Episode 11: Bill Thomas; A Veteran’s Journey Through Alaska, War, And Public Service

A life can hold multitudes, and Bill Thomas’ story proves it. Born and raised in Haines with deep Tlingit roots, Bill carries us from Main Street memories and Chilkat dancers to the hot ramp at Bien Hoa, where a young crew chief learned to keep planes—and people—alive. He talks about flying VIP missions in U-21s, the daily reality of fear, the rare medal signed by General Creighton Abrams, and the strange return home through welded bus doors and jeering crowds. You’ll hear the humor too: mess hall standoffs, a monkey fed on grasshoppers, and the long-running code of “never leave home without your crew chief.”

We shift from war to work, tracing how Bill helped secure ANCSA recognition for Klukwan Inc., negotiated land selections, and built a vertically integrated logging operation on Long Island that kept profit with shareholders—roads, cutting, longshoring and all. Then come the policy fights: securing funding for DIPAC’s hatchery, pushing the Renewable Energy Fund that still powers rural hydro and wind, backing ferries that actually pencil out, and delivering harbors and highways that changed daily life. He’s candid about what’s broken in fisheries—escapement first, interception capped, trawler bycatch addressed, and 32-inch rules reconsidered if we care about the future run. On ferries, he argues for short hops supported by road links over a patchwork of costly, empty sailings.

Woven through is a call to remember the people who built this place for real: Tlingit code talkers Jeff David and George Lewis—sworn to secrecy for decades—deserve monuments and lessons our kids can learn from. Bill’s voice is straight, warm, and unsparing. If you care about Alaska—its communities, fisheries, ferries, and the people who show up when it’s hard—you’ll find a dozen reasons to lean in and rethink what progress looks like.

Enjoy the conversation? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with a friend who loves true Alaska stories. Which moment stayed with you?

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of Doug Hask Questions. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe. We're available if you want to watch us on uh YouTube or if you just want to listen to the podcast version on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and each episode goes live on Thursday morning. So I hope you enjoy this episode and we're happy to have you listening. Hey, welcome to this uh episode of Doug Hask Questions. My guest today is Bill Thomas, uh longtime family friend and mentor of mine. Um hope to get into conversation with him about his uh growing up in Haynes, um his service in Vietnam, working in the logging industry, commercial fishing industry. I think you were in elected office in Haynes.

SPEAKER_07 0:50

Eight years to grow assembly.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

It's Grove Assembly, uh lobbyist down in Juneau, and then eight years as a representative.

SPEAKER_07 0:59

Lobbied in DC, also lobbyist in DC.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

So we'll plan on getting to all of those, but first welcome to the show, Bill. Thank you, yeah. I appreciate you being here.

SPEAKER_07 1:08

Well, I I had to go shopping, so I figured this was a good time.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

So let let's let's start start with your childhood growing up in Haynes.

SPEAKER_07 1:18

Well, I was born and raised here June 1st, 1947, and uh I had uh two brothers, two sisters, and one brother got killed in logging, and the sister died of tonsillitis. We moved her tonsils and she butt out. Really? Yeah, and she was what year was that? She was it was well when I was just a baby, she was probably five or six.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Five or six. Did they do that here in Haynes or did they send her out?

SPEAKER_07 1:46

They did it in St. Anne's Hospital in Juneau. In Juneau. And my aunt Irene was there when she when they had them boat taken out. And she said all she heard was her coughing and looked over there and she was just spewing blood. They couldn't stop it, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Wow, that's something you don't think is something that's life-threatening today anymore.

SPEAKER_07 2:06

They don't even cut them, they don't even cut them out anymore.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah. Wow. So how how old were you when you because you said you were little when that happened? How old were you when before you really knew the story on that?

SPEAKER_07 2:17

Quite a when I got into high school and I found I started going to the cemetery as a child and I saw Mildred Nancy. Thomas said, Who is she? You know, and she said, Your sister. And I didn't know, I couldn't read then, so it's pretty young. When I went to school, Ron Sparks was a senior, him and uh Wayne Alex.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:37

That's how old. 1953. 1953 first grade, yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

So now your your brother died in logging exactly when was that?

SPEAKER_07 2:46

That was uh 71.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

And was that here locally?

SPEAKER_07 2:50

Here in Haynes, yeah, a log fell on him, it came off a log truck, and he was truck driver and he was binding the load, and the log wasn't uh cradled right. Usually you go in the cradle and they rolled off, and he was trying to bind it and he took the the binder off and the log rolled and crushed him.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Where where was that at?

SPEAKER_07 3:10

Is that the Kelsaw or it probably was then before they went to the other side him? But he was he was 27 and I just come home from Vietnam, so I mean So that's two big traumatic experiences for you back to back.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Vietnam and then your brother driving or brother dying and never came back.

SPEAKER_07 3:30

And the sad thing was I I I I don't tell a lot of people, but I was um we were in the bar one night and somebody was messing with him, so I went and knocked him out. And he said, What'd you do that for? I said, Because they're messing with you. And I had just come home from Vietnam and I didn't like that. He says, Well, I could handle it. Obviously to me, you weren't. And then I went to California and while I was gone, he got killed, so I had to come back home.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Yeah. How how much older was he than you?

SPEAKER_07 4:00

I was 21. So he was six years older than you?

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Yep. And so you you're did your were all your other siblings, were they all older than you? Were you the youngest size?

SPEAKER_07 4:10

Clifford was the uh Clifford was the youngest. I was the uh Christine's the youngest. And then uh there was Danny, Clifford, me. Mildred Nancy was in between there, and then Chris. Yeah. Raised on Main Street. My mom had tuberculosis, so we were raised by Mildred Sparks. Okay. And uh we had tore a very tight line. I tell people I I grew up in the Presbyterian church because she was very religious. We had Sunday school, we had church, and we had fellowship, and we had uh choir practice, then we you know, then we had the fair, whatever we had every Sunday.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

So is that is the pre when when you were a kid, was the pre is it the Presbyterian church that's there now? Was it the same spot? No, because Haynes House was there, correct?

SPEAKER_07 5:02

Yep, that's where I was born. Okay. Where the church is now. It was the old Haynes House. I was born on that side of the building. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

So where was the Presbyterian church when you were the museum? Okay, so it was over.

SPEAKER_07 5:13

Oh actually up up above it, the Mance, they called it where uh Hartwitz lived, was there, and then just above it was a church and they burn it got burned down.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 5:23

And then Hans Hebert built the new church down there. I think it was Hance, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

So growing up with because Haynes House was there when you were growing up, right? So what what year did that come down?

SPEAKER_07 5:35

I'm not sure. I I might have been gone by then, I'm not sure. But there was a lot of good kids come through there, you know, that that we grew up with. And I still see them, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

And the kids at Haynes House, and for the people for the people that aren't from Haynes and don't know the history of Haynes House, what was Haynes House?

SPEAKER_07 5:52

Haynes House was a Presbyterian-owned, like I wouldn't call it wayward children, but the parents couldn't handle the children, so they send them down here or they needed a break, but they weren't troubled kids. I grew up with most of them, you know. So, you know, we had good people come through the Walter Porter, Chuck Goodwin, Fred Metz, you know, I mean, people we all grew up with, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

And were they was that a 12-month thing, or were they only here for the the school year? School year. For the school year, and then they would go to the Haynes Schools while they were here.

SPEAKER_07 6:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

How many kids went through that? Or how many were there at a time, do you remember?

SPEAKER_07 6:29

Probably 40 or so at least. They had a girl's side and a boy's side.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 6:35

So and a hallway in between. The kitchen it smelled like we called it mush, but now they call it something else, but yeah. Had that one smell.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

So these kids were all Alaskans, or did some of them come from a lower 40 years?

SPEAKER_07 6:50

All from the villages in Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Okay. And you met you met some of your lifetime friends.

SPEAKER_07 6:55

Oh yeah, yeah. The the m uh Walter Porter, the Matsunos, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Walter Porter was from Yakutat and his brother and Teresa, they've they've all ceased since uh that's because I'm getting older. I'm I'm 78 now. I was thinking, in the last year I had four close friends die. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Last year's been rough. It has. In hands.

SPEAKER_07 7:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

It's been very rough.

SPEAKER_07 7:19

Yeah. It's nothing you prepare for. You know. But you know, I I never realized it'd be this, we call it the traumatic, you know, when you start losing your your lifetime friends, you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 7:33

People you grew up with. For forever, plus your brother. My brother died then too. But paints is good. Some people are good, some people aren't.

Haynes House And Growing Up Tlingit

SPEAKER_02 7:47

So what growing up on Main Street, were you ever going up to Kluckwan as a kid? Or were you just staying in town?

SPEAKER_07 7:55

No. I live with for six years, eight years with my grandma, and she was very high on the A and BANS, and she would go to Kluck One three, four times a month, you know, or more. And her, of course, I'm she was her.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

If I can interrupt, what was it like to get to Kluk One when you were a kid compared to now where it's a 20-minute drive?

SPEAKER_07 8:17

Oh, it it took a while, but you know, you usually go to sleep before you got up there. But my grandmother's maiden name was Hotch, Mildred Hotch, and her brothers were Dave Hotch, Victor Hotch, Clarence Hotch, and Sampa, we call him Harold. And my uh she had married my grandma, my grandpa at the time was John H. Willard. And he was Big Boy, we call Big Boy Willard's uh brother. So Lawrence and Marvin and Karudi Leonard were all cousins and related to all the Hotch's. And it's amazing how many people don't know that I'm quarter hotch, quarter willard, even the people in the village sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Well, I'd I'd mentioned to somebody that had been here for a few years. This is several years back, that they're trying to figure out who's related to who, and I told them the best advice is just don't trash talk anybody. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Somebody's probably waiting.

SPEAKER_07 9:13

So I was in the bar one time and a guy was doing that, and I said, I think you better tone it down. You you know, he's as he says, why? I says, Because I'm quarter hotch, quarter willard, and you're bad mouthing, you know. It's all family, yeah, all family, yeah. And a lot of people forget that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yeah. So when she was going up, it was just mainly for A and B, A and S events and stuff that you're going to do in any of the subsistence fishing, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_07 9:43

We did later in the fall. We call it gathering though, but we did uh we all summer long we do blueberries, strawberries, and uh soap berries. We gathered everything. Then we did got fish in the fall time. We did all that and we do hooligan. And I remember yeah, yeah, we smoke them. Remember, we'd be cleaning them, you know, they're little bitty things, you know, cleaning them sitting there for hours. Yeah. And the best ones we liked because she just we just put them in the eyes and hung them because it smoked them full. Yeah. But yeah, we did all that. And we'd get all upset. People like Walter Sobloff or other Clinket Elders and Singet Elders would come to town and she would say, Go get a couple jars of soap berries, blueberries, and jars of strawberries. You know, and we'd go in the pantry. That's when I learned about a pantry, but then we'd get it and bring it out, and she was giving it all the way. It was sit there. You know how much work that was? These little hands are picking up berries. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

So as as you knew Walter and them later in life, did you give them a bad time about how generous your grandmother was with all your hard labor?

SPEAKER_07 10:57

Dr. Sobolov or Walter Sobolov was he was a minister in Juneau. Uh-huh. And I used to tell him that we were very close friends. Um, I ran for the legislature and he sent me uh five dollars, wrote me a five dollar check, and I told him, I'm not gonna cash it, getting it from you, because to me he was a legend, you know. He was well respected, and he looked at me. You cash it, I want to help you. And and so when I ran for the legislature, I won, and my grandma had passed, and he he looked at me, he says, Your grandma's smiling from heaven, Bill. You know, so I always thought that was pretty neat, you know. And I'd see him all the time in Juno.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

I remember going down to gold medal. First year I went down to gold medal. Um and he was always very present around gold medal and had a chance to talk to him a couple times.

High School, Hepatitis, And Basketball

SPEAKER_07 11:45

But that's when I talked to him and he had cancer near the end. And I said, Are you gonna go to Matsu? I can't remember if it was Ross Silla or had a veteran's home up there. And he looked at me, very slow talker. He says, Bill, I want to die with my friends. I don't want to be in a valley of of of strangers. I'm gonna stay home and die. And so I I when I served in the legislature, I remembered that, so I got funding for the veterans home here in Haynes, and they called it the Sobolov McCrae building. And I was we had the dedication, I told him I said Howard McCrae was a command sergeant major from Haynes. He's related to the Claytons. And um, he served in Korea and then Vietnam, and he was command sergeant major of special forces when I met him, and I always told people these are two men who served God and country. Walters was 50 years as a chaplain for the National Guard. Walter, I mean, excuse me, uh Howard was honor guard for Kennedy. One of 40. Yeah, very few people know that, you know, and that was why I also I liked the idea of naming the building after him. And uh in one of 40. And I I hung out with him in when I was in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. My mom wrote me a letter. She says, Go look this guy up. It's kind of a cute story. I saw I go over where he was at, and I walk in there, and this black sergeant says, What do you want, Slick Sleeve? I was I had no rank at all. I said, I'm looking for Howard McCrae. He says, Command Sergeant Howard McCrae. I said, Oh, and say that. No. And I didn't know what rank was anyway, you know. But he came out, who's looking for me? I says, I am. What do you want? I says, my mom wrote me a letter and she told me to look you up. She said, Who's that? I says, Margaret Thomas. He says, How's Maggie doing? Just like to just turn it off. How's Maggie doing? And so we talked, and you know, he was so happy. Then I said, Oh, Terry Pardee. Eva, Eva Hotch, married a guy named Charlie Pardee, and his son's being trained here by you right now, Terry Pardee. He says, How's Flossie doing? I mean, completely turned off everything, you know, the rank and all that. Yeah. So he gets on this big, I call it big hook, and Mike gets on and pushes it down. He says, Specialist Terry Pardee, report to Command Sergeant Major Howard McQuay. Now! Terry tells me that to this day, we're very close friends because this he said he was looking, he was laying in his bunk, had a three-day pass, and looking at the speaker. He said, Where do I go? He said, he took off one downtown. He said, I'd be damned if I would have stayed in the in the ditch all weekend shoveling, you know. And I I got off of duty because uh we'd Howard would like to get his beer in when Terry and then would jump as trainees. We I went to this uh jump uh field they call St. Mary Glee's in the 80s. The special forces would go through, they'd drop all the people off, and him and his commander, uh commander, yeah, the um company commander would come down. And the night before he had a colonel cooler and we put beer in there, and so my job was to go to St. Mary Glee's, have the little Volkswagen that he drove hood open, and he they drink beer and watch the guys go. But he and the the lieutenant colonel served in Korea together, and so they were high-ranking both. And uh Howard's rank was if you were military, his was uh AA1 is the command post in blue. The high-ranking NCO officer, non-commission officer, was AA1 in red, and that's what he was, AA1. Okay. So nobody messed with him, and I walked around all his rank on his sleeve, you know, demand. So I had KP one weekend. He said, I'll come get you tomorrow. I said, You can't do that, Howard. Why? I said, I got KP tomorrow. He said, What company with you? 517th, Transportation. So I'm sitting up in the in the bunk, and the first sergeant comes out, Thomas, company commander wants to see you. I didn't do anything. So I go down there and I sit down and serve Private Thomas McPhone's ordered. I sit down and he says, Looks at me. Who do you know in Fort Bag, North Carolina? I said, I don't know anybody. I just stay at the company post here and you know we had uh trucks and stuff we worked on. Who do you know here? I said, I don't know anybody. Who's this Howard McCray? Oh, he yeah, I uh Command Sergeant Major McCrae? Yes. He said, My is this big from being balled out by him. He advised me that you no longer have duty as long as you're here. So I got off a KP and everything. Anything I'd go out, you know, I'd walk around like this, you know. Command Sergeant Major of the Post, you know, he outranked the Command Sergeant Sergeant Major of the Post by three or four months. Uh-huh. I'd walk around. That's right. I'm gonna call Howard, you know. And that was before cell phones, so yeah. So we become very good friends. And uh he when he got out, he he came home. He was uh, I think he worked uh he was an appraiser or something for the borough for a while, then he died, you know. He's buried out. I I go talk to him once in a while out the cemetery. I go out there and talk to a lot of people three, four times a year. Tell him, you know what that Marty did to me? Marty, Alan, what did he do to me? Now we got Dave to talk to. Now you got my dad out there, too. Paybacks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

So when you when you got into high school then, because everything at that time was in the school on Main Street.

