Still Making Waves at 92 with Jim Paulk | Ship's Log #34

“I am FEARLESS, willing to take on any project and get it done. I’ve lived by this my whole life (92 years old), whether I knew it or not.” — Jim Paulk 

Episode Summary 

At 92, Jim Paulk has lived enough lives for several people — Naval Academy graduate, submarine engineering officer, 26-year Procter & Gamble executive, marine conservationist, and published author. In this Ship’s Log, he traces a path that started in Depression-era Brunswick, Georgia, where a teenager who loved hunting, fishing, and golf set his sights on Annapolis — and got in only after two years of trying, with a phone call that came while he was mid-round at a golf tournament. 

From submarines that ran silent on battery power to a five-month campaign that banned destructive gillnets across California, Jim tells stories most people have never heard. He explains how a ragtag committee of retirees “created the perception of success,” flew the state dark-to-dark to win a ballot initiative, and helped launch a white-seabass restoration program still running today. Along the way he shares the love story behind nearly six decades with his late wife, Pat, and how a chance Cracker Barrel encounter with The Platters became a chapter in one of his books. 

The episode closes with Two Truths & A Lie, where Jim reveals that the most cinematic claim of all — three days on the moon with Apollo 16 — was the lie. The truth behind it is even better: that’s astronaut Charlie Duke’s story, which Jim wrote for his book of 81 Naval Academy stories, interviewing Duke alongside his own granddaughter. 

Guest Bio 

Jim Paulk is a 1957 Naval Academy graduate, former submarine officer, and 26-year Procter & Gamble executive who later spent nearly a decade leading marine conservation efforts on the California coast. After retiring, he became an author, writing books that collect remarkable true stories — including one featuring 81 stories from 59 of his Naval Academy classmates. At 92, he’s still writing and still chasing the next project. He lives near Kingsland, Georgia. 

Guest Links 

Book — Shaking Up the World:  https://a.co/d/KyS3rh 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/share/16FQCN7Kjg/ 

Guest CTA 

Get a copy of Jim’s book Shaking Up the World:  https://a.co/d/KyS3rh 

Who do you know who'd make a great guest for the show? Please let us know.
Email: info@projectcandor.com

Website:   https://www.projectcandor.com

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Transcript

— Cold open

Jim Paulk 0:00

I'll tell you a story. And you may not do you know who you know. I'm gonna tell you, and you see if you know the person. Bob Bob served 27 years as an NFL official. He was a white hat, the head referee, and

— Intro

Jim Paulk 0:15

he did Super Bowls in three different decades. The only one there would do that. And when he retired, he was a senior official in NFL. So Bob said my only job was to watch a quarterback after the play started. He said, I never knew whether it was a touchdown or or or completed pass or first down anything. I just watched a quarterback. That was my job. But before the play started, I had several things I had to do. I had to check the play clock, the game clock, the formation, the substitutions, and a couple other things. He says, But he says, when I was in Chicago, I had one other thing I had to do. I had to reach around in my back pocket and see if my penalty flag was there. If it was not there, he said I'd go to the huddle, I'd stand behind number 34, and I'd say, Walter, give me my flag back. And Walter Pade would put it out of his shirt and give it to him. He'd put it back in his pocket pocket and it'd go start to play.

Jeanne 1:57

Today

— Jim Paulk joins the conversation

Jeanne 1:58

we are setting sail with someone who has lived not one life but many, including a sailor's life, and found extraordinary stories at every port. Jim Paulk has lived at least five lives in one Naval Academy graduate, submarine officer, corporate executive, marine conservationist, and at 91, a published author. Jim grew up in Brunswick, Georgia, graduated for the United States Naval Academy in 1957, and spent a decade in the Navy before a 26-year career at Proctor And Gamble. But the chapter that surprised even him came later: Nine Years Fighting to Protect the Pacific Ocean in a book called Shaking Up the World. That's where we begin today. Jim, I'm really happy you decided to join our little ship Project Candor and take a journey with us.

Jim Paulk 2:48

I am happy to be here. I always enjoy it.

Jeanne 2:51

Great, great. Are you ready for a bunch of questions?

Jim Paulk 2:55

Shoot.

— Growing up in Depression-era Brunswick

Jeanne 2:56

Okay. So I want to start at the beg very beginning because I think the beginning tells us everything. You grew up in a small Georgia town, attended a military prep school, and ended up at the Naval Academy. That's not an obvious path for most kids. So looking back at that young man from Brunswick, Georgia, what was the first moment you sensed that your life was going to go somewhere unexpected?

Jim Paulk 3:23

Well, I was I wasn't sure. I was probably like a lot of us, we were just having fun and doing a lot of hunting and fishing and uh had a girlfriend and and just enjoying life and enjoying being a teenager. And then the biggest thing was being able to drive a car, being 16 years old and getting a driver's license. And at least with the older kids got a driver's license, then they could drive, and then we just wouldn't ride with them. But but that was probably the biggest transition uh was being able to get in a car and have freedom and go to the woods and run around and go to different towns and and do whatever we wanted to. But that was that was it. But the time uh being born in 1933 was the depths of the Great Depression, and the world was changing at that time. Hitler was coming into uh power in Germany and and uh and and we had so much poverty in the United States, people would come to your backdoor and say, May I please have a piece of bread? And I don't think people today understand uh uh what it was like back then. It it was really, really bad in tough times, and money was hard to come by, and and most of us worked when we were kids. Uh I had so many different jobs as a child, but uh but we needed to spend in money, so we had to work for it.

Jeanne 4:54

Nice. Well, I don't think people do get get it, and that's why I like you talking about it because we want to preserve history, we want people to think about this and not try to rewrite it because the bad times were the bad times.

