Dick Brandt

Evan: I'm Evan Reibsome and today is Monday, November 21st, 2016, and I am interviewing Dick Brandt today. He's been kind enough to volunteer, or agree to being interviewed for Veterans Empathy Project. And just to give you an overview of what the interview will be like today, there's basically three sections. The first section is going to deal with your upbringing, questions like that, where you're from.

Dick: Sure.

Evan: And then the second section will deal with your military service.

Dick: Okay.

Evan: And then the final section will be your transition back to civilian life, and your post-military life

Dick: And how that helped and whatever, okay, that's fine.

Evan: So that's a fairly loose structure.

Dick: Sure, okay.

Evan: So we're just gonna have a conversation and if there's parts that you want to focus on, we'll focus on those.

Dick: Good.

Evan: So I thought we could start with maybe Dick, if you could just explain where you're from and when you were born.

Dick: Yeah, sure, I was born on August 20th, 1944. And I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. My father was Richard, my mother was Helen. They both 1:00worked in factories in the Cleveland area and so I grew up in Cleveland, which was then part of Cleveland proper, was Brooklyn. And then my family moved to a suburb called Parma and that's really where I spent most of my years growing up in Parma, Ohio.

Evan: And you have other siblings?

Dick: I have a sister, yeah, I have a sister who's three years younger than me. And neither my mother or my father were in the military, but when it came time for me to go to college at Kent State, I was trying to figure out how to pay for it because they didn't have the money to send me to college. And Kent State was a teacher's college at that time, so I knew I wanted to be a teacher, at least that's what I thought. And so I kinda worked out, I also had a rock and roll band that I'd had for 20 years that I grew up with. At age 14, I started 2:00it and we played for 20 years. They were all friends in the neighborhood. We stayed together all those years. So, on the weekends, I played in clubs and for parties on Saturday and that took care of one part of the tuition and the expenses. And then I worked in the Chevy stamping plant because Cleveland is a big auto area. So I worked in the Chevy manufacturing line during the summers and then the other part of that piece was the ROTC military piece. So when I first applied to Kent, since the Vietnam War was running hot and heavy, 1966 through '68, I was actually going to the University in 1962 through '66 and then going into the military '66 through '68, but those were heavy years for the Vietnam War and there was a major draft on as you would know, so I felt that I would do it as an officer and also it covered a third of my education, as we had talked. So, the combination of playing in the band and working summers in a manufacturing facility and 3:00then the ROTC, allowed me to actually take care of the whole four years of college without any debt.

Evan: Wow, I'm sure any young viewers of this can not imagine getting through college without--

Dick: Without any kind of debt. Back then it wasn't part of the logic. People had some debt, but most people tried to do it without having any debt at all. The thing that happened, of course, is that I had no weekends really to myself, so I had to study during the week and I was also an officer in a fraternity there, so made it a really condensed week. And then of course, by taking ROTC courses, as you would know, that basically eliminated most of my electives, so those were all military electives now so it kind of really confined the schedule for me in those four years. It went pretty quickly, but yes, having no debt was, I think, really important.

Evan: I wanna talk more about, I mean that's a lot of information that we can talk about, if we could just take a step back for a moment. 4:00Can you explain, you mentioned you were in a band, were there any extracurricular activities? Were you in sports? Like what was it like--

Dick: No, I wasn't in sports but I was involved in student activities there. We had a student activities club that ran all the events for the students at the high school and so that's what I did. I was an officer in that. And because of my commitment to playing in the band, we were kinda the only band at the high school, so we played for all the canteens and we did talent shows, that kind of stuff. So that kept me pretty active. And then I was also in the marching band, 'cause I've always played an instrument. So, marching band, and then this kind of civic group that was part of the high school and then my band was pretty much, besides going to school, took up my time.

Evan: Do you have musicians in your family?

Dick: Yeah, my wife is a musician also, she plays the piano. We still play every week, today we're part of a Christian kind of rock group 5:00that plays for a church. So we practice during the week and we play on Sundays. I get a chance to continue to play all the time. And funny story, five years ago they invited my band back for the 50th high school reunion of my high school and because we were the only band, we did it and we were all in our 60s. So we went back there and played for 300 people and it was just like 50 years had melted away. What was a little bit strange is they had a picture blown up about three feet by three feet on the stage and it was a picture of us when we were 16 year old in kinda blue leisure suits and here were the five of us, the same five, in the same order, but 16 instead of 66, so you know, really strange. 50 years later, but there we were, playing our music, right?

Evan: That's amazing. So, in your family, like your parents, do they play music? I just wonder what--

Dick: My Dad, my Dad was a guitar player. He had eight brothers and several of the brothers played guitars and steel guitars, so there was always music in the house.

Evan: So you're in the band and you're going through high school and you went to Kent State, you said?

Dick: Kent State University, right. I was at Parma High School and then I went to Kent State for four years.

Evan: What did you go there for?

Dick: Well, I went there because it was a teacher's school and at that time, I really wanted to be a teacher. It's funny, I came back to Lehigh and at the end of my career, I finally did what I was planning to do. But I always wanted to be a teacher. So my degree was a BS in Education, so with a major in English and journalism, a minor in psychology, but anyway, the major was English and journalism and so prior to graduating from Kent, I returned to Parma High School and actually taught four sections of English and Journalism as a student teacher 7:00to find out whether this was really what I wanted to do. All of us had to do that our senior year and I came back to my original high school where I was posted and so I knew that was what I wanted to do at that point. But, of course, I had to go on to the military first.

Evan: And Kent State, when is this in relation to the famous Kent State shootings?