SPEAKER_07 18:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

And so everybody was in the same building.

SPEAKER_07 18:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Get into high school, played basketball, right?

SPEAKER_07 18:09

Yep, walked to school every day. Walked to school across the street. Yeah. I didn't play my freshman year. Haynes had an epidemic of hepatitis, so I didn't play. Okay. And I was telling uh Hepatitis, really.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

I'd never heard of that.

SPEAKER_07 18:24

How many a lot of people, 15, 20, 30 people had it here in town. It was very contagious.

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 18:32

But I I was telling uh my friend Sam Keto, who was raised in Petersburg, and I said, Yeah, we're talking about Bob Henderson. Bob Henderson was my uh science teacher. Science teacher, yeah, general science and biology. I said, he gave me my first F and he started laughing. He said, What did you do? I said, I couldn't do my what do you call it, uh work you know where you had chemistry work or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 18:58

Like I did the homework because I was at home nine weeks with this hepatitis, me and Danny and Clover, who just had to lay in bed.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

So you had that you had hepatitis.

SPEAKER_07 19:09

Yeah. I was and Stan Jones, the first Stan Jones was here then. We had two of them, Stan and then Stan Jones again. Yeah, I had it. Danny had it, and Clover had it.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

And so you're you were home for how long?

SPEAKER_07 19:22

Nine weeks. Nine weeks. Yep. Yeah, you turn yellow. You know, your eyeballs are all yellow and weak. Couldn't eat any or any fat or anything, you know. Pretty strict diet, too.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

So were you did they have you on any kind of medication or they just have to let it run its course.

SPEAKER_07 19:44

Yep. We had one one person die, a cousin of mine from Clock One died from it. And uh most people recovered. Mm hmm. I missed my freshman year of basketball. And I thought it was a man. Little did I know it was until later on, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

So after after missing nine weeks, you still got through your c your freshman year. Yeah. And then so what what year did you graduate?

SPEAKER_07 20:13

I graduated in 65.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

65. So you were your senior year was my parents' first year here then.

Fishing Tenders And The Draft Notice

SPEAKER_07 20:19

Mr. and Mrs. Olrood, yes. Yeah. He he was something else. It was different. I was going with Joyce then, who I eventually married years later, and we had gone together for a couple years by by in 63 and 64 and five. And uh I had a corner at the office because your dad and your mom, if they saw me holding hands with Joyce, then they said, Bill! They didn't even have to tell me where to go. First time they told me where to go. And Carl Ward would come in there. Billy, what'd you do now? I says, put my hand up. I mean my corner reserved.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

And Carl Ward was the superintendent of the schools at the time, right? He was, yeah, he was principal of the school.

SPEAKER_07 21:04

He was principal. Jim Bill John was superintendent.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Okay. And he was because Carl was all he had first come here with Haynes House, correct?

SPEAKER_07 21:13

Yeah, he hadn't he was a Boy Scout leader when I was growing up.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

I was in Boy Scouts and he was one of them. Yeah. And then so because I always heard, I remember you and Mike McHenry when I was a kid coming in the sports shop and talking about all the all the shenanigans and the boys' cooking class when you guys asked my mom.

SPEAKER_07 21:35

Yeah, yeah. And Walter Weedman. Walter Weedman. Tony Strong, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 21:41

Yeah, we we we she would cry. She was very emotion sensitive. She still is. Still is. Her son is too. Yeah. I got it from her. He got it from her. Sensitive, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah. Can't believe you'd pick on my mom like that.

SPEAKER_07 21:57

That's what they call me. Snag. Sensitive native Alaskan guy. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

So then you you get out of uh you graduate from high school. What's what's your plans when you graduate from high school?

SPEAKER_07 22:14

Well, I went to the University of Alaska and one of those scholarships they had, and I was there for several months, and I've developed a thing called Persitus. I went there for to play basketball, and there was something bone, it was a bone fragment under my knee, and my leg would swell up, and I couldn't run for I run for a while, then I'd start falling down. And I think it was Coach Clary from he was General Douglas coaching was high school, but said, we can't have you do this. So they put me in the swimming pool with a guy named Jim Mahoffee, who was here, Gilnut fisherman here in Haynes, and he taught at the university and put me in the swimming pool, and I said, I didn't come here to swim, so I quit. Came home and played City League basketball, and uh by then it was the second Stan Jones, and he gave me some cortisone shots, and that seemed to help. But then I got drafted. All right, actually, I went to work on a tender in 66. The Pacific Queen was Stan Lang and Mike McKenry.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Wait a second. Stan Lang with the Pacific Queen was here in 66?

SPEAKER_07 23:19

Yeah, he was there before.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Before he was when you first start coming up.

SPEAKER_07 23:23

Oh boy, when I was pretty young, he had a vote called a Harding before that tender. And I would say that was probably 60, 61.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

I remember him when I was a kid until through college and everything, coming up with the Pacific Queen. I didn't know he'd started that early coming up.

SPEAKER_07 23:42

Oh yeah, before that was uh guy named Harold Johnson, and he was one of the first captains of the Marine Highway. Uh-huh. Because they they hired all the tendermen. All the tender guys, yeah. Speaking of the Marine Highway, Joyce and I flew to Ketchkan. We were in high school where they're bringing up the Malaspina, first first maiden trip for the Marine Highway.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

You were on that? Joyce and I were on it.

SPEAKER_07 24:03

Chilcat dancers were sent down there. Okay. Yeah, I've got a picture of it, and they told me at the ferry tunnel, I should blow it up and then put a picture out there at the ferry tunnel.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

So you're what you're when you're growing up, you were was that a big thing there with the Chilcat dancers? Because I know when I was a kid it was bigger than it is now. Oh yeah. Because they always had it over at the um Chilcat Center.

SPEAKER_07 24:26

Well, we we danced, we we danced, it was at the uh tribal house and then up in the barracks, old barracks place. We didn't dance at the Chilcat Center.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

And was that was that what tourism or who was coming in to watch those shows? Chuck West. Chuck West was bringing the smaller boats in?

SPEAKER_07 24:42

Yep. Well that was that was it.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

That was all that was coming.

SPEAKER_07 24:45

Yeah, he was uh I was I always thought he was the grandfather of tourism, but I may be wrong, but but he came into Haynes a lot, and people would walk up to the up to the tribal house and then across from there and one of the barracks buildings that we danced in. Yeah. I think the one that burned down.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

So how how long did you do that? When did how old did you start?

SPEAKER_07 25:08

I had uh I read a dedication of the the uh tribal house of uh that was built over there in 1959 and it said Bill Thomas I was dancing then.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

You were dancing in 59.

SPEAKER_07 25:20

Yeah. So I danced all the way through until I got out of the army. Even then for a couple of times because Carl said it's kind of like your dad. You got a got a couple days to go with us? Got a minute? So is that were you guys paid for that, or was that just we never know. We got I think they get no, I never got anybody, I don't think, you know, who's maybe we went up to other place, got made 50 cents, but we had a job on the weekends with Alaska Indian Arts. They hire us on Saturday, we clean the barracks in and do different things. And we made a dollar fifty an hour.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

What fifty an hour? Yep, big time.

SPEAKER_07 26:03

Big time. In 63, when I turned 16, I worked at the cannery. I've been the iron chink, and people tell me that's inappropriate, you know. It's it's it's not you can't use that word. Yeah. Because the iron chink replaced the Chinese that cut the heads. And well, that's what I did. Mike McHenry and I, again, you know, it was like a sore blister. He was everywhere I went to the house.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Everywhere you went, Mike was there. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 26:27

And Gary Sampson worked in the egg house. But yeah. And then we um 66 went to work on the tender, it was Stang and Mary McLang. And uh we pitched a lot of fish. You know, Haynes used to have a lot of fish back in them days, not like now.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

So when you were 66, because I remember when I was a kid, people were using brailer bags and things like that. And were you guys just fish, was it all pews? Yep, fish pews, so you just stick them in the head with a long hole with the hook on them and just flip them all that way.

SPEAKER_07 27:02

And they go into the scale the bucket. Okay. Scale bucket. And you know, you could hit uh the bucket, you know, 10-15 feet away. Easy. Because the boat would tie up to the sides of the gill letter, and you pitch them out of the hole into the uh and was was any of that refrigerated at the time? Stan was. Stan had RSW, we call it, but it was more like brine water or something.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

Okay. But none of the gill letters had any kind of insulation or ice on them or anything like that.

SPEAKER_07 27:31

And everything went down into the hatch, you know. They hose we had hoses, they hose the boats out to pump it out.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Okay. So how how how long would they because it doesn't see now you want the r you want that ice on it to have that fresh fur fish that's delivered to the cannery.

SPEAKER_07 27:50

We we picked up every day. Every day. Every day. We'd leave uh depending where we left from, but well, normally we're at the down at the boat harbor in Haynes. And we run around and we go to Chilcoot and then go down to Sherman, the Chilcat side up to the cannery deliver, then run back around to the Haynes side.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

And then the next day you do it all over again.

SPEAKER_07 28:10

Yep. Three, four days a week. I got my draft notice on the Queen in 1960.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

You were on the Pacific Queen when you got your draft notice.

Training To Aircraft Crew Chief

SPEAKER_07 28:18

I just turned 19 and like a couple weeks later got a draft notice. And Jack Brennan, who ran the cannery at the time, got me a deferment because I was making$500 a month. Now I don't bend over for that much, you know. But um I got my draft notice and got it deferred. And it I was that's another cute story. Uh we ran the Pacific Queen to Seattle. And I went down to see Joyce. By then her parents had moved her, and she was in Oklahoma, so I flew down to see her and I was coming back home. And I was walking down Neil Duty's store. I don't know if you remember Neil Duty. I don't know if I remember Neil, but between the Hammers Shed or the Hammers Museum and uh Fog Cutter was a store there, Neil Duty. I was walking up the hill from the boat harbor back then, whatever that was, when Sonny Williams comes yelling up behind me. Hey Bill Thomas, Bill Thomas. I turned out, what do you want, you little shit? I think this is yours, and he gave me my draft notice. And the reason was that my name is William Thomas Jr. and his is Thomas Williams Jr. I said, you little shit. And so I get my notice to uh I had to go get a physical and I got it, and it and I went in on December 7th, 1966. So what date is that?

SPEAKER_00 29:41

It was Pearl Harbor Day.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Yeah, 25 years after. 25 years after the day. So it one of the things that I heard many years ago when I was growing up, and you can confirm this, is that there was the the draft board in Haynes, there's a lot of people that felt that they were if you were native and you came up, you were gone. Oh yeah. If you were white, maybe not so much. Is that a is that a true fact?

SPEAKER_07 30:07

I believe it. Yeah. Yeah, because you know, we had three or four people here locally that recommended who to get drafted. Okay. And so a lot of my a lot of my friends, almost all of us, ended up in going in service, and you know, I think it was 2530 that ended up in Vietnam even. From Haynes, yeah. And Cluck One.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Yeah. That's a huge number.

SPEAKER_07 30:31

Huna's the same way, and Hunu was smaller than Haynes.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Were were you telling me a few years ago that Haynes and Huna are kind of tied for the highest um ratio of number of people that have served in Vietnam?

SPEAKER_06 30:44

In Vietnam.

SPEAKER_07 30:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Yeah. Yeah. So you get your you get your notice, your deferment's over. Where do you report to?

SPEAKER_07 30:55

Reported to Anchorage, and I still remember the I went to the Low Sac Zone Muse uh Library. That was a recruiting center, and we took the oath. Then they sent me, sent me to Fort Lewis, and we took the tests for about two weeks. They sent me home for Christmas. So I got to come home before we started basic training. And I started basic training in January of 67.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

And where was basic training? Fort Lewis. You better back in Fort Lewis.

SPEAKER_07 31:23

Yeah, Delta Devils on the on, you see, Delta Delta Devils on the go were the best. D41. D41. Yep, that was it what it was good about that. Was Ed Littlefield, Paul Lingley, and I, and I can't remember the the the guy, Pickens, but I can't remember his first name from he joined. We all were drafted, but we have US I'm US 50202-962. Paul was 91961, and Ed might have been 963, but we're all consecutive. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 31:55

Yeah. And and uh Ed Littlefield died several years ago. Paul's still alive.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

So af after basic training, what's the next step?

SPEAKER_07 32:05

I went to Fort Eustace for I took these tests and after basic we got graduation and I didn't have an assignment, so I had to do base uh KP for two weeks. Finally got orders and they sent me to Fort Lewis Wa uh Fort Eustace, Virginia. And me and a guy named Dale Triese were held over. So we go to Fort Eustace and we go in there to report. They said, You should have gone to Fort Rucker. That's where your school is going to train you at. Is that this one don't show up for another 14 weeks? You know, Dale Treese and I looked at it, 14 less less weeks that we might be in Vietnam. So I said, No, I think we'll stay here. And my MOS that they trained us for was an airplane mechanic, a bird dog, beaver, and otter. And it was and it was 16 weeks of training. So we were sat there doing a calculation looking at the board. What do we want to do? So you can be a river out. I said, No, I think we like what we're gonna do. So I ended up with a being a airplane mechanic. And then I went to Fort Bragg, and that's where I met Howard McRae. And I run into a guy named Jimmy.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

So they they let you stay there for the 14 weeks. What did you do before the school started then for those 14 weeks? KP.

SPEAKER_07 33:21

KP. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Probably one of the only times in your life that you were happy to do KP. Yeah, and we did car duty. All right.

SPEAKER_07 33:31

We just drank a lot of again. Mike McHenry shows up at Fort Eustace and Kenny Pearl. I don't know if you know Kenny Pearl. I don't remember Kenny. His parents owned Ten Mile for a while. Okay. Down Pearl. But he showed up, so there were three of us in Fort Eustace. He was a truck driver, Mike was a helicopter mechanic, and I was an airplane mechanic. Then I went to Fort Bragg and I was there for like I don't know how many months. And I got orders to go to Fort Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 101st Airborne. So there was about 30 of us in there. We started a new company. We turned down. We had bird dog grievers and otters. We tore the planes down, put them in the box, and we shipped them to Vietnam. And they sent us home for leave. Then we got back and got in the plane, C-141, flew backwards. The first sergeant says, it was in the plane flying. He says, Thomas, come up here. Part of talk to you. I said, what? He says, uh, first sergeant told me you're from Haynes, Alaska. I says, yeah. He says, look out the window. And I looked out. I said, what? He says, right below us is Haynes, Alaska. And I could see the Kluckwan lights. I could see Skagway. And this is uh in January 68. So I flew and I got the Anchorage. They had um MPs or bodyguards, so I wouldn't go A-WOL. I was amazing. I'm way up in the, you know, that's the FAA station it used to be. Uh-huh. They had a beacon there. I think it's still there.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Still there, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 35:09

And uh I said, whoa. All right, man.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

So they had MPs to make sure people wouldn't go A-WOL anchorage because that was I was from Alaska, everybody else.

