From Paper Routes To Sea Routes (Bill Atkinson)

A life can look ordinary on paper and still be packed with turning points you only hear when someone tells the story out loud. We talk with William “Bill” Atkinson, a longtime Lansing, Michigan resident and United States Navy Reserve veteran, about growing up near General Motors, watching neighborhoods vanish as I-496 is built, and learning grit the old-fashioned way on a newspaper route. He’s honest about school being rough and why he believes you do not truly learn until you are ready, a theme that reshapes everything that comes next. 

Bill takes us inside a decades-long career at Michigan State University where he works his way through the printing trade, from type and press rooms to coordinating jobs across campus and eventually purchasing printing and materials. Along the way we get a clear picture of how printing technology changes, why local print shops disappear, and how someone without a college degree can still become the person everyone relies on when accuracy, budgets, and deadlines matter. 

Then the conversation goes to sea. Bill shares what it’s like to serve aboard the USS Tripoli, make repeated Atlantic crossings, stand watch on the bridge, and log high-pressure moments including a grounding near Bremenhaven and a sudden turnaround tied to the Beirut crisis in 1958. We also talk about coming home, building a 67-year marriage, serving through church and multiple 501(c)(3) boards, and staying curious through genealogy and military history, including Arlington National Cemetery questions that surprise almost everyone. 

If you enjoy veteran stories, Navy history, leadership lessons, and real-life career paths, you’ll want to hear this one. Subscribe, share it with someone who loves history, and leave us a review, then reply to this question: what’s one skill you learned later in life that changed everything?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Today is Friday, April 17th, 2026. We're talking with William Bill Atkinson, who served in the United States Navy Reserve. So good morning, Bill. Good morning. Thank you for having me at your house today. Thank you. All right. We'll start out with the first question, and that is when and where were you born?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I was born in 1938 in Lansing, Michigan.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Now, did you live in Lansing?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

I lived in Lansing up until 1970. Oh. Unfortunately, pretty much every house I lived in is now torn down. But uh progress is is available there. I lived in the area of uh General Motors. The reason for there is that uh uh all the way up till the time my dad retired, he worked at Oldsmobile, he wanted to be able to walk to work. So we always lived into that in that neighborhood. Uh-huh uh the corner of at that time was St. Joe and Birch. Yeah. It is no longer called St. Joe and Birch, it's St. Joel and they tore the house out to build 496. So I lived in that development area.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Okay. A lot of houses uh went away when they put 496.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

They made a documentary on that, and and uh it was war they even moved the dirt. And I kind of disagree with some of that, but then again, uh in order to get the grant ward, I know I know the reasons for it. Uh I peddled newspapers in that area. Uh at one time when I was in high school, I pedaled the largest state general route in the city, Lancing 158 customers. Today there's only three houses left. Gotcha in that area. And that's because of the highway and General Motors. Right. They they took out that. Right. And uh I'm I give that well when I got into high school, I ended up delivering a free press route also. And the journal found out about it and says you can't do both.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Pick one or the other, huh?

School Struggles And Learning Readiness

SPEAKER_00 2:34

One was morning, one was afternoon. Worked very well for me. So I picked the free press route, mainly because most of them were paying at the office and I didn't have to collect. Yeah. And that was in the vicinity of Sexton High School, which was basically a better neighborhood. Uh I went from practice uh the general route as a uh carrier for our yoles. Uh when I moved up into the uh the Heatherwood area up around Eastern or Sexton, I uh I peddled the mayor. And uh I can remember one story. It's second week I was pedaling. I went to the one house that I carried the paper for, and a gentleman comes to the door and I says, collect for the state journal. And he says, Sonny, he says, I don't pay for the journal. Come to find out he was managing editor of the state journal. And I well, I pedal a paper there. I figured he owed me money. Right. Uh yeah, other just kind of some interesting stories there, but yeah, get to meet a lot of neat people that way too. Yeah. So now where did you go to school? Uh I went to Main Street school. Well, I started out at Lincoln.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And at the time I left Lincoln, I think I was only the there was only three white boys or white children at that school. I went to Main Street, and uh, that's that building is still there. From there to West Junior, from there to Sexton, but I graduated from Sexton and Tech. I graduated out of the tech school, uh, two-year program, but I only went there one year because of the senior year I was on co-op already. Wasn't supposed to be, but I was on co-op, Michigan State University. Worked from Michigan State University for 43 years.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

And told a lot of people I went there 43 years and never graduated. Well, so did you have brothers and sisters growing up? I have one sister and no brothers. Okay. No brothers. A younger sister. Uh she has since passed.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

So Okay. So you were the oldest then? Yes, sir. Yeah. You see, I I had an older sister, and that was a whole different dynamic. But uh yeah, so how how was it growing up though? I mean, you had a it sounds like you had a great childhood. You delivered papers, you uh went to school. How how was it for you?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Um it was good, but you know, I make a comment today. I've a few years ago I ran across my report cards. And I vowed at that time my grandchildren would never see my report cards. Because to this day I don't know how I graduated.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

And uh that that's part of my story is is is you I truly believe you don't educate until you're ready to educate. Right. At that area. And I've I've done things in my life that uh have required professionals to do. And uh, you know, I can say, well, I graduated from high school and uh very proud of that. And the Navy was a big part of that. And there was another organization that was even even more, but the Navy is what sent me to that organization. So uh as we get into the story, I'll tell a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

So you you graduated high school and then you went to work directly for Michigan State University then?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

I worked for the university as a senior in high school.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, as part of your co-op.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Part of my co-op. So uh you're supposed to have gone to high school about four hours or a half a day, and you went to tech school, and like I say, I went out on co-op. Basically, I was still a junior and I was I was out working for the university, and and anything about it at that time, and and my my grandkids, for one, don't believe me. But I says, you know, when I started working for Michigan State Order, I made 50 cents an hour. Uh, but I was driving my own brand new car as a senior in high school. Yeah. So uh I'd worked a number of jobs even before that. I worked in a drugstore, I worked in a salvage yard, and still pedal newspapers. I peddled newspapers up to a senior in high school. Okay. And uh which was very nice because it helped me pedal newspapers. Yeah. You know, I didn't have to ride my bike anymore.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

That's right. That's right. One of the few lucky ones that when I I know when I pedaled newspapers, I peddled them because I peddled them on a bike. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah. Well, I I did that. We had uh a fr a young friend and and he moved into owning his own company in Wisconsin. And we were in the area one day and I called and I said, Carrie, he says, What's that? He says, Who is this? And I said, I won't tell you, but I tell you what. If you pick up for me, I'll pay you a penny of paper. And I used to ride my bike and throw the papers on the porch from the bike. If I make the porch, I paid him to stop, pick it up, put it up on the porch. And there were days that he didn't get any money. And I won't tell you what he told me, but but uh it uh just some of those thoughts still come back to me. Yeah, and there's other thoughts that I do have problems with. And and uh I was going through I kept a cup of log when I was in the service, and I look at those, I I kind of reviewed them last night, and I'm looking at it, I said, you know, those things don't tell me anything. But I I've got some memories that you know were there. And uh it's just like calling Kerry and telling uh and he knew exactly who it was.

unknown 8:05

Right.