Dick: Yeah, well, the famous Kent State problem occurred in 1970 and so I had graduated in '68. Of course I was on active duty at that time, just coming off active duty. I mean, I was just back to Kent, I just had the gracious opportunity, I was their commencement speaker last year, so I came back and spoke at the graduation of the business school and it was strange to be back, because when I was there, it was only seven or 8,000 students and it's now 45,000 students on three campuses, right, 45. So a lot has changed but as you know, if you 8:00know the story it was the center of kind of dissidents during the Vietnam War and unfortunately a lot of the people that were there demonstrating were not Kent State students. There's a whole story behind what really happened with the National Guard, they shouldn't have been there. They were taken off the roads, there was a big strike going on for the truckers and there were some shots on the highways, so these guys had loaded weapons, They were guarding the trucks and they were pulled off, sent to Kent State. They didn't have a lot of sleep, they had loaded weapons, the ROTC building where I studied was burnt to the ground. So it was smoldering and burning. Kids were getting wild. Somebody threw something, I guess a brick, a bottle, and bam, people started firing and that was that. It was just a perfect storm of terrible things that happened. I think it was probably the only case of that in the United States during the Vietnam War. But it happened at Kent State.

Evan: Were you the first person in your family to go to college? You mentioned that your--

Dick: Yes, yeah, my sister didn't go 'til later, she did go later, but I was the first person. My father didn't go, my mother didn't go. I'm trying to think, actually none of his brothers or sisters went to college either.

Evan: So, you're at Kent State and the draft begins to go to Vietnam. What was your feeling? What was that like to be-- Well, I mean, it's interesting, I was just at the Veterans Lunch. We have a very small ROTC group here, probably it's less than 30 people. We were hundreds at Kent State because we had an Army Corps and we had an Air Force Corps. We all worked out of the same building. They had what was called a knoll area and kind of a valley area where the military building was and we actually marched there. It was interesting because we would be 10:00in our military uniforms on the campus at that time and with some of the stuff that was going on, externally to Kent, the demonstrations against, of course it was one of the most unpopular wars in the history of the United States, the funny thing was, it wasn't really felt on the campus. I mean I never really felt strange wearing a uniform. No one ever said anything to me because it was so big. We were two big units, probably 300 people involved in the ROTC there and Tuesdays, Thursdays of the week you'd be working in military classrooms there so you were wearing your uniform. There was marching. It was just part of the college campus. It's funny that later, a couple years later, this dissidence grew and people came in and then we had the terrible event. But when I was there those four years, from '62 to '66, it was just accepted that we had a military training program there at the university and it was fine. It wasn't really anything, I mean was 11:00concerned about where the war was going, and of course the escalation and all of the other stuff, but, those of us who were in the military thought that this would be the way to serve. We thought we would probably serve anyway with the way the draft was going.

Evan: And your family was fairly supportive?

Dick: They were very supportive, they were very supportive of it. In fact, I just was looking at a picture of my mother and father the day that I got my bars. We were dragging out some pictures for our retirement function that I had and they wanted to go over the phases of my life and I was just looking and they were very proud. We went to the graduation in the morning, I got my degree and then in the afternoon, we went to the commissioning ceremony. And then I was off to Texas.

Evan: And you said before, off camera, that your father served in the military?

Dick: Not my father, he didn't get to serve because he had a heart murmur, but actually three of his brothers served in the military in the Second World War and my wife's father was a Marine also in Guadalcanal in the Second World War.

Evan: So it's somewhat of a family tradition?

Dick: Yeah, I mean my uncles were very, very strong military supporters so it's funny you ask that question. I'm trying to think of all my friends. I don't think any of close friends from my neighborhood went in the military. I'm sure that the friends of mine that went with me to Kent, there were a number from my school, but none of them went into the military. But for me, again as I told you, part of it was economic because they were going to pay for a third, and secondly, I thought well you know, if I'm gonna serve my country, I'd rather serve it as an officer, it sounded quite interesting to me. I didn't know later that this whole leadership aspect of being in the military and being an officer, would later, I know know that'll come back to some of your later questions, but it was actually critically important to my career, but I didn't know it at the time. Just like you don't know a lot of times what is so important in your life as you're going 13:00through it. It's only when you look back.

Evan: Can you explain, so you're at Kent State from '62 to '66, you graduate, you receive your commission as second lieutenant and then so while you're going through that, you're taking classes through the ROTC that are leadership oriented and after you finished, do you go to basic training then or what happened?

Dick: Right away, yeah, you go right to basic training, right away. I wasn't married yet then and we left right away, the following week and I had been commissioned. I mean you find out your last year, you give them some choices and strangely, I ended up in the air defense, so I was a missile officer. And it's interesting because I took no technical courses in my life and for some reason based on the military tests and so on, they said that they needed me in El Paso, Texas to go to missile school, which was new to me because we didn't really 14:00study missiles as part, we studied artillery, traditional artillery. So I'm off to Fort Bliss, Texas which was the center for all missile officers in the United States. Interestingly enough, there was also a military unit there of the German Air Force, based on the base there. But anyway, we were, it's the center for all missile training. In those days, Hercules missiles were protecting all of the United States around major cities and also around key places in Europe. And then more recently, they instituted a missile called the Hawk missile which was kind of a low-flying missile for military aircraft and those missiles found their way on to Vietnam. They were regarded as more tactical missile, not one that was protecting the United States. And we studied actually both.

Evan: So, this is in Fort Bliss, Texas,

Dick: Texas, right.

Evan: You went there for basic training and for schooling?