SPEAKER_07 35:19

Okay, everybody else was from, you know, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

So how long was your layover in Anchorage then?

Vietnam Arrival And Reassignment

SPEAKER_07 35:27

About six hours is all. Okay. Then we flew to away to Vietnam, uh to Japan. Another interesting story. I'm sitting there. By then I started to feel a little depressed. I said, shit, I am getting closer to Vietnam. They might kill me over there. Might be over. So I'm sitting in this chair like this. Two guys walked by me. And I said, I recognize that walk, both of them. So I got up and I shoved them. I said, What are you guys doing here? With Donald Spruel from Juno and John Lee Kendall. And they joined the draft, volunteered draft. Yeah. I played basketball against Donald in high school at the University of Alaska for the part of one year. And John Lee was the manager. So he shoved in. And Donald got killed over there. I think it was May 8th, 68. But it was January 12th. And we got when he landed in Vietnam, he turned 21. So the day he landed in Vietnam, he turned away. And I saw that when I saw I went to visit him at the wall. And somebody had put a plaque out there when he got killed, just before Mother's Day. But I got elected in the legislature, and Brad Catullah and I named a building after him and uh the Sprill Gamble building, Charles Gamble, he got killed in Vietnam. In Walter Donald. I met his family. We become very close to them. It took me 30 years to get the guts to go in and see him.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

That had to have been hard.

SPEAKER_07 37:06

It was. It was survivor's guilt. I still, you know. This this time of year is not the best year anyway. But uh so when it's another cute story, but another my cute story. I go knock on a scamble at a spruil house. Walter, which is father, Mr. Sprill, answer the door. He looks at me, he says, Come on in. And he yells, Claire, one of Donald's friends here to visit. And and so I sat down, he got me a soda pop. I said, How'd you know I was a Donald friend? You guys are the only ones that come here at nine o'clock at night.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Oh.

SPEAKER_07 37:44

Yeah. And you know, dark. And he told me a cute story that he worked for the Marine Highway. He was an engineer. And he was in Seattle in the ticket stand there. When they landed downtown, this young man had an army jacket on. He says, How much is a ticket to go to Juneau, Alaska? And the the clerk told him whatever the amount was, and he says, Oh, I don't have enough money and to get there. And so Walter Sproul says, How much, how much do you need to get there? He said, You know what? Are you going there? He said, Um, I want to go to Juno to say thank you to Doc Spoil's family. He saved my life in Vietnam. Yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty touching. And Walter said, I'm Donald's father. So he put him in the uh uh ferry and put him in the room with the staff and brought him to Alaska. Very touching, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

So he was a when he went over there, he was a medic?

SPEAKER_07 38:53

Yeah, he volunteered medic.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

Volunteer medic.

SPEAKER_07 38:55

Him and John Lee. I I as I understand, I'm not sure if he drank himself to death, but John Lee died pretty young also. I think like Larry, you know, they all had problems. We all had problems for a while.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

So when was it? What was the date when you landed in Vietnam? Same day. Same day? Different plane, different plane. January 12th. January 12th.

SPEAKER_07 39:19

1968. And so we got there and our plane landed and we went in. When did you land? Benoit.

unknown 39:27

Benoit.

SPEAKER_07 39:29

We got out of the plane, and it was hot. Gross. I mean, there was, you know, they do drop open the plane dropped down to the back. Yeah. Because it got all that warm air coming there. Holy sh, you know, we can't swear because you might let somebody else see this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

Quite a difference from Anchorage and James. Oh, yeah, and Haynes left.

SPEAKER_07 39:53

So we go in there and waiting for our orders, and we're sitting around there about all 30 of us, plus our pilots. They were sitting there when they came out and says uh our planes didn't make it to Vietnam, so we're getting all reassigned. So about 10 of us went to where I ended up at Longtown North in Vietnam is three miles from Bearcat, which was the 9th Infantry, and about 17 miles from Long Bend, and about 30 miles, I think, from Saigon. But back then that was a lot of country, you know, you didn't go out there, you didn't go walking around on a park trip, you know. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

And so when you get there, you're on base, you're doing aircraft maintenance. So what was what was the day in the life usually and also let me backtrack a little bit here. I didn't know they used beavers and otters over there.

SPEAKER_07 40:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Were those as a surveillance plane then?

SPEAKER_07 40:53

Or cargo flights or the bird dog was a surveillance they go out?

SPEAKER_02 41:00

I'm familiar with the bird dogs being over there with the surveillance plane.

Flying VIPs And Daily Fear

SPEAKER_07 41:04

They were heavy, heavy heavy cargo small airstrips they could take off of smaller airstrips. But I get there and they send us to the first aviation, 210th Combat Aviation Brigade in uh it was like I said, three miles from Barricad. We get there, and the planes they assigned us to was the U-21 Alpha, which is a king air but not pressurized. Twin engine turn turbines. And so we were having meetings, they were sitting there and I said, sorry. I didn't go to school for you know beechcraft U-21 Alpha. There's about by then there was 12 or 14 of us. He looked at it, he says, You guys are chiefs, right? You say, Yeah. Can you read? So yeah. So read your manual. And the manual tells it's kind of like when you Google things up now and it tells you how to fix things. We had the manual. You go through there and you read it, you take it out there and figure out how to figure out how to do that. It was maintenance and anything, anything you can do maintenance on anything.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

So were you getting planes coming back that were shot up?

SPEAKER_07 42:14

We were in them.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

You were in the planes when they were shot up.

SPEAKER_07 42:18

We were we got there and then we had become crew chiefs. And uh I have a good friend of mine is uh in I sat next to in the legislature, and uh he him and I got selected to sit on the Dan Sullivan Selection Committee for U.S. Military Academy applicants. And so we were going through the meeting of meeting with each other. All the guys are majors, lieutenant colonels, captains, pilots. And I said, Bill Thomas, Vietnam 68, former legislator. And my buddy hit me in the arm. He says, Tell him what you did. What? He said, Bill was a crew chief and fixed wing in Vietnam. What do we say about the crew chief? And they're all pilots. Never leave home without one. And uh it was kind of funny because I told him it's the reason they make us fly is because they knew damn well the plane's gonna come back if you're on it. You you know it's not gonna go down while you're on it. So we flew damn near every day.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

So what kind of what kind of areas were you going to and what was? Everywhere. Everywhere.

SPEAKER_07 43:23

Everywhere. We would clear up to the DMZ, which was uh uh Wei Fu Bai, Wangtao, Danang, the Trang, Bamitu, the Lot, everything saw pretty much the whole country. Yep, in the air. Yeah. And we'd landed, you know, it's it was hot everywhere. So uh I'm not here. They they saw your car. I'm parked by Marty. They said, uh oh see they stopped out here.

unknown 43:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Could be looking for you guys in here.

SPEAKER_07 44:02

Yeah. Guns blazing.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

So you so you guys in in these planes, you're you're delivering supplies and everything to some of the forward operating bases?

SPEAKER_07 44:12

No, we we flew uh generals, all officers were VIP ships, yeah, VIP uh uh POWs, and every once in a while I'll be an enlisted man, but they're high ranking. Usually it's an off big ranking officer on board. And we flew around, we had plates on the on the side of the window, so when you landed, it we were there for several months, and I had asked a question. I said, I have a question to Sarge. Now what? Because the name was Mullins, you know, Sergeant Mullins. I said, Protocol that we were taught is we're not the first ones out of the plane, but for months now we've been getting out of the plane first and people getting out after us. And he looked at me, you stupid or something? Like four, you know, like force cuppers or something? I said, What do you mean? He said, Well, if they're gonna shoot anybody, you're gonna shoot the first man out of the plane. That's why it was you. Yeah, that's why it was us. Good grief. So yeah. I flew into uh Denang one time, and and uh we usually get up at five in the morning and get up to the planes. We pull them out of, we had revetments where they're protected, and we bring them out and we do a uh pre-flight with the officers and go through the planes. Then we fly off to where we're gonna get our first flights out, usually Saigon or Benoit a long time on Long Ben. Then we fly the people around. And we had a three-story general one time. I'm sitting in the in my little jump seat, kind of like this thing here, but no handle. So just a cushion or so we landed in Denang, you know, and down there at the bottom, and the general gets up, say, Chief, yes, sir. And he said, Did you have breakfast yet? I said, No, sir. We don't eat till we can find some food somewhere. But so there's a mess hall right there. You go over there and eat. And the two pilots were behind. We only had the like the general and one of his staff, and then the two pilots. So the guy takes off. He he goes off with the base commander. So we go over to the mess hall, walk in there, and so we're gonna have breakfast, and this big black sergeant comes out. You guys can eat here, but he can't. It was the officer's mess hall. And so Lieutenant Ritchie, I still remember. He he flew to Vietnam with us. He says, Sarge, come over here. So you see that plane out there? He said, Yeah, that's the chief's plane. How many stars in that plane alongside the outside the window there? He said, Three. Three-story general told the chief, come over here and eat. And he got picked up by a base commander. Now he's gonna come back later on, and we're gonna fly him to another place, and he's gonna ask the chief how breakfast was. You know what you want the chief to answer him? He said, Enjoy breakfast.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

All right. Was it a good breakfast?

SPEAKER_07 47:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

Normally we had what was the difference between a breakfast there and what you would get in your normal chow?

SPEAKER_07 47:21

Big thing because we had rolled uh we had instant eggs and rolled and turkey in a can. I mean not turkey, bacon.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Bacon in a can.

SPEAKER_07 47:28

Yep, and they had bread and stuff and water.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 47:32

We had a malaria pill we took each week, you know, and then a little bit of water, but yeah, he they had SOS. I mean, they had everything. They had pancakes, they had shit, sausage. I wish I had one of them, goat things that had stacked it all up. But SOS, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Holy smokes. So I I I get this, I get this feeling that throughout your military career there was always somebody there that was kind of looking out for you. Oh whether it's Howard McCray, the three-star. You seem to have some pretty good luck with uh people taking care of you.

Three-Star Missions And A Rare Medal

SPEAKER_07 48:08

Well, I was a crew chief, and that was the thing. Yeah. It was my plane. I when I was there in uh General Westmoreland, or Creighton Abrams was commanding uh officer of uh Vietnam, his crew chief retired and we got to go home. And so I go up, pull you check the paperwork, and my I'm not in my normal, my plane, 023 or 024, but it was um the paint number 18024. They had me reassigned to 18048. I said, that's not my plane. I said, you're flying General Creighton Abrams for the next three days. I said, Really? I said, yeah, you gotta go get ice and vodka and tomato juice. I said, what? He drinks bloody Marys. Can you mix that? I said, yeah. So it was him and the three staffers with him. And so what's amazing is I come home in January of 69 and I get this little thing in the mail with my phone, and I look at it, and and I didn't pay attention to it, I didn't give a damn. But it turned out look at who signed it.

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Great Nabrams.

SPEAKER_07 49:36

It's a medal they got for meritorious achievement in service. And I I asked uh I asked Terry Pardee, I said, what the hell do you get this for you? He says, Who do you know anyway? Same thing. I said, I crewed him for three days. He said, You you get a medal that high from the commanding general of the army in Vietnam? Usually any medals company, the company commander, battalion commander. He said, What did you do? I said, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

And I I've shown it to the plane was never the plane landed safely every trip.

SPEAKER_07 50:11

Every trip. Three days. But you know, he said, never. I've talked to well, the guy here, Mark Smith, he said he never even heard of anybody getting a medal from a general, commanding general at death. You know.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

I said, well, I don't know what he did, but I just showed either that or that bloody Marys you were making where I was probably alive. You must have been.

SPEAKER_07 50:37

You want to hit this joint too well yet? But yeah, it it's I saw one one general and ask him about that. He said, I only heard of one. He said, I've never seen one, and I said, Well, I got this one here. So I I talked to Terry Pardee, I gotta find it, they're gonna put it in the Legion. Yeah. And like a you know, memorial. Is this because you know he's never never heard of one? He's you know, and Richard Foster, rest in peace, same thing, and he was in Army Intelligence for two years in Vietnam. He said, I've never heard of anybody getting an award from him.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

There you go. Yeah. So I remember, and I've I've talked to you about this in the past, so several years ago, I was on the ferry going to the J going to Juno's, back of the cafeteria, sat down next to you, Bosch Hotch, I think Donnie Land, David Land. Um, I can't there's a couple other people, and you guys all started sharing stories about Vietnam, just the different people. You were running into other people from Haynes when you were in Vietnam, right?

SPEAKER_07 51:51

Mike McHenry again. I ran into Mike again. I I got a letter from him. Um I got off of guard duty and I had a letter there. I said, Hey Bill, he says, You must be close by me or somewhere because you got the same area code that I do. Our mail went to Bearcat, and that's where he was at. So I just got off of guard duty, so I went up to the flight line, asked Sergeant if I can go to Bearcat. And he said, You make sure you you go to the gate and you catch a ride over there, then you catch a ride back. We don't want you walking out. It's three miles of no man's country. So I do and I get get over there, and he said he had the company and address he was uh, I'm gonna just say 420th or something in aviation. And everybody said, Don't know where it is. About three guys asked, don't know where it is. I said, Okay, how about cherry troopers? Pointed right away. Cherry troopers knew in tech. What were the cherry troopers? That was Mike McHenry and his company that just got there.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

That was their name.

SPEAKER_07 52:51

That was the death. No, they first they've just gotten there.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Oh, okay. The cherry, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 52:56

And you can you could tell a guy new in country by that, you know, see how your genes would fade out, yeah, your jungle fatigues had fade out, and you knew how long you were there. Yeah. And people say, How long have you been here? By then I'd been there like almost six months, and they said you could tell by the color of your clothes. Yeah. But I said, cherry trooper, and they point. And so I finally found him. And so I go, he was on KP. I said, What the hell, Mike? I get over here to come see you, and the sergeant again comes out. What do you want? I said, I just come over and see my friend. We grew up together in Haynes. I just come over to see if we can have a drink or coke or do something. And the guy looks at me, how long have you been here? I said, six months. Could tell by the clothes again. He said, just bring him back. So he took, we went to the club and I got him half, half shit-faced, you know. Thanks a lot, Bill. He said he told me when we got home. They sent him off to break a new do a new country in the camp. Send him up there to do it because he got drunk on KP. On KP? It was my fault.

SPEAKER_00 54:07

Causing trouble.

SPEAKER_07 54:08

Causing trouble. I said, well, then then I left him. I went back to because I already got had I knew I had didn't have guard duty that night, but I had like four or five days a week because we're a small company. I said, okay, Mike.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

So one of the things I've wondered about is you're going over there as a clinketh Native American. There's a lot of I was never, obviously with my age, never in Vietnam, read a lot about it. The majority of the veterans that I've met have been Native Americans, African Americans, you know, lower, different, different classes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 54:51

Was that when you were over there, was it mainly minor were majority of minorities that were drafted or not really, you know, which to me was surprising because the group of people that I hung out were all crew chiefs, and there were and they were eastern blacks, western blacks, north blacks, southern blacks. And I tell people, very discriminatory because you didn't have the jive if you were you weren't from Detroit.

SPEAKER_06 55:16

Okay, you didn't have the music, and you know.

SPEAKER_07 55:18

And um, so we ended up with a couple um Latinos, like we kept Mexican people. I was a clinket, a couple Polaks and some Italians. And we had one block guy, they didn't fit in today. Where his name was Washington, so we kind of let him hang out with us. But there was probably 10 or 12 of crew chiefs that hung out together. And uh yeah, we it was weird. Yeah, everybody had their own cliques. Then you have the California hippies there. I call them, you know, surfers. They all hung up by themselves. They didn't hang out. Well, a good friend of mine was in True Lock Modesto, he was in country in California, they didn't like him because he wasn't a surfer.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

Oh, the Californians didn't like him because he wasn't a surfer?

