on what they would be experiencing at their, practice site.

SPRAGUE: Another down in the weeds questions did they teach? How would your intent of action have been if you were on a military post? How does saluting work? What's the military protocol?

BLUMENBERG: So same protocol. I only wish that I would been in uniform and useless, because when I went to Annapolis, all those midshipmen were would have been snapping too, right? Yeah, but that didn't happen. So I was a CB anyhow. Or I'm on base. We follow military protocol just like anywhere else. And depending upon your rank, you know.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: You hold the salute or you initiate the salute, whatever it might be. It also, you know, if we're looking for, visiting officers quarters or things like that, we were able to utilize all those all those benefits.

SPRAGUE: Because you're commissioned officers, right? Okay. If you could pick out one event or one. Yeah, one event during your, Indian Health Service career, that was rewarding. Which one would it be? Or is there one in particular that sticks out or.

BLUMENBERG: I'll give you. I got a lot of examples, but, I mentioned Ray Wolf. That was one. But there was another one when I had been at Cpq for quite a while, and it took, it took me a while to get the trust of the Subcu people. Then I left there and then was reassigned to the white River hospital, and I was on duty in the hospital. And it's a cultural thing that when somebody is seriously ill, people show up at the hospital, but they show up in force.

So I was on duty, I think I was in the emergency room, but I was going through the hallway and realized that somebody from Subcu was seriously ill, and I don't really remember who it was. But I remember in the hallway stopping and talking to one of the pastors from that community, and I said. I said there must be something. Something bad going in happening or just something difficult situation happening. He said all the people from Cpq are here. And he said, and you are too. Yeah. So he meant that I was. One of them. Very rewarding. Yeah. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Do you think you would have had that, type of connection if you had been a retail pharmacist?

BLUMENBERG: Not a chance. Not a chance. And, you know, mainly because I was out in the community and people people knew that I was a pharmacist at these Indian health facilities, but I was so involved in community activities that they they even knew it and appreciated it, and I knew it and hated it, but they they knew it and I was part of it. So.

SPRAGUE: Do you have any, do you continue? You already had mentioned a couple relationships with those people you served with.

BLUMENBERG: Served? Yeah, we still have, zoom meetings occasionally Indian Health Service officers, and we haven't had one for a while. But there's usually a group of people that have retired, maybe 30, 35 of us had that meet. And we'll have a little instructional, event there, maybe a little travelog or whatever. And people just chit chat and say, well, I remember the day that this happened or whatever.

SPRAGUE: Yep. Do you keep in direct contact with any of the people that you served with at those postings?

BLUMENBERG: I do, okay. Yeah. And, just yesterday I talked to one of the officers that, actually the first guy that I interviewed for the Library of Congress. I talked to him yesterday. We we chat, probably every two weeks. And then there is there's several of us that, still have connections we meet or visit in some way at least once a year. Wow. Just a handful. Okay. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What do you think your life would have been like if you had served in the IHS Hoover?

BLUMENBERG: I don't know if I think I would have been disgruntled trying to be, a pharmacist at Walgreens or someplace. I just didn't I just did not. I could not visual my visualize myself doing that for the rest of my life. That's how I got started in population health forever. You know how that worked. And, I enjoyed the I enjoyed immensely the patient contact. But the Indian Health Service gave us a whole different opportunity, to know the patient and their medical history in a totally different way. And I'll tell you a little bit about that. When you came in as a patient of mine, you saw the doctor or whoever it was in the in the facility, and then you came to me, but your medical chart came to me also.

So if you were prescribed a medication and it interacted with, upcoming lab test or some other medical issue that the primary provider didn't catch, and, you know, those doctors are under pressure for turning patients on also because they were understaffed as well as us. But pharmacists were the last step before that patient walked out the building. And they were on their own with their medicine and their diagnosis and everything else. The pharmacist was considered the last, safety net before they left the building. So we we got to know a lot about the patients, and we became, patient advocates because pharmacists usually stuck around a little bit longer than the medical staff, had a higher turnover rate. And pharmacists knew the patients, and they knew the culture and they knew health concerns, and we knew how to interact with the physicians and other providers in order to institute change if it needed to be.

SPRAGUE: Oh. What motivated you to do this interview?

BLUMENBERG: Well, first of all, I want to see how a real pro does it. I don't know. So thank you. Yes, this was a great interview. And what motivated me is I. I have a story just like everybody else. I did not carry a weapon. I can't feel bad about that. I, I knew that I could be weaponized at any time, but my, as I said, my mission was totally different. My experiences were way different, and I tried to do the best I could for myself, my country, and I was in uniform, so I tried to make the uniform proud. So many times in, ceremonies where public health officers were with flag raisings and entry of the flag and powwows and all sorts of items like that. And we were we were the eyes. People had eyes on us. We were we were being scrutinized all the time because we were in uniform. So I tried to do my best. And I think people need to know that, you know, it's not just the four uniformed armed forces that are out there. There's there's a few others and, you know, the eight uniformed services as well as I do, but I can list them if you want.

SPRAGUE: Go ahead and give them to us. Just for the record.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. I think about the Army because you were in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast guard. The Space Force is the newest one. Then there was no other National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. There are Public Health Service officers that are, detailed to NOAA. And finally, the Public Health Service. That should.

SPRAGUE: Be eight. That's it. Yeah.

BLUMENBERG: So those are the eight uniformed services, even though they're not all armed.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So did we miss anything you'd like to cover?

BLUMENBERG: Well, can I make, like, a little political thing?

SPRAGUE: We try to stay away from politics.

BLUMENBERG: Okay. I'm not going to do it. Okay. I'm not going to do it. Okay.

SPRAGUE: No problem. Well, thank you for your service.

BLUMENBERG: Thank you. Luke.

SPRAGUE: Okay. This concludes the interview.

BLUMENBERG: Okay.

[Interview Ends]