Dick: Yeah, I went there for basic training and then all the schooling was there, so I went right out of basic training with the typical master sergeant and all the stuff that you go through as a junior officer and all the work in the field and the night maneuvers and all of that. And then I matriculated right over into a couple months, maybe more, almost three months, of missile training. And I was actually specifically trained on Herc missiles to be a battery commander for a Hercules site. Actually I was slated to go to Germany, at a missile site in Germany and that's what I took all the training for.

Evan: Do you remember or can you speak on, I mean this is such an iconic kind of experience for military service members, going to basic training, what was that like for you?

Dick: Yeah, well, I mean it wasn't that I wasn't physical, I played basketball with the guys and I was in pretty good shape, but it really 16:00taxed me. I mean it's typical basic training. We were out day and night, up at 6:30 and push-ups and then chin-ups before you got into the canteen to eat and then we were working on maneuvers and night maneuvers and often to the woods for three and four days at a time and simulated battle situations. A lot of all the stuff about keeping all your gear clean and stacked properly, you know all that stuff from your military experience. And the guys, you know the master sergeants are pretty tough on you, they know in a few months you're gonna be coming back as an officer and they're gonna have to salute you, so they're having their way with you because you know, it's their time and their time to toughen us all up. So that was hard. It was good, I mean we were all going through the same thing, it was tough. I don't think anybody dropped out at that point in time. We all spent four years in officer training at the university, but of course this was very 17:00different. This was very concentrated and we got some extremely good leadership training, trying to manage units in the field, that kind of thing. And then we matriculated over into the high tech training, which was really extremely difficult training, because we had to learn all the radars, so we learned all the positions at a missile site, so we had to learn all the radar. We had very big activities in the desert in those days, that's why it was in El Paso, because we could actually shoot drone airplanes out of the air with missiles. So we had drones there that were being towed by the planes and then separated and then gliders up there. And we were taking them out of the air. So you had all this experience on radar, but then the real training came when you were in the site. Because in the site, you're sitting with loaded Nike Hercules missiles. And so all the training that goes into the testing of that site, make sure there's no stray electricity, and 18:00the way you connect and disconnect everything as you get these missiles ready, it's really quite dangerous if you do some wrong things and you get electric current going through the connector devices, you can fire off one of these things in a down position in an underground missile site, which would not be too good for the city that it's protecting. That's another story I'll tell you about later because I was in charge of something called Operation Understanding, when I later got my assignment as a press officer and that Operation Understanding were biweekly trips of politicians from all over the United States and European politicians that came for the better part of a week of orientation about what these missile sites were, what the tactical way they would be used and particularly the safety issues about the sites because all these sites were ringing their cities. So it was kind of an interesting program. I didn't know later I would be part of. 19:00But anyway, so that part of the training was really technical and very interesting because there was no room for mistakes when you're dealing with a live missile site.

Evan: And that's a combination of classroom textbook kind of studying nine to five and also some field.

Dick: And in the field, lot of field stuff, in the field, in the trailers with SSR radars and down in the sites as the guys perform the regular maintenance, as we bring a missile up to get ready, all that stuff was obviously, on site.

Evan: So you go through this training on the Hercules missile system and then this is '67, right now?

Dick: Yeah it was, early '67. I graduated of course in June of '66, then I'm off for training right after the graduation ceremony and I'm 20:00spending really the end of 1966 in all this training. And then I go on active duty after all this training in '67 and '68, right.

Evan: Okay, and did you get to go home at any time during this?

Dick: Yeah, you get to go home, I did, I did go home before I went on to my active duty assignment.

Evan: And your initial experience, is this how you envisioned the military? I mean it's always kind of a uncertainty, right--

Dick: Well of course, before we talked, I don't know if you want me to tell that part of the story, but of course I didn't get to do anything that I had planned to do with my training, which was really kind of a shock to me. So that was different, but no, I think it was everything that I had thought. I think the missile training was more technical than I had imagined, for someone like myself, that wasn't involved in the sciences, it was a stretch. I mean I had to work a lot harder because I had never really studied that kind of stuff before. 21:00The stuff at the site was really hands-on and it really taught me how to be really thinking ahead and cautious about everything we do and the kind of training people have and supervision, that kind of thing. But no, I think it was what I thought but then of course as I told you, whenever you wanna talk about that, I didn't get a chance to do it after all that training.

Evan: Yeah, well we can get into that. So you're training to be a missile officer for these defensive missile shields that surround cities and then you get assigned to a permanent duty station?