SPEAKER_07 56:00

He wasn't a surfer. He was he was a country boy.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

So what what based on what everybody has seen in movies, every from your time over there, what would you think would probably be one of the biggest misconceptions?

Encounters With Hometown Soldiers

SPEAKER_07 56:17

I don't know if most things I saw, like uh to me it was Platoon was a night fire, was pretty active, you know, pretty actual the flares and and things moving. I told Terry Parti, I said, I killed a lot of shadows because everything was moving. We got flares lying all over. I think one of the things they don't show in the in the movies that I watch in Platoon and Apocalypse Now and uh what is it, Fourth of July, was the fear. I've never lived, I told somebody the other day I've never lived 10 months, 17 days of total fear where somebody's trying to kill me every day. And you know, and you can't express that on the movie, you know. No or anything, you know.

SPEAKER_02 57:05

So the bases you were at was that a regular occurrence where you were under attack?

SPEAKER_07 57:13

Enough, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Enough that that you didn't know when it was gonna come.

SPEAKER_07 57:17

No, no, but you could I it's another thing is I we had we slept in uh what do they call it? Uh mosquito nets. Had over there, and then we had a sheet and the blanket. We got down to 72 degrees, he put a blanket on. It's usually 110. But you could hear a motor load, you can hear doop. And you know, you hear that sound, you know those things are gonna start blowing up somewhere, so you try to get out of there. That's when I learned, and it wasn't until several years ago that I quit sleeping with my feet outside the blankets.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

Really?

SPEAKER_07 57:54

Yeah, and I mean it was I slept with my feet outside the blankets because so I can get out, otherwise I get tangled up in them. Uh-huh. It wasn't until even if it was 15 years ago, you know.

unknown 58:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_07 58:05

Yeah, and it's you know, we had a guy, Tim Brown. Dear John's are pretty common there, but he took it pretty serious. He was drunk every night, and and my buddy uh Michael Michael Fryer calls me every once in a while. He's from Pennsylvania, and we talked about Tim Brown, how'd he get drunk, and we'd all of us would throw our mattresses on him because we'd roll them off on the on the floor, stack the mattress on there, you know, when the motors started coming in, our rockets, and we'd laugh about it. But you know, he'd get up, what happened? Well, this shit dumb shit. He slept through again.

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Again.

SPEAKER_07 58:49

It was, yeah. He was he was a good guy. He was from Indiana. Yeah. It's weird because you never knew people's names. You knew the name last names like you know, tanks, you know. Mine is Thomas, and they called me Bear and Eskimo.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Bear and Eskimo.

SPEAKER_07 59:10

Oh, because I was from Alaska. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

Was that was that something that was different? Was that mainly because they didn't want to have that attachment?

SPEAKER_07 59:19

Maybe because they didn't give a they didn't give a damn about your first name. Yeah. You know, you'd see your nameplate together and there says, okay, Thomas.

SPEAKER_06 59:27

You know.

SPEAKER_07 59:28

You got too close, and then you like you said, you're close friends you knew. I was just another cute story, but Hali Halibut fished out of Huna for since 78 or 79. Several years ago, Cole and Gabe, they were just little kids. We fished pitched a Huna Huna Seafood's uh coal storage. And I went up to the restaurant and I'm sitting in there, and there's a lady sitting there, and I walked in, had the Vietnam insignia on my shirt t shirt or sweatshirt. So I sat down waiting for Gabe and Cole to come up. They were, you know, washing the boat down a little. And she said, Were you in Vietnam? I said, Yeah. So is my husband. I said, Oh, okay. And a lot of Vietnam veterans back then. And uh he walks and sits down. She says, Where were you at? Who are you with? I said, uh, First Aviation. He says, I was too. And she says, So where'd you serve? I says, Long Town North. He says, Command Airplane Company. I said, Yeah. Turned out that we had Joyce had sent me my pictures that I had from Vietnam and I'd say through the years. And he was a Pentecostal minister in Huna at the time, and he's a janitor at the school. So we were talking. He said, Boys, come over here. So she had my pictures spread out. And his says, look at this. He had it was a Polaroid camera she sent, and he had to put a little stuff on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:00

And he had one, two, three. I had four, five, he had six, seven, and I had number eight. We had Gardy together at one time. Really? But he was an airplane mechanic. It's another Vietnam veteran from Cake. But um, yeah. And he said he told his wife, he was one of those crew chiefs, really crazy guys, you know. But my uh my friend Michael had 400 hours of flight time. I didn't keep track, but we had pretty probably pretty close to the same because we flew almost every day.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:36

400 hours in the year. In the year, yeah, flying over there.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:40

I got I was in a place called the lot, and uh if you want a jump seat, you know what that is? You want to go to the dang or the triangle, and uh the uh officers come down there and say, Chief, can we jump jump seat? Your plane's coming back in about four hours. I said, Let me ask the pilots. And the pilot says, Yeah, says, What do you got? And they'd say we got six cases of watermelon, and they're little cute little ones, sweet. If I got any, I they had to give the pilots half. So, okay, I'll I'll wait here. And the pilots like, all right. And we go some other places we get sea rations. Just food all the time is food, you know, a bottle of whiskey, or you know, but you had to get two of everything because they wanted one pilot's one, yeah, which is okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

That was the that was the harder system. If somebody wanted to get in the jump seat, they needed uh they needed to give something good to the crew chief and the pilot.

Race, Camaraderie, And Fights

SPEAKER_07 1:02:39

Like I said, it was my plane, you know, and everything we did was I had control of. Uh-huh. That's why my my Eric always said it, well, he's the chief, you know. You listen to him. We had we had some pilots who take and go fly to Vang Tao, which they go down to get drunk and maybe go to a house or something, but we got tired of that because we had to work seven days a week, 12, 14 hours a day. So we learned. Well, we know how to keep that plane down. We had a can of oil, used oil, and we poured down in the in the cowling. And they come around and they look in there and they never figured it out. But too much oil, engine oil leaking. If it's leaking or just idling over to the to the reventments, we got a red X this plane. So we red exit. And they said, How do you get the red X off? Well, it had to be a flight sergeant, you know, line sergeant. But they don't work, they're not working today Saturday or Sunday, one of those two days. So they couldn't take the plane.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

That's how you guys get a day off.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:45

No, that's how we kept them from going.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Oh, that's how you keep them from going.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:48

Yeah, going to the whorehouse or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:51

Maybe going swimming. Going swimming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

So what was it like? Um getting back to you know me, I usually don't go into ethnics and stuff like that, but as a clinket over there where you have majority white population, United States trying to dictate what they're doing, where there's a long history of US government taking land from natives, Native Americans. Did that ever cross your mind when you were over there? Has that crossed your mind since then?

SPEAKER_07 1:04:32

It has since we it's because they have the Vietnam veteran program right now. And uh my friends, there's a bunch of us that served in Vietnam, will not file for it because they want us to go up to bear up to the Bethel, Kotzebue, Delta, Junction, select land. And we say we're gonna stay home. And uh we'll select down here, and we know it'll get rejected, but yeah, you know. But only one night that I saw really big discrimination. It was sitting in the in the um club. For some reason, about eight of us had the night off, and there's a table of black guys sitting over there. And they're crying and screaming about being the minorities over here. You know, it's a minority war. Look at all of us here. So I was about half shit facing. I said, She said up and said, Oh bullshit. How many clinkets in this room in the tent here right now? We had a tent with all the club. Me. I said, how many Polacs in here there were two? Two Polaks, and how many Mexicans there were two? You know, and I said, Looks like we're the minorities over here, not you guys. Yeah. They said, well, there are more of us. Anyway, the argument was more of them to send. Yeah. Maybe it was, but I said, I wasn't worried about that. I didn't cry about it, but they beat the hell out of me that night. And I woke up and we had trenches eight foot deep, because when it rained, they'd fill it up and take the rain out of the camp. I woke up in there in the morning, oh, all beat up. I looked down the trench and there's snakes and rats and stuff crawling around there, but a couple of guys passed out there too, so I dug them over near the little walkway, got on there and jumped out, went back in there, and I got about an hour's sleep and I had to go pull the plane out. I was up at the flight line. This guy comes in and I walk over and hit him in uh Mullins. What'd you do that for? He said, You just wait, Sarge. Another guy came and slugged him. He said, What are you doing? They beat me up last night and threw me in the ditch. Oh, okay. I was just wondering what you're doing. By there were probably six of them, and I said, by the time they got to the third one, they were avoiding me. So they were laying on the floor shaking, you know. Big time. I said, bastards. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

So did you did you think about the thought of you know, you guys were over there on behalf of the US government? You didn't have any say, you were drafted.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:16

Yeah. I, you know, it's back up a little bit, Doug. Growing up, we didn't know where Vietnam was. It was South Indochina when I was growing up. So I didn't know anything about Vietnam. You know, where's this place? You know, if they said South Vietnam China, they would have known.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:33

Yeah, I just thought you know, it's it's one of those things that strikes me as I think you're aware, I I love history. My dad was a history teacher, and so I'm always reading about it. But just some of the some of the different things that have happened in history and the people that they have doing it, it just kind of seems this weird thing that with Vietnam you've got the white man going over there, kind of trying to subjugate an indigenous people, and the people that they're sending over there are the minorities and indigenous people from our country, was the majority of the people that they sent over there, and it just always baffles me.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:09

We've been doing a lot of funerals, and I think uh the last one I did was uh for David Land. And uh I told, you know, the oh what and uh I told Daniel, I told Daniel and uh and um Wattosh died, they're together again. He said, What are you talking about? John Barry was born and raised in Haynes, yeah, he lived in Skagway, David Land, uh Wattosh, Ron Martin, Ron Martin, they were all yeah, Ron. But there's four of them all together in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:43

Was it Bosh Hotch that was over there? No, he was he wasn't with them, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:46

He wasn't with them, but they went to Vietnam together with the 101st Airborne. I'm missing somebody. Well, there was a young guy from Cordova, but they're all back together again, you know. They were there. You know, it's it talked about the stories of what they've done and what they did. And just, you know, just say, hey, they're all back together again. Bosch was there and he, you know, I gave his old gear to spirit all people like it because they interject a lot more humor into it. But it's you know, it's kind of sad, but I think I would cry if I didn't inject humor into it. Especially like Bosch, you know, and we were talking. Because he he jumped out of a helicopter where it was crashing, and that's how he ripped his kneecap and his knee all up.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:32

Do you mind sharing the story between with uh uh Ron and David?

Coming Home To Protests And Shaking

SPEAKER_07 1:09:37

Oh yeah. Wattosh, you know, David Ron Martin was a medic there in Vietnam, and they're all together. John Berry was a platoon sergeant. He had Say Sova Watosh and John Berry and David Henry Alisowski from Cordova. And uh Watosh was sitting there and they had body bags laying there full of ice. People got malaria. You had to take your malaria pill or you get malaria. And he was going along, making sure they're all iced up. And he said he'd come up to this one bag and David Lanz laying in there and he looked. He said, Hitchqua chilkut, it means what you get, because he didn't take his malaria pill. And David Lanz swears up until he passed when he looked, he woke him up, looked at Watosh, and he's up there smiling at him. He said, if he didn't say that, he probably would have died, you know. And Bosch, Tom Stevens, and I, we had, it was we're all related. We're sitting there talking one day, and Tom Stevens looks at me. He said, Bill, you ever dream about Vietnam? I said, Yeah, I do. And he says, and he doesn't talk very much. What do you dream about? And Bosch is sitting there. I said, I dream I'm getting out tomorrow. I'm gonna get in the helicopter and fly out tomorrow. And then they come tell me the helicopter got shot down, so it's not gonna come here tomorrow. But three miles away is a camp over there. We heard there's a helicopter coming in over there. You can crawl over there and try to get on that one tomorrow. So I crawl over there and you know, motor attack rockets and gunfire all over and get there, and I said, here you have a helicopter tomorrow. He said, We did, but it's got shot down just a little while ago. So, but you go to that camp over there. And Tom Stevens and Bosch looks at me, same dream we have. You can't get out of there. Can't get out of Vietnam because you go to the next camp. Can't do the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:45

Yep, same thing. All three of you guys were having the same dream.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:48

Same dream. You can't get out, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

How long did you have do you still have those dreams?

SPEAKER_07 1:11:54

No, I had the last one in quite a while ago when uh Joyce was with me and we're in uh some Arkansas or Alabama, somewhere in there. We went through Memphis and then we're just driving back to America. But she woke me up. What are you doing? What are you doing? I remember I said, What are you talking about? Bed was soaked, you're whimpering over there and you're rolling around. And I haven't had a you know, I dream about it, but not so violently. You know, you know, I've learned, I think, uh, how to wake up. So I'd think try to think about happier things, you know. Like if uh Mike uh Bob Barton had a monkey, and that's another thing I remember the guy from Huna. Yeah. So we'd go out there and we'd go out and get grasshoppers and feed his monkey.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:47

Over in Vietnam grasshoppers.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:49

Uh yep, you had a little patch of grass, uh grass, and we went through there looking for grasshoppers and give it to his monkey out in the cage.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:59

What what's something you want to share that I haven't asked you about? What's what's something that people don't know about that we shouldn't know about me? About you in Vietnam, about your service over there.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:12

Somebody asked me one time, says what's guard duty like? I said, go sit in the closet and close the door. And and and you look around and you don't see nothing. And if you hear you see a chip flare or something go off, then you puck her up, you know. So, oh shit. I hear a mortar go off, you know, scare the hell out of you. But one I it's not a funny thing, but I went to Vietnam and I wrote to Joyce two letters and she never got them. By then she had married somebody else, you know. But we were that's one of the reasons for her to leave was because we you know they didn't want us to get married. You talk about discrimination. We grew up with it in here in Haynes big time, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:55

So they Joyce left town because her married?

SPEAKER_07 1:13:59

Yeah, because I was gonna graduate. I was it was April of 65, you know, so you only know it's only a month away before graduation. Yeah. So you're just gonna marry that native boy, the Indian boy's gonna be a fisherman. So then I found her again. You know, you wanted to know about my lobbying. I was in in Washington, D.C. in 1975 trying to get Klukwan Inc. back into the Claims Act. The village of Kluckwan at the time voted to not go into the Claims Act and retain the village lands. And people we call them left outs, people outside the village didn't get to vote on it. So Irene, Rowan, Donna Willard, and I went to DC and lobbied to get the left outs back into Cluck, got into the Claims Act. And so it's coming out of uh Senator Stevens' office with Tony Strong. And uh we're walking by the Senator from Oklahoma's office, and I walked in. Hey, let's go in here. So I went in her, and I says, Can you find an old girlfriend for me? And he said, and they had a phone book, and I was looking through the phone book and I couldn't find her name anywhere. I said, Oh, I said, we gotta get Tony said, we gotta get going. I said, Well, your uncle Kelly lived in in uh this town, I can't remember right now, in 1019, uh Cherry Street or some street in um he said, Oh, there he is. I said, I'm at the Hyatt Regency and Bill Thomas, and I'll he leave me a message if we find her. And so Tony and I we went to the to do the uh other meetings we're going to. So I go back to my room after going out with the staff of Grevell and and uh Don Young and uh Stevens, the Senator Stevens. And I get back to the hotel and I have a message and uh it says uh Joyce America. I said, Who in the hell is Joyce Amerida? And then oh shit, that's Joyce Kelly. So I go to my room and I dial the number and it was like one o'clock in the morning, half inebriated. And uh she says, Hello? I said, Joyce? Bill? I said, How'd you know it was me? She said, I'll never forget your voice. So I said, Well, I'm in DC. Can I come down and see you on my way to back to Anchorage or back to Alaska? It cost me$60 if flight of Chicago down to the Oklahoma City.$60. Changed my plane ticket to Oklahoma City and then back to Seattle. So we go down there, we go visit her parents, and they said, Oh, what are you doing nowadays? Oh, I'm fishing. And they could say, Oh boy, yeah. So this is 1975. And uh by then I bought the bantry from Haynes Packing. I bought it in 73. So now I gotta get back home. We start fishing here next week. And they said, Oh, what kind of money in fishing? I said, I think last year I made$96,000 between halibut fishing and gilded. Joyce said when I said that they just, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:04

That was 1975. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:10

And between that and halibut fishing, yeah. Because I started halibuting after after gold medal. Okay. So I'd fish until gilded season started. By then I was becoming a legend in my mind already. In my head, you know. In your head. Yeah. And then so fishing got over and I went down to go see her again. And so we had to go visit him. And they said, So what are you gonna do now, Thomas? So I'm gonna take a Irving, he's my cake problem child. I said, I'm gonna take a train, I'm gonna go take a bus down to El Paso and take a train to California and buy me a truck either in California or Washington. Take the bus back up, and that's what I was doing. Just touring, just driving around. So I bought a truck in in uh Seattle and Hagen bought one at the same time. So anyway. So okay, I'm going home. But she's she couldn't believe everything. So how'd you do this? I said, that made about the same 96,000, 97,000. I couldn't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:15

So let's back up.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:16

Back up.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:18

You get out of Vietnam, you're coming home. Where was your first where did you first land?