MSU Printing Career And Workplace Change

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Right. So so what did you do at uh Michigan State then? That's part of your co-op then.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

The co-op and I'm what the print the the training that I got was in printing at that time. Okay. Lansing Tech had printing. Um there were three from my class that were there, and there were two or three from Eastern. Uh we did basically printing for the school district. If it was formed somebody needed, they went there. We printed there. We had a a large cylinder press which printed uh uh newsletters for uh Eastern and the newsletter for Sexton. Well, Sexton went half a day, and Eastern went the other half a day. When the paper came over, whoever was working it that day got it. So we did uh our chances to sabotage their paper, and they did so. We tried to work it in such a way that we got it there and time enough to get it. So it was printing trade. Uh, went to work for Michigan State University and what they at that time called Memograph Department. Yeah. And I went out there basically in 1955 when they changed the name from college or yeah, from college to university. And my biggest job at that time was setting type for corner cards and letterhead stationery. And uh I worked from there up until uh uh I was promoted into being in the binder. And the binder was a one-person operation at that time. And from there back into the press room, uh, run some small presses. Um they moved and and uh basically moved from the ranks from a small press up to a web press. I was their initial web press operator. Uh, from there to printing coordinator, which I traveled around the university to advise as to, you know, how to do a job or if there was something done wrong, I had to evaluate it, find out what was wrong with it, and make sure that it got fixed. And uh from there I went over to Kellogg Center and managed, they had a print shop over there. At one time there were four or five print shops on campus.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

And went over there and run that up until it consolidated with back to the main shop. And uh when that happened, I was pretty much in line to be managers, but there was because of the move, there was a lawsuit because of discrimination, which held for about two years and was thrown out of court because there was no base to it. But it put me in a position I couldn't supervise because those people were still there and it was a part of the evaluation. Uh, the lawsuit was against myself, my boss, his boss, uh, trustees in the president of Michigan State University. It was a it was a major lawsuit. And uh so they created a job for me. And I went over to purchasing and was a purchasing agent for printing and printing related material only, uh, with a stipulation that I save the university enough money to pay my wage. I did that in a period of about four months. Wow. And uh I did that for 12 years. And this is one of the areas where I think we had, I think we had nine printing agents at that time, and I was the only one, to my knowledge, that did not have a college education. And uh basically when I left they replaced me, but that job is faced out. The printing department is faced out now. Right. The division, which was service division, is no longer. That's how progress has changed. Everything changes, right? Oh, yeah. And I've I've really learned that more in the last year. Uh I uh did have a stroke a year ago, minor stroke, but that's when I started realizing change. And the change is there. And I, you know, and I see it in I see it in everything. I uh uh I'm on the internet and I I found a site which is called Letter Press. And I'm just having a ball of that because I'm seeing machinery I haven't seen in 50 years. And just how that field's changed. Uh when I retired, there was probably about 25 print shops. I think we're down to about six now in Lansing. Right. The field is uh at one time was was a big field, and because of technology, it's pretty much gone.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah. I mean, a lot of people can just do things at home that they would normally have had a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Or or like uh well, the church that I go to uh I bought it, I didn't buy it, the church bought it, but I I mow and ordered it uh 15 years ago and the copier just basically died. We're now using just just an office printer. Yeah. And and doing and doing more than we could have done on the other machine to start with. So and uh but they look at me and what do you know about this? And I'm thinking, you know, I've throw more paper away than you've ever seen. Right, right. And it just change. Yeah. It's just the change.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Well, and I want to reflect on something else too. Like you said, your grades weren't great in school. You're surprised you graduated. Um, you didn't go to college, and yet you uh you held these positions, you saved enough money to justify your your uh your paycheck. Right. That was nothing. So I think really it uh you know the grades don't really determine who the person is.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

No, like I say, you have to be ready to learn. Uh I made a comment here not too long ago, and uh when I graduated, I could ask my class classmates today, and I'm still active with a number of classmates that are still here. Uh when I was in school, what was the last place you would look for me? And they would quite often they would say the library would never see me. Three years ago on Facebook, on my birthday, I received birthday wishes from five librarians, all of them head of their library. I mean, and and this goes, one of them just passed away here last year. It's the state of Michigan head librarian, sent me a birthday wish. A fellow in the the largest genealogy library, public library is Fort Wayne, Indiana. They're their head librarian on that, sent me a wish. Uh the the person in charge of the Houston, Texas library sent me one. And I'm thinking to myself, you would never found me anywhere near the library. Was this good? And my marks. The only good marks I had was printing. And that was my interest.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Because you were good. You were well, it was you were interested and you were good at it.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

The yeah, yeah. I got I got A's in there, had the same teacher for drafting, he almost flunked me. Yeah. You know, it just it was that thing. Uh my life after service will really show you something I think it will really impress you.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

So at what point did you join the service then?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

When did that come into the bigger? Uh-huh. And I figured, you know, when I graduated, I want to get out of the house. So I joined, I think I was a junior in high school. Okay. I had made a grade before I got out of school. In other words, I was a seaman before I got out of school. I I spent two weeks in boot camp. Summer boot camp, two weeks, but I made my grade. Right. Uh when it came time to go in, you know, they said, okay, your your reserve program, your reserve program is that you go to meetings up until the time that six months after you graduate, or there's certain months, I think it was six months, uh, we will you will go active. Active is two years, and then you will be uh go back to meetings for the rest of a six-year obligation. All right. That didn't work with me. Uh when it came time for me to go, I went in uh on, I left Lansing on Thanksgiving morning. They didn't care what it was a holiday. And I and because I did not have to go to boot camp, I had made my grade already, uh, I went to Philadelphia. And in Philadelphia, I was there for three weeks, signed my ship, and that was USS Triple A. I served my full time on the triple A, full-time plus a little bit. And the reason for that is at the time I was supposed to be discharged or separated, at that time separated, uh, we were in the middle of the Atlantic. And there was really no way of getting off. Right. So the minute we got into port, then uh they sent me to Pensacola, which was normally a two-week discharge period. I was out in three days because I was over. But they gave me the option of going to the meetings or being standby reserve. Standby reserve means that you could get a note and you'd be on 24-hour call.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Briggs broke out. I got my call. Uh, just have your bag packed, be ready for 24 hours. Well, that never happened, so I could put my bag back in, but I cut the service time. It's still a six-year obligation. So, you know, I I retired or I got out of service later on. Uh never known what was going to happen in the future. But that was my military service aboard ship. Okay. Uh, all of it was on the trip-ee. The trip-e was a U.S. Navy ship. You want to get into that now?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Oh, absolutely. And then look, then we also want to talk a little bit about what you did there, too.

