Welcome to the Nobody Knowz podcast with Callie Zamzow. Join us for conversations with local change makers and hear the stories that don't always get told. It'll be honest, messy and beautiful. Touching and humorous. Slow down for a glass and pull up a chair. This is the Nobody Knows podcast. Welcome to Nobody Knowz. I'm your host, Callie Zamzow., and I would like to start off this morning, thanking our sponsors and those, very appreciative for, the family company supporting this. And, I want to give a tip of the week, and, I actually called our buyer today and said, hey, I'm looking for a tip of the week. What are your thoughts? And he said, the thing that keeps coming up over and over again at our store level is that people come in, because their cat is not eating the food that they're they're feeding them. They're being picky about it. And cats can be very finicky. What we always think is that it is because of what the cat is tasting. And so people try different flavors. They try different meat sauces. And scientifically, that is not the case. As it turns out, cats have very few taste buds. So it has less to do with tasting and more to do with the texture of the actual food itself. And that is what they're being picky about. So, Corey McClements, our buyer, was sharing to me today that that's part of the reason why Callie Zamzows has such a huge selection of cat foods is because people will come in and they need to try various textures, and then when they find the texture that works, then they're set to go and they can change up the flavors then and it won't. That won't matter to the cat. So, things like, shreds and patties and mousses and obviously kibbles, there's all different sorts of types of foods that you can feed your cat. So hopefully if you've got a picky eater and you're trying to figure that out, this maybe is a solution for you. You can head into one of our stores and let them know that you have a picky cat, and that you need to try some different textures and give that a go. And, if you find that something works, I would love to hear about it. So, okay, so we're kind of heading into end of year festivities, some sort of upon us. And it's time, I think, a nice time for us to purposely choose to slow down a little bit. There are so many things going on. We have maybe visitors in town and that sort of thing. And, it's it I think it can be a time of year that if we don't slow down, we get through it. We just put our heads down and we get through it and then effort's over. We have regrets. So at this point in the year, it's still in front of us. We still can make choices. We can still decide that we're going to be our best version of ourselves, that we can take a deep breath, that when somebody says something that makes us mad at the dinner table, we can just take a bite of turkey and go on and let it ride. So that's kind of where I am today. And I think part of the reason why I'm feeling this way is that our guest today is somebody that I absolutely adore. My husband and I sat down at a table. It was a dinner where you were people, was not assigned seating, and there were a lot of, people that we didn't know there. And we sat down and these two wonderful people sat down at our table, and we had the best conversation. And what's funny is I look back on that conversation, I remember thinking what interesting people these people were, and I didn't even know the half of it. We since then we've we've had dinner a couple more times and I've learned so much more. And I'm really excited to share the story, of this wonderful guest. So please welcome into the studio, Norb Murray. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me here. I yeah, I want to I want to introduce you to with all these things that you do, but I think what I'm going to do instead of doing that is let's let it reveal itself as we're talking, because, that was how I learned. And it was really fun because you are an extraordinary human. You wouldn't know it because you are not. You aren't, you know, throwing it around everywhere. But, if people just take a moment and ask you a few questions, you've got a wonderful story. It's lovely. It's lovely to have you here. So let's let's, let's start off maybe just, in whatever way you want, maybe give us just a little, little, like, background on you and how you ended up in Boise. Okay, well, I'm third generation California, and, I guess when I was 18, I went off to college in Wisconsin on an ROTC scholarship. And kind of put California in the rearview mirror. And, I'd grown up around the military. My grandfather was very much involved with the Navy, and in his home he had a a barroom that was all. It was like a Navy museum. So that's what I was. My goal was, and then from there, I just, went into the Marine Corps as a marine aviation cadet, got my commission, and, as a second lieutenant in an aviator and, flew helicopters, spent 25 years doing that. And then we retired. Lee, my wife, was from British Columbia and I came from California. So we decided anywhere west of the Rockies was where we were going to live. We had a motorhome, and we explored the West Coast and had Portland as a base, and we couldn't find the home that we wanted to say, this is going to be it. And so we used, local park there, RV park and looked at houses around and said, well, let's just buy a home here and we'll keep looking. Well, it took us 30 years. And it was actually, some friends of ours, he was very concerned about estate taxes. And they said, well, let's look around. And at that point, Lee and I were looking to go from a two story home to a one story home to get rid of the stairs, and they couldn't find anything in the local Portland area that we liked. And so let's go over to Idaho. We've been here for four years and, decided this is our forever home. Home? Whatever forever means to, these days, we're so glad to have you. We're glad that you decided to come live here. We do. It's wonderful to have you here. And, you've certainly added to my life by being here. And I'm sure you've done with many others, and we'll get to that. I know you have. So let's let's dive in a little bit to, to the Marine Corps because you and thank you, by the way, for not revealing all the secrets of what we're about to talk about. You did a great job of skimming over that. But this this is a huge part of your life. So, and in particular, let's talk about the fact that you were a helicopter pilot. So, tell us about that. Like when when did you decide that that was the direction you wanted to go and that that was going to be your passion? I grew up influenced by the Navy. I can remember the first memories that I have was World War two sneaking down, and my mother and I lived with my grandparents, and they had the big