Dick: Permanent duty station, well, I was offered it, I didn't have to take it, actually the way it worked, as I had mentioned to you, the press officer there was actually killed on an assignment in Vietnam. And of course, I didn't know that, but apparently they popped my card out of the IBM computer and it said that I was the only junior officer, second lieutenant, coming out of missile training, this is a missile post, that had English and journalism. And I got a call from a guy by the name of Colonel Schultz who was the chief of staff there. 22:00And he said we want you to come down and have a discussion with General Underwood. Well, I had never met General Underwood, he was the two star running the post there. I later found out that as the PR press officer, I became his press officer for press events and stuff, I didn't know any of that, of course. And I went down there and got interviewed by the chief of staff and by the general and they said listen, you're on orders to go to Germany, you've just gone through three, four months of missile training, so the Army's not crazy. We will send you on that assignment, because I know that's what your thinking of. I wasn't married yet, didn't have a family or anything, so he said, but I could really use your help. And of course that to me, was the magic word. To have a general say, "I could use your help." So everything kind of lit up, right, I'm some junior, second lieutenant. And so he said, "We could really use your help "in this press job." 23:00And I really didn't know what a PIO did, or press office. So I said, "Sounds interesting to me, "it's kinda my training." He said, "Well I'll send you down to meet the Colonel "who's head of the press office there "and you can see what he thinks about it "and whether you think this is gonna be good for you." And his associate is Major Babick and you would actually work for her. So, I went down to the press office and I got interviewed by them. It's funny because I had not, at that point, run into a female officer in the military and Colonel Babick, I'm sorry, she became a colonel, she was a major when I met her, but I walked into the office and I remember, she tapped me on the shoulder and turned me around and I saluted and I looked at her. And she said, "Do you know what I am?" And I said, "Well I think you're a nurse." And I looked at her shoulders and I saw these major leafs and I said, "No, you're not a nurse, are you?" She said, "No, I'm Major, you're gonna actually "work for me if you take this job." She said, "I think it'd be fun if you worked for me." But anyway, they were 24:00delightful people and as I told you, I ended up managing reporters and photographers and we had a couple newspapers there, we had a Spanish-speaking newspaper, 'cause we were right on the border of Juarez. A lot of the military people there were Hispanics. And we had an English-based paper for the post. And then we had two other programs, one was called the Hometown News Program, that I created when I was there under their direction. I actually got the Army Commendation Medal for that program. It was a news program for all these hundreds and thousands of recruits that were coming through to go to Vietnam. We would do stories on them and send them back to their hometown newspapers, that's why it was called the Hometown Newspaper, the program. And then I was involved in this Operation Understanding, which was really political, very political. I had no idea that I would be involved in something because I was kind of responsible for these groups of politicians when they came into the post. So, yeah, I was running reporters and we had news programs, and we had this political 25:00program, so that's what I did for the two years that I was there from 1966 through 1968.

Evan: Couple questions I have on it, that was all wonderful information, Did you find, I mean was there a tension on you, was there an expectation at a time when the Vietnam War is escalating and you get lots more news footage coming back in the war, I don't know if you, the sentiment in the nation might be souring toward the Vietnam War and yet you were in a public relations kind of office.

Dick: Yeah, well, to your point, it was absolutely an issue. I mean the reason we did that political thing was to soften up certainly, these politician are facing exactly what you said back home. Now there's a double duty here because they're also having to explain to their 26:00constituents why they've got missile sites. Some people may not have even realized that, you know, outside of a major city in the United States was a Hercules missile. But those that did, these guys had to be the voice of reason with the people and then of course, they're also dealing with this issue of the tension because of the Vietnam War. For me, that manifested itself in the local news media in El Paso, because the minute we would have something go wrong at the post, we were flocked with news people that were looking for the seedy side of what had happened, if it was wrong. We did have a series of events. We had some young men that were killed in a bus overturn on the way to a military exercise and they were all young people. And so we had to set up a special news camp out there and I even had the opportunity to talk to some parents that called in, were trying to find out if it was their son that was killed in this accident. And so the news media 27:00was interestingly to deal with. We'd have, you know the post that was tens of thousands of people at that point. It's still one of the really big posts in the United States. With tens of thousands of people there, it's a regular city, so just like any city you have problems. We had people in that were in the brig and people that were not doing what we wanted them to do, picked up by the military police, so all of that used to receive a lot of extra supervision from the media because there already was this tension because of the Vietnam War. And we were one of the big training centers. And I was responsible for media relations, so even though it was an open post from the standpoint, the media couldn't get in to do what they wanted to do unless they were accompanied by a PIO, or somebody from the press office, myself or one of the guys that worked for me. It was, that was interesting time because I learned a lot about media 28:00relationships, about having good relationships with these media when they needed stories, we took them out on some really interesting stories with the politicians when we took planes out of the air, very visual, that kind of stuff. And if you did a lot of work for them when they needed you, when you needed their help, like okay guys, we've got a riot going on at the stockade, but I can't really report that to you right now, because we haven't brought it down yet. I don't know the situation there yet. I can not let you go there and take pictures of this. When we settle it down, when it is, I'll give you full disclosure. So you kinda had to call in some favors of the media, so that they wouldn't blow this up until they had the full story. So, yeah, I never thought of it that way, but there was a lot of tension during that time. It would have been the really peak years of a lot of the dissonance and a little after that is when the Kent State thing 29:00happened. So you know that whole situation.

Evan: And especially for a second lieutenant at the time, you would have had a point person, right? The liaison between--

Dick: Right, so I was with the media in there, right. And then if it really got heavy-duty then I would bring the colonel in who was the head of the office, or the major or that kind of thing. But I was the daily person working with them with the stories, getting them placed in the local papers. I had reporters that worked for me, so we had regular contacts with the El Paso papers and the local TV stations, all the regular stuff. I mean we were a major part, we were the biggest business in the city and also right on the border of Mexico. In those days, it was interesting, because at the Veterans Luncheon, I had a Hispanic master sergeant sitting there and he was from El Paso. So we were talking and he said, "You know you can't go to El Paso anymore." I said, "What do you mean you can't?" That was a major trip for me with these politicians. We would just go across the El Paso, just go into the center of El Paso and walk across the bridge into Juarez and 30:00I started mentioning some of the places I used to go to, and he said they're all still there, but military personnel are outlawed from going into Mexico because of the problems that existed in Mexico fairly recently, over the last several years and some of the killings and the gangs. El Paso became a pretty tough area. So not that you could go there, or I could go there today, and if we decided we wanted to go to the El Camino Real, which is a beautiful hotel there, you and I could do that, but not if we're military.

Evan: By whose order on that, that's interesting--

Dick: That was, yeah it was the military, it was the military, it was the military's order, he said, right now. And it's in place right now. I mean, El Paso is one of the big centers for retired military in the United States because you have this beautiful post there with all the PXs and multiple shows and multiple officer's clubs, so it has become a big retirement area. It's also beautiful weather, but if you're active duty military, you're not going into Mexico.