Jim Paulk 5:09

They were. Yes, they were, but but we survived, and then people worked together and helped one another. That was that was the main thing, and then uh I'll tell you before World War II, the average person made about $20 or $25 a week. Think about that. And then when we had a shipyard in Brunswick to build Liberty Ships, people were making $100 a week. So they were making four or five times as much as they had made before the war. And they came to Brunswick from all over the south to work in the shipyard and build liberty ships, and uh uh and and that changed the town. We didn't have enough houses. Uh they built uh built uh uh uh little one-bedroom things on every vacant lot in town, and people were renting out bedrooms, and people were driving for many miles, and some people were simply sleeping in the cars. So it was it was a really very, very different time. And our schools were overcrowded, of course, and we went

— The dream of Annapolis

Jim Paulk 6:15

on uh two two phases every day, and where one part of the alphabet was in the morning and the other part was in the afternoon. So if the kids you played with were in school, you didn't have anybody to play with. And then and then the second half of the year you switched. So your friends were were gone until the weekend. So those were the some of the things that that we experienced. And so I don't I I wasn't sure what I wanted to do as a teenager. I thought for a while um I might go into the ministry. Uh, and then uh uh I thought maybe I'd like to be a professional golfer, and uh and I worked at those, and then I decided that I really wanted to go to the Naval Academy, and that that became my overriding dream was to go to Annapolis. But uh I was fortunate that I did not get in out of high school because I don't think I would have made it. I was I was not mature enough, and uh and I don't think I was prepared well enough academically to to get through the program at the academy. The academy goes a bang, bang, bang, it throws stuff at you so fast. But uh but going to uh military college in the Lana, it was a four-year college, but I went there for a year and I thought I'd get into Annapolis, but I did not get an appointment. Then after the second year there, uh, and I had I had gone through different equations. I only lacked two courses to having a major in math, but that was a big, big thing for me was getting the math background. But I did not get an appointment. And so uh at the end of those two years, I said, well, I guess I'm gonna go to Georgia Tech and get an engineering degree like a lot of my friends. And and I was playing in a golf tournament somewhere in Georgia, I don't remember where, but a friend from mine from another city that had become friends uh over the playing golf in different uh around the state, uh, came running out of the course. Jimmy, Jimmy, your mother called, she wants you to call home, she wants you to get home immediately. And I said, Well, I'm not walking off the golf course in the middle of a match. I'll call her when I get done. And so I finished up and I called her and she said, You have an appointment to Annapolis. And almost melted to that point. I could not believe it because I thought I was not gonna get it. But I got in and I said, Oh, I had to get home because we had to get down to Jacksonville and get uh all the exams done and and then uh get to Annapolis in a week. So it was it was kind of run, run, run before I got in. And uh it was unbelievable getting there. And the the first night uh at the academy, there were 1,168 of us, and and everyone was running around, where are you from? What do you do, and that sort of thing. And uh there were people from all 48 states, only 48 then, and six foreign nations. And it seemed like everyone I talked to said they had graduated valedictory into the class, they were president of the class, and they were captain of the football team. And I'm thinking, I was none of those things. What am I doing here? But I was so in awe with of them, and then after all these years, I'm more in awe of them today because I can look back at all the things, unbelievable things that they they have accomplished in life. And uh uh I just uh it it's just been overwhelming for me to go through all of this and and uh and and enjoy it. I've I've I've had such a great life, I really have.

— Three chapters: Navy, P&G, conservation

Jeanne 10:00

Yeah, that's wonderful to hear. So you navigated at least three distinct chapters in your life military service, corporate career, and marine conservation. Yeah. Was there a specific moment when you understood your life wasn't going to stay on one course? And how did you learn rather than five?

Jim Paulk 10:21

What I what I learned, Jeanne, was that, and I think it's probably like this for everyone, I think life is an evolutionary process. And I I think uh that you just uh you just it's like Yogi Berra said, you come to a fork in the road and you take it. And and there are a lot of decisions, and I tell my uh grandchildren, I said, you're gonna make a lot of decisions, and some of them are gonna be right, some are gonna be wrong, but you want to make more right ones than wrong ones. And and uh and so you you you just go through one at a time and you try and do your best at every stage. You do uh just be the best that you can be. And uh, and so when I graduated from Annapolis, um I

— Life aboard a submarine

Jim Paulk 11:10

got married the next day after graduation, and we could talk about that if you wanted to later. But uh, and then I went into the Navy and up in a submarine force, and and I served on five years on active duty and then five years in reserves, and uh being engineering officer on a submarine was the one of the best jobs I ever had because about half the crew reports to the chief engineer, and and I had the most fabulous people working for me. They're they're all very smart, very all very talented, and very motivated. And uh it's it's a great group of people to work with. And here it is all these years later, and I'm still in communication with some of the enlisted men. Most of the officers and the chief petty officers have passed away, but there's some of the some of them that are still around, and we still communicate with one another, which is amazing.

Jeanne 12:03

Yeah, that's fantastic. If you were in the engineering room in a sub, did you have any hearing loss as a result? I know that something back then there wasn't a lot of good protection.

Jim Paulk 12:15

That's probably right. I I think I think that I was exposed to a lot of doors over my career, and and that's why I have hearing gauge today. So that's a very astute observation. But the engine rooms are very noisy, but once you dive and you shut the engines down and you go on the batteries, that's very quiet. And it's very still, and when you're deep, you don't have the motion of the that you have on the surface.

Jeanne 12:40

So you don't have the turrets hitting you, I guess.

Jim Paulk 12:43

Yeah.

Jeanne 12:44

But I didn't know you went what's electric in the submarine. That part I don't know.

Jim Paulk 12:49

What's it like?

Jeanne 12:50

What's the electric? You said when you dive, then you're gonna be able to get the battery.

Jim Paulk 12:53

You go you go on the battery. You have you have you have batteries. You have you have two you have two uh uh batteries with with uh 126 cells in each one, each cell weighs a ton. So you got 26 tons of battery, and forward battery and after battery, and uh and so that that will keep you going as maybe three or four knots for uh for a day or two. So you if you try to go real fast, you're gonna use up you can use up the power in your battery.

Jeanne 13:26

So but it still allows you to steer, so you're not just sinking.

Jim Paulk 13:30

Oh no, no, you yeah, and that's right.

Jeanne 13:33

You I thought when you turned off the screws that you know it would just sink, but well you can actually you can actually um you can actually maintain control just by pumping water in and out.