USS Tripoli Missions And Oddities

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Okay, yeah. Uh the USS Triple E was was a World War II ship, was decommissioned, was recommissioned in the early 50s, but it was recommissioned as a CVU from a CVE to a CVU. CVU is carrying a carrier utility. And they used it quite a bit in in the early years, and at that time that was war years, carrying equipment to various sites. Uh mid-50s or just before I went aboard, they decided they moved removed all the armament. Uh when I went aboard, basically they had a 50 caliber machine gun, two or three M1s, and a half a dozen 45s. The the the all the side arm uh mounts, the I don't even know if they were because they were gone. But uh I do know that the stern had a five-inch mount on it. It was a big gun tub, um, probably about as big as this room, and a little bit smaller, and round, they had the five-inch mount on it. They pulled that. Well, the skipper at that time got the idea, called the boiler tenders up, the welders, and I want a piece of plate plate across the front part of this. And we were the only ship in the US Navy with a swimming pool. Oh. All right. And since then I've been involved with a group and talked with uh talked with the doctor at that time. And he says, about three weeks, he says we had a big influx of swimmers here because of no filtration on it. And so he went to the cabin and says, Captain, you gotta shut that down. And he says, you know, and the engineering officer come up and says, Well, I'm glad you did that. He says, I was afraid to, but he says it changed the integrity of the weight over the fantail because we had all that water in it. Yeah. And he says, that structurally, he says, that wasn't a good idea. So he says, Thanks, Doc, for doing that. Doc became a good friend of mine. Uh-huh. And and uh I just think, yeah, that's part of history. We had a couple two or two or three firsts. But we were the first, and I think to this day, probably the only one that had a swimming pool. And we fronted it because anytime we passed a Navy ship, we were always by ourselves. And because we transported aircraft from the United States over and then the derelict aircraft back to the country and went back. So we were transport. So then they changed the name to a TCVU, which was transport carrier utility. That name never stuck because they never finished it. They decommissioned the ship in 1958. So that part never left. But there were two of them, US Tripoli and the US Cregador. Bam.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah. Oh, all right. One second.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

So so anyway, being by ourselves, uh, the ship had a lot of not what I would call Red Renavy. Uh-huh. Uh officers seemed to be coming out of our ROTC program, with the exception of our bridge officers, which needed that in order for them to get their next grade.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Captain needed it in order to become an admiral. All right. And so forth.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

So it was more of a stepping stone, I think.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

It was a stepping stone. But outside of that, they were reserve. Uh I I think we had a number of them that um, believe it or not, bragged that they had just come out of the brig, or they, you know, uh it was not what I would consider at that time they said black shoe navy. Right? They um we had we had a strange crew, but we had a good crew. And and uh we had, I think, about 180 um run the ship. Um I served one. Trip. Now I'm going to go back a little bit here. I was in a period of 22 months, I made 10 complete crossings over and back of the Atlantic. So we were the you'll notice what the sign says traveling tea.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

The traveling tea is because of the number of miles we travel. But I found out that that traveling tea tag was put on them in the Second World War, and I still haven't figured out why. Oh, really? But uh the first trip that I took, uh, I was in the deck force. And he said, you know, this isn't really what I would like to do. So I'm not I'm starting to mature very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Right. That ain't what I like. Right. The deck the deck force, that that's a special kind of person that does that.

Grounding In Germany And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Well, yeah, and and um, but I learned things. Uh Marlon Spike seniorship. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Uh so I put in, they had an opening in uh the quartermaster for quartermaster, so I put in navigation department. And really, I really enjoyed that. Uh I ended up as a quartermaster, being quartermaster of the watch for every general alarm. If it was just a general alarm, I was quartermaster of the watch. If it was abandoned ship, quartermaster of the watch. If it was fire, quartermaster of the watch. So the minute the first bell rang, I didn't have to hear what it was. I headed for the bridge. My cleaning station was the bridge. I spent probably outside of sleeping that were in my quarters, probably 80% of my time on the bridge. So I was I was with the officers. Yeah. But I kind of like that. I made a lot of coffee. Uh the um, we had some episodes that yeah, a little bit taxing into that area, but we would United States, Europe, United States, Europe, and we'd just back and forth. Now, I put two two yard periods, and one went for 33 or 34 days, the other one went for almost two months. Take that off. Now you got 10 months. So basically I was making one trip a month over and back. It's 17 knots. That's a lot of sea time. That is. And and uh we would pull into a port and we had three sections for liberty. One section would get liberty because we were the one there overnight. And a lot of the ports of call, that's where they were. They have three or four aircraft be unloaded, we're ready to go in the morning, or in the middle of the night. Yeah, but everything had happened. One of the things that did happen is that we went aground in the Wieser River going into Bremenhoven, Germany. I was on, because I was quartermaster of the watch, I was on the logs. We only had five quartermasters. You had more than that in the destroyer. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. And but we were quartermasters signalmen. So we did the whole lot there. And we went aground, and what happened is they decided to drop. The weather conditions were bad. We were in a river condition, but there was an area that we could pull off, still enough water. We dropped an anchor, and wind caught us, we snapped the anchor chain, wind pushed us more. By the time we got the port anchor down, we were ground. And I was on the logs 18 straight hours. And basically that's what I did is I kept the logs, basically the logs. Uh, I had another quartermaster there just to take care of the duties of the of the weather watch, taking care of the weather, uh, making coffee, doing this type of thing, but he was one of the new recruits. So basically he was there. My whole task was there to take notes and put in the log. Um when we they sent six tugs out to get us. Two days later, after three tugs went aground, they decided it wasn't working. And we did have a a uh uh deck third class, no, first class, that devised a way of getting us off. And it basically was as putting all the tugs on one side and then catching us off. But we had to wait till high tide to do it. Right. And uh so because of that, the crew was very happy because they put us in dry dock to examine us for damage, this type, to retrieve our anchors, to put on new anchor chains, get us fit. And that took eight or ten days. Most of that I was confined to the ship because the tap captain was gonna set through a board of inquiry, and he wanted to go through all the notes. Oh, yeah. To go through all the notes on that, he wanted me aboard ship. So finally there's a day come where he's gonna let me go on launch or go on liberty. Went on liberty, a bunch of us here, and we we got in a couple scrapes. You know, we didn't get along with the brains that will. And and ended up in the police station investigated. But anyway, by the time I got back to the ship, I I was AWOL for an hour. The captain left message as soon as Bill comes aboard ship. I want to see him in my stateroom. Two o'clock in the morning, boop, boop, boop, boop. I went in, he asked me one question, I answered the question, and I figured, well, I'm I'm gonna be on report. Never heard a word. Wow. But I was on, I sat in front of that board of inquiry for four hours answering questions. And and uh that was quite an episode, also, set through a formal. Now, the captain was Captain Larson. I've read, I've got a couple books that Captain Larson was mentioned. Uh not too good. He was an all-American football player for the academy. He had an uncle who was a senator. He was basically a login for an admiral. Because of that episode, he did not get it. Right. Uh he was like so well, his family didn't even attend his funeral, from what I've read. And and uh, but that going aground is what stopped him from happening. And the reason is because we were in restricted waters. We had a pilot aboard, and the pilot recommended two hours before that we drop anchor, and he says, no. The reason if we went into Weezer, we had to go through a lot, we had to go through at high tide, and he wouldn't make it. And we didn't make it.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

You gotta listen to the pilot because that's why you have the pilot on board.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

And and I got to know him pretty well. I'm talking more than one time, Captain Arnold. Uh-huh. Where are you from? He says, Wigan, England. I says, What? He says, Wigan, England. He says, why? I said, my dad's from Wigan, England.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, and my dad came over from England as a young boy. But he said, Well, if you ever get up to Wigan, look me up. Well, by the time I got there, uh, he had passed. Anyway, he was he was our pilot at that time. And uh yeah, being on a bridge, you got to associate with some people, although you could tell stories that in the deck force you wouldn't ever have. You would have been freezing on the forecastle.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Right, right, yeah. With your sound-powered phone and your big jacket.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Uh we had, like we were independent, we were in Naples, in Naples, and like I said, we had a skeleton crew. Well, when we went into port, you always had you still had your eight o'clock reports, and the division head or his appointed would serve on that report, right? And we went in eight o'clock report. Now, I didn't get any higher than a seaman because I didn't want to get any higher than a seaman. And um they called they called uh ON Division Officer to the quarter deck. So I went down seaman strip, and there was, I don't know, two or two or three petty officers, uh, a couple of them were first class, and they wanted to send a message. The fleet was anchored in the bay. We were port side because they unloaded. And they they said, we want to send a message. I says, uh, how do you want to send a message? Oh, radio. I said, Radio Shack said down. Well, first of all, they challenged me as being a division officer.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Right.