Evan: Did you find this to be an enjoyable job? It was completely different training than what you had.

Dick: It was wonderful, I didn't realize how much I was going to enjoy it and then later on, we'll talk, it had a strong effect on what happened to me later in life, about the jobs that I got later, that I didn't plan. It was a wonderful assignment, but it came to the end of my two years and then I was faced with a decision. By then I had been made first Lieutenant, of course, in my second year. And then I still remember having this conversation with the colonel and the chief of staff, they showed me a set of papers that were promotion to captain, but had a little place called Saigon on the papers. So in order to get the captain's bars, I would have gone to Saigon. Now, by that time, I had been sent off to DINFOS the Defense Information Systems school and they had changed my MOS from missile officer to PR to public PIO, 32:00'cause that's where I'd been working in and I was trained for that and so I became a professional 'cause I went to the defense department's school. And I would have been a press officer, the guy that got killed, I remembered that, in Vietnam, but I would have been a press officer. But at that point, I said that I would rather take the Reserve route and that was five years, but then it turned into 10 years, so I actually had 10 years in the Reserves. But I would rather take the Reserve route because I had been already throwing out interests and I had a position to go back and be a teacher, a high school teacher, back in Parma, where I grew up. And that's what I had really wanted to do and I thought well, I had served my country and I'll serve five more years in the Reserves, that'll be fine, but I'll get to go back and 33:00do what I thought I wanted to do. They understood that and so I had a decision to make. It was not, you know a captain is a captain, it would have been, and I was already in the field that I was doing, it was pretty dicey over in Vietnam, and then I realized that also. But I really wanted to be a teacher, so I thought I'll do the Reserve thing. And so I made the decision and I got out after two years.

Evan: Okay, you said they had no problem with that, there wasn't a terrible amount of pressure?

Dick: No, no, they said it's up to you. You know, you've done a great job here, you received the Army Commendation Medal, we've been very, very happy with your work, we're glad to promote you to captain, after two years, which is pretty good in the military, but that assignment is over on active duty in a military zone.

Evan: Did you think if you had gone that way, is that a career then? Would that--

Dick: You know, I don't know, who knows, life choices, right? I probably, if I had gone there, and now had been a captain and spent another two to three years over in Vietnam, coming back now I'd have five years, probably would have been a decision for me to make. It would have 34:00been a different kind of a decision because then I would have been on a track after several years, if everything went well to be a major and 20 years in the military as an officer and then the option to retire is a pretty good career. And I love the military. I thought it was a really good activity. I thought that the training was good. I thought that the organization was well understood. And everything was pretty good. I didn't realize that later on when I went to a big corporation if I looked at the organization chart of a large corporation which I did, AT&T was the biggest in the country at that time. Their organization chart looked like a military chart. I mean I could have matched it, everything from lieutenants to first, second levels to captains that ran the organization and they were district levels in the business and I could just go up this hierarchical tree. It looked like a military, so it was good. I may of stayed in, I don't know 35:00what would have happened.

Evan: So you go back to Ohio, where you're from, and you start teaching there?

Dick: Yes, well, that's what I thought, but as I told you, things don't work out that way. About a month before I returned to Ohio, I received a call from the superintendent, a guy by the name of Oppenlander, and I don't know that, I mean 'cause I was actually hired by one of the principals of the high school and one of the department heads for Social Studies and English and Journalism. But I got this call from Stewart Oppenlander and he told me he was the superintendent of the school system. It was a very big school system, it had three high schools, of 3,000 kids each, about seven or eight middle schools, 21 elementary schools. And he said, "Listen, our Board of Education "just approved a full-time position "for public relations at the school system "and you're doing exactly the job "that we need, your training at 36:00the university "was exactly the training we need." And he said, "Could I interest you." And he said those magic words, "I could use your help." And I heard that again, from the superintendent. And he said, "You'd be working full-time "so you'd get a 25% pay bump because you're working "summers, but we'd like you to set up "our public relation office, do all of our publications, "do all of our media relations "with the local media here and also open up, "which we don't have, media relations "with the TV stations and radio stations in Cleveland." That's what I was doing, right. And I said, well yeah, sure, I'll do that. So I went there and instead of, I said, "well can I still teach sometime?" He said, "Yeah if you do this assignment "for two, three years and you still wanna teach, "then we'll put you in one of the schools." And I said okay. So I went back and I did that for two years. I did all their publications, did my own photography, did 37:00brochures and stories on what was going on in the school system. We won a national award for an educational publication that I created. So we did that, it was like being back in the military without the military. And I was doing all the same kinds of things back home in Parma, Ohio.

Evan: Were you in the Reserves at this time or--

Dick: I was in the Reserves, right, 'cause I had a five year commitment and then I extended that to five more years.

Evan: And at the time, what was that like? Was that one weekend a month?

Dick: Yeah, and then you went away summers. That was really interesting because the unit they put me into, based on my experience was a PSYOPS warfare unit, that was out of Fort Benjamin Harrison in Pennsylvania. I was going to a unit whose business was psychological warfare and writing and all that kind of stuff that goes on, broadcasts that you broadcast to the troops and all that. So that's what I really did.

Evan: Was the National Guard different at that time, the Reserve kind of element, that force, in terms of obviously the more recent wars with a heavy reliance on the National Guard, was that similar in Vietnam or not?

Dick: No, no it wasn't, I mean none of these guys, everybody that was there, none of the units that I was associated with, and I would mix with other units when we'd go away in the summertime, to my knowledge, at least during the times that I was there, I don't remember any of those units being called up other than a local disaster. But no, it wasn't the same situation at all.

Evan: Was there a lot of gentlemen like yourself, who had been active and then continued that?