house and had the little pajamas with the little feet on the bottom and sneaking down. And my grandfather, would get these films from the War in the Pacific, and they would show them, he'd bring his friends in and they would show these films. And I can remember peeking around the corner and and watching these, you know, the big Navy guns going off. So I can still picture that. And that was, like 80 years ago. Wow. And the, anyway, he had this, this barroom, which was a museum, and it was made up of like there was a small table. It was made out of a, a piece of the USS Alabama. And he had a bench that was made out of teakwood that was off the deck of the USS Maryland. And these are all ships that had been retired at some point. And it was, and I can remember Admiral Halsey, who anybody familiar with World War Two will know was the, admiral in the Pacific. And I remember he was at my grandfather's house and I was standing, but he was in a rocking chair, and I had a, a balloon, a helium balloon, and he had a cigaret in his left hand, and it just by and he rocked the chair, and the cigaret came back and popped my balloon. And I can still picture that, from all those years ago. So bottom line was my dad was in the Pacific, in the Navy. So I was going to go in the Navy. Well, I mentioned that they had gone ahead and ROTC and ROTC scholarship to Wisconsin. And my first midshipman cruise between the freshman and sophomore years was, aboard a a destroyer in Long Beach. Well, the destroyer had been damaged, and, they were in for repairs and they couldn't go anywhere. So our excitement was getting up in the middle of the night and and guarding the front deck of the ship. That's what we did as midshipman. Useless. Just tasks. And we. So we went out, they put us on another ship and then another ship and, I guess the big memory of that was we did get to go up to Seattle, and I remember getting seasick. Oh, that was actually, only twice that ever get seasick. And that was the first one. Well, at that point, I decided, nope, I'm going to go in the Marine Corps so I don't have to spend all this time at sea. Well, that didn't pay off well because I ended up spending five years on a ship anyway. So anyway, I, wasn't real serious about school and ended up having to take a break. But the middle. But after about two years and I was driving a truck for a tree service and I thought, what the hell am I doing? Said I had all these plans and here I am. I'm not following what I set out to do. They had a program called the Marine Aviation Cadet Program that went back to actually Korea. And you could had two years of college. You could go into aviation training. So November 10th, 1964, I rode it on a bus into Pensacola, which just happened to be the Marine Corps birthday. The November the 10th. And then they had Veteran's Day on November the 11th, which I always thank them for having, since we could recover, had a day off after celebrating on the 10th day of recovery. And that did it. And at that point, Vietnam was starting to gear up. So everybody that, took about a year and a half to go through the program. And when we graduated, you got your wings and your commission at the same time. So I became a second lieutenant and a naval aviator and the same day. And they needed helicopter pilots in Vietnam. So we had no choice. Normally you could choose, if you were. I was the top marine graduate at that time. You could choose between helicopters, jets or transports. But as I said, they needed helicopter pilots. So I became a helicopter pilot. Yeah. I'm speechless. I think mostly because I when I think of Vietnam and the things that I've read about it, helicopters, I was. This seems like there's always a theme around helicopters and things that happened to helicopters. I was that's scary. That's a stupid question. I realize. Well, my I joined a squadron. Yeah. Marine Corps they had Vietnam was divided into cause and it's the very northern part of southern Vietnam was was the, Roman symbol, the symbol one. And then there there was like six cores throughout Vietnam. Instead of saying one, we'd say I, because that's the Roman symbol with ice. We called it ichor, and it's right up on the demilitarized zone, from between the ocean and, was on the east side and Leo was on the west side, and North Vietnam was on the was on the north side, and then Leo was on the, on the west side. And so you had this narrow piece and that was our area of responsibility. And my very first, been there maybe five days. And we were based out of a place called Phu Bai, which was little north of Danang, and we had a number of bases that we supported that were up between Phu Bai and the demilitarized zone. And one of them was called Dong Ha. Dong ha was kind of a a rustic to give it a, a nice name, a base. We had, they had wooden huts that we would stay and we'd go and we'd spend maybe five days at a time up there doing missions all along. The DMZ and there were fire bases and different, out camps, that the Marines had. And we were there and I had this terrible odor. And it's a the odor of death. And, I said, boy, that's a strong. And I looked over and there was a row of body bags. Oh, line in front of a hanger waiting to be picked up. And what had happened was that the Marines that were along the DMZ, right on the DMZ itself, got overrun, and they couldn't get back in to pick up the Marines who had been killed for about four days. And part of our ethos is we don't leave a marine behind. Right. And so it took four, but it took four days to get in there and get them out of there. And that was my introduction. Oh, I said, this is for real. And then, I guess it was spent a year. Basically out of the same place doing. And it was the year that it went from a, as we called it, a gentlemen's war, where you went out, you operated during the day, and then at night things went quiet and both sides went home, so to speak, and it was quiet. Well, that ended very quickly. And I remember, well, I have a souvenir on my. Little souvenir shelf at home of, It's a mortar tale. And we got attacked one night in the alley. We lived. The water table was so high that you couldn't dig anything into the sand because it would fill with water. So our living quarters were, little huts built on stilts, and there would be 6 or 8 of us to a hut. And right outside the hut we had a bunker made out of sandbags. So if something came up, you'd run out and you'd climb into the bunker and it was, again covered with sandbags. So it was protected and we got, under attack and went down hidden. The more hidden the, bunker and came back and I had a little desk made out of a box next to my cot, and this mortar tail was buried into the desk, and it hit the roof of the hut, and it exploded. And of course, the