Beirut 1958 And Standby Reserve

SPEAKER_00 31:22

I said, Well, I'm it, you know, and uh well, we want to talk to your your petty officer. I'm it. But then I go in there, they went. So they said, I want to send a message by radio. They had something they had to communicate out there. I said, Nope. I just can't do that. He says, Well, you could use yard arm, but you're not you're far enough out, you're not gonna see the yard arm white send code. Well, we'll use flashing lights. I said, You can't do that. So why says we dropped our adapter overboard? Oh no. Anyway, they left. I never did get their message. But every answer they had, I had some reason why they couldn't do it. And I'm I'm thinking to myself, yeah, because we had our reports, there was probably five black shoes there and no officers. Yeah, you know, and uh I know I went, we had a visitation and it was their one of the bigger ships, and they come aboard and it was their engineering officer, and he was he was a full commander. Lieutenant JG So-and-so, would you come down? He was the head of our engineering division, and he's meeting with this near Admiral. And I know, boy, this is we're a tramp ship, you know. Right. Good, good delivery. Yeah, and when we got to places, you only got one day. Uh, there was a couple boards when you might have been Bremerhoven, Germany, usually two or three days, because that was our refueling point, and we we went there every time we went in the North Sea. Uh the other incident that happened is on our last trip, and this is the reason I was stuck aboard ship when I was supposed to be getting off. Uh we were returning back from Europe, and I can't remember, I could tell you the part. Uh, I have the eight o'clock position of every day I was aboard a ship. Oh. And my idea was to get a chart and lug them all because every trip had a story. Uh-huh. You know, storms or or this detail. Oh, we went. There was some two stories that are having problems around the uh Azores. We headed there to add assistance, got called off because they didn't need us. But anyway, Beirut broke out in 58, probably before your time. Oh, way before my time. And and the United States sent choppers down in Beirut. So what we're going through today is not new. Right. You know, that hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

The names have changed, but the game is still the same.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

And but they sent helicopters down from Germany to Beirut, but they violated airspace. So it was an uh international incident. So to pull them out, they told us turn around. We were about a quarter of the way across the lane, turn around, refit to pull up that squadron, pull them out of Beirut, back over, and by the time we got to Gibraltar, they flew off Gibraltar and went to Detroit or uh Germany because they didn't violate any space. But we were there, and I think we were there for like 14 hours. That wasn't long enough to get the medal.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

So my my 214, I have no medals because that was even in a time they didn't give the G dump medal. Right. Right. So there are no medals involved here. Uh but anyway, the only person allowed on the open decks, because they were close enough to shore, they were firearms could be shot at the ship. And so nobody could go out with the exception of the quartermaster of the watch. And I had to go out and log when they left the ground until they landed on a ship. And that was run in, put it in the log, go back out. And we ended up leaving two or three on shore because they had been either broken down or something there. So as far as live fire action, that was all I saw in in the period there. And by the time we got back, I still had one more duty to do, and I got that done. And but it was it was I relate my time in the Navy as my growing up period. That's when I started. Yeah. All right. Uh I finished it with other activities, which are pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

So I have a question for you then. So when you finally got out of the Navy, then you did you do this, you took the standby option.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I took standby option.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

So you didn't have to go to meetings or anything. You were just, if they needed you, they called me.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

I had I got two letters from the Navy, sends them one, three letters. One to be standby status for Bay of Pigs.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

The other one is Bay of Pigs has been resolved. You know, don't basically don't worry about it. And the third one was my discharge papers. Oh. That was that.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

That was it. So when you got when you got out, you went to Pensacola and then you came back to Michigan?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Come back to Michigan. Now, when I come back to Michigan, it was my understanding that my job had been kept for me. Right. That's one reason I had the opportunity to work in the print shop at the Mobile Alabama Air Force Base. I was offered a job there and said, no, I'm gonna go home because I got a job waiting for me.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

When I got home, I found out my job was not waiting for me. Because I had to have six months and I only had five weeks and three weeks full time. So I didn't get that. But the boss came in and says, your job is still here. His name was Lauren Brown. And basically he gave me my job back, but he gave two other people their notice that they were no longer there. Oh. One of them stayed in the burning trade, the other one left. And he did well. I mean, it was a good move for him. Uh the other one was you never know if he's come to work or not. So uh went to work then, and then over the years, I was able to get that two-year period resolved as active duty, which is credit for working there. So basically I worked 41 years. Right. Got credit for 43.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

So you kept your seniority essentially.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Kept my seniority.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah.

unknown 37:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

And so you came back what would have been 61.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

I'll give you the date. All right. Uh I reported aboard the ship on 21 January 1957. Okay. Okay. Um I left the ship on 14 of November of 1958. And I was back to work in December 1958. Okay. Um, met my wife in December 1958.

Marriage Church Community And Family

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Well, so that's a great segue. Talk to me about meeting your wife.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Um, one of my one of my good friends introduced me, we're going to went back to church. Uh-huh. Uh my wife and I today are historians of the church. And uh I, up to the time that I had my stroke, uh, I was doing a five minutes in history of the church. And one of the talks that I've got prepared, but I haven't done it yet, because I'm gonna start back up on that again, is is how a lot of people say the decrease of churches today is because the churches aren't functioning right. Uh-huh. You've probably heard that said by a number of people. Oh, yeah. Right. I've got another you things change. And the reason is that I became involved with a church when I was in high school. I played on the softball team for the church. I didn't play on the team because I was not good enough to play on the team, but I was on the team. Uh-huh. Part of the stipulation was you had to go to church one Sunday a month. That brought me to church. A lot of them brought them to church. Not only did it bring them to church, but it brought their families to church. All right. Look at it today. If you have a young child and they get involved, okay, my grandkids were involved with soccer. Their games are Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

All right. They didn't go to church, their parents didn't go to church. All right. At the time I was in high school, I was on a softball team. I was uh I didn't get on a basketball team because I was only 95 pounds. Right. Right. Uh, but there was a basketball team, City Leagues. And both of those. Uh I was on a bowling team. The bowling team had one guy that was 86, another one that was 72, another one was 50, another one was 50, and I was 16. That was the bowling team. But you had to go to church on Sunday. I never joined the church until after I met my wife, although I went years. But I had one friend that set me up second or third week I was home with a blind D. And it was it was Judy. And we dated for about a year and a half, got married. We are the church now is Christ Community Church in Lansing, which is a block from the Capitol. It's one of the downtown churches. It's in the original history-wise church blocks of the city of Lansing. There's three churches in that one block, and one across the street. And uh the the church itself, Judy and I were married in trouble here. Yes, you are. Anyway, well, we were married. Uh they had just done a a restructure of a massive redo of some of the church. We were the first people to be married in that church. There were two of us the same day. The first the other marriages didn't last a year, but he was 80 years old. Yeah. And he uh today at that church, Judy and I are the only married couple that was married in that church that's still there. The only ones. That's gonna be part of my history. And I wanted I wanted to do that in the spring, and that's when I had my stroke. Because I wanted to have basically the reception, like we had a reception, which was nothing more than cake and ice cream. Now it's a five-course meal. Oh, yeah, it's a big deal. It's almost twelve.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

So you've been married for what? 60 seven years. 67 years, wow.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Yeah, 67 years.