Back To Fishing And Big Years

SPEAKER_07 1:18:24

That's probably the worst thing, yeah. Is uh California. San Francisco, Travis Air Force Base. Right, yeah, we we we got in the the jet, Tiger Airlines. I still remember it was you know the little flight line that flights the company. So we get in the plane, there's uh all veters are all leaving. There are four stretches in the plane with the people metavacing out. But the plane took off, and you can hear the screaming and hollering. You know, we're alive, we're alive, you know. We made it, we made it. So we're flying, flew back, went to Okinawa, then to Hawaii, and I saw the lights of of where we're at in Hawaii there, and breathing. I said, shit, I'm going home. So we get it in the plane, then we fly some more, and we landed at Travis Airport Space, and I get in the bus, and the other guys did it, uh, MP standing in the back, and they had wire mesh on the windows. Mind you now, we had no, we had barely had windows because you know we hit if they shot the windows of you know, blind the people, no wire mesh. And so there were about 10 or 12 of us got in there right away, and the MPs I said, What the hell's going on? The back door was welded shut to the latch. I said, What the hell is going on? And the MP says, We're we're doing this to protect them. I said, Who? He says, You'll see. You'll see. So we come out at Travis Air Force. We supposed to be six or eight buses of us, you know. They couldn't tell because it was dark. And uh we come out and there hundreds of hippies or protesters shaking the bus, screaming, hollering at us. We told them, let us out. And people said, let us out. He said, that's why. That's why the wire mesh and everything is welded shut and MPs. So then we go, they drive us to the presidio, which is under the Golden Gate. And the same thing there, there were hundreds of protesters out, they drive in the gate, and they we get discharged finally a little after one. And so I get out and I walk out, and there's cabs inside the compound, so I get in a cab, and the cab driver says, Where are you going? I said, Sacramento.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:54

When you got discharged, was that you were discharged from the army and service was over with? Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:58

And I tried to get, I got a two-week early out. I tried to they tried to get me home for Thanksgiving. And I knew I wasn't going to make it, I wasn't going to say anything. And I said, I'm going to go, I'll take it, go to Sacramento. He said, You know how far that is? I said, I don't care. I all I know if I go out the gate and go downtown here in San Francisco, I'll kill me a bunch of hippies. I'll be back in Vietnam in 30 days. So I'm sitting there, the door opens up, somebody jumps in. Cab driver says, Where are you going? He says, Where is he going? He says, Sacramento. He said, sounds good to me, because if I go out here, I'll kill me some hippies and I'll be back in Vietnam in six months. He said, You guys know each other? I can't even see them, you know. It's pretty dark out. So we headed for San Francisco and I said, Hey, cab driver, by the way, any way, any, any way you can get us some fresh beer? Beer we had traveled 10,000 miles and been hot and cold. It was wet, it was a good thing. He said, No, it's illegal. All the the lick the liquor stores were grocery stores for beer. And it was after one o'clock or something, and they're closed. I said, Come on, you're a cab driver. You must know it's after hours place. It's illegal. I said, That's you know, man, we we just I've been gone almost 11 months without fresh beer. So he goes, he calls dispatch and tells him, Where do where do I get this beer? And he tells him. So he drives out, and this other guy and I were just sitting there, sitting there, and pretty soon the cops raid the place. And the guy we asked him for two six-packs, and he's standing outside the door, and they come over, they didn't drag us out, but so get out of the car. And they talk to us, and says, Man, we I I literally just got discharged 20 minutes ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:47

And we haven't I've been gone 10 months. I didn't even know almost 11 months in Vietnam. And the other guy said the same thing. We asked the cab driver to get us some fresh beer. We haven't had any fresh beer in months. So they went and met for the three or four of the cops. And the cab driver came back, got in the cab, and we had the beer, and they let us go. And then we drove to to uh Sacramento.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:18

And then was it did you try and get when you got to Sacramento where you're on a plane coming back home?

SPEAKER_07 1:23:23

No, I went up there to my a good friend of mine in Vietnam was there, Brad Rubel, and he was from Tru Lock Modesto area. So I knew if I took a cab up there he'd come get me. So there was uh some logging people that were down there, they'd written me a letter to come have Thanksgiving with them. And I tear ended up terrorizing because of liquor store. I went by a liquor store and got a bottle of whiskey and a half, two six packs of beer, and got half shit faced.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:55

Only half?

SPEAKER_07 1:23:57

Yeah, it was pretty juiced. Yeah, I probably should have apologized to them, but you know, by then it was that that was before you went to Thanksgiving dinner.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

I was sitting in their house. In their house doing that.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:11

Yeah, and then Brad came up, drove up there, and picked me up. Brad. Rubel. Okay, yeah, and spent a week at his place. My mom didn't know I was getting out yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:21

You didn't let her know?

SPEAKER_07 1:24:22

We didn't have a phone.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:25

We didn't have phones, you know. And so that's another story. So I landed in Juneau at about nine o'clock at night and the airport's closing. Didn't have any of the hotels or anything out there. And they were closing it. They said, we gotta leave. I said, I said, man, I just come out of Vietnam. It was too hot there. Now I'm gonna freeze because it was in December.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:47

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:48

Well, that'll die out here at the airport. No cabs, no nothing. Leighton Bennett walks by, rest in peace in Leighton. And I said, Hey, Mr. Bennett, are you going to Haynes? Too dark, too dark, too dark, you can't go. So I'm sitting there, man, I am gonna die after all this. Comes out, taps me on the shoulder, and look up. Mr. Bennett, and I says, he says, You that Thomas boy been in Vietnam? I said, Yes, sir. You been home? I said, I'm trying to get home now. He said, Let's go. Pitch black. So we flew by the lights, you know, all the way to Haynes and Lou Bennett, his wife, had their old uh Oldsmobile at the end of the airport. We flew over the top of it. There's no lights out there. And uh and you know, we landed and uh got it right into town. My mom was sitting there with the lady knitting. So I walked in the door. I had a bag, I bought civilian clothes so people didn't know I was in the military. I looked at her and says, Can I still stay here? And she started crying. I tell the people I always feel sad about that, you know, because nobody knew I was coming home.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:03

My bed was made yet. I finally threw my bag on there and I said, How are you guys doing? They just looked at me, huh? By then I started shaking Douglas and and I didn't know what was going on. And I, you know, I said, What the hell? So I went to Blanche's old bar in Evanson, West Red there, and I went in and have a beer and a couple shots of whiskey, and I quit shaking. Found out later by talking to to several doctors, I was addicted to adrenaline.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:35

After being in Vietnam for 10 months, 17 days, fear and everything dropping, you know, in your body.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:42

You're on that heightened alert that whole time.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:44

You're always just Yeah. I've only had one issue since that was when I pulled George out of the water and his three f brothers when the boat sank. That got me all messed up, but but you know, otherwise, you know, it it took years before somebody told me what it was. Just hooked on adrenaline, which makes sense, you know. Because you have a couple of adrenaline rushes every day. Somebody dropped a tool or sounded like you hear a mortar or do or something go on it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:16

Yeah. And just knowing you're like you were talking about with being in the closet for guard duty, yeah. All your senses are just heightened 24-7.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:26

Yeah. And you hear cans, we had cans in the wire and trip flares, and one night the they started rattling and everything's going off, and and the the the they call it the bunker next to us. They started shooting the uh Claymores and shooting the 60s. Turned out we could see there were monkeys. There had to be a couple hundred monkeys in the wire that would try to call in and tell them to knock it off because there were wires. They killed hundreds of monkeys, blew the Constantino wire down. Then it really got scared because it could have walked through that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:04

Yeah. So how how long after you got home was it that the how long did it take for the shaking to go away?

ANCSA, Klukwan Inc., And Long Island Logging

SPEAKER_07 1:28:12

I can't remember. Because I, you know, I we started playing basketball and drinking beer at Marty's. I came home, played for RH Construction, Reeves and Howard. But I hadn't played ball for two years, and and one of the owners said, You're worthless. You don't you used to be a good ball player. I said, I hadn't played for two years. So I'm at the Pioneer Bar that sitting up there, and Billy Albecker and Larry recruit me at Sunny. Play with us and hell with them. So I did, but Watosh was it was RH construction. So I started playing with the Pioneers. But Marty would buy us a couple of beers a night if we won. If you won? So we were motivated. Beer was only like 60 cents then, so big money.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:03

Big money, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:06

When you got back, you're back in Haynes, what was what was the next step? Is that when you went into logging or was it? No, I went fishing.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:14

I started fishing with Larry Albecker. Larry Albecker was in Vietnam in I can't remember 65 or 66. And uh so he saw me off and then I left and I came home and I went to go look for him right away. But I started fishing with him in 69 on the Bantry. In 1970 I fished with Gene Martin. He got the Kluckwin Rue, and then 60 uh what would that be? 71 I fished with uh oh Jan Jan uh and Les's brother Bunky. Uh yeah, because I can't remember Polly, Billy Joe, some Polly. John anyway, I fished with him. And then Jack Brennan gave me a boat in 1972. Oh, I fished the ban. No, I fished the Tuffy in 72. I was married to Danny's mom then and fished it. And then after the fishing season is over, Jack Brennan gave me the banter in 73.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:11

And Jack Brennan was the head of Hinty. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:16

Danny Pardee convinced Jack to give me a boat.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:21

So at that time with the cannery, because you had what they all termed the you know the white and black cannery boats. So did they they own those and they decided who got to fish them the next year?

SPEAKER_07 1:30:31

Jack did. Irish Navy we call them because they were all named after a county or a bay in from Ireland.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:36

From Ireland. Yep. Well, I never knew that.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:39

Yeah. Really? Yeah, Wicklow Kildeer, yeah. The clue clue banter, yeah. Yeah. Wickersham. Anyway. Yeah. And so then I fished it until I built through this boat I got now in 87.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:58

So but I've been eventually you bought the banter for stacking. When was that?

SPEAKER_07 1:31:05

76, I think it was. 77. Because when Joyce said I got married in 77, I owed like six thousand dollars in taxes or something, eight thousand. She said, I thought I'd never see the end of it because I they took 25% and I paid the boat off in two years.$20,000 that I said, I've never paid that thing off. That was a lot of money then.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:28

But I got it paid off, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:32

So at the same time you were fishing, was that trip to Washington, DC for a cluck one to try and get cluck one ink? Was that the how did that come about? Did you have an interest in politics? Where it was just like, hey, this is a well-spoken young man, let's send him.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:48

Well, they found free labor. I worked at the sawmill for a while and loaded, learned how to load logs in the woods. So I tried to get on the pipeline, so I went to Anchorage and I couldn't get on, so I ended up taking a job at a place called Tyonic. And they had a whole log chipper mill and I loaded the logs out of there. And Irene, my aunt from Donna World in Anchorage, and they said, we need you to do some work for us. So I quit my job, went in and lived with her, and I did research for land, what lands were available in Haynes, and saw there wasn't there was none because the saints selected it all. Then that's when I found out the village of Klukwan voted to keep it, keep uh take their land and and stay with uh village of Klukwan. But they're they're pretty simple titles, so which I find interesting now because of their their uh attitude towards everything in Haynes. The latest one, they're they're objecting to the bald eagle uh creation of the bald eagle preserve.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:56

Kluckwan's objecting to that?

SPEAKER_07 1:32:57

They were in their latest letter. So they weren't involved in it as if because you you're a free civil title. The you know, people in Haynes that owned land weren't involved in it except through the public process.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:10

Process, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:11

So we have that come out on the 17th. I'm gonna tell well, you had a chance. I did it because I was living in Kluckwon, and I'm the one to put in uh traditional uses and uh subsistence be protected, otherwise they didn't do anything, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:27

So when when when did you move to Kluckwand?

SPEAKER_07 1:33:30

Good grief. I can't remember. I moved there because people wanted were trying to recruit me to be mayor of Haynes, and I said, I'm not interested. So I moved to Klukwan and lived in my grandpa's house up there. And I stayed there for 17 years, so I was up there until I think 88, so 71, maybe 71. Okay. Something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:53

And so that whole time because once you went and you obviously got the land for Cluck One Inc.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:59

Yeah, it was an interesting. We had language and we went back to DC. It took us one, we got recognized as a village corporation, and every once in a while we'll talk and we'll say, well, the village took their land. We probably didn't have to bring the people that lived in the village into Cluckwood Inc. Because they selected, they elected to select and see keep the their land.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:24

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:24

But Irene and Don and I said, Well, they're all family to us, so we'll bring them in anyway. You know. So we did that, but then uh we're in DC and the second time getting to get the land, and uh we drafted the bill up. We went in there with Senator Stevens, and uh we Senator Stevens had the bill and he had an agreement to put it on a consent calendar, which means they didn't have to go through the public hearing process. And he went down, met with the whoever the uh president of the Senate was, came back and said he won't let it go because they're fighting over Admiralty Island then. You guys are afraid you just go to Admiralty Island and select 23,040 acres there. So I'm sitting there and I read the bill and and Irene and Don are sniving. I says, I have a question, Senator. Yeah, how about if we put excluding Admiralty Island on the end of the bill and he writes it down? I still see his face, he looks over at me, he says, I think that'll work. He got up and he walked out, they came back, and we're still sitting there. He says, Watch that calendar. And the bill came up, it was passed. Excluding Admiralty, excluding Admiralty Island. So then I had to negotiate as to where Cluckwin Inc. would select. And uh that was another long process, but we had withdrawn the Indicot uh across from Huna, uh home shore, and uh where Anger ended up uh Chalmee Sound. Oh, and where uh Goldbelt ended up in down there in uh north of Petersburg. But anyway, I I talked to the senator or the DNR commissioner, DOT commissioner. They didn't want any logging clerk out along the route of the uh ferry tomb. Yeah. And so we got out of Indicott and out of Huna. Charmley, fishing game commissioner, went to him and they said, no, that's a too big a dog run, we don't want you there. And there was another place uh above Petersburg, I forgot what the name of it. And uh so we got out of there, and it was John Sander. I don't remember the name. No, he was a he was a commissioner, he was a uh U.S. Forest Services guy here. And uh, and that language bill we had, they had one year to transfer can interim conveyance to us, and we had to select. So we agreed that, and I was walking out of his office, U.S. Forest Service, and there were three magazines on Iraq. I said, What are these? The gal said environmental impact statements. I said, I don't even know what they were, but I picked them up and I went and read them at an office at Sea Alaska, and it's one that got my attention was Long Island, so I did more research. And so we decided, well, go there. We got a map and we color-coded it, and it had like 600 million board feet on 23,000 acres. So we decided to select that, but people in Heidelberg didn't want it, so we had to go down there. I had to go down there with Judd Brown. Uh-huh. Met with the elders, and said, We're against Clinkett's coming down here, we don't want them in hide of the country. And he said, Well, maybe Bill should talk to you. I said, I have this EIS in my hand, environmental impact statement. If you don't allow us to come in here and select this land, LP will be here according to the EIS by July of this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:00

LP.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:00

Louisiana Pacific. Long-term timber sale, you know, the pulp mill. And uh I talked to Bobby Sanderson, Rob Sanderson, his grandma, stood up and she said, I think personally I would rather have clinkets down here than LP. And there's about 20 elders there, and they were all agreed. And I said, We will allow you to continue to hunt, fish, do whatever you normally do there. We won't bother you. So they did. Helen Sanderson was her name. And uh so when the young people found out that the elders agreed, they were all mad. They wanted it back in until they found out that Helen Sanderson, you know, she's the ones that do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:45

Once they knew it was Helen, then everybody's okay with that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:50

They always had the the big the big the leader, and she was at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:57

So just to give people some more uh information that don't know, that was Cluck One Inc. came about through the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:06

Exactly. In 1970, it was passed in 72.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:09

And that did what?