tail, still in good shape, went and buried itself in my writing desk that I had and made writing letters difficult because I had this big hole there. But I still have that as a as a souvenir, along with shrapnel and stuff. That's when you knew it was real. But we'd go out at night night medivac was probably the scariest. Your toes. Yeah, because you go out and when you went out, somebody was in real trouble. And they're under attack and they're either had to get wounded out of there right away, or they're running low on ammunition. And they needed, you know, to be a resupply. And so you go and you circle overhead and they would pop a flare. So you knew where they were. And you could tell where people were by the, ammunition every six round, it would light up. Okay. And so you could see at night, you could see the bullets flying back and forth. So you knew which way to come in from. Usually we'd get directly overhead and do a spiral down into the, into the zone and either pick up the wounded or drop off supplies or whatever was needed. And that was that was scary. Yeah. Hey, you didn't want to do that too often. Just hearing about it doesn't miss making me. Yeah, I'm making my palms sweat. Then one time, one of the ones we went into was actually in a Vietnamese graveyard. It was in the middle of the night, and they had sent flares up. So we landed. And you're in among all these and they the the monuments in the graveyard were above the ground. So you're in among these monuments and there's all this smoke go in and it's dark and you can see shadows, and you don't know if they're good guys or bad guys. We got our radio shot out and the, so to communicate within the helicopter, you had to yell at each other, which was kind of interesting. And, got out of there and we picked up, I'll never forget it. We had a few other things wrong. So we got back to what's called Charlie Med, and Charlie Med was sort of one of the initial points coming out of the field, where they give them initial help before they take them to a more, capable medical facility, such as one of the, hospital ships or a bigger hospital, something like that, and just shut down there. We didn't want to go back to the base. I remember walking in and the young kid we'd picked up, he had a what you call a sucking chest wound. He'd been hit right in the middle of the chest with a round and gone into his lungs. And so he was lying there, and you could see air going in and out of his lungs. And I always wondered this day, did he make it or not? I like to think he did. I like to think somewhere there's, you know, well, he's not a young man anymore, but he's there, and he's got a little scar in the middle of his chest, but he's able to live a productive life and, that's. And that's why I did it. That's the important thing, is to give somebody back their life or to help them. I don't even know these stories. Just sort of. These are the stories I was thinking we were getting to. But this is, I you're just. I just love you so much. You're just such an interesting human. And you are. You're extraordinary. And that that. Thank you for sharing that information with us in some of the other things. You know, it wasn't to relieve the pressure of the what you were facing. We had our own little bar. It was a Quonset hut that they'd built up, and it was pretty well stocked. And so they could get pretty rowdy at night. And I, I had the title of the song Master of Fu Bay, and there's probably not a song that I could repeat in public, but it was a distraction. Yeah. And I saw guys, some that were just very mild and very religious in this sort of thing. Just you got to let the steam off some. Yeah, we'd go out every day. There was a river that went into, Danang and that's where the freighters would come in with supplies. And there was a ship that would come out of the Philippines that you could recognize from the air was a small freighter. And when it came in, we knew what was on it. There was, Black Label beer, and so we would send when after that, a day after we'd send to helicopters down to dinner and we'd fill one of them up right to the maximum with cases of Black Label beer and we treated him like stock on a, on the stock market that for $10 you could buy your own case of beer. And underneath one of the huts, they'd cut, the hole in the floor, put a trapdoor in, and underneath the hut they'd taken sandbags and it's like a vault. And that was the beer storage. And all the beer was stored in the this one hut. And you were given a certificate. And when you wanted your case of beer, you'd go turn in your certificate. You get your case of beer and you do whatever, half the time you had to drink it warm. But it was also good trade bait because we had an Air Force. There was a listening post nearby, and they got all the cool stuff. They got blankets and they got steaks. So for a case of beer, you could go and trade for a real blanket because you get cold in the wintertime and or steak because we ate at a cans. And so it was and you go up and you trade the guys, we go up and there is a place we'd go to the it was a village. Right at the corner were Vietnam, North and South Vietnam. And Leo came together and there was a little mountain yard village, and the mountain yards were indigenous people. And they had this village and they actually still use crossbows. And that was the thing to do is to go and trade for a crossbow. So we'd take blankets or trinkets or whatever up there. And, and if you got a crossbow, you would really scored. Wow. Well, like, can you tell us about the day that you left for Vietnam? You had to go to Okinawa. You'd sit there just waiting for a flight. And it was the it happened to be the Marine Corps birthday that was there. And we had to take all our uniforms with us, or blues or greens or dress uniform, like we really needed them in country. But when I got to Okinawa, they made us all the the officers, the there they Lee actually held us up a day of leaving so we could be there to form up a ceremonial unit for the marine Corps birthday, which was kind of fun. It was memorable, I guess, to give it a good a good twist to it. But you want to think you were ready to go, right? You didn't really go. And I managed to. Most of the Marines went into Southern California, but I was born and raised up in Northern California, north of San Francisco. And so I managed to, weasel my way into a flight that went into, I think it was Travis Air Force Base, which just north of San Francisco. So I can see my my grandmother and my parents and the, my brother that just had a baby. So my first niece was just one year old. I can still see him there, you know? And I was, ready to get back with life. Yeah, yeah. So then after that, you just pretty much rolled