Dick: Most, most were that way. Yeah, we were just finishing out our service and doing it in the National Guard. Most people left, if they had an officer, he had a commitment for five years. I'm not sure what the commitment was for enlisted persons, but for me it was five years after my two years active duty. Most people left after their time, I decided to stay on for another five years.

Evan: For a total of 12 years.

Dick: 12, yeah, two active and 10, 10 reserves.

Evan: So that would have been, I'm trying to do the math. You got out in '70--

Dick: So yeah, I got out in 1968, so '66 through '68, so 12 years on top of '68. And that, so '68, '70, that'd been 1980. Now you may ask, well, why after 12 years, I mean, if I thought about it, yeah you could stay another eight in the Reserves, then I would have had 20 years, well that comes back later to my assignment because I went overseas in 1980. I took an overseas assignment and I never came back to the United States for 15 years. So I couldn't be in the Reserves and take this overseas assignment and I elected to take the overseas assignment and I got out of the Reserves, 'cause I was coming to the end of my five years.

Evan: So yeah, I want to try to talk through that.

Dick: The link, yeah.

Evan: You were kind of PR--

Dick: PR for two years for the whole school system, right.

Evan: For two years you said?

Dick: Two years.

Evan: And at that time you thought you were gonna be there for awhile.

Dick: I was gonna be there for the rest of my career. And then, well, it's all an interesting story, right? This is always looking back, so now it's 1970 and just about 1970, the end of 1969, and there was a dispute that developed between the teachers and the parents over a bond issue that had failed. You probably don't know this history, but teachers, of course at that time, were public employees, it was illegal to strike, so you go to jail. A few months prior to that, in 1969, there was the first strike of teachers in the United States and it was in New York City, a guy by the name of Albert Shanker, took out the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, now this was not the NEA, but he 41:00took them on the streets. And nobody had ever seen that before, big news, right. But everybody said, okay, it's New York, you know everything happens in New York. So here we are several months later and here we are in Cleveland, Ohio, in the middle of the Midwest, and here's this local school system and hundreds of teachers pour out of the school system and the parents are outside picketing the school board and I'm the PR guy, right. And news media came from everywhere, because it was a big story. Why would a school system now follow the New Yorkers and why was this dispute going on. So I was out there with the news media and of course, I was talking to all the local media. It was a big story. And the superintendent wouldn't actually be interviewed about it and the guy that was head of the union's there wouldn't go on TV either, but I was the PR guy and I kinda knew both sides, I knew all the people involved. I ended up going on the talk shows and doing news clips in Cleveland on the news stations about this whole thing, because I was the PR guy, so it was really my job, 42:00right. And so we're in the middle of all this and I'm doing this news stuff and all these news media are there and my phone rings at home. And it was an officer, a guy by the name, I won't mention his name right now, but it was a guy, an officer of AT&T. And he called me up and he said, "You don't know who I am," he said, "but I'm so-and-so "and I'm the head of public relations for AT&T." And he said, "We saw you on TV in all that controversy "going on in your school system and we've talked "to the news media people there and they think "that you're a good guy to work with." And he said, "We need a PR guy in Cleveland." And he said, "Would you consider going into business?" And I said, "Business?" I said, now I was a missile officer and I never took it, I said I've never taken a business course in my life! And he said, "That's not a problem." He said, "You were an officer in the military." This is where it comes back. He said, "You were an officer in the military." And he said, "We know that officers get excellent training. "You were managing people in the military "and you had a great 43:00assignment in the military, "you were doing exactly what we want you to do in business, "now you're doing that at the school system." And he said, "So you're not a kid, I mean you've "been out of school five years now." I'm 25, 26 years old. And he said, "We need a PR guy there "and you already got the relations in Cleveland." I said, yeah, the only trouble is that I always wanted to be a teacher and they've promised me in another year I can go into being a teacher. He said well I understand that, he said, but I think we can offer you a very interesting career. And he said to me then, "What are you making at the school system?" And I told him. And he said, "If I told you I could double that "if you came to work in business, would you consider that?" I said, "Where do you want me to show up, right." And so a month later, I was working for AT&T. But I didn't, that's the part of the story, but I didn't work in PR because they decided that I should 44:00go into a special management program. It was called IMDP, Initial Management Development. We could spend the rest of the tape on that, but it's a high risk, high reward program for people that were older, coming from industry, but it was very high risk program. High risk because there were 52 people, it was a two year program, we lost half the people in the program. And they were already highly selected. But it was a program where they moved you every time you got comfortable. Every two or three months they moved you in a different assignment. So I managed operators, I managed rate and route. I managed outside plant guys on the polls. I managed engineering groups. I managed operations systems group. I managed an HR group and then I finally got into the sales which is where I ended up. It was a wild program and your bosses were evaluating you all the time and every month you would go out and meet with your other peers and talk about whether or not 45:00the experience you were having was a good experience and what was your boss like. And then every month, all the bosses went out of these 52 people and talked about how we were doing. And gradually people left, because a lot of people get into an assignment and they've always thought they wanted to do one thing and they get in and that's what they want to do. Well, you can see by my career, I've been bouncing around a little. So bouncing around was no big deal to me. But it was a big deal to a lot of people. Once they found something they really liked to do, in this program, as soon as you did, they moved you. And a lot of people didn't like it.

Evan: Did you know that going into the program? Was it a lucrative offer or something exciting that was appealing to you?