Jim Paulk 13:46

And we we did that a lot um in some of our drills, uh that we would we shut everything down and we would we would spend four hours just just uh uh trying to maintain a certain depth, not change the depth, but stay that stay at that depth. And uh if people walk back and forth uh and they move forward, then you're gonna have to pump water to back to keep keep it balanced and uh and whatever. But you could uh you could maintain, but because the the weight changed all the time because if you were running, uh you had you had you were running uh making fresh water all the time. You had to make a lot of fresh water, not for showers and washing your hands, but water for the batteries. So we made a lot of water, and so uh you're taking salt water out and making fresh water out of it, and so that changes the the weight uh in the boat. And so uh, I think everybody can't go to the well if if in front of the well and and and people did that as a joke. Uh if if if there was if there was a certain officer that they didn't particularly like, that said, let's all go forward. They would all go forward and change the weight. They did get paid to get compensated for it, and then they'd all go back somewhere else. Oh it was it was it was it was kind of a joke, but it was it was kind of like that.

Jeanne 15:14

Yeah, you know, they used to do that on airlines too, like they'd start moving people's seats, like, oh, we have to w distribute weight better. I don't know if they still do it, but we have to redistribute the weight. So three three people need to move back to the back. It's hilarious. Yeah. I don't know. I can't I couldn't imagine being underwater and just you know, with the door or the hatch closed, and you know, there's no sun, there's no I don't know. Is there is there it's just any I mean it's just the subs lights, right? You don't see any uh light in the ocean itself.

Jim Paulk 15:50

No, there's no wind no windows.

Jeanne 15:54

Oh, you have to be some special person to be able to do that. I actually dated a submariner, but um my questions don't come from knowing him, but um you know it's just interesting to to think about being there. I when I was stationed in Hawaii, they have that one um submarine, and I can't think of the n name of it now. It's on display. Um, and you know, it's a tourism uh place now. So you can go in and walk in it, and that is one teeny weeny little place.

Jim Paulk 16:24

I I remember watching that out of a window of the hotel there, and uh they would take people out. They would take maybe a dozen people or so, and then they'd go down and they they could actually see, and they'd take them out to show them a plane that was on the bottom or something that was on the bottom, they could and show them the fish and everything. But that was uh uh I I remember that. That was interesting.

Jeanne 16:47

Oh, yeah, they do have those tour tour boats that do that. I did go on one of those, and I I didn't really like it too much being it was claustrophobic for me. But I think it was called the Bofin now that I'm thinking about it. There's a boat, the actual sub from um Lake the World War II time frame. Um the bowfin's now it, you know, you can walk in it like it's a museum. Yeah, yeah, and it's the whole full sub. It's very interesting.

Jim Paulk 17:11

Yeah.

— The fight to ban California gillnets

Jeanne 17:12

All right, well, let's keep moving here. We gotta keep sailing around. So um marine conservation is rarely smooth sailing. So when you were in the fight to eliminate destructive gill nets from California waters, what was the hardest stretch of that campaign?

Jim Paulk 17:28

And what I'll tell you maybe. Well, I I I worked for 20, 26 years for Proctor And Gamble and retired. And after I retired, um I decided that that uh I was too young to do nothing. And uh I got a group of people together, retirees, and said, why don't we do some projects together? Not for money, but we'll get some money, but it's mostly for fun, they're doing it together. And so we were about a year and a half into that, and I had got some projects, we'd completed some things and having a really good time, and and then um a group came to me and said, uh uh they've got this GillNet initiative that they've started, and and Doris Allen was assemblywoman and she was sponsoring it. And uh I didn't know anything about the Gillnet program, and and uh but they apparently had tried to get that on the ballot twice and it failed. And so they were in the third time and they were a month into it, and the guys had been going to some of the meetings, and they said it's not working, and so they went to Doris Allen and they said, We're gonna fail. It is not gonna work. We got to get somebody to lead us and take charge and somebody that knows the fishing community, and we want to get Jim Paulk in here to run this program. And so the guy that was running it was actually um uh the uh editor of uh fishing magazine, and uh uh and so anyway, I went back and and talked to a group I'd been meeting with, and I said, Look, I've been asked to take over this this this uh initiative, and I said, but there's absolutely no way I can do this. I need a a committee, and you guys, if you guys will agree to put your lives on hold for the next five months, and I'll do the same thing, then we will bust our rear ends and we will get this thing on the ballot and get it passed. So they said yes, and I went back and said, okay, we're organized, we're going. And I said, I told the group, I said, we have to create the perception of success. I said, we have to be everywhere, all over the state of California. And if we create perception of success, then we can get people to donate money to pay for ballots, getting, getting, pay for the signatures. We'll get some. And we ended up getting a hundred thousand as volunteers, which we were told the most that ever gotten in a in a in a uh initiative campaign. And uh anyway, we we uh by June we thought we were ready and and had enough ballots, but we weren't sure because they have to be validated. If somebody signed more than once, then they would get thrown out. If they didn't sign it exactly the way they were registered as a voter, it got thrown out. If they were not registered to vote, it got thrown out. So we weren't sure whether the one that we had enough to cover the ones that were invalidated. So um at the end of the campaign, uh I asked a friend that that had a mortuary, and I knew they had a King Air airplane, a twin-engine plane that would carry about eight or nine. I said, we need a fast airplane to cover the state of California in one day. And I said, Will you be willing to donate your plane? And he said he would, and his brother said he'd be the co-pilot. And so we left Orange County Airport, which is uh south of Los Angeles uh in the dark, and we flew to Sacramento, and we put on a dog and pony show, I call it, at in the governor's uh media room, which was like a small auditorium, and it was full of people. All media, television, radio, and everything was there. And so, and we got through with that, we got back on the plane and flew down to Burbank, and with the media uh facilities were there, and we had a lot of uh television stars and and uh VIPs that showed up there, of course, being being near LA. And uh we must have had 20 people standing up for us. So we we did another dog and pony show there, and then got back on the plane and flew to San Diego. And when we got down there, the guys had organized a convoy of fork trucks with pallets of ballots. So they went down the road with those fork trucks and the ballots and put them on the steps of the courthouse. And we went up by the pallets and did a dog and pony show. Got through, uh got on the plane, flew back to Orange County and got there in the dark. So from dark to dark, we covered the state and put on put on the shows and and uh uh and I think got people convinced that we could we could uh get this thing passed. So about a month later, we found out we had qualified and we would be on the ballot in November. And so the night of uh the election uh Bill Ray, who owned the Balboar Bay Club in Newport Beach, uh made his facility available to us. And uh we I think Mickey Mantle was there,