it up and didn't do anything else. Right? Of course I'm kidding. I, tell us about the next chapter. Well, I went on next Marine Corps wise or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, from there I got stationed in North Carolina and I'd gone through training is what's called a forward air controller. And that's, somebody that's assigned to a ground unit that acts as liaison between the ground commander and the and aviation. So be it helicopters or calling in an air strike or anything to do with aviation. I was kind of the link that the community went through, and I was assigned to Marine Battalion, first Battalion, six Marine Regiment in North Carolina. And that was really interesting. I had a 2 or 3 guys that worked for me, and we got to, deploy down to the Caribbean for six months. So that was fun. The like calling in airstrike. We had a place where they could drop bombs. And actually that was in North Carolina to call in aircraft to, okay, you're off target, you know, more than 100 yards to the left or West streets or whatever. It was calling in medevac. You remember in the driving rain on Saint Eustatius Island in the Caribbean, having to sleep with nothing more than a blanket on the ground in the mud. And I said, well, I guess is what, you know, what you do with the when you got to do it. Oh, and that was, so I spent six months doing that before going back to the aviation, component again. And I'd been married. Had gotten married, actually, a girl I'd met in Pensacola going through training. If anybody's ever seen an officer and a gentleman, this was a version of it. I was a the aviation student going through, and she was working for a local company in Pensacola, and we met at a football game. But our backgrounds are so different. It didn't last very long. At last, through the my first tour. So I said, I got to get out of town and I volunteer to go back to Vietnam. Got as far as Okinawa. And President Nixon had put a cap on the number of combatants that were allowed into back into Vietnam and, something like 100,000 or something. So I was told that you got to stay here. Well, that just broke my heart that instead of going and having cold rations and hot days and being shot at that, the, I was going to get actually a real bed and warm food, cold beer and the I guess the only shots would have been out of a whiskey, but and then in the, we, linked up with the school teachers, all the local school teachers. And I did spend six months, on a ship. Again, I mentioned, you know, I didn't want to be in the Navy, but I did spend two tours in the Caribbean and a couple of tours off of, Vietnam and what we call Westpac. We never did go in to Vietnam. We were there to, in case we were needed. We had a battalion of Marines, and they were so strict about the number of Marines that could be in-country that they did get our mail. They had to send in the Navy's ships helicopter to go and pick up the mail, because there'd be too many Marines if they took a marine helicopter in. So go figure. Why? Yeah. From there I went back to got a year to go back to school, and I went back to Cal Berkeley 1970. And, there was a it was called the bootstrap program. And if you were near getting your degree, the Marine Corps give you a year off, you were still officially on duty to go to college. And there was a marine that been in the year prior to it to when I went there and he said, whatever you do, don't tell anybody you're a marine and said, even your professors. And he was correct about that because that was when it was you know, you weren't really welcome back into society. So I decided to go incognito a little bit. I grew my sideburns long and grew a handlebar mustache and to kind of be undercover, I I've got a that's when I it was actually on the way home from Vietnam on the flight home that it was a harbor charter. And I was so excited about going home. And I was writing, Saint Patrick's Day cards to girlfriends that I still kept in touch with. And there was this flight attendant that came up, and she was just a brazen hussy. And she she started chatting me up and this sort of thing. And she had a little address book, and she picked up my address book, and she put her name and phone number and address in there. And it turns out that she lived on the south side of San Francisco. So we started dating and ended up. And the following June getting married. And, so she likes to brag that she picked me up on a flight home from, from Okinawa, and which she did. So I've got a picture anyway of at the Marine Corps ball and in, when I was going to Berkeley. It's embarrassing. These long sideburns and the big handlebar mustache in my uniform. Oh, and the administrative gunny sergeant at Alameda, where I go over and I pick my paycheck up. Because back then, you didn't have all this electronic ways of doing things. And he said to captain, who can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure, what is it? Gunny said said, do you mind if we mail you your check? You're bad for morale around here. So it was at the Marine Corps unit. So from there, we, it said we got a little motorhome and we set off with two cats. And my next duty assignment was in Washington, DC, where I was assigned to, Marine Helicopter Squadron one or HMX one, which is the Presidential Helicopter Squadron, and spent five years with them. Okay, so this is the part that I want to talk about, because this is the thing that I when we had that whole first meeting, it didn't come out at all. And it wasn't until later that I had heard from somebody else did, you know. So let's talk about that. So first of all, I didn't, you know, you always hear about Air Force One, except people aren't very aware of that. So, Marine One, that means that you it was the helicopter. Any time that you were carrying the the president. But you did it for three presidents. Three? Yeah. Just happen to be that unique period of time that I got my first flight was, in May of 1974, and President Nixon was just coming back from Russia. He had been to China and had, made some agreements and this sort of thing very successful. And it was during Watergate. So they were trying to draw attention away from, you know, let's get some more interesting news. And he'd gone to Russia, didn't accomplish much. And that was my first flight with Nixon. And he resigned that following October. So I got the last, say, six months of his tour. And then all of President Ford's who, you know, took over when Nixon resigned and then he didn't get reelected. So then the beginning of Carter, three of them were so different. Well, you told me a story about, so I don't want you to tell the story, but hopefully this is enough information for you to know which story I'm talking about. But you. I think it