SPEAKER_07 1:39:10

That gave of each of the villages, recognized villages on the Anska 23,040 acres uh to select land.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:20

And did that also do the regional corporations as well? Yeah, and so what was the de what was the difference between the regional and the local or the village corporations?

SPEAKER_07 1:39:29

There was always a good one. The regional it it took all the southeast here, but they had the same members, but they were recognized as a separate organization representing all the people instead of individual villages, uh village corporations.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:44

And so we had Klukwan Inc. for Klukwan, but the Chilkut clinkets, they never they never got anything, did they?

SPEAKER_07 1:39:52

That's because it's it's there wasn't enough natives to recognize at the time. Okay. Careful because they were appearance more white than they were native. And so they didn't want people to know that they were native. So they never claimed to be. And so they went below the percentile of requirement. Had they had they said that I'm yes, I'm Athabascan or I'm Eskimo, or they would have qualified. Okay. And some of them didn't, so now they're badly and get back in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:29

So and so what's the difference? Because now you have Chilcat Indian Village and you have Chilcut Indian Association, and so those are sovereign tribal governments compared to Klukwan Inc. was a for-profit corporation. So when did when was this shift and where's the with the sovereign tribal governments, when is when did that kind of start taking place in Well again is the Klukwanink got recognition?

Tourism, Hatcheries, And Lobbying

SPEAKER_07 1:40:57

Yeah. Kluckwanink was the sitting body in the village of Klukwin at the time. And when they got re and Kluckwanink was re-recognized, it'll select land elsewhere. They were giving the land back to the village, but they went out of trust. So it went to V Simple. Okay. And they they still they got more active with the IRA Indian reorganization, the reorganization act and then same as here at CIA, Chilkit Indian. And that's where the dilemma I think is going to come up is that you know you selected you you were fee simple title. You know, it's no different than the I call it the uh the uh were Robert Venables and them Mount Bether, uh Mount Bethler, which is the commune of life covenant life, no different than them being say, well, we should be sovereign too. And and as I researched it, I just went back to read it, and the I think the borough was recognized as one of the signatures I did, and uh Alaska Miners, Alaska to Alaska Logging this, Stable, and sports. There was a bunch of people that were signatures on it, but the village wasn't because they were you know they they weren't active and they were fee simple. You you know your dad wasn't active in there because he was he was recognized by you know under the borough. In Cluckworn they said, well, we weren't part of the borough. Well you were at the time, you just didn't know it. You're still the part of the borough, I think, you know. But it would be a different battle. I I I just figure out if you don't like it, change the bill. When I was in judo as a legislator, I had a I amended the bill once and nobody came to me and said, Change this and change that. Yeah. I put an additional seat on it at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:51

Yeah. So with your so now we're late 70s, early 80s, commercial fishing. You married your child, your high school sweetheart enjoys this moved back to Haynes. You're involved with politics, at least on at some level, with Kluckwan Inc. You've been doing some stuff with timber out at the sawmill, loading trucks in the woods. What else was what else was happening with Bill Thomas?

SPEAKER_07 1:43:25

When when Kluckwan Inc. got recognized, we were and we got the timber and stuff. I was I was the chairman CEO and developed uh the logging plan for Long Island and the company, established the logging operation and did long shoring. We bought West Coast Steve Doyle from John and Schnabel and Tom Quinlan. We did our own longshoring. We did our own road building and construction and then cutting the logs and everything ourselves. And somebody said, why'd you do that? Because everybody has to make 10 or 15 percent profit by the time you bring in you know cutters, logging, uh road building, and truckers for in long term is about 80% of your profits gone right off the top. So come up with the idea to do it all by ourselves, and we did.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:19

So when when Long Island was at its peak, how many people from Kluck One were working down on Long Island?

SPEAKER_07 1:44:26

I went about 25, 30.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:28

25, 30 people out of shareholders are down there working on that.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:33

Yeah, we had members from other and and mind you, we also had like three or four other logging camps running too. Yeah. We logged for Kutznew and and uh which is is Angun and uh Gold Belt in Sea Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:48

So yeah. And that program with logging down at uh Long Island, how long a time period was that that they took to log?

SPEAKER_07 1:45:00

I don't know, 15 years, 18 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:03

And that was kind of the heyday of Clock 1A.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:06

Yeah. Well when we started, you know, we had sustained yield harvest, we're gonna do 15, 18 million feet a year, but mind you, at the time we borrowed money, interest rates of 20 went up to 21 percent. And so it took everything we had just to run and maintain everything. So we had to accelerate our logging from 15 million feet to 30 million board feet to 40 million. You know, we kept going up just to break even, make some money, you know. Yeah, and we started logging for other other people.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:36

So and then after the after the logs, then Cluck One Inc. moved into tourism.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:44

Yeah. We we put a lot of money into a trust fund. We had a construction company and they went fine uh creative accounting is how we put it with Cluck One and it put them into bankruptcy because they were creative accounting purposes.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:01

And so uh Clockwan Inc. is no longer in existence. Yeah, they are.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:05

They are, yeah, but we put all the money in and everything into trust so nobody can take it.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:10

So and they still own long, they still have the rights to Long Island.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:14

And they could they're within five or ten years that we started the logging, because mine you started logging in 81 or 82 though. So it's been what uh 40, 45 years already.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:28

It's a limestone island, so the trees are growing pretty fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:32

When was the last time you were on Long Island?

SPEAKER_07 1:46:34

85 or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:36

Really? So it's been 40 years since you've been down there.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:38

Yeah. They fired me as after I got it all set up and stuff. I said, uh, it'd be the headache.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:45

Is that why you moved to town? Is because they fired you for about one inch?

SPEAKER_07 1:46:49

Well no, Joyce did. Joyce. We had the kids by then, one had to play basketball, one wanted swim, and the other one they had extra things that they wanted to do other than just sit at home. Yeah. So then she had a car that she drove the sh hell out of it. So she said, I don't like this anymore. And 88 happened. I don't know if you remember what happened in 88, but sockeye prices went to 360 a pound. Hell of it was out of the world. So paid off quite a bit of the house back then.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:20

Yeah, 88 was crazier for fresh prices.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:25

Yeah. It was 360 a pound for sockeye. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:31

So my I I keep doing this math in my head as we're talking here, Bill. In 71, you're making$96,000. What was so what was soccer per pound then? Was it just because you're catching a ton of it?

SPEAKER_07 1:47:45

Well, between that, yeah. Between that and halibut. Yeah. I do about 60,000 pounds a year in halibut back then.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:54

60,000 pounds.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:56

Yeah. And we get 60 cents a pound, so we made$30,000,$40,000 on the halibut.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:03

60,000 on the banter.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:05

Yeah. We that's a lot of halibut. With 6,000 pounds you get on the banter. I go after Gillianing and I'd uh halibut fish until thirty until Gillianing started and I come home. Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:20

Are you just down in Icy Straits doing that?

SPEAKER_07 1:48:22

Or that's where I still fish it. Cold those were all our sets are at, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:28

Yeah. I did not realize you were catching that much halibut back then.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:32

Oh yeah. We averaged 50 to 60,000 pounds a year. So you were doing sport charter boats in.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:39

Yeah, and but then also was it just it was just open and you could fish like now. Seven days a week. Like now you've got a quote that you can only catch so much, but then it was seven days a week. Seven days a week, right? So that was before the derby days where you'd have a one-day, two day, three-day opening.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:55

Yep, and we fed we run nine sets of gear, which was nine miles of gear, and we turned it once a day, and then we'd leave it there and go to town and pitch, and then we'd come back and pull gear.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:04

Pull gear. Yeah, and we would have three of you on the boat, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:09

And you know, it would take two days or two and a half days to get six thousand pounds on board. You know, there's no boats out there, nobody fished.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:19

Dang.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:20

Then when it finally, was it eighty three? Which like two two fifty or two th two thirty a pound, and you know, and you know, we it was phenomenal. So you figure out how much fifty thousand pounds is in two thirty or three dollars a pound.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:45

Good money.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:48

So what what made you you're making all this good money with fishing, what got you into being a lobbyist?

SPEAKER_07 1:49:57

Well, when when Clackwink got rid of me, and then they started getting involved politically, they knew that I I was already involved with knowing Senators Stevens, Gravel, and Don Young. And they would go meet with everybody said, Oh, the building, and they look around. And so they hired me to be the lobbyist. Okay. And so I did that for years, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:21

Yeah. And so Cluckwon Inc. was your number one customer?

SPEAKER_07 1:50:25

Yep, and then I got hired by the North Slaw Bureau for nine years.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:29

And I was in Juneau?

SPEAKER_07 1:50:31

Yep. And you know, I just I got paid year-round with them. But mainly Juno, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:40

Just in case they'd take me or have to go to DC. I only went there once or twice with them, but yeah.

Legislature Wins: Energy, Roads, Harbors

SPEAKER_02 1:50:45

Yeah. And then was was it that experience that led you to run for house?

SPEAKER_07 1:50:52

Well, that and and like DIPAC, you know, I got the funding for the DIPAC hatchery. Just passing through Jinner one time. I'm glad to call he rest in peace. Was a good friend of mine, and he had this dream about building big hatchery. And but he needed funding, and so he he put it for it. They took it out. So Dave, Nandy, and I went back to the huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:14

What year was that?

SPEAKER_07 1:51:15

I can't remember what year that would be 85, 6, 7, somewhere there. Okay. So we got the 20 million dollars for him. It was just a loan. And he got the loan money, and then we had to help get him the uh uh like the Malago Harbor, you know, harvest area and boat harbor area through fishing game. And uh we call it uh the parks director for Southeast used to live at Haynes and she was against it, so it wasn't compatible. And being a lobbyist, I was at the time uh Senator Duncan's a good friend of mine, and I knew he had passed the uh oh it was it the uh oh it's a bill created Island Island Park, Marine Park, and it made it and said that um aquaculture would be compatible use of the area, and she did like it. So we they had a meeting in June and I had it set up for I would pick Senator Duncan up, and the meeting was at six o'clock, and I I'd pick him up at 10 to 6. So he got to the centennial hall. It was going on, but we had uh DIPAC board of directors and and people reserved a couple seats for us up front. So he walked in and sat down, and the lady said, Oh, Senator Duncan, um, are you here for a reason? She says, Yeah, I'm here to testify. You wish to testify now? I said, Well, it'd be just as well because I can go home. And she said, Come on up here. And by that she already had like 10 people testifying, she had maybe a hundred people. He said, Um, I'm uh Senator Jim Duncan, and I'm here to testify on behalf of support for DIPAC as these uh release size areas. It's compatible with the marine park bill. And it's in the bill, he says, uh we read it right here, it says that fishery enhancement and and uh uh agriculture would be compatible. And so I wrote the bill, and I'm the one that, you know, and you're the parks director. And so he gets up, that's all he said. He gets up and goes, sits down, and she says, Okay, Marty, you're the next one in line to speak. I no longer want to testify. And I said, Douglas, I no longer want to testify. And so she says, anybody here after she recruited these other people coming, said, Do you want to testify? And they said, No, thank you. And so it we went through. But and the lad he he he got diepacked going and then he went to work for the state, and then he got killed in a car wreck, and uh drunk driver hit him out of between Anchorage and Goodwood or someplace up there. But that was his dream. He was a science teacher for General Douglas High School to build hatcheries.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:21

Because he had didn't didn't he live right across um as you went across the Douglas Bridge? Right. On the right, right on the left.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:28

Right side, right uh left side, but right across.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:31

Take a right and it's a house on the so interesting story here. When I after my eighth grade year, we went to Minnesota on the way back. They dropped me off for Jim Hamey's basketball camp. And I stayed at his house. My son Andy, who's the same age, yeah, and so we'd walk over the bridge to JDHS in the morning for camp and back, and uh it wasn't until years later that I figured out that's actually who that was.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:59

He had a little cabin, little shack along the creek there, and he put humpy eggs in it as a novelty and trying to get him humpies coming back in that creek. Yep. Then he got the big dream, and he went out to Fish Creek out there out towards Stain, put a hatchery out there, and then we built the big one down at the Dye Pack. Bug was on the pink and chum, but now it's Lit Macaulay. I haven't got his coat on. When I got the funding for him, and he got this back and made and gave it to me. Jesus, yeah. So yeah, then that's set the stage, all that for uh becoming a legislator. Because I was already active in Juno, and and uh our district was primarily Democrat. People say, Well, why are you gonna run? I said, Well, I think I have more in common than any other candidates. Vietnam veteran, commercial fisherman, village corporation, and the number one of all of them is I played basketball against all these guys for years. And and that was the kisser, you know. The other guy, my opponent, you know, who he was that didn't do any of that. And then one of the things I was when I was fishing out of Huna, my grandma told me, when you go to Huna, you gotta let the people know you're in town. So George Dalton Stewart car, I'd have to go to his house. He was a much elder guy. Let you know I'm in your town here. He says, Good to he says, let the people know. So I'd go to the bar, the Cutilla Beach Bar. Now it's the office. We don't do it anymore because there are more tourism people. But we'd buy the first drink for every all the locals that come in there. Yeah. Joy says, How can we barbecue so much? I said, because I'll have to let them know I'm in town.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:52

So your grandmother recommended you do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:55

And you gotta let them know. So I do that yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:58

So is that a is that a clinker tradition when you go to another town? You have to recognize you there?

SPEAKER_07 1:57:03

Yeah, you have to recognize them. People like when they see Alaska came here, they had to say thank you to the people in Chilku Chilkat for letting us come into your town and talk. And so, you know, when they see my boat come in, they say, All right. When I got on elected, I boycott it for two years. But we went in after it was really rough. And people said, Oh, glad you're here. The people that campaigned against me hugged me and said, Oh, sorry. Because they voted against me because I put the dock there. Got funding for the uh cruise ship dock. And they didn't like it where it went. I said, I don't pick the thing, I'm just giving you the money to build it. The marine pilots picked the spot for the safety of the ship. But then they were, oh, it's the salvation of HUNA. Well, yeah, it is now.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:51

So you you got funding for the original start of IC Straight Point in HUNA.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:57

The dock. The dock there. Yep. The first dock.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:58:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:02

Did you ever imagine it'd be what it is today?