— Restoring the white seabass

Jim Paulk 23:00

Joey Bishop was there, and a lot of celebrities were there, and about every half hour I'd get up and make an announcement, tell him what the vote was, and by the end of the evening, we had won 53 to 47, which was a was a huge victory. And uh that was probably the most um I don't know what you call it, but it's there's no way we could have done what we did, but we did. It was it was amazing. But we had people all over California working, everybody was donating facilities, uh making things available to us and and and cooperating. But over the next three years we phased out the gill nets and and made a lot of other programs available. And uh when the gill nets were gone, one of the major fisheries in Southern California is white sea bass, which is a member of the Croaker family. And and they're sizable fish, 30, 40 pounds, so they're they're good sized fish and fun to catch. And so uh SeaWorld had started experimenting with raising these uh white sea bass to about three or four inches. But when they put them in the ocean, there was like feeding the ocean ice cream because everything ate them. So we came up with the concept of having grow-out pins. And so uh we established these that were going to be operated by fishing clubs at their expense, and they had built these pins that would fit in a boat slip. And if you visualize just a pin under with underwater, and uh SeaWorld would would bring these fish to us at four inches, and we would feed them and get them up to 10 to 12 inches to release in the ocean, and the survival rate would go from maybe four or five percent to maybe 75-80 percent. And and this program is still going on today, and it's one of the best things we ever did because now 40% of the fish of the white sea bass that are caught in Southern California have a tag in them, and they were a result, a product of this program that we started. So that is it's ongoing, it's it's it's working real good. And uh I guess.

Jeanne 25:22

I have to ask you a question to interrupt you, but when you're talking and you said gill net, I I I don't even know what that is.

Jim Paulk 25:30

Okay, a gill net, okay. Picture picture uh like a like a like a tennis net, okay? Okay, and the fish would swim into the net and and get caught, the gills would get caught in that net and they couldn't get loose. So the the fish are trapped trapped in the net by their gills. The gills would get caught in there and they couldn't get out.

Jeanne 25:54

Oh, right, okay.

Jim Paulk 25:55

Okay, now what happens when they get caught in there? What do you think eats them? Sharks eat them, uh seals eat them, uh everything wants to eat them, and those things get tangled up in the in the nets too. So you kill a lot of what I call bycatch. Things that that you don't want to catch end up getting caught and and destroyed uh because of the the nature of the of the fishery. It's not it's not a selective kind of a fishery, like you catch them one on a time in a lion or whatever. Even if you wrap a school of fish in a big net like the tuna boats do, and they wrap them around and then pull the scene and they pull them up and they've got a whole school of fish. That way they only they they mostly catch tuna, but sometimes they get porpoise in there and they have to find a way to get the porpoise out uh that are feeding on the on the tuna.

Jeanne 26:51

But uh who put who put the gill nets in there to begin with? Well it's the fishermen.

Jim Paulk 26:56

It's yeah, it's it it's it's a legitimate way, it's a legitimate way to fish, except that it's it's uh it's a it's a destructive way of fishing too. It's it kills a lot of things you don't want to kill. And uh if if if you have uh uh unbelievable amount of uh of wildlife, then you don't worry about killing something you don't want to. But if it's limited, then then you can't afford to kill a lot of things. And and and so it's it's not it's not uh one of the best ways to to fish. And and uh and they can do other other other ways of fishing, and but but gill nets were very destructive, and and uh we we kind of set the pattern and and uh we kind of told some other states how to do it, and and uh we we cooperated with Florida and the state of Washington and and got them to go through the gill net process too.

Jeanne 27:55

So that's great. It was well you said that you know kill things you don't want, so or you kill too many of them. Um I just my husband's crazy over that lobster or whatever it is. No, yeah, crab, the crab fishing people. Yeah, and they they they fish so much that our Alaskan king crab is cost a buck a claw, a hundred bucks a claw. So yeah, that's terrible when that happens, and now they have to repopulate if you know you don't want to take a species totally out.

Jim Paulk 28:28

Yeah. Well, we did some other things too. Um, we we wrote legislation for anglers and uh and we built we built artificial reefs. We built probably the largest artificial reef in the world, and we dumped a lot of concrete. We worked with uh uh Department of Fish and Game and the Coastal Commission and Coast Guard and everyone to to to get material and take it out and dump it in a designated site. And uh I got so that I could I I I did a lot of media uh media events, and and whenever I'd send something into the LA Times and they would uh publicize it, uh we we would we would get all media that wanted to go and we'd put them on boats and we'd take them out so they could watch. And and uh and then uh as we got more publicity, I had people calling saying, We got material, can you can you use it or whatever? And it was very unusual. I had the uh uh National Fisheries Service that called me one time and he said, We've got we've got all of this this coral that's been confiscated that was being imported illegally because it was illegally illegal to bring coral in, and said, You're making a dump. Could we uh could we bring some of this out and and dump it? I said, Well, how much do you have? They said, Well, maybe a dump truck load. And and so when they came out and we did a presentation uh in Huntington Beach at the in a parking lot there with with a lot of media, and and these these people, well they showed up and they went shorts and and their their legs had all these cuts off their legs. I said, what happened? All this stuff was wrapped up in paper or something, and when they unwrapped it, they it's very sharp. Carl is very sharp.

Jeanne 30:23

Oh, yeah,

— Writing Shaking Up the World

Jeanne 30:24

yeah, yeah. I know that from I snorkeled in Hanama Bay. They tell you when you're walking on the coral reef, do not put your leg into a hole, even by mistake, or try not to, because there's these eels there, right? And they'll come and bite you. But I did slide into one and scrape my leg, and then it started growing because they're live. I mean, it's not a rock, it's like a little organism. So it started growing. I had to have antibiotics, and I almost got in trouble with uh the navy because they're like, Oh, you were out sunbathing and now you're sick and you can't come to work. I'm like, no, I got stuck on coral. That's a different thing. I wasn't out partying. Oh gosh. Well, let's go to another question because there's so much to ask you. You're just full of good information. Um, your book, Shaking Up the World, brings together remarkable stories from people across different lives. As you gathered these stories, what did you discover about what it actually takes for a person's life to leave a lasting mark?