was Nixon that you were flying and you had landed and you opened a window. Yeah, that was the that was the first flight. And it was. It was a may. It was the middle of May your way. It was your very first one. Right. Well, my first one as, as the president. Okay. And I'd already been there, maybe eight months. You go through a lot of training and background checks and you with the call, the green side. And then when you get all these qualifications completed, then you move to what's called the white side. So I'd gotten all my completed all the training. And because it's totally different helicopter what the Marine Corps has in their inventory. So it's almost starting fresh. And you have to learn where things are in Washington DC and, you know, in case of emergency. And so you go up on the they have a place called Anacostia, and it's where the Anacostia and the Potomac rivers come together. And it's a three acre plot with a big hangar on it. And we keep three helicopters up there at all times around the clock to evacuate the white House, the vice president and then anybody else that needs to be evacuated. And so you go up there and you learn the area of Washington, D.C., and we're landing zones are, and where all the secret places are in the mountains and that sort of thing. So the first flight, again, it was a Sunday in May, beautiful day. And you come in to the white House lawn, you come in from the south over the Jefferson Memorial, and you've got the Washington Monument on your right and the Lincoln Memorial on your left, and you come down right into the back lawn of the white House. And so they're making a big deal out of this. So there must have been 1502 thousand people lining the lawn. And they had all, all the networks, all three of them back then with their television cameras. So we go in and they you have a checklist that you go through the, the copilot reach, and the commanding officer of the squadron is always the pilot for the president, and then everybody else is a copilot. It's just him. And I was the copilot. And you go through the checklist and you realize how important the checklist is because it's so distracting. Almost like combat, but totally different situation. Yeah, and very distracting. So you didn't want to land with the gear up? You know, that would be embarrassing. So you go through the checklist and land. There's a couple little things they never told you. Like what the protocol was when you are sitting there. So I am on the left side, which is where the door was. So I said, well, I better see how things are going. So I opened the slide, open the window there and stick my head out to see what's happening. Well, this is all on National television. So this is, my guest, my photobombing of President Nixon as he got off the plane in the vice President Ford was there to greet him. And then all the squadron, of course, is there back at the Anacostia and back at, Quantico watching this on television. Needless to say, I never heard the end of that one. I actually was doing a search the other day. I was trying to figure out if I could find any video or any, like, pictures from that. And just because I would love to see it. Actually, I do have a picture on my wall that very. I would love to see that to the left hand opening in the window. And it's such a great story. That's awesome. So I and I did ask you this before, and I loved your answer because I, I think about flying presidents and how nerve wracking that is. And I asked you about that. I'm like, was it? I mean, stupid question, but was that nerve wracking? You're like, well, anyway, because I was like, what's the president like? It's the present. You said all life, all life is important when you're a pilot. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I guess that's right. So but but can you share a little bit about that as far as, you know, just the, the realization that you're carrying the president? Well, as I said, you know, the, the, the you don't want to make a mistake, you want to make an ass of yourself and I guess the one that we're that was the most aware of was I got to take, you know, this was the plane commander on this particular mission to take the president of Germany from the, it wasn't the white House itself, but it was. There's a big concrete area right between the Washington Monument in the Lincoln Memorial. And they had the band out. The Army band and this sort of thing. And we went to pick him up there and take him over to Andrews Air Force Base. Well, it was foggy. The I mean, the the clouds were right down 50ft off the ground. So as soon as you lifted off, you were in the soup. And, you know, you've got the Washington Monument over here about 200 yards away and you don't know what's, you know, you don't know what else is in there. You know, that there's power lines and, all this stuff, you get up. And I was about 300ft before they could pick you up on radar. So you're totally on your own. Oh, boy. Lifting up. All of a sudden, everything disappears. And so you're totally on instruments, flying. I've got the president of Germany on board. Please don't crash. And I'm, you know, was able to get up high enough where it was picked up by radar, make an instrument approach into into Andrews. But it's, you know, you're totally flying on instruments. Marines don't do that a whole lot. So it's, Oh, yeah. Again, my palms are sweaty all over again. Just the thought of it. What an extraordinary career. And I know that there was a lot there are many more things that you could tell us about that I am amazed that the fact that you you had this really tremendous and I mean a rare career, this is this has been everything that you've told us up to this point is extraordinary. And then when you leave the military, then what? Well, we as I said, we spent, spent close to 25 years. And I was getting up at that point. We're in the commanding officer, the marine barracks, Whidbey Island. And from there I went back to, grad school, got my advanced degree, and then my last three years were in the Pentagon, and I worked, I was the, worked in aviation procurement. And there are six Coast Guard helicopters out there that I like to say, or mine, because the the Department of Defense didn't they took them out of the budget. And so I got to go down and argue is why the Coast Guard needed them. And they put them back in the budget. So but anyway, that was my last tour and I was coming up for promotion and I said, I don't even want to stick around. To be turned down in my next tour would be a desk job somewhere. And I said, no, let's try a new life. So we both decided to retire early. It was flying still flying for TWA at the time. And so 1989 we both decided to retire. But a big motorhome, we had two cats and a dog and we