SPEAKER_01 42:11

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

So it's been good, it's been bad. So got a good family.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

So she's basically been with you since you got out of the Navy. Basically, yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

There was some well, we went to a movie. Yeah, and and the language in that movie at that time was very bad. Today it's common. Right. What'd they say? What'd they say? Can't repeat it.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

It was racy for that time, wasn't it? Yes, it was. You know.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

And I'm not expecting any calls. I'm getting a ton of calls on Rome. Uh-huh. I apply for a loan.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

No, those uh I get those all the time.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

You know, I can I can tell the cheap ones. They're only 50,000, the other ones are 80,000. Right, exactly. Exactly. Yes. The uh church has been a big, big part. Um, I know somebody approached me a couple weeks ago if I would do uh if I would do a talk on the Fifth Sunday dinner. And if I would do a talk there on the tripy. And I said, though that's not going to interest them. And what triggered that is the trip that's over there now. And that's the third tripoli, by the way. The other one was decommissioned a few years ago. Uh so I'm I'm thinking of it, you know, it wasn't too long. I was back, they had a dinner, and I did a talk showing a lot, I took a lot of pictures in the all water. Of course. But anyway, I took a lot of pictures and I did a talk for part of the talk, and then there was another gentleman by the name of Doug Frizz who did, he just got out and he did the army portion. So I looked, Doug died two years ago, didn't realize it. But I do a lot of research in that area. Yeah, yeah. And uh yeah, I just yeah, back back to there. So I'm talking to him now. I said, Yeah, it depends where we do it. We're doing some restructuring in a church and where we would do it. I had to have an overhead because it's all I have a full company on that. But I said, rather than do that, I would rather do one on Arlington Cemetery, which I've done a number of times. So uh and even that one's twenty years old.

unknown 44:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

And that place has changed. But not enough that I would cemeteries don't change that much.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

No, they don't. No. They don't. So um how many children do you have? Two children. Two children. And did you have children Pretty s like right away, or did you wait for a while?

SPEAKER_00 44:36

We we had trouble.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

We had trouble uh coming up with getting started. Yeah. And we had we had the two girls. Uh one girl had two boys. Uh the other one had two girls. Uh one of the girls, as of last Friday, just give us our second great grandchild.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

So your family's grown.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Well, we're we're getting there, yeah. We have, we still, well, I haven't we used to go to Arizona, so I never took the tree down. Well, I still don't. And uh all the hooks on the walls, all that comes down in our socks for everybody. Well, we discontinued that a couple years ago. Um, basically because of the financial, you know, I was putting$1,000 a year in the socks.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

And uh so they decided, well, for grandma and grandpa, we're gonna discontinue that. Um, but a lot of stuff I got was freebies, so I did it for two more years, just giving away the stuff that I collected over the weird. That makes that makes sense. But uh we we still have our Christmas here. Uh we have basically two events that the family gets together, and it's Christ, Christmas and Mother's Day. Uh but the family has moved out. We've got one in Detroit, and we got one in in uh Saginaw area, and we got one in school at Michigan State, the younger granddaughter, and the oldest granddaughter lives in in uh in uh Grand Rapaz area, Wyoming. Okay. And we we're set we're sitting at this table here two years ago, and we're playing trivia. I'm playing trivia with my grandkids.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

I got basically he's he's an lawyer researcher, but he graduated with honors out of Michigan State and Constitutional Interpretation, right? With honors out of James Madison. So he's pretty, pretty, pretty nice. And and then a doctor who's a tripart uh chiropractor, his wife, who was his teacher at school. She's the one who just had the baby, two engineers, and we're playing trivia down here, right? Yeah. I got one answer, and we're using the phone to trigger it, right? And I triggered that thing, and I knew the answer, knew it right away, went right in. I come in third on that answer. And it was okay, where's Gettysburg? I knew that one. I'm third. I ain't playing with that bunch anymore. Only question I knew in the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

You know, those questions can be kind of difficult.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Well, yeah, but I felt pretty good. They got one I know. I got this one. Yeah.

Civic Clubs Boating Education And Leadership

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Third. So when were your children born then? Were they like born in the 60s? Uh 70s. Okay, 70s.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Well, yeah, 60s and 70s. Okay. Yeah. Uh they they were involved with a uh with a drum and bugle core. And later uh I was boating. I'd like to kind of go through some of my activities back to work because you can see my growth pattern.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Yeah, yeah. So let's let's let's go there then. So you you came back, you got married, you're still working at Michigan State. So let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

First one I got into was at that time CB radios were big. And I kind of got involved with a uh a local CB group, you know, and we did some things. And and I learned there there were there was a gentleman there who was a retired submariner, but he happened to be civil defense director Lansing. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching him. I went up and I says, you know, you're not a member. He says, No. But I said, I see you control the meetings by Robert's rules. He says, You notice that? And I said, Oh yeah. And he said, Don't say anything. He actually controlled the meeting by what he said. And he would say things that would be wrong, but nobody there knew the difference. Right. So nobody challenged him. That's good to remember. I did I just there were six of us that got a little bit perturbed with some of the stuff they wanted to do. We formed our own group and we call them CB caravanners, and we set a set of rules that was impossible for anybody else to get involved, which was equipment in your car and uh uh first aid, and it wasn't just working first aid, it was advanced first aid. So I'm starting to get education. Uh I had a friend that I worked with at that time, and him and I wanted something. This was even before I met Judy. From the time I got out of school until we got married. And uh he helped he helped me, basically him and I wired this house. And he was one pretty sharp dude, but I worked with him. Uh we would take night school classes in Lansing of anything that would just somewhere interesting, just to have something do. Uh, we took a course in electronics, and Dave was a genius in electronics. And I did something here just three or four years ago, and the teacher that was teaching that class remembered me.

unknown 50:20

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Because he had come up and he says, Where's David at now? I said, When David passed away. But anyway, we took that for two years, and finally he came up and says, Would you come in as my assistant in that class, the two of us? And so but we took motor rewinding, we took radio electronics, we took basic electronics, um, you know, just any course we could. We ran out. Uh-huh. There was a group in Lansing Co. Lansing Power Squadron, or it was at that time. Okay. Lansing Power Squadron was a boating education group.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

You're familiar with it? My father-in-law was uh involved in in the Power Squadron.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Lansing?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Uh I believe so, yeah. What's his name? Dan Popoff.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