Jim Paulk 31:28

Well, let me put it this way: to get the story in the book, it had to be significant. Every story had to earn its way into the book. It couldn't just be something. It had to be something special. It had a little twist to it. Uh, because uh this was not gonna be a book of bios. I was born here, did this, this, this. That was not gonna be this book. And uh this, as it turned out, uh, this was the only book of its nature in the history of the Naval Academy since 1845. There have been a lot of movies and a lot of books written, but they were basically about one person, about one person's life or about the academy and a movie or whatever. But but this book has 59 authors and 81 stories. So it's very unique from that standpoint. And uh when I announced to the class that I planned to do this book, no one says, Who the heck are you to do this book? Everybody said, What can we do to help? It was just it was amazing.

Jeanne 32:41

And uh I got one of the support.

Jim Paulk 32:43

One

— NFL referee stories & Katarina Witt

Jim Paulk 32:44

of the first persons that called was uh Bob McAlewee. And Bob Bob called and said, Jeremy, do you want some stories from the NFL? I said, Oh, I would love to have some. I said that would be a big hit in the book. And so I'll tell you a story, and you may not do you know who you probably know. I'll I'm gonna tell you and you see if you know the person.

Jeanne 33:06

Okay.

Jim Paulk 33:07

Bob Bob served 27 years as an NFL official. He was a white hat, the head referee, and he did Super Bowls in three different decades, the only one there would do that. And when he retired, he was a senior official in the NFL. So Bob said uh my only job was to watch a quarterback after the play started. He said, I never knew whether it's a touchdown or or or completed pass or first down anything. I just watched a quarterback. That was my job. But before the play started, I had several things I had to do. I had to check the play clock, the game clock, the formation, the substitutions, and a couple other things. He says, But, he says, when I was in Chicago, I had one other thing I had to do. I had to reach around to my back pocket and see if my penalty flag was there. If it was not there, he said I'd go to the huddle, I'd stand behind number 34, and I'd say, Walter, give me my flag back. And Walter Payton would put it out of his shirt and give it to him. He'd put it back in his pocket and he'd go start to play, and the people uh on the stands or on television never noticed that happening, but the guys in the huddle were all laughing. But Peyton loved it, he'd loved to have fun on the field, and there are several stories in there about him and and some other things that uh that Bob I'll tell you another one. Do you know who Katerina Vick was?

Jeanne 34:50

No, I I do know Walter Payton, but I don't know Katerina Vick.

Jim Paulk 34:54

She she uh was from East Germany, she was an ice skater, and uh won the conjuring up something.

Jeanne 35:04

Okay, sorry.

Jim Paulk 35:05

Yeah, she won she won the uh Olympic gold medal for for ice skating, and she was a beautiful young lady. And so uh Bob was doing um a game in Berlin, in in West Berlin. And uh they came to him and they said, Katarina Vick is gonna toss the coin at the beginning, and Bob said, Fine. So when they brought her to him, she took him by the arm and said, Bob, I have something to tell you. And he says, What's that? She said, When we go out on the field, everybody in the stands is gonna whistle. And he says, In Europe, when they're whistling, that's the same as booing. So don't be surprised. And Bob says, Well, don't worry about that. I've been booed in every stadium in the United States.

Jeanne 35:58

Oh, that's good. And these are the stories that you have in your book, things like uh what you're just telling us. Is that correct?

Jim Paulk 36:04

Yeah.

Jeanne 36:05

Oh, that's gotta be a book to read for sure. I'm gonna have to get that. So at 91 years old, still writing and still sharing these stories, when you picture the reader who most needs these stories, who are they and what do you hope they carry with them when they finish the last page?

Jim Paulk 36:23

You know, uh the first book I did was Swimming for Our Lives. And uh uh when I retired for the second time from doing marine conservation, all the magazines, I was pretty well known in the state of California for doing the initiative and and and conservation work. And so the magazines wanted my name in there. And I said, my my the stories I wrote were just terrible, garbage, but they didn't care, they just wanted my name in their magazine. So I had done uh lots, lots of magazine articles, and uh I had a friend of mine that was the uh outdoor editor for the Augusta Chronicle uh mag uh newspaper, and he's I was complimenting him on a book. He'd done two or three books, and I said, that's really gonna be a great book. And and he said, Well, Jimmy, you could do a book too. I said, Oh, no way. I said, no way I could do a book. I said, I said, I'm a terrible writer. And I uh I said, I'm better at talking than writing. And uh he said, no, he said you could do one. I said, How what do you mean? He said, well, you just take some of your magazine articles and put them put them together, and that's a book. I said, Well, I'll go through my files. So I went through my files, and there might have been four or five that were decent enough you

— The Platters at Cracker Barrel

Jim Paulk 37:45

could fix it up and be in a book. The rest of them, no way. But I I worked at it, he got he perked my interest, and I I started uh I found notes on other trips I did and things, and and I put together uh about 20 or 20 or 21 or 22 stories uh for the book, and that's how that one came to be. I I told him he tricked me into doing that first book. And uh I'll I'll tell you I'll tell you a story. Do you know the singing group The Platters?

Jeanne 38:18

Yes. Well I don't remember what their songs were right now, but I'm a music fanatic, so I do know the platters.