just hit the road very soon. Serendipity. And we went up to went down to Disney World. And I guess the adventure of the that trip was rescuing cats out of trees and strange places and wondering if we're going to get through the trip with all three of them, which we did, and we've, toured the country. And we ended up in again in Portland. We couldn't and we went down to Arizona, and even though it was October was 105 every day send up to Sydney for, we were actually went into a park. It was so shocking. And we were too young. We couldn't stay there because we were too young. This is to see. Clint wants to join an over 55 community right now, and he's not even 50 yet, but he's excited about it. You know, we're of the same situation. And so we decided to have this is we threw out the anchor and that's we stayed in Portland. And, so I went into the gut. Weren't real welcome. It was tough, you know, at the time, interviewing for jobs, not like Idaho, you know, I said, boy, if I knew what I knew today, I mean, there's a lot of help out there for, veterans getting out and helping them find, you know, like mission 43 and, you know, this sort of thing. But there wasn't back in the 1990s, especially in Oregon, there's just no military presence. So it was terribly well received. And I did get a job in finance, and I got all the went through all the training and got all the licenses and this sure thing. And, here I've gone through 25 years of doing interesting stuff. And I, said, I've gotta get connected to the community. Didn't know a soul. My dad knew somebody that was in, work was a stockbroker, but that was it. Didn't know anybody. So I walked into the local dry cleaners and he said, you in rotary? Because I saw this rotary. You said, no, but my wife is is why I'm interested. So I joined rotary, and it's like joining a family, and a lot of connections. And I joined the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of commerce? The they had a local festival called the Crawfish Festival. And the Crawfish Festival had been around about 40 years. And the group that ran it was having was at odds with the city, and the city wanted to make big payments for doing the overtime for the police in this. So the group said we quit. So the Chamber of Commerce took it over and I thought, you know, I've put on parades, I've done, I put on airshows and that's fun. I've done this kind of thing before. So I went into the chamber. I said, you need somebody to run your festival. And I took it over for 3 or 4 years. And so this is kind of interesting. So I went into the festival business, event management and a perfect person for that. You're you're just so lively and fun and interesting and and that's actually how I got to know Boise was it. I got into a specialized area where we did, auditing, big festivals. And one of our clients was the Western Idaho Fair at the fairgrounds here. And I come over every August, for it. And we'd audit the, all the food vendors at the that were part of the festival. Interesting. So, so you you start, I mean, I, I, I know that you are currently in rotary. I didn't realize that that that started so long ago. So you've been doing this for quite some time. You've been a part of rotary for a very long time. Yeah. We had we had a before we actually got involved in it. We had a friend of ours that was in it and they had an exchange student, high school age student from was coming from Australia. And they have a program where we send students to other countries and they send students from other countries here. For example, our club of Boise Southwest, as an exchange student from Japan, they were hosting this year. But there was a young lady coming from Australia and he said, can you guys be your host? So for six months, we hosted when she was a 13 year old who interviewed for this program, was not the same young lady that showed up at the age of 15. And we always listened. I would say to each other, said, you know, someday she's going to have a daughter and she's going to it's going to be payback. Well, she's had five daughters because we've we've actually kept in touch with her over the years. But anyway, she had five daughters and that got us got me interested. So I joined the local rotary and it was just out of curiosity. I wanted to learn more, and the more I learned is the realization, the less I knew. And I actually went to a guy that I respected, and I had to fill out a form, and I wanted to make sure I did it right, so I went, I asked him, and I asked, I said, is there a point in time when you ever understand what rotary is all about? He said, I've been in it for 35 years and I still don't understand it. And that was true. And so I just became more and more involved. And, it's been kind of my and actually, there was a point in the early 2000 that actually became my life. Yeah. You've traveled all over the world for rotary. Yep. I been to, Uganda, Cambodia, Poland, Singapore, Thailand, other places that I can, I can think of. It's amazing. And it's about the kids. You know, I've got a story I tell it's. And it actually took place when I was in the Marine Corps. We were in the Philippines, and it was that second tour, and they'd come up there was a village that had been isolated by heavy rainstorms, and a Navy chief had somehow taken the village under his wing, and he'd procured, several pallets of food to take in there. So I was assigned a mission to take these pallets of food to this village. A lot of interesting things that went into this whole story about fighting the village from the era and going into landing, but I always remember we found it landed, we were off loading, and the Navy chief had brought a bag of candy with him, and he was hanging out with the kids. We just watching these children that lived in the middle of, I call it the jungle, but nowhere. And the excitement of a big airplane coming out of the sky and having food and getting candy and the excitement and the smiles on their faces and I so I call it, you know, smiles or the jungle or how I found my passion in the Philippines. And it's been the kids that has really driven me. And, probably one of the memories that I have the most is we were in a little town called Gunga in Uganda, and it's there is a place called Bishop Willey Primary Training School, and it's where they train college graduates to become primary school teachers. So they had a student body of about 200, and it was in a Uganda was a community of maybe between 5 and 7000 people. It was several schools, and they had one well, that served all these people. And the well had been, drilled back in 1970s and was on its last legs. So our three of us, two other Rotarians and I went to look to go to the village and look at what can be done to help them out. So