SPEAKER_07 1:58:04

Not really. But you know, you we could see it growing after, you know, when they were anchored up there. They were they were starting it. So you put the dock in there and did that so they can get the cruise ship head tax money, mainly, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:24

Well, I know that's you've told the story, and I know my dad's told me this as well, about from when you were in high school. He never thought you would be the one that would do that much for Haynes. He told me that were you were you mad at him that he didn't have more faith than you?

SPEAKER_07 1:58:42

No. He he was just one of those, you got a minute, Bill? That was maybe like two years ago, you know, maybe two and a half years. And he said, Bill Thomas, all my years of teaching and have the graduates coming out of here in Haynes. I never thought that you would be the one that make Haynes more successful and do more for Haynes than anyone in my alumni. Yeah. Like I said, as at the funeral, he'd come and ask me for help. And I said, Who am I to deny my senior class advisor?

SPEAKER_02 1:59:15

Even though he kept sending you to the Yeah, go to I had my spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:23

I played basketball with him for several years. You know, he was a pioneer boy ball team. Terry Shaw.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:32

There's still the picture up there.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:33

Yep, Jaw Katzick. Yeah. The old coach. Yeah, and then the Jack Jack Withham.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:44

I was telling somebody, oh Terry Seeley said, It must bother you, and you go by the pioneer and go out to the bar. That's when we won the Christmas tournament for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:54

Oh, you beat them for the Christmas tournament? High school kids, yeah.

Managing Fisheries And Policy Frustrations

SPEAKER_07 2:00:00

I'll go to go man to man on us. And he says, I'll take that old man Bill Thomas. I says, Shit, I was only like 22. And I had 36 points against him before the three-point line. Yeah. He says, I remember every time I see you that I just shake my head. He says, You made me a better ball player.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:20

So as you moved through these different stages, do you think there were lessons from your experience in Vietnam or things there that that helped you as you move through politics? Besides just being a besides just being a veteran?

SPEAKER_07 2:00:37

Survival and you know taking shit from people, I guess, you know. I don't know. I always it was, you know, after basic training, and then I look back at what where I ended up as a crew chief and airplane mechanic, and it helped it helped me and my boat when I built my boat in the pantry. Everything I do is meticulous. It's got to be just so because on an airplane it's the same way. So I learned you know in discipline, I guess you call it more than anything. But um, Irene, my aunt was the one that really trained me because I used to fight a lot. And she called me up, she says, quit beating up the shareholders. I said, Well, it's um quit being so nasty. Like now I I won't go to a uh to the to the bars, I go to the Legion, and that's it. If I go downtown, somebody give me raft or something, you know. Why didn't you do that? Why don't you do this? You should try it, you know. See what it takes to pass things. I think Jesse told me we we put over a billion dollars into Haynes with the realignment of the highway projects, you know, and the buildings and the rebuilding buildings, redoing things. And the Haynes heard about it, and it was one that it was a floating gym, so you didn't have these, yeah, you didn't get uh splints. And Haynes wanted one, so okay, so we did the whole gym, you know. But you know, one of the things I didn't do in the Remember when that happened?

SPEAKER_02 2:02:17

My dad was he who because he was on the school board when they built the gym after the fire at the original school, and I remember him complaining, he says, that is a state-of-the-art gym floor. And I was like, Dad, that was state of the art like 40 years ago. I don't think it's a bad thing that Bill's getting a new gym floor. I think some of that stuff there probably wore out by that.

SPEAKER_07 2:02:36

And all new bleachers. So yeah. And it the reason they did it in uh Met Lake Catholic because of shin splits. Mm-hmm. You know, they liked it because it was a more floating floor, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:53

So how did how did that feel when you were up against uh Jonathan Christ Tompkins and you ended up losing the election? I think didn't Kluckwon have more votes for him than for you, or is about 750%. That and Mud Bay. Mud Bay.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:08

And I called him up because I said I think what you did was absolutely wrong. Um she ran search at the time, and he had a picture with her, Ethelund, and him, and he was campaigning, and he says, Ethelund endorses me. Well, they had like four or five hundred employees. And I called him up and said that was wrong to do that to an elder. She did not endorse you. She called me up crying. I did not do that, Bill. I would never endorse him, and he did it anyway. But I would go to when I go to sitka now, I go there and say, How you like me? How you like me now? Because I think they had to take out a$28 million bond to lift the the uh hydro from Sitka. And Bert Stebbin when I was campaigning there, Bert said Bill can get get that money a lot easier than JKT can. He said, I can get the money. And I tell people now, I go down there so how you like me now.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:09

He didn't get the money, did he?

SPEAKER_07 2:04:12

I don't think he did much of anything, I don't think, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:16

But you were you besides just funneling money to different places, because I had a friend in Fairbanks. He asked me if I knew you. I was like, yeah, and he goes, Because this is when you were a co-chair of finance. And he says, I'm extremely impressed with him because he's he's looking out for everybody. Yeah, he could funnel everything into his district, but he doesn't. He makes sure there's when there's money, there's a fair share for everybody around the state.

SPEAKER_07 2:04:46

Yeah, I got my a buddy of mine, Woody Salmon, he's from Chelkitsick, he'll be in here on the 19th. He got he got he didn't get re-elected, so he comes to Juno. I said, What are you doing here? I'm city manager for some village or he was at. He said, What are you doing down here? He said, I'm trying to get a fire truck for them. I was co-chair of finance and I said, Really? How much is it? And he told me, I said, I'll I'll fund it for you. Because I knew he wouldn't get it otherwise because that was, you know, Democrat districting in. And so I said, I'll get it for you. And then he calls me up at the summer, hey, I'm on this on the beach here waiting for the fire truck to come in. Yeah. I didn't get I when I first ran, I didn't get Skagway or Yakutat or Cordova, you know. And uh I got enough votes out of Haynes and a couple other uh maybe Huna, but anyway, to get in there. But the second time I ran was overwhelming because again, I didn't pick, you know, they wanted someone and made sense to me. And I did three bills, four bills, texting while driving, which is a big thing today, and uh renewable energy fund bill, which was we put 50 million a year in there, and it gives hydro and wind wind energy. Like I think uh Kodiak is like 95% renewable, you know. And I bought the hydro at 10 mile for IPEC, but put a lot of little hydro projects in. I go to AFN and a guy calling, hey energy man, you know. They were getting projects all over. There was another, there was three big bills that I did, but but you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:33

So how does that feel now that Gabe, your son, is into his third term now in the Haynesborough Assembly following in dad's footsteps.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:42

Yeah, I've been there. Well, he had he's got good teachers that had Sam Keto and Chris Chris Noss. Yeah that we both were working in it helping, you know, tell him it's not all about you. Sometimes you gotta work on the other side with them. One thing that the people there now don't do, you know. It's all and nothing for them, but yeah, I told him I talked to him.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:05

Is he does he come to dad for advice?

SPEAKER_07 2:07:07

Oh yeah. He he called me the other day, his stepson won the region, you know, region. Yeah. And he's stuck in stuck in sitka. I said, Why don't you take the ferry? He says, What? Well, the ferry don't go into sitka because all the little ones are icing icing up so they're moving the Columbia just between Ketchikan and Haynes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:30

They're not going over through the Sitka.

SPEAKER_07 2:07:31

They're not going to sitka.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:07:34

But he's he's flying there tonight or something. I don't know when the ferry's going through Juneau tomorrow or the next. Well, he might be there tonight. But you know, I spent four years on the school board and borough assembly before the legislature. And involved in the ball legal advisory board, uh, you know, creation of that. Like I said, I'm you know sitting there making sure subsistence was covered in uh prior existing uses and rights, you know. And that skits us down to the the cabins, they said that people are trying to shut up and and take away from uh your tree stands.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:08:20

And it actually came from Craig Loomis. Craig Gloom says, Hey Bill, those are those are protected by subsistence, aren't they? They're subsistence cabins and tree stand tree, you know, tree stands. They shouldn't have anything to say with about that.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:37

Yeah, because it's parks that's trying to take those over now, isn't it?

SPEAKER_07 2:08:40

But yeah, but I talked to the parks directors, yeah, but we we're not against it. We just want them to be public like they were before the creation of the Paul Legal uh preserve. And I said, Well, I guess you have your different opinion. I says, To me, uh all your regulations you adopted are illegal anyway. Why is that? Because you didn't have public hearings to have it notified clock one what you're gonna do or haynes as required by the bill. He said, Well, it came out of the bill. I said, You're missing my point. The bill says that before regulations are adopted, you will have a hearing in clockwork one in Haynes.

SPEAKER_06 2:09:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:09:21

So, anyhow. Well, we've one of the likes that I funded the Legion to remodel. Yeah. And uh I'm sitting in my office and Jesse Badger was there, and Pat Murphy comes in, comes down and sits down. It's not Pat. He says, I know you don't like the American Legion, Bill, because of what they said years ago. It was twenty-something years. What they told me is that Vietnam veterans shouldn't be American Legion members because it wasn't a war.

SPEAKER_03 2:09:51

What?

SPEAKER_07 2:09:52

Yeah, and I won't tell you the guy's name because this is being recorded. And so I was sitting there with David Land, Gary Cranston, Larry O'Blucker and I at the uh what was it before the fog cutter was called the reef?

SPEAKER_00 2:10:05

Reef bar.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:06

And I and I told him the good French word, pulled my Legion card out, and I said, I didn't burn my draft card, but I'm gonna burn my American Legion card in hell with you guys. Because I thought when I was in Vietnam, if that wasn't a war, I don't know what the live realms of ammunition and combat fights and mortars and rockers are about. So I left them for well over 20 years. But Pat come in. He said, We are gonna get shut down if we don't get any help from you. We need you have to put a sprinkler system and redo the kitchen and the bar and everything and add it out of the building. And I said, You're right. But all those guys are dead now. And I said, You have big enough balls to come in here and talk to me. I like that. And I said, the other thing, Pat, if you weren't a combat medic helicopter pilot and flew people out, I would tell you to get out of here. But I says, I have enough respect for you as a commander to help you. And you know, I knew he was a helicopter pilot there, so I didn't know he was a helicopter pilot. Yeah. So I said, You tell Jesse how much money you want. And interesting, you were talking about money. I funded all the nonprofits here for years. And when I got didn't get re-elected, no no no nonprofit bunnies came in. And uh Stephanie Scott, rest in peace, told me she said she had a meeting with the nonprofit organizations. We didn't get any money this year from the legislature. Do we get money from the borough? She says, you know why you didn't get any money from the legislature? They says, No, whose signs did you have on you guys' doors? JKT. You know, she said, all you guys had those signs on there, and he didn't get you any money this year. It was Bill Thomas who got the money. He says, We never met with Bill Thomas, we always met with Jesse Badger. Badger Jesse'd write it down. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:17

Who would get who look looking back, you're what, 78 years old now.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:28

What would if you had to go back, or if you could go back, what would you do different, if anything?

Ferries, Roads, And Infrastructure Costs

SPEAKER_07 2:12:36

I don't know. I don't know. Probably nothing.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:45

You know, I've I've known you my whole life. You know, you were my parent student when we first came up here. You and my dad developed a long-term friendship from the youngest age that I can remember at the store. You were you've always been coming into the store. I think uh I've I've been good friends with you. You've been a mentor to me in different things that I've done.

SPEAKER_07 2:13:04

Um, but just the And you haven't bought me your beer yet. It's the wrong thing. Anyway, I'll work on that.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:15

I'll have to work through Marty here. Maybe we can do something, but we shouldn't have beers on the bigger. We might have to make some adjustments looking forward. But did my dad ever buy you in a beer?

SPEAKER_07 2:13:29

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:30

See, it's it's a mission, Bill.

SPEAKER_07 2:13:32

You got a you got a minute?

SPEAKER_02 2:13:36

But I as after I asked you to be on here, I started just going through my mind of the different the different roles that that we've talked about here and the different the ones that I knew of you, it is it's extremely diverse.

SPEAKER_06 2:13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:50

You know, from the the commercial fishing to running a loader for lobbying in Washington, D.C., the head of a village native corporation, elected representative down in Juneau, um, serving here locally. The diversity of your life experiences and the jobs that you've had is pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:14

Yeah, I told Joyce, you know, I went to too many funerals this year, and you talk how about how great everybody is. I said, Do me a favor. I says, you know, when Dave Old passed, they they had a family only. That's all I want. I said, I don't want people to stand up there. Reminds me of uh when I gave Bosch's eulogy, you know, reminds you of people talking about how great that person was. Bosch was there, and they said, You gotta move. They said, Oh, it must be in the front row, you know, that was that then. They moved us up to the front. And so they were given the eulogy of the guy. He elbows me. Hey, Bill, go open the casket up. I think we're at the wrong funeral. That guy was an asshole. And I told Joyce, I don't think you should hear that from anybody. I'd, you know, so I said, just take me out there, have the family there, and put me down in this tube that I had built, you know. You know, cremate me, drop me down in there. No funeral and no dinner and nothing. But people, you know, talk about how bad I am after game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:26

Yeah, I've already and that's that's the thing too, is to some people you're extremely polarizing.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:37

And I think the reason you're polarizing, my dad was extremely polarizing to some people. And I think the people that are the most polarizing are usually the ones that are most effective at getting things done.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:49

That people see that there's somebody that's getting stuff done, and they're either jealous that they couldn't get stuff done, or it's counter to what they might have thought of it. But you've been in the arena, you've been doing the work and showing results. And that rubs some people the wrong way because you've been successful in numerous fields.

SPEAKER_07 2:16:13

Well, I told Joyce in talking with her, we'd ponder about it, and she'd always bring up, says, you know, I always tell her for an uneducated Indian, she's and she said, Don't do that. I said, Well, I'm not a college graduate like a lot of these people around here that have college degrees and don't know Jack.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:33

Well, so there's I I look at it, there's different types of education. There's book education, which has its place, and but there's life education. Yeah. Both both are important, but I don't think one is more important than the other. I think one of the things that was, as you were talking about when you were running for legislator and talking about playing basketball with so many people, when we were traveling in high school and you take the ferry and you'd stay at somebody at now you stay in the gym or whatever, but we'd stay at people's houses and meeting people from so many different backgrounds and having conversations with them over the dinner table. Sometimes the parents weren't around and you were kind of on your own. There's other places that they were there supporting, but just seeing all those different, being exposed to all those different situations, in many ways, I felt was just as important to my intellectual growth as going to school and learning chemistry or algebra or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:30

Well, you know, Joyce told me the thing I is that being able to respond and think, bam, like that, you know, about the issue. We were at the at the hearing when they're going to take the pipeline up at the school. People all testifying is a great thing, tear it up. Because I'm sitting there, and so I would go up and testify. I said, I'm opposed to pulling this pipeline up. We should use it as a conduit. Run all our power lines up to up the valley. And I said, and somebody said, Why is that? I said, Well, when I was growing up, in our house we had um cable and we had inside metal, and it was a conduit, just you know, protect so it didn't show it out anything. But I said, it's ideal. There's no no power lines to be shown from here to the border. And Joyce and at the hearing and at the school, and Joyce said, How'd you come up with that idea? I said, I'm just sitting here thinking, must be a never witness, another beast, yeah, yeah. And then just rip it up, you know, and she's yeah, you're reacting to things, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:39

But they ripped it up and then they put new new pipe down to put the con the power lines in.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:44

Well, they didn't rip it up, they they left them in there.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:46

The the I thought they took most of the pipeline up.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:50

Only from the tank farm to here.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:52

Okay, that's right. Yeah, and then they did on the other side of the border, they pulled it up, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:57

Because we went to the to the border, but it's all there. Yep. But you know, reacting and listening to to issues and how to fix them. It's like Gable for the well, take the ferry home. You know, we stuck there until next week. This why didn't you know come home? But you know, I we just had a um task force meeting with fishing game, and I told and uh about this year's fish season, we caught 67,000 socks. And I told him, I said, it's embarrassing. I've been fishing since 1969 until this year is what was it, 50 some years? It's the worst year I ever had fishing, because your inability properly managed for escapement and your politics about allowing uh interception fishery by a non-resident gear group. I figure I can say that now because if they would do anything, they'd have to kill me or I'd shoot them or do something, but this is crazy. You know, and I said, by the way, each one of you guys are violating the constitution. Constitution Says you shall sustain yield manage, and you guys aren't doing that. You're doing you know you're intercepted fishery. We didn't meet escaping goals. Always been one in in trusting fishing game, but I don't have the trust anymore. So it says I'm I'm actually thinking about uh dual management, having the the native community come in here and who cares about food sovereignty and food you know, people eating over what you guys are worried about. I don't know what you guys are worried about. You make sure the non-resident fishermen catch everything and leave. But I said, you know, that like something like that. And I I told Fishing Game, I said, that's completely opposite of what I believed in all these years. But you guys have proven to me you have the inability to properly manage. I said, I heard it at AFN and I heard it uh the tribes that met in Juno. There were 13 village organizations that got together, but fishing game has lost the ability. So I'm gonna go to Juno. I said, I'm gonna go to the Juno this year and go to the fishing game subcommittees and testify like that. And I said, there's several things that I would do if I sat in this body down here.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:15

Because it does seem if you if you look at it that the the trawlers and the sanders have precedence over every other type of fishing or for the charter industry.