Jim Paulk 38:26

Only you. That's my favorite song. Okay, and uh but anyway, uh uh we had uh we went to Branson, Missouri, and my wife's roommate, a husband, lived in Texas. We flew there to Springfield from Southern California and rented a car and went over, and they drove two days up from Houston to join us, and uh and we had gone to shows, and the shows there were terrific. I mean, really, really world-class uh like Las Vegas type shows, and and really good, and we had a good time. So we decided on Friday that uh we were gonna be leaving on Saturday morning, that we had to maybe go to an afternoon show, then go get dinner, and then go back to the room and pack up because they were gonna take what we had left over with them, uh, and we were gonna fly back to California. So with that plan, we went to the Cracker Barrel for dinner. And after dinner, uh John and I uh went out on the porch and sat in the rocking chairs, and the wires went around the gift shop in there, and uh two guys came out the door, and as they came out, I heard them say, Why don't we play a game of checkers? And so I stood up, I said, There's a checker board right here. You can take my chair. And I said, Wait a minute, how are you gonna play checkers with him? He's got a white cane with a red tape. Yeah, I got a referee this match. This isn't gonna be fair. So we got going back and forth like that, and about that time, uh my wife's roommate came out, Nancy, and she said, You know who these guys are? I said, I don't have a clue. She says, They are the platters. I said, Oh, wow! I love that. I love dancing to their music, it was just terrific. And uh uh and so anyway, we talked a little bit and he said, Have you been to our show? I said, No. I said, we haven't had a chance to. He said, Well, you gotta come tonight. I said, No, we got we gotta go back and pack. We gotta leave early in the morning. He said, No, you gotta come to the show. Anyway, we finally says, okay, we'll come to the show. He said, Well, give me 15 minutes and I'll go make arrangements at we'll call. So we wait a while and then we go and we'll call, and and in Branson, the ushers seat you because they could get everybody, they seat theaters there seat thousands of people. So there could be chaos when people try to figure out where they sit, so they have ushers to show you where to sit. So we got our tickets and we gave them to the usher and we started going down front. And we were at the very front seats. There was nothing in front of us, just the stage. So, anyway, the show was terrific, and uh the music was was incredible. And at the end of the show, uh Rooster, who was the leading leader of the group, and the one I'd been talking with, he uh he was base uh bass in the group, and and Rooster came down off the stage with two long-stem red roses. He gave one to my wife Pat and one to Nancy, and he danced with Pat in the aisle there in front of the stage. And then he went back up on the stage and they finished the last number and invited everybody to come up to the lobby to get signatures and take photographs and everything. And uh uh I'm thinking we're in the front row, it'd take us 30, 45 minutes just to get to the door. I said, No way. I said, look, I said, there's an exit door right over next to the stage, and there's not a guard there. Why don't we go out that door?

Jeanne 42:08

So we went into their dressing room.

Jim Paulk 42:11

So we went out that door, and as soon as we get out, I hear this voice, where are you going? Here comes Brewster up the sidewalk. He was going up to the front. And he said, I said, Bruce, we gotta go pack. He said, No, you come up front. He said, No, I said, the line's gonna be a mile long. He said, Don't worry about the line. And he took Pat by the arm and he they went up the sidewalk. So I told John, I said, I guess we're going up front. So we went up front and took some pictures and got autographs, and it was it was just it was one of those uh unusual events in life. And so I I made that into an article for the for them for the uh for the book. But I had some things like things like that, but that was that was that was kind of fun. But but I learned from that book.

Jeanne 43:00

What are you telling people though? I'm asking, what should they take away from it? I mean, are you telling them enjoy life or just a few more?

Jim Paulk 43:06

I think I think there I think there are a couple things. I think one, I think it's educational. I think it's it can be inspirational, and and I think I think uh I think it can just can be entertaining. Entertaining, historical, and educational. So I think you get all of those things out of a book. If it's if it's if it's a good book and it's historical in nature, then you get those things. And uh and my books have all had some things of historical nature. One of the one of the things uh when I was 82 years old, I was invited to go to New London and give the remarks uh at the graduation ceremony uh at submarine school, which was a great honor. Um my my men asked me to go and represent them there. at at at for the ceremony. And so uh I got to go and talk to all those young guys and and uh and and give them some thoughts for the future and and that's where I got to thinking a lot about uh relationships and I talked to them about relationships with their shipmates with their spouses with their neighbors with everyone I said relationships are the most the

— Relationships are everything

Jim Paulk 44:30

most important thing in the world I said if you have a good relationship with everyone you're gonna have a wonderful life and that kind of started me off thinking about relationships and uh did you see the movie uh City Slickers with Billy Crystal Okay Well you remember when they when Jack Pallance had that big old knife and he they they were convinced he was gonna cut their throats and one day scary guy anyway yeah he blew out one day he said we're gonna go out and round up straight and Billy Crystal said uh oh he's gonna cut my throat he's gonna take me out there and kill me but as they were riding out Jack Pallas turned around the saddle and he says there's only one thing and Billy Crystal says your finger and I did that in subscribing they all laughed of course and I said Pallas told him that's for you to figure out I said well it's not for me to figure out I'll tell you what it is it's relationships and that's when I talked to them about relationships and uh and then uh when when I got through the remarks the the commanding officer of submarine school gave some remarks and then they said you go stand over there you're gonna give out all the certificates and shake hands with everybody and I I got every sailor they they they were all standing at attention of course and I said I'm gonna make every one of them smile I said they're just too formal and so uh I shake their head give them a certificate and say something to them and got them all smiling and that was it was such a wonderful wonderful experience to do that and then after after after the ceremony we went back and had lunch with the Chiefs in their in their mess hall.