I know him. Yeah. Well, I know who he is. Yeah. Okay. Uh, you realize I'm Pass Commander? Yeah. Wow. Small world. Uh I served as treasurer for four years. Uh-huh. Dave served as secretary for four years. And they says, okay, you two, one of you has got to go up on a bridge. And I went up on a bridge. I served there. I am the only, I am the oldest pass commander in a squadron today. It's not called American Boating Club. Okay. I don't know anybody. I know two people there, right? All right. I've got certificates on the wall. Uh-huh. Okay. Uh, 50-year member, past commander, 25-year member. Uh, so I got involved with that. But anyway, I become that's a 501c3. Yeah. Right? And it's education. I become commander or what you would call president. That's one. Then from there, my kid, we voted out of uh uh up on uh White Lake. My kids were involved as they got a little bit older. Uh, we're sitting at a drum core show, and my daughter says, Boy, I sure like to do that. And at that time, there was a corps in Grand Rapids. I says, maybe another two years we can get you down to Grand Rapids, you can be in that corps. She was Saginaw one year later as a color guard. They were national VFW champions that year. Wow. Right. She served in that group for nine years. Needless to say, Judy and I going to Saginaw. Uh, I became, well, in even in some of those early years, I got involved with the Bam Boosters at PW and uh worked them. I was president of their association for three years, 501c3. Uh went up to Saginaw. They were in nine years. My wife and I ended up on the board, 501c3. Uh between the two of us, we were uh membership people in charge of membership. I become commander of the Eagles, which was their feeder corps.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Got another plaque for that one, 501c3. Right. From there, uh we we got out of that, and I keep saying, what are you gonna do when you're no longer involved? Because the kids aged out of core. Right. And and my oldest daughter was gutter garden instructor for St. John's for 20 years. Uh, very much involved. And we were involved, and and I still involved with the band to some degree. Uh the we got through with that. I joined uh Judy's mother was into genealogy. All right, so if I'm taking her to the meetings, I'm going to be involved. I got on the board, ended up on the board, ended up as president for three years. That's 501c3. At church, we're at church, I ended up being moderator, 501c3. Moderator is church president, five. I've served on nine different 501c3 boards, five of them as a lead person. All right. Power Squadron is where I grew up. Uh I was treasurer for four years, and that was not an easy task because you're dealing, you're dealing with professors, you're dealing with doctors, you're dealing with lawyers, you're dealing with with uh uh CPAs. All right, I'm treasurer and I'm dealing with CPA. We had to have our books monitored every year. Uh-huh. Right. Uh no actions were taken unless the the membership voted on it outside of budget. I had to create the budgets. All right. You just don't learn that by you learn it by association. Yeah. Uh I ended up being in charge of constitution or the bylaws. And the gentleman I worked with there was a fellow by name of Irvin Grohl. And he happened to be a state legislature, but his specialty was bylaws. I learned from one of the best. I've worked on at least five or six different sets of bylaws. This is a kid that wouldn't go to the library in school. Right. Right. I've ended up with MMGS or the genealogy speaking. Uh Power Squadron got me involved there because I ended up as district conference coordinator. Now, district was Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and I'm charge of the whole thing. They had two conferences a year, three-day conferences. And I was in charge of seeing those for I think four or five years. So I learned that trait kind of the hard way. Power Squadron. And with that, it was nothing for me. I was at, we had one conference in Detroit at the Pancha Train Hotel. The band was Guy Lombardo. Did I tell you the magnitude of this? Okay, I didn't do the planning, but I oversaw it.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Right.

Newsletters Reunions And Preserving History

SPEAKER_00 56:22

All right. So they had 600 people at that at that conference. 500 people at that conference. And I had to get up and make a report for the next one. When I got out of school, if I was with four or five people, I was afraid to talk. Power squadron. So I say between the Navy and the Power Squadron. Power Squadron classes, there's one class called AP. There were four of us that took the exam. I was the only one that passed the exam. The reason is because I learned how to figure tide and currents the Navy way. I did not be able to show, I could not show my paperwork doing the power squadron way. But I had the right answer. So I got most of the credit for it. And that was the answer that I passed it, and the other ones didn't. I've taught first aid to a class of four. Two out of the four were MDs. And I'm teaching first aid to them. Give me a break. Oh yeah. I was it was very easy. I just passed it on to them. Martin Spike, I've taught classes in Martin Spike. There was a book published that was donated to the MSU Museum, and they wanted a class or a group of Boy Scouts to come in to promote the book, and they wanted me to teach a class on Martin Spike seamanship. So, you know, I did that. I was afraid to talk to myself in the mirror when I got out of high school. You grow when you're ready to grow.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

Right. Right. And it's all thankful to your really your military and your sea background.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

No, military. Let's go back. I was out probably 15, 20 years and I found out I called a buddy of mine. He says, You're going to the reunion. I said, What reunion? He says, Well, they have a reunion. Start about five years ago. Okay. The last thing I did when I was on the trip-As I edited in a newspaper.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

Oh, so you had like a That's really neat.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

Alright, now. I did two of them, but they weren't doing it when I first went on board. So I found one that somebody had done, went through, figured out the type and how much space and everything, put the thing together as far as what it would go. When Brooklyn Air Force Base, which was our home port, had a print shop. And that's how I got involved with them. Right? And I would put it together. When we come back, we stopped at Mayport. I got off at Mayport with the captain didn't trust a seaman.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

So he had a the chaplain. And the chaplain didn't do anything but say, Bill, is that okay? Okay, we're done. Anyway, we got off at Mayport. We flew from Mayport to uh Berkeley Air Force Base and Mobile, a home port. And I stayed there in Air Force Lodging, lived like an Air Force, and went over there every day. They did the typesetting. I put the layout together. They printed it. When the ship came aboard, I went aboard with my with the newsletters. Uh-huh. And like I say, there's only two of them. So I did that, walked aboard the ship. They says, Captain wants to see you. I went up with them on the army. He said, I want to see the newsletter. I showed him the newsletter. He said, Pack your bags. You've got to be in Pensacola tomorrow morning for separation. He said, I got a very nasty letter. All right. When I got involved with the alumni group, I went one a couple years and they had a newsletter. And the gentleman's name was Bob Hurley. But the problem was he was going blind. So I took it over. I edited the that one, the last one on the ship. Yeah. And I edited that one for 20 years. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

Well, that's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

And then not only that, but each year through union, I produce one reunion book.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

Oh, so the yeah. So the reunion book is more um. It's got colors and yeah, this is nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

So I've got those for about 20 years. Uh-huh. There's also copies in the uh library of Fort Wayne of that. And it because it gives you, you know, names of people and that type of thing. But it tells you uh the very last reunion we had, when uh first one I went to, we had 170-some people. Last one we went to, we had 32. And and we lost a couple cents then. It got down, we didn't have a chairman of the board, but we had a board. And everybody in the board had their function. And it boiled down to we had the newsletter editor, which is myself, and a fellow by name of Jill Joe Parker, who I basically appointed as treasurer. And he died three months ago, four months ago. And so we have no longer have those reunions.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