Dick: It was exciting because you would get promoted earlier. It was a high risk, high promotion, so you would move along quicker in the company, which I did, but you had to go through this risk portion and have all these, you were in a fishbowl all the time. Well, I was in a fishbowl when I was an officer trying to learn all these missiles, so it wasn't a big problem for me. But I like new things, so I wasn't 46:00bothered by it, but a lot of my peers were bothered by it. I didn't know later that that would be one of the reasons I got this international job, but because I had been through so many different assignments in the company. But it was great. So again, but you know, here it was again, this vice president who later became the head of all HR and public relations for AT&T, he said to me, right out of the box, you know you were a military officer. And we're interested in that and I was doing exactly the job he wanted, so I understood that. The funny thing about this story, as you look back, and you say okay, if I didn't need the money and the war wasn't on, I probably wouldn't have gone into ROTC, but I did. If I hadn't gone into ROTC, I wouldn't have been trained in Texas. If hadn't been trained in Texas, if that guy hadn't got killed, I wouldn't have got the PIO job. If I hadn't got the PIO job there, public information job there, 47:00they wouldn't have called me for the public information job at the school system. If I hadn't been there when they went on strike, I wouldn't have been on TV and I wouldn't have got the call from business and 25 years later, I was still with AT&T.

Evan: How long was that program, the program, the high risk program--

Dick: It was two years, two years.

Evan: So you do this for two years and we're in the early '70s now.

Dick: Yeah, so we're in the early 70s, right. And then I went through a series of assignments in Ohio, in Akron, Denver, Atlanta, and Painesville, Ohio, and I spent 10 years in Ohio Bell, before I eventually got into the international work and went overseas in 1980.

Evan: Where did you go over there?

Dick: I went to Dublin, Ireland. I opened up an office there and we did several consulting projects there in Dublin, Ireland and then I moved on to Rome, Italy. And I sold a big project in Rome and I was there for two years in Rome. And then I moved to Australia, sold a even 48:00bigger project in Melbourne, two years in Melbourne and then I moved to Sidney and set up a sales office in Sidney, Australia. Then I sold a couple projects in New Zealand and I moved to Wellington, New Zealand for a year. That's where I met my wife. And then I came back to Rome, now as the head of what was called AT&TI, AT&T International in Italy and in Greece. I had an office in Athens and Rome. I was there three years, we bought a company in Italy and ended up with a big joint venture there. And then I moved to Asia and I ran all of Asia out of Hong Kong for five years. And we opened up 15 countries in Asia. And then I thought I was on my way home, and they sent me to Amsterdam and I lived two years in Amsterdam and I was actually managing the Middle East and Eastern Europe and also Africa, out of Europe. 49:00That was kind of a crazy thing, but I was never there. And so at the end of those 15 years, that made my 25 years and that's when I retired and ended up here at Lehigh.

Evan: That is a whirlwind, that's--

Dick: That was wild, absolute wildest time.

Evan: Was this stuff that you kinda think that how that process works in the business sector, do you get choices on this, was it exciting to you--

Dick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, well it is and it isn't. The big assignment came after we bought this company in Italy and then I became the Vice President of International. And it's another interesting story, in life I've always tried to tell my students, this part of the story is that sometimes you come to a position in life and you have to make a decision whether this is right. It was wonderful, Vice President of the World, right. My mother was happy, my wife thought this was great. But it was too big a job and I went to the officers, 50:00Bob Allen was the chairman then, and Bill Marks and some people and I said, "Listen, I can't do what you want me to do for the world. "We're gonna open up the world for AT&T." Now you have to understand what happened. In 1984, the government broke up AT&T, so we were the only company here in the United States. And so we were given from 1980 to 1984 to kind of find markets overseas before the government cut the whole company apart and I was part of that process. That's why I went to Ireland in 1980. But anyway, we were on a move to open up markets all over the world because we were losing our market share in the United States, government mandated. MCI came into business and things like Sprint and all, they didn't even exist. T-Mobile wasn't even existing, Verizon wasn't Verizon, it was one of our companies before. But anyway, so all of that gets broken up and we're over there opening up all new markets, so that was my job and I said 51:00listen, I can't do this job the way you want me to do it, you're gonna need some other vice president. We're gonna have to break up the world in regions, decide what are the key countries. And they said, okay, that's the job you got. So for five or six months, I sat with a team and we broke up the world. We looked at key markets for our products, distinguished where we were gonna go in the world and then I got, because I did that, they gave me my choice, so I had the chance to choose Asia, which was the biggest growing market in the world, as it is today. I mean it was the same when I went there in 1990 through '94, it was still the growingest market of all of the world and it still is today, right now. So that's why I moved to Hong Kong. So I had some choice there. The Amsterdam one, I didn't have any choice about. I thought I was coming home but we had just bought the Dutch company over there and there were no Americans in the headquarters of AT&T for Europe at that point and at that level. And so they said we need some Americans over there. They probably wanted me to look 52:00after these Dutch, and Russians, and Germans that were all in charge of the company over there. So I ended up over there in Amsterdam.

Evan: And after, Amsterdam your last--

Dick: Last assignment, yeah, and so in 1996, I retired. There was a special package offered to Vice Presidents with 25 years and so I got a full retirement from AT&T at a young age, to leave. That was part of the enticement, golden handshake, the whole deal, so there was a lot of us that decided, well, we'll try something else in our lives, in our 50s. And I always wanted to be a teacher, so here you go. So I came back out, I did a brochure, sent it out to some universities about all these, I had been writing international business courses all through my career, ideas I put in outlines together and I took about five months off, stayed in Amsterdam, while my wife, who was also an 53:00AT&T employee, finished her assignment. They let us stay in the house that I had there. And I wrote up all these curriculums, so I eventually sent those out to a bunch of universities and I didn't hear from Lehigh. I actually got a job to teach in the MBA school in New York at the CUNY, at the Zicklin School of Business and also I got a chance to teach, I taught three years in executive programs every couple of months, out in Long Island University. So I was teaching, but I was traveling to New York and traveling to Long Island. And then about six months after I was doing that, I got this call from here to come out and meet Lee Iacocca and I did. And they asked me to be the main teacher in this new Global Village program they were thinking of starting, so that was 20 years ago, 1997. And I came out here and started teaching, then I ended up doing some teaching in the business school, 'cause in those days, for half of my career out here, I reported to the Dean of Business, not to the Provost. The other half was either to the Provost or now, to the head of International, but in 54:00those days, it was the Dean of Business. And so I taught in the business school, as I still do, but yeah, I had to eventually let go of those assignments in New York, because I became full-time out here and I couldn't be traveling to New York and Long Island and teaching out here. But yeah, that was 20 years ago. I ended up being a teacher in the end of my career.