— Two Truths & A Lie

Jeanne 46:19

That's wonderful and that was it's got it we're we're getting to the time when I want to play Two Truths and a lie our signature game on um Project Candor so are you ready to play? Oh sure okay great so for those listening the rules of the game are is that our guest Jim has provided us with three headlines from his life um ones that he hasn't really talked about yet but um that two of them are true and one of them is a lie or a twisted truth or just exaggeration maybe but um I'm gonna read out those headlines then I get to guess which one I think is the lie and then we'll turn it over to Jim to talk about these three stories and then in the end he'll tell us which one's the lie. So I'm going to display my screen and show the stories. This episode is sponsored by Rebel 180 the home of brave pivots and fresh starts Rebel 180 is all about helping you rediscover what's possible when you stop settling and start listening to that little tug inside that says life can be different. Whether you're navigating a career shift dreaming about a new direction or standing at the crossroads wondering if it's time for your own 180 degree turn Rebel 180 is a reminder you don't need permission to change your story. And now as we open the door to our second sponsor we're stepping into the world of tech simple socket print the lightweight blazing fast label print solution designed for those who need reliability without the blue with version 1.5 you get instant printing in milliseconds fully maintained print sequence and automatic base64 decoding all without needing print driver installs. If you're running SQL Server 2016 or newer SimpleSocket print 1.5 drops right in and gets the work. Keep your workflow simple keep your label printing fast with Simple Socket Print. Thank you to our sponsors so the number one story here Jim it's the Jim shares a love story that's hard to top nearly 60 years of marriage to his wife Pat. Number two story is one of Jim's classmates at Annapolis ended up in jail and Jim recorded the surprisingly funny and heartfelt story behind it. And number three is Jim recounts his connection to Apollo 16 including three days on the moon and an Olympic level achievement. So shoot I don't know you've done so much stuff I it's hard to say none of these but the one in the number two one is about your Napplis friend up in jail so I'm gonna guess that's a lie because that would be hard to think somebody was an officer and ended up in jail. No I guess it's not too hard of a stretch but anyway I'll guess that one's a lie. So you go through each of those stories please starting with number one and your love story with Pat.

Jim Paulk 49:17

All right okay well my my second year at Annapolis my uh Georgia girlfriend I could not get her to come up to and she said you're you're our relationship isn't not much she says I see you a few days at Christmas and a few days uh in summer but you only get 30 days leave in summertime so it's not much of a relationship so she called that off and so a classmate said he was going over to the University of Delaware for three days and would I like to go and I said I'd love to go. And his girlfriend at the time Sheila Cunningham fixed me up with three blind dates and I'm sure the first two were fine but number three was amazing. I had never met anyone like Patricia Ann Metzler she and you had to understand that when I was soporn high school I had a steady girlfriend always had girlfriends I had a lot of girlfriends over the years. I had one that told me I had one that told me uh she said I'm not waiting around four years to get out of Annapolis. She said I'm going to Georgia and find me a husband and I said it's okay and but anyway when I met Pat she was uh she had a charisma about her that seemed to reach out four or five feet it was amazing and uh I didn't know anything about her background just that we talked and I I I just was so comfortable talking to her I said she this is she is just an amazing person and I said I have got to get to know her better because this might be the person that I want to marry someday. So I I got a phone number and address and everything and I went back to Annapolis and I tried to get her to come to Annapolis for a weekend and uh she wasn't interested in doing it. She did not see uh being buried into a military life that was not something she had pictured for herself and I I I didn't know it at the time but but she was studying elementary education and she wanted to teach and she wanted to be a coach. She was going to coach kids in sports. And I didn't know that's what she wanted to do. And I also didn't know that she had just broken up with the captain of the Delaware basketball team and years and years later I found out that she was the most popular girl on the campus. And so I didn't know what I was fighting with all those things. But I was not going to give up and I finally convinced her to come down for a formal dance and Navy had the best dance bands in the country that came there and had that reputation. So they knew that it was going to be a fabulous dance and and so she agreed to come down and we said we would meet on the steps of Bancroft Hall at 2 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, which gave her time to get there on a train and get a bus over from Baltimore to Annapolis. And so when I went to the steps there she was she was sitting on the steps and I wasn't sure how I was going to recognize her and she was not sure how she'd recognize me but she had on a sweatshirt and had Delaware I looked at her and I smiled and she smiled back and I I think maybe our souls met when when we smiled at each other because there was not an awkward moment ever in our relationship. It was always like we'd known one another for many years. And uh and so we hit it off from the very beginning and uh it was it was kind of like the platters group where the platters group glommed on the pet and uh on a honeymoon after a honeymoon we went went out from uh Brunswick to San Diego and we stopped in Las Vegas and that was before the strip but we we didn't know anything about gambling and we I'd heard of the golden nugget so we went there and it was all lights and noise and uh full of activity and so we went over to the craps table and was standing there and the guy a guy at the table uh started to have a conversation with Pat and and next thing you know he wanted her to hold all his money and next thing you know he's he and the coupier are are arguing and uh and it's his turn to throw the dice and finally he threw the dice and was going to leave and I said wait wait wait your money said no you keep it you you keep it we're he said I just lose it all and he said just don't get out of here don't stay here and uh wow and so but people people just glommed onto her and when we'd go if we went out to dinner in a nice restaurant in California people thought she was a movie star. They weren't sure who she was but she looked a little bit like Doris Day or Elizabeth Montgomery uh the two people that they used to think she was uh all the time and and but she was attractive and she was uh but she was just like the girl next door you'd never know that she was as attractive as she was because she was so nice and she was always president of just about every organization because everybody wanted her to be present. Not that she wanted to be but but that's just that was just her her coming I guess whatever but that is lovely.

Jeanne 54:58

We got to keep moving because we're gonna run out of time here soon but number two can you tell us about your classmate in Annapolis?