And I miss those. That's the reason I have a sweatshirt, I have shirts, I have hats, you know. But with that, you know, I've learned 501c3s, uh, I've learned how to work with people. Uh, I voice for turns. We have a problem at church, and I says, you know, I didn't know how to do that, but I know who could. And that was the important thing. And we got a person right now that wants to, she's it. And I say, hey, that's not good for us. But because of the squadron, you see, I got two lone sailors. Yeah. They only give out four. Two out of the four. So, no, it's I feel pretty proud of my accomplishments. I feel I feel that I've grown. Uh, I'm I'm still doing genealogy. Now, I I've got it, I put it on a chair. I got the uh coil of honor here from Delta about three months ago. And the galla presented it says, I made it. And I said, What was your maiden name? She says, Spitzley. I says, My son-in-law's a Spitzley. I'm not related to her. Well, my grandson is fourth cousin. Oh. I've done I've been working on their generation. I'm all back to 1600 on her family. So I've done a lot of genealogy. I've done a lot of talking, don't bother me anymore. So, but it did. It's a big change. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Big change over time.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:06

Yeah, and and and it started with the Navy. Yeah. It definitely started with the Navy. We first episode, we were in Pennsylvania. They sent us from Pennsylvania to New Orleans to meet the ship. The ship was still on one of our trips. And so we were at the Air Force Base in New Orleans, and which is a huge base, but it was a recruiting center too. And but it's in Algiers, which is across the river from New Orleans. And we got off the plane, and uh we were able to take the public transit, which was kind of like a bus type thing. We got that in. Well, then we had to cross the river on a boat.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Like a bird kind of thing?

Retirement Stories And Print Expertise

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Yeah. Well, yeah, it wasn't no. I was trying to think of what they would call them. Uh transferring people back and forth. Uh we got on a ferry. We got on the other side of the river. Now, they had three, and they put us all on one set of orders. So in that one set of orders, they give the orders to one person and say, okay, you're leading the detail. You make the decisions for the detail. And that's one of the problems that I have is no matter what I've been in, I don't want to make the final decision. I want to group or team. And so we got on the other server. We had a fellow of mine named Aaron Brown, a black fellow. I grew up in the black neighborhood. I didn't have any problem with that. Another one, his name was Bobby Reynolds. And Bob was out of Pennsylvania, and myself, they give me the orders. Okay, do not separate. So we got on the side of the river. We go up to a cab. We can't take you because you got a black person with you. Now, I've never had a problem with racism. One of my best buddies was was um his name was Brown. I mean, he had a brother they named a little street after in Lansing, anyway, because he was active in the black movement at that time. I had no problem. I went, you know, school and I was only one of three white kids. But anyway, Brown, we can't take you because you got a black guy. So that's okay with me. Went over to a white cab. We can't take you because you tried to go in that other cab. Next thing I know, they're all coming after us. Not all us, but there's some coming after us with tiring items. I said, I was smart enough that I know that this isn't good. So I said, they said, What are you gonna do? Bill's in crying in tears crying. He said, What are you gonna do? I said, go back on the ferry. Got on the ferry, went on the other side, found a shore patrol, told them the story. They said, okay, put the their vehicle on the ferry, took us across, and they took us out to the base. That's how we got to the base. But I'm thinking to myself, this is the navy. Right. First bad thought, but not too many. Yeah. Not too many. And uh Bob Reynolds, I still communicate with him every once in a while.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:14

And uh, yep, had a good life. So you you uh worked, you said 43 years at Michigan State. So you retired in the I retired in 2000. In 2000, okay. And to talk to me about that. What was that like to after having been there and really, I mean, that's you grew up there basically. What was it like to retire?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Very easy. Retirement was easy. Uh my retirement was in Breslin. Mm-hmm. And in the basement in Breslin. And, you know, and I've got uh wasn't too long ago. I'm going through I'm going through things now and memory remembering. Yeah. And so I'm going through my retirement and I'm looking there. Uh the There was one office out there at that time, it was Office of Information Services. Everybody in that office came to my retirement. There was a fellow by the name of Keith Williams. Keith Williams ended up being uh director of alumni. But I knew him long before that. At that time, he was in uh alumni relations. And I can remember, and this is when I was consultant going around, but my job was going around campus. The only job in the print shop that got out of the office.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

And I would go around campus, and I decided, well, I'm gonna go to alumni. I went in and I said, I like to see Keith. And at that time he was the director, and he's a black man. Yeah, very, very neat guy. And he says he's on the phone. I says, Oh wait. So I'm sitting there, and about 10 minutes went by, and he's still on the phone. She gets on the phone. Keith, there's a gentleman out here to see you, and he says, Who is it? It's Bill Atkinson. Oh, okay. Well, send him in. So I'm in the phone. I get in there and he's talking to his wife. And guess who just came in the office? It's Bill. Because I'd went to hockey banquets, a few things around him in that. She's a provost from Yukon at that time. He had been there and come back, but she was the provost of Yukon, and he's saying, Bill's here. You know, I'm thinking, hold on. He was in my retirement. He was one of them there. Uh I'm I'm going through, and some of the people, I know there were some people there that didn't sign, but that was a full afternoon program. I got a picture or a statue of Sturdy on my front stoop. I don't know if you signed. I saw that when I was walking up. That was my one of my retirement program. The other one was$200 to a trip for airline tickets towards a trip to England. And yeah, I did for a while. I I retired. And at that time, because I was in printing, I knew the printers in Lansing. I knew the presses they had in Lansing. I knew the capability of those presses. If that didn't shop, did not have the capability of printing the job I want, they didn't get a bid. Right. Right? I only had to get three bids. And and I would bid accordingly to that. Two stories. I had one that we used to print when I was in Kellogg Center. They took all my equipment, all my employees, over to the main shop, but they couldn't do that job because they didn't have the equipment or their empire. And the same thing they took from mine and took it over there. So I bid it out. And I bid it out, and uh I sent it to a guy by the name of Joe LaFleur who had his own print shop. He was the winning bid. And I would go quite often on a Friday to the different shops to find out, okay, what shops I had to progress, if there were any problems. And I went in Joe and and he's printing my job. I saw doing it. And he says, uh, it's coming over well. We're gonna get it done. I said, You're only on chapter four. He says, Don't worry, Bill, it'll get done. I was okay. And uh, so then I went to my second shop and that was gardener printing, and I went in there. Jerry, what are you printing? He said, Well, I'm helping show out on a job. He had that in three different print shops putting it together. I did it with one, but I shifted my my hours so that I had somebody working on a job 24 hours a day. And I got it done. But anyway, the job got done. We never did do that in the print shop there. They had 38 employees. I had five. They had the same five. Well, they were the ones that filed the lawsuit. And so I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is something. After I retired, I'm sitting kind of bored for the first two or three weeks, you know. Right, right. And I'm going to paper looking for jobs. So, press operator, mailbook printing, phone number. Recognize the phone number. I called, I got on the phone. Now, all I said is, sir, I just read in the paper, you got an ad for our offset press operator night shift. I says, Can you tell me something about the job? You want to know what my answer was? What? Bill, you don't want the job. I never told him who I was. Right. Bill, you don't want the job. But I had calls from a number of few. I had a call from Texas wanting to know, there, did you go to State at all? You're familiar with State? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, you remember the answer sheets, which were the digital, and you had to remember. Okay, well, I printed those. I was the only company, only place in the United States, only one place in the United States that printed those things because of the accuracy. Over a five-year program, I developed a program, we could print them on campus. I printed those by the thousands, right? And I did it on a webpress. I got a call from Texas. How do you do that? I said, okay, first of all, it's ink. What do you mean? I says, well, there's some ink that's reflective and some ink that's not. Well, how do you know that? I saw I worked with a company to do that. It took me two years to get the right inks. I said, no, the next thing I do is accuracy, because them little black squares have got to be in exactly the right place. Right. How do you do that? And I said, I run them on a web. Oh, what kind of web? And I told him on it. And I said, Well, you do it. He says, There's a lot of waste. I said, Yeah, but a lot of waste, but I still saved a lot of money. The machine I run that on the WebPress won 50,000 sheets an hour.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:44