part of our visit there, we stayed at the local school. And I always remember each day we go farther and farther from the capital and, Kampala and thinking it's going to get more rural as we go, which it did. But anyway, we stayed there and we went to a visit at a children's so fringe, and I like to call it a baby orphanage because it was for children from birth up to the age of four. And we got a tour of it. There was a it was a Catholic nun. There was a that kind of ran the place. And I remember the cribs, had a rotary plaque on it. A Canadian Rotary Club had given the, the, orphanage these cribs. But I remember walking out and I was the first one that walked out of the building, and I turned around and Mike and Jim were big guys, and each one of them had a orphan orphanage holding their hands. And one of them, you know, how you you stand on a foot of an adult, you know, and you'd sort of ride their foot. The only one was writing, I think it was Mike's, foot, and it just. And the smile on their faces and I always remember, Rotarian had gone to Romania and looked at orphanages, and he came back and he said, you know, one of the most important things in the world is a hug. You know, you need in life. Life needs hugs. And that's what these kids were so starved for, was the human touch and the smiles on their faces and the smile. These two big guys looking down at these little teeny kids and the and they just the little kids were just so happy. And I'd seen that so many times. You know, we in Cambodia, we went on a, a group. It was called Golden Leaf Education Foundation. And it was that was the first president of the the group. And our goal was we would raise money. We'd go to schools that were already in existence, but we build a new block of school rooms. So we'd fund, to do that because back during the Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, when they had taken over in the 1970s, the things had been built back then were just falling apart. And so they needed upgrading. So this was our first school that we built. We went back to do the grand opening ceremony. We went to visit other places and we bought bicycles because bicycles are the primary transportation, especially for the kids to get to and from school. So a bicycle might mean a difference between whether a kid's going to get an education or not. It was that important. But seeing the smiles on their faces when you gave them a bicycle, or in India, we went to, do a polio vaccination, what they call, a national immunization Day, and they would advertise. And then on a Sunday they would immunize children all over India, and then they would do a follow up for five days. So in that one immunization day, they did 128 million children, got the two magic drops of the polio vaccine. So I went with a group, our first, that we delivered the vaccine around to the different stations. And I remember our very first stop was literally on a sidewalk next to a building that was been torn down. And the health care worker India had, was able to develop a marvelous medical, coordination for the doing these vaccination. And the lady set up a card table and the kids started showing up. So Lee and I had been. Oh, we were so clever. We bought a roll of, stickers. And the stickers were little cute little animals. We thought, okay, when a child gets their two drops, we put a sticker on them. Well, that lasted for one child. And all of a sudden, which there were maybe ten. All of a sudden there were a hundred kids and they weren't there for their vaccine. They were there because they heard about the stickers. So we stopped that real quick, and we went around to different places. And it was a, a medical facility, just a little one story building. And they were actually giving the drops in the back. So there weren't all the mass of kids. And I always remember this one little boy came out and he was with his dad and putting this sticker on his chest and the the look, he wasn't quite sure what it was all about, but he looked up and the look on the dad's face, knowing that his little boy's not going to get be paralyzed from polio. And in India, you see the crawlers, the ones that have lost use of their legs and the only way to get around is to crawl. And the look on his face, knowing his child is going to be safe, just happiness. That's incredible. So, you know, it's it's that's the reason. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. This is probably not a great time to be taking a break to thank a sponsor. However, I'm going to take a break just to thank our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Zamzows, your local source for garden, pet and planet friendly products. At Zamzows, we believe strong communities grow from people who care. Visit Zamzows.com or stop by one of our 12 Treasure Valley locations. Nobody knows like Zamzows I feel like you and I could talk for another like seven hours. And you have such great stories and I just. I so appreciate you being here. We're going to switch gears into an area that we like to call sharing is caring, or I like to call it rapid fire questions, although they don't have to be rapid fire. So you can answer them however you like. So here they are. You ready? Okay. Ready. All right, so how about a leader or mentor who influenced you at one point in life, I used to have five, and probably my first one was my grandfather. And my mother didn't like him. He was too much of a party guy. And she didn't like him, and we moved away from there. But he was probably the very first one. And I still look up to him, and my father in law is one, and he was define the word gentle man. He treated people with such respect and with such care. And I can still picture, you know, we'd go to dinner somewhere and he would always after we sure get it. He'd always go to the server to help us. And he would say something to them. He take their hand, he'd say something to I never heard what it was, but I thought that was so cool. I don't usually tell people this, but I carry around a bunch of $50 bills, and if a server is an extra big smile or something, you know they're gone. I take a jack and I go up and I take their hand and slip them a $50 bill and say thank him. Say you. You did such a marvelous job. You got such a beautiful smile, you know, keep it up. I'm so grateful for people for different reasons. You know, I think that's what helps us figure out who we are. Sort of. Jerry pick. Yeah. You know, with what I take from people. Yeah. Do you think your grandfather, if you were able to talk to you today, would say he was proud of all the things that you've done? I think so, yeah. He says, he might say, how come you're not hanging around with generals? And that's. Oh, grandparents are always going to say something