Evan: Is it up to what you thought it was gonna be like? Because you said you wanted to along your life and then--

Dick: Yeah, it was, it was, it really was. It was everything I always, and of course, the program I was running was an international program so I was teaching international young business people and they were from all over the world, so all my work in other countries, in other regions, I had developed into presentations. So it was absolutely a perfect match for me.

Evan: And did your military training help you in the classroom? I obviously see how it helped you within the business community and the 55:00leadership skills and then of course the training within the PR--

Dick: Yeah, I mean all that helped me a great deal, from a standpoint of presentation skills and being able to feel comfortable publicly. I'd always wanted to be a teacher. I think, certainly I don't think the military training led that directly into the classroom. I mean, in the military, as you know, as a military officer, we would have to give sessions, so you were always in front of people. In the business, because I was in sales almost my whole career, I was always giving presentations and what I decided to do, I decided no matter where I was posted, I would do some teaching, because people were interested in where this whole telecom thing was going, so I had an avenue. And when I was even, in the last couple years I was in Europe, I was teaching for Loyola University in Amsterdam. So I was always doing that, but I never had a formal job as a teacher. But everything led, you know, one thing led, I think the military training, as an officer, managing 56:00people, feeling comfortable in front of a unit, obviously that helped me get that job in AT&T. That was one of the reasons they looked at me, 'cause I was a military officer. It was very clear, it was right up front from the head guy. And even though I was doing the job he wanted, he said this is something we're interested in. He said that's why we're gonna put you in this special, otherwise I just would have gone in and been a PR guy, that'd been fine. But instead he said, now we're gonna put you in this special management program if you're willing to do it. It's voluntary because it's high risk. But I figured, what the heck.

Evan: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, that's just fascinating. I think as you were telling your story, I'm thinking of a sentiment that you continually referred to is that they asked for help.

Dick: They asked for help.

Evan: That's something that's unique to teaching and unique to the military, as well. That speaks to something in your character that to be in front of the classroom, you have to wanna help people.

Dick: You wanna have to want to be helping people and you have to want to be wanted in the assignment. When they called me to come out here 57:00and I met Lee Iacocca, was one of the icons. I didn't expect that to happen, 'cause Roger Nagle was the head of the institute. Peter Likins was the one that had my brochures, so that was where the first call came from, was the President here. But I didn't know any of these people, then I sat down with Iacocca and he really, really questioned me about my experience. And when he saw what I was doing and we talked about international business and the difficulty of dealing with different cultures and negotiating and different cultures and the different ethical environment. You can imagine ethical environments in the Middle East at that time, some of the places in Africa, completely tough, tough and corrupt governments and all that. And we had a lot of discussion about that and he said, that's just the kind of training that I want infused in this leadership program that we're gonna create here. So, you know it was a natural match. I didn't know 58:00it at the time, but after talking to him, he said, I want that. And he's the real decision-maker so he said, we want you here, so that's how it happened. It was only part-time at that point, but after the program ended, then they asked me to come back and do some teaching in the business school and then it became full-time. And then I took over the Institute.

Evan: For approximately 20 years--

Dick: 20 years, I was here, right, yeah, I took over the Institute in 1999, so first year I was just a teacher, second year I ran the program, and then the third year, 1999, I took over the Institute and so I had a 20 year career here.

Evan: Maybe one or two more questions. I'm just curious, the training, it has a clear trajectory from the military to your various careers, did you keep involved with the military community as you moved through civilian life?

Dick: Did not, did not, other than my wife was born on the 4th of July, so she's an absolute flag-waver, so we're always at every on Veterans Day and the military, all those kind of things, we go somewhere to a parade and we always go to the Monument in Flemington there 59:00for that service. But, no, I didn't. After I came out of the 12 years, I did not.

Evan: I think that's kind of wrapped up the interview. Is there anything that we haven't touched upon that you would like to share or any final words on your service or your life?

Dick: I just in summary, I would always recommend to any young person, men and women, because the service has become very open to women these days, to take a look at the military service. I think it's an excellent career. It's excellent training. These days it has a certain context because of the smaller military, the voluntary military where we are in the world, where you've been, but I still think the military, and I've always said to anybody if they've asked me about it, I have absolutely no negativism about my time in the military. It 60:00was great training. It gave me really good training, even all that missile training taught me some things that I had never been into before, that I could do stuff that I had never been trained for, or that I taught was above my ceiling level. If you stretch yourself and the military does stretch you, I thought it was excellent. So I would always recommend to people as a consideration, if they're giving it a consideration, that they should because it was a great help to me in my career, as we talked.

Evan: Well, thank you so much, Dick. I really appreciate you coming in and sharing your story and I think it's a fascinating life you've had and I think people who get to watch this video will get the--

Dick: Yeah, I know you're gonna cut only certain sections out of it, but yeah, I mean who knows? Hopefully they see something in there,