Wow, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:46

I threw a lot of paper away. I mean, I was selling paper away. Those big boxes, I could fill two or three of them a day. But I was printing two or three hundred thousand, you know, over that period of time. But I went from that. I went, I did everything but pre-press. Uh press room, press room manager to uh, like I say, I was at the right place at the right time. Uh at the time that I was the purchasing agent and we had all those college educated, I was one of the top two or three in pay. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and talked with the right people.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:27

So, and that makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Yeah, sometimes it's sometimes it's luck and sometimes it's skill, or sometimes it's a combination of both.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:34

But something had to trigger. Right. And it was when I left home.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:38

Yeah, absolutely.

Downsizing Genealogy Arlington Trivia

SPEAKER_00 1:13:39

You know, and that's the reason I felt with this right here, great deal of pride. And that's probably the biggest thing that I I hurt on now, because there's just another I maintain the national database. I got 1800 names. I've only got I got less than 200 still alive. Because they were World War II.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:00

I had one two years ago, 104 years old. Because a lot of them were World War II. Big crews for World War II. And some of the history, I got some books on the history that mention Larson for one.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:13

Yeah. And uh so uh since retirement then you've been actively involved with the something. Yeah. Which is key, right? Like if you retire, you gotta do something.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:25

That's one of the big problems that I'm having. That's probably my biggest problem right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

And I'm going through uh huh, I I decided when we come back from Arizona, we come back with a pod and it was full. All right. So I've got two collections of things. All right. I got a box of towels that we had down there. Well, we got towels. So we're trying to purchase stuff. So I got that, but the big thing is is that I had a small shed, and that was my tools down there. And I had built and done some things down there, and I had plumbing work, and I had plumbing thing, electrical work. And so I decided I'm trying to put this together. And I've I've found some tools in five different locations. Yeah. So I'm trying to get them together. Screws and bolts. You know, I got this nice little box, and I got this and this box, and they got the same thing in them. Well, there's not room. I'm merging when I can. So then I got in the back, and there's some boxes in the back. I found two parts to a car. One was an extension to a tailpipe, and the other one is a cable trunk opener. Now, this is before they had the modern stuff, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:41

All these things were in, I think, the second car that I ever owned, and that was a junior in high school.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:49

And a box in there. You kept a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:52

Oh, yeah, I got junk around here. Yeah. Well, I'm filling my junk container pretty much every week now. Right. And and throwing nuts and bolts. I I have got some lead anchors in there that were my uncle's. My uncle died in the 40s. They're almost those lead anchors, and I still use them today, are probably 100 years old. I got some nails in there that are square. Oh, yeah. And well, he was working with the theaters in Paramount, and I inherited, I inherited all but his good tools. And and my dad sold those.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

So now, so now you're just trimming down your figuring out what you need and what you don't need.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

And uh well, I'm not even to that stage. I'm I'm I'm putting some away, and that'll be my next time I go through them.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:45

Um I have a stack like that of printing plates. They're not a pressing lancing now, a run-nose, you know. And uh yeah, we got I wasn't the nicest guy in the world either.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:58

Well, we've we've covered a lot. We've been talking for about an hour and 20 minutes, and um you have lived quite an interesting life.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

I I thought so, but but I still feel, you know, I I'm more interested in military now than I have been for years.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:14

And I'm I'm watching what's going on. You know, I'm still I'm still involved with trying to figure out I got two more pieces there that don't fit on the wall, but they're swagger sticks.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:24

And that he made those a trench art. And I went through trench art and I don't fight anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

Yeah. So yeah, that's so it's kind of the next chapter for you then is kind of doing this uh military history stuff then.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

Yeah, well, what I found out is the database I had for my genealogy died. Uh-huh. So I've got to re-input basically all that. And and I still, and I don't know if I want to do any more talks, but a lot of the books I have are nothing but the talk. And uh I can ask, I'll ask you two questions. Yeah. And I bet you can't give me the right answer. Either one.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:01

Let's try.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:02

Who owned Arlington before it come a cemetery?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:09

Thomas Jefferson. Who?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:13

Give you a clue. He was U.S. Army, ended up being head of the Confederate forces. But he's that's the answer people are giving me. Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee didn't own it. His wife did. Oh. His wife was granddaughter of George Washington. Oh. And she inherited it from Washington. All right. John Brown. You know who John Brown is? The activist in the Civil War?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:38

Okay, he was captured. Who led the team that captured him for the US from the U.S. Army?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:45

I wouldn't even venture, I guess. Robert E. Lee.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

Oh. And I've got 10 questions that I will answer during my talk. Uh-huh. And that's two of them, but the names are over here. Well, they look at Robert E. They always pick Robert E. Lee and went the other way. Because since that time he left the American or the U.S. Army to become Confederate. Right. And I have more fun with that question. And uh how many white crosses is there in Arlington?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:20

National Cemeteries. I do not know.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:22

Two. Kennedy and his brother. How many white crosses are there in national cemeteries in the United States?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:34

Just those two, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:36

The National Cemetery in Hawaii had white crosses. They were all removed before they come states. And it's all the street the stone on the thing. And uh that's another another question they have on Airs. You know. Those are great questions. Oh yeah, yeah. I I have a ball with that. That talk, I've done one called Grandfather's Trunk. If you're an attic, okay, things you'll find in in the attic that might apply to your genealogy. Uh one of them is bump takes. Yeah. They come back, you put them up, they're in the storage in the attic. But that gives you something as part of their life story. Uh just another one. Oh, I've got another one there. People collect, uh I don't have this as a question, but people collect various things. You hear anybody collected toilet paper?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:30

No.

Always Learn Final Takeaway

SPEAKER_00 1:20:31

I know somebody. Collected toilet paper. Every country they went to, they got a copy or a sample of their toilet paper and they kept it. And her son ended up being one of the top historians in Lansing, which I kind of learned. I went to school with his sister and got to know that he was one of my better friends. In fact, was a pallbearer for his uncle over the years. This is a kid that in high school would hide in a closet so nobody would see him.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

Yeah, things, things change. People change.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:07

So hopefully I've given you something.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:09

You have. But I do have one more question for you. Okay. Um, and that is, you know, if someone is watching this or listening to this a hundred years from now, uh and answered. Yeah. And they and they they you know, they've learned about your life and they we've had this great conversation. But what message would you like to leave for people? What would you what piece of advice would you give for folks?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:32

Always learn. Always learn. You're never too old to quit learning.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:40

All right. Well, thank you for that. And thanks for taking time out of your morning to talk with me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:44

Oh no, I enjoyed it.