like that. Right. Well I've got I've got pictures of him, Bing Crosby at a party, his house and wow, he and Charlie Chaplin fooling around and, you know, things like that. So he he was that level, you know, very cool. I like to be more this level. Pretty extraordinary. Okay. Next question. This is on topic. Okay. How about a book a quote or philosophy guiding you today? You know I don't want to have to go back to, say, The Hobbit. The determination to carry on, to carry through, you know, when you've got a goal to overcome the obstacles, just taking the whole general story to the point where I've read it twice, you know, all the books. My philosophy was everybody has something to offer and to treat people that way, that people have an opportunity to and helping you can. Yeah, that's a great answer. And my husband Clint will love that. You said that he was just just lecturing me because I haven't seen The Hobbit movies. And I know how the gasp all around I know. Well, we were on a walk and he was like, let's see if we can get home and get like, is there time for you to, like, could we get it started? So I will be watching it soon because he he couldn't believe it. So and now I'm really excited about it. Okay, how about a Boise spot that you love or find restorative? You know, I thought about that in my backyard. I have to thank Zamzows. Okay, but that I'm not being paid for this. But we have a jam. Joe's near us anyway. It's. We moved in. It was an empty canvas, and it was a big backyard, and I wanted a small backyard. This was huge by comparison to it was bigger than the one I had in, Oregon, but it had a row of, evergreen trees along the back fence that were very small. They weren't even a tall fence. And now there are days I've counted over 100 birds. I've got bird feeders up. And we had, one day I think I got 25 quail. I was able to cat in the backyard with their little ones. Yeah, that's the best. And I just sit in the chair and sit quietly so that the birds get used to, they don't see me anymore. And they come in and. And just the activity, and it's, the colors know I can. It is a very calming spot. I could sit there for an hour, a couple of hours just meditating. Yeah. My husband and I do the same thing. We absolutely love it. We just recently got, one of those bird feeders that has the camera. Oh, it's like, so we haven't set it up yet, but we're very excited. I got to figure out where to put it, but we're very excited because apparently I will like they'll look at the picture and then they'll tell you what the types of birds are. Yeah. So we have a book that we, you know, and we make little notches in the pages like, oh, this is the one that came to our yard. And we get all excited about it. It's neat. Yeah. It's very fun. Okay. Last question. Something outside, something outside service that you do. So acting travels, hobbies that bring you joy. We love traveling. I have a hat that I collect. The flag of a country of pin, and I drive everybody crazy, especially for a group, because I've got to find that hat pin. Which means, you know, going into a souvenir shops. And there are a lot of countries, don't they? Don't Revere their flag like we do here. So they're hard to find. But I love acting. I got into it, we lived in Whidbey Island, and Leia would be gone for five days at a time. And Whidbey Island had, like that. It was 16 churches in one bar. So you can see what a lively place that was. And the local community theater was having an open house. We decided just to go see what, you know, they were doing, and they were going to audition for South Pacific. Now, I never I've been to a theater in the audience, but like in high school, I didn't even know we had a theater. And so Leah dared me to audition. So I walk in and the the music director look just like Burl Ives, but 300 pounds. He had a little goatee, mustache and wore beret. And he says, well, what are you going to sing for me? I said, sing you. You gotta be kidding me. Don't you have a speaking part? South Pacific? Right? So I refused to sing, but I ended up in the chorus anyway. I needed bodies at that point. That did it. Nope. I, I like learning lines for some reason, and I use that, like at night when I go to go to bed. Yeah, that puts me to sleep. Like, now I'm learning the, you know, the night before Christmas. So I, recite it, and I can get through about a third of it, and that's that's all that's needed to fall asleep and actually got to be in a movie. And, man, you know, I this is kind of all coming together for me, because the last time that we were seated at a table together, my daughter and her boyfriend were at the table. And, you know, she's 18 and a lot of people shy away from wine. I mean, who wants to really like you just never know what 18 you're like, what are you going to get? You're not sure you guys didn't know you had met us, but we introduced you to her and the whole conversation. The four of you were talking, and Clint and I were just going back and forth watching. And you were so engaged with both of them. Oh, yeah. And I think I get it now, because obviously she also has, because she had told you what she was going to school for. And so you were talking about all that. I, I guess I didn't realize how connected you were with all of that until I saw the two of you just, you know, and I loved it because anybody who wants to talk to my kid just makes me like, you know, that's my kid. So that's pretty great. All right, Nora, it is time now for the last question of the show. It's a question we ask everybody. There are no rules. So here's the question. What is something that nobody knows? I would say, well, actually, you know it. Now, I've never even listen to a podcast. I love that answer. I think I did. I think I heard one about basketball one time, but I'm not sure. Sometimes we hear them. We don't even know we're listening to a podcast. That's true. Yeah. Oh that's great. I love well, I'm glad I'm glad this is your first one that you get to be a part of. I feel honored and I really appreciate the time that you gave us today. Your stories are incredible. I feel like like I said earlier, we could go on and on, and I would love to just drain your brain of everything that you've gone through and all the wonderful adventures you've been on. Well, wonderful and not so wonderful, but interesting. You've lived a very interesting life and our community is really lucky to have you. Well, thank you to the wonderful community to be a part of. I think so too. It's a pretty great place. It's even better with you in it. Thank all right. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast and leave a review. Next week we'll hear from another incredible voice shaping the Treasure Valley. Until then, thanks for listening.