Jim Paulk 55:06

Yeah um okay uh George Phillips was a skipper of an ocean going tugboat and uh they got an assignment to pick up a destroyer in the reserve fleet in Philadelphia and tow it around Florida to Texas to Houston so they got it hooked up and towing behind them and they got out into the Atlantic Ocean and it was very rough and they got the word that there was a hurricane brewing down by Florida. So they decided we better not get caught out in a hurricane with this big destroyer behind us because that would be very hazardous. So they pulled into Port Angeles which is now Fort Lauderdale and to wait out the storm. But before they got in uh George came down with severe abdominal pains and the hospital corpsman on board who was a doctor said you have appendicitis and then when you get in you have to go directly to the hospital so when they got tied up the paramedics were up there on on the dock waiting for him with and they came down and he got George under urine and so those captain is going up the ramp and going to the hospital. Well when he got to the hospital it turned out it was gastroentonitis and not appendicitis and so they treated him and let him come back to the boat the next morning. So when he got there everybody's waiting for him skipper we're in the best Liberty port in the United States we're gonna be here a few days we have not been paid for two weeks no one has any money we can't go ashore and have a good time with no money but we found out if you take our pay records down to the Coast Guard station in Miami they will give you cash you can come back and pay all of us we can all go ashore and have a good time while we wait out the storm and we have a pickup truck for you. So George gets in the pickup truck with the pay records and heads south on highway A1A the ocean's on the left and the strip ball's on the right well somebody pulled out of a strip ball without looking and he veered to the left to keep from T-balling them and he scraped all the way down the side of another car. So they pull over and the other driver is mad as his brand new car is all scraped up and he called the police and the police came and gave George a ticket and he said I'm taking your driver's license because I can't depend on you showing up in court. But if you show up in court in Miami at two o'clock this afternoon we'll give you your license back so at two o'clock George gets to court and the judge is very ornery he said most half the cases were Hispanic and and the judge was bilingual and he was tough as nails so they called his name and George stood up and the clerk read the charges and the judge says how do you plead and George says not guilty and the judge said $25 and George said let me explain the judge said $25 and the judge says take him away so the bailiff takes George by the arm and takes George and locks him up so now the skipper's locked up but he saw there was a telephone on the wall and he called the boat and he got his executive officer who was a lieutenant JG and he said they got me locked up down here in Miami. Bring $25 down here and get me out he said sir I don't have $25. He said well past the damn hand there's got to be $25 on the boat. So a couple hours later uh the executive officer showed up but he's got Boats and Bean with him who was a warrant officer and and so George looks at at Boasted Bean and said what are you doing here all dressed up in blues like you're ready for inspection he said well sir I've never had the opportunity to bail a skipper out and I wasn't going to miss this opportunity so and at about that time the judge came out of the courtroom and he saw this group out in the hall and he and Boasted Bean started looking at each other and all of a sudden they ran together and started jumping up and down clapping each other on the back and everything. And it turned out they were best friends from New Jersey they had joined the Navy together and they were in Pearl Harbor on a battleship in a 40 millimeter mount a bomb came down and blew both of them over the side and each thought the other had been dead for 24 years. So at that point the judge looked at George and he said okay five dollars court case so they paid the five dollars and went back to the tugboat oh so when when judge when when George got there he went to his his room and and he got on the phone and he called his wife honey sit down I have something to tell you in the last two days I've been in and out of the hospital and in out of jail and that's all I have to say okay all right number three let's go to that one you recount your connection to Apollo 16 including three days on the moon and an Olympic level achievement well I was uh I was I was uh scheduled to be uh a backup for Apollo 13 and then you remember the movie Apollo 13 and uh but I got the measles and I was not allowed to go and so uh I I I I was I was programmed to go on Apollo 16 and we had uh a lift off from Cape Canaveral and and we had uh had a little bit of trouble with navigation on the way there but we worked our way out of it and and we got it got out of the orbiter it got into the lander two of us and we landed on the moon and it was a perfect landing it was worked out great. And we had one thing on this on this uh uh lander that was had never been on the moon before and we had we had a a rover so it was an electric vehicle that was just basically four wheels and two seats and so that we could we could get as much far as four miles away from the lander because if it broke down that was the most we were we we could walk with those heavy backpacks with the air conditioning and the

— The reveal

Jim Paulk 1:02:10

oxygen generators on our backs uh so uh but it never did break down and so uh uh my other astronaut um drove and I was on the mic talking to NASA and photographing what we were seeing and doing all the reporting and um and so this went on for three days and we we did a lot got a lot of uh samples and and uh and got a lot of a lot of video and and uh and a lot of a lot of comments on what we were seeing and so that was the story of our three days on the moon now when we when we we left when we when we left the moon and we uh got ready to hook up again with the orbiter and we opened the hatch dust started coming up because we had dust from our uniforms and everything and he shut it down and he said here's a vacuum you you're not coming up here until you get rid of all that dust so they gave us a vacuum and we vacuumed everything up and then we could get back in in the uh uh uh orbiter with all of the samples of rocks that we had and head back for earth and it was a very smooth landing we landed uh in the Atlantic and the helicopter picked us up we got back to the aircraft carrier and and it was uh a very worthwhile journey and that was uh uh a real fun trip for me I had I enjoyed it wow so those are your three stories so I guess that two was a lie can you tell us which one's the lie number three oh but you told it so well I thought you were right there that was it that was Charlie Duke's story Charlie Charlie Duke was was a Apollo 16 and he went to the moon and uh and I'll tell you what Charlie when uh uh Charlie called me and he said Jimmy he says I don't want to write my story he said I want you to write it he said I want you to interview me and you write it I said okay so I asked my uh 31 year old granddaughter Melanie Johnson to come over she had a photographic memory and I said both of us will take a set of notes and that way we don't miss anything and then I'll take those two sets of notes and then I'll write the story. So that's what we did and I wrote the story sent it back to Charlie and Charlie embellished it some and that was so much fun because I got to do that one with my granddaughter.

— Connect with Jim & closing

Jeanne 1:04:46

Oh yeah that's fantastic. Well this has been so much fun Jim I want to tell the viewers there's a you know the way that they can get in touch with you. So I'm gonna scroll to the next page here because I know they're gonna want to connect with you. And you have a quote here that I think is really great. I'm gonna read it I am fearless willing to take on any project and get it done I've lived my whole life 92 years old whether I knew it or not so I think that's a great quote you've done a lot of things and I think I was adding another one because I don't think you really talked about being a fisherman too much but uh you talked about the marine conservation but you also were a fisherman you knew a lot about that as well

Jim Paulk 1:05:32

That's that was fishing has been my passion in life since I was a little boy and uh I I had a fishing rod that I took on a submarine I didn't have a place to store it so I had it in my bunk. I slept with my rod and reel.

Jeanne 1:05:47

That's cute that's very cute. So Jim has given you some contact information here his website his Facebook page and a call to action is take take a look at the link that's here um to get um a copy of Shaking Up the World I think you'll really enjoy it. I mean Jim you've been a fantastic guest on Project Candor I'm so happy that you joined us today and for those listening uh I hope you'll join us back next week for another outstanding guest and until then from your Admiral of the unexpected I wish you smooth sailing. Bye-bye thank you thank you thanks for joining me on Project Candor where the doors are open the stories are unexpected and the treasure is always real if today's episode made you laugh or think follow the show and share it with your crew otherwise I might just make you squab the deck. I'm Jeanne Andersen your Admiral of the unexpected see you on the next voyage