Honoring Code Talkers And Local Builders

SPEAKER_07 2:21:26

Yeah, and and and I and I pointed out to them, I said, you know, it's kind of like it. I I was in the Helbert Commission meeting the other night, and I I couldn't figure out how to get my volume on there, but my granddaughter put earplugs on a headset, so I couldn't get the volume, so half the meeting I didn't know what they were talking about. I finally got going and I was gonna come in and testify on there. And I when I started Halbert fishing, and I told the gal that I talked to after well, the Hell Longline Association, that when I started fishing in 1973, there were no sport charter boats. Now they're everywhere, and you get a bigger percentage of the quota than anybody, you know, you get you get less taken from you. And I said, the other thing that I don't like is a 32-inch under. I said, when I started fishing and I'm gonna say 79, 80, 81, we got letters from the halibert commission to cut the Ganyon because we had the old J hook. Little fish would swallow them. And if we cut them, they could pass the hook. But if we slammed them off, we killed the one small one, so we had no future. So I said, I wonder why all of a sudden the halibert commission gave up on the future because he allowed sport charter boats, uh sport fishermen and subsistence users all 30 un 32 and under. Yep. And you know, they're killing the resource along with the trawlers. The trawlers would harvested five and a half million pounds so far this year and dumped it overboard. I said several years ago, if I threw a humpy overboard, it's want and waste, but you know, by agreement you guys allow them to do this.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:06

That's the thing that's that's always gotten me is the the number of things that are fairly blatant out there that don't make sense.

SPEAKER_06 2:23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:16

That there's rules for one group but not for the other, or they'll say something that we um you know that one that comes to mind is I've been the last several sport fish directors out at out here in Haynes ask them why they don't do any kind of spawning rehabilitation in the upper chilcoop. And I said, Well, their comment is always it starts with, well, we don't mess with a natural run. I said, Well, what the hell's a fence you've got across there that keeps all the fish from going up there? I said, You guys you guys crossed that Rubicon a long time ago.

SPEAKER_07 2:23:50

Well, that that's what I told uh who I was at another meeting talking about the and I said we should be doing uh incubation boxes. It's not it's not like you're taking the hatchery and incubating them, release them. Yeah, what they have this year, 50, 4500 kink salmon escaping. And I said, you know, you restricted us all season and you let the sanders go. I said, I was used to be a troller, and I said you extended the same gear down to the point where they're catching king salmon. And I know you know, I did I know that you they don't throw them away. They go and they're sorting them out to tender. They take they like in Huna one, I was down there one year, and people said all the frid fridge all the freezers are full of king salmon because the sameers brought them and gave it to them. They wouldn't pitch them.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:43

How do we get on that list?

SPEAKER_07 2:24:44

Yeah. That's what I was gonna call cluck when they took somebody had told me they took the guesstimate of 500 king salmon there this year. Really? That's what somebody would mean. I don't know if it was drunk talk or what, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:57

And just in front of the village in the yeah, yeah. Because the soccer was nothing in front of the village this year.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:02

It hasn't been since they put those. I told there's Douglas fir in the river. Yeah. In the hemlock trees. They put two of the Douglas fir and five hundred hemlock trees in the river or bank civilization.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:19

And you think that's what's keeping the fish from.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:22

Mark Soggy thought I was nuts and he started thinking about it. So I think you might be right, Bill. When we created the Bald Eagle Preserve, the only thing that fell in the river is cottonwood. Anything beyond it was State Forest. Yeah. Because you know, there's no way the uh uh Douglas fir don't live here anyway. They're all Washington.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:43

So all of the um trees that they're planted along for stream or for rehabilitation, are they using cottonwood this time for the highway project? Yeah, they all always have. Okay. How did how did Cluckwan get away with not using cottonwood up there?

SPEAKER_07 2:25:58

They don't respond to anybody. Fish and game don't hold them too. That's the thing I'm gonna come up with is is you know, are are they allowed to go out there just dump whatever they want in the river that's owned by me too?

SPEAKER_04 2:26:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_07 2:26:11

Because I had a friend of mine that came up and working for Chicano and put a hundred Douglas fir piling in there up there in all these trees, and he says, he said, I thought salmon respond to that. And I said, they do. And I brought up with Mark Sarge when they did that about five, six years ago. And he he told me, he said, I thought you're full of crull. I said, I think you start to make sense because the fish now go up in 19 mile, they don't go across the village up either.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:39

Yeah. So do you is it uh some kind of chemical in the trees or something? Is the oil coming off of that that's keeping the fish out?

SPEAKER_07 2:26:47

And you put the hemlock trees in behind it. Yeah, you know, if you have if you're concerned about the mine up there being copper falling into the river, well, this is worse, worse damage. I represented Cordova for eight years, and they told me how many train loads of copper fell into the Copper River. Never destroyed that's the second largest run in Alaska, Copper River. It's all about escapements, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:14

So, what do you what do you got coming up? Got any big plans? Big plans, huh? What's what's next for Bill Thomas? Besides going out and having a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.

SPEAKER_07 2:27:25

Oh, my boat, I'm pulling the engine in my boat, putting a new engine in there. So I'll be working on that, but I got cold, so I just quit working on it. So I gotta find a heater Monday tomorrow. I'll go to Haynes Haynes home and see if they got what kind of heaters they got to get to put in the boat. I'm too delicate to not make it warm enough to work in.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:47

I I that's why I thought why you had a deck hand. That's why your son just did it.

SPEAKER_07 2:27:53

No, I I we had his ex-boyfriend will help me. Yeah. We spend a day or two, we have everything ready to put the engine back in, and then we go from there. I got Tim Hannon helping me then. So getting parts, you know, it takes a while to get them out of Seattle.

SPEAKER_03 2:28:10

Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:11

It takes forever. Took me three weeks to get a coupling to attach my engine to the reduction shaft. But we'll get it done. I got till May.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:24

Starting halibut and May.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:26

Yeah, I usually do.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:27

Yeah. Go go halibut and then salmon again.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:31

Yep. Somebody said, When are you gonna quit? I said, probably when I die or get you know, do something weird.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:38

Well, you still enjoy it, right?

SPEAKER_06 2:28:40

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:41

I set all the gear, I pull all the gear. Yeah, we bait the hooks. Yeah. And Cole knows where we go, what when to set, where to set.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:53

So you're gonna take over the Raven's walk?

SPEAKER_07 2:28:56

I doubt it. Nobody wants to fish, I'll probably just sell it someday.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:02

Yeah, they you know, I've lost so much Halbert IFQ. I had 28,000 pounds, I'm 8,500 is all I have now.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:10

That's how much the reduction's been from and that's from International Pacific Halibut Commission, right? Because they've been dropping that. They have now they have uh have the has the charter fleet ever had a reduction in their quota?

SPEAKER_07 2:29:25

No. Because they they they were just gave them part of the commercial guys, and now they got they found a new thing. They got uncharted um uh uh boats.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:36

Yeah, you can just rent a boat and you can just go out there, so it's not it's just sport fishing instead of charter.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:40

I think a way to uh curb that one is have fish have Coast Guard company can get involved. You're sending some amateur out there in a boat, you know, you're not listening to the you know, listen to the weather. Fish down there saw these buoys out there, and we we thought they were halibut fishing, but they were on-guided sport boats that were set buoys for the guys to go tie up to. Oh, okay. And they tie up to them and they they have a GPS on them, the numbers they find them.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:10

They find that buoy they tie up to it, and that's where they go dig for the halibut.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:13

So Andy Sablin, he was a trooper, you know, and Hooner said, pull them up. So we pulled one and we brought it home, but he said, Oh, if you don't want to pull them, is you pull them up down and uh cut the line so that the anchor will stay down because they got little they're cute little anchors in the chain, you know, 20, 30 feet of chain, and cut it off and let it sink.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:36

So he's he says it's all right to because I thought you're not supposed to mess with somebody else's yeah, but they aren't supposed to they have to have a permit to leave it there.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:44

To leave it there, yeah, forever.

SPEAKER_03 2:30:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:49

He don't like him. He's a commercial fisherman now. All of a sudden the stripes changed, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:30:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:58

Are you getting anxious, Marty? No. What out what what what else do we need to cover while we got you here, Bill? Furthermore, huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:08

I've covered everything that I didn't know. What's that? Yeah, that's right. You worked for the governor.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:23

And you're sh and that and that's the thing too, that when I was mayor, the number of people that you put me in contact with, because even though you haven't been in the legislature for a while, you still know everybody in state government.

SPEAKER_07 2:31:38

I walk, I go through the airport and people come up to me. You know, I I was gonna tell you one story. I was at left the post office the other day, and this young lady was younger than me, came up to me. She says, you know, ever since he left the legislature, I think Haynes has gone backwards and done, and we haven't benefited from anybody in the legislature. She says, and I voted for you, but I she says, I I just it just bothers me that we don't have the ability to get what we want, versus when you were there as well. I live here, so it's pretty easy, you know.

SPEAKER_03 2:32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:15

Walk down the street, say, hey, asshole. No.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:22

Well, I think that's any anytime you're from a cu from a community and that's who you represent, and it's I mean, it's things you've seen your whole life that can be improved here. The people are comfortable letting you know what's going on and makes it easier.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:36

Well, but when you got super 300 here that don't like you, then you know that hurts too.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:41

Yep.

Closing Reflections And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_07 2:32:44

That's the voting block. And the other thing I was involved in was the uh Cascade Point Road. I was a big supporter of developing that originally, and because you know, to try to get the road to come up to Haynes somehow, somehow, and shorten the ferry trip up. And things were going along great until they just found out there was gonna be a potential mine out there at uh Kerbert Glacier. So it still can happen, it don't matter. You think you're gonna stop it? It was at Cascade Point. You could have had they would have put the terminal in there.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:19

So you would be you would know this better than I, but I've heard the story that in this, that with the original formation of the Alaska Marine Highway, the main line ferries were gonna be a stopgap because the the plan in the late 50s, early 60s to the mid-60s was to go like most other ferry systems, figure out where you can build a road and then have short shuttle ferries were gonna be from each of the community. Any person could have a road, you'd put a road, but then have but then it was so easy and simple to just run the state ferries that everybody just got used to that. And now it seems like the governor's in some ways is trying to go back to those shorter distances and have more of it road traffic. Well, you know, was that am I correct with that? It's kind of one of the original intents with that.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:09

The original was, you know, just connecting the the major towns, Haynes, Gagway, Juno, Wrangell, Petersburg, uh even Sitka wasn't on the original plan, and then uh Ketchkan and Prince Rupert in Seattle. And then as I tell people at the biggest downfall of the Marine Highway was somebody get elected and said, We'll bring a ferry into Tannekey. Well, Tannekey don't need a ferry because they can get from Huna to Taneke within a half a mile of Tenneke, but they don't want to finish the road. Oh, okay. And so they use four-wheelers to go from there to the parking lot where the cars are. Yeah. But they get a ferry there once every two weeks or something to get their freight in their groceries in. Just like Pelican, you know. They quit going to Yakotat because nobody wrote it out there, you know. Same as Gus Davis and Yakutat. Um uh Pelican, you know, I don't I think it you look at it, is it feasible? No. The most feasible part is the Haynes, uh uh Juno Haynes Skagway.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:16

So do you think the they think the West Side Road is ever gonna happen?

SPEAKER_07 2:35:19

I don't know. Carl Heimel had stopped that in the 60s, but they should. But you know, they that if they did that, I would say leave the Ark Bay terminal and go William Henry Bay or St. James Bay, so you go into the north wind and then into the south wind coming back. And you don't have to go.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:40

Cascade Point would be almost straight across there, and that would be like a very uncomfortable ferry ride.

SPEAKER_07 2:35:46

Totally. And that's what I told you. You don't put any thought into it. Then if you go to St. James Bay, I know in in before I can't remember if it was before or after when I was in the legislature, they had a super plan, and the super plan was going to go from St. James to Point Coverted, and then the small ferry going over to Huna. And then from Huna you go down to Gustavis Road. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:09

Or excursion inlet. Excursion inlet to Gus Davis. Well, no, you're not. Because Huna to Gus Davis, you gotta go across the you can't have a road from Huna to Gustavis.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:19

But you know, but Coop Point Cooverted is Point Coverted would be a quick because that's what I was saying. You go to Coverdan or even go into Excursion Inlet, and then you have a ferry that can go the whole icy straight thing and come back and you put them on the road service.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:31

If it's feasible, if it's not, then you do it once every two weeks again, you know. Yep. And that's what they do at Pelican. They know they're only going to get out every two weeks. But to build a turbine was like$20 million, so it's not.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:43

It's crazy how much that stock costs anymore.

SPEAKER_07 2:36:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:46

I was listening to uh uh uh an interview this summer, and the guy was talking about how you know after World War II, there's this huge boom of we're building the interstate highway system, we're just building all this infrastructure. We says now we have we really don't have an ability to build anything much bigger than a shipping container. He says if it's smaller than a shipping container, we can do it. Anything beyond that, because you look at any of the any of the transportation projects we do now are always so far over budget, it takes forever to get them, and the and the cost is absurdly expensive. How do we how do we change that?

SPEAKER_07 2:37:25

Well, we're talking about you're the you're the master of all these things, Bill. We sit there and talk at the bamboo for breakfast, and we all started with the minimal wage. They keep chasing that, chasing that tail, you know, and teachers' wages, you know, they want more money. Well, our education standards are scores are going down, you know, yeah, but they want more money. I was like, you know, we did we'd argue, we're all agreeing because like Anchorage, they got all this money last year for for education. Oh, we need to buy this, buy that. The teachers put them on notice for to negotiate. But minimum wage, you the mayor of New York wants to go to$30 an hour. And who's it? Carrie Underwood just canceled all her concerts in New York?

SPEAKER_00 2:38:14

Oh, really? I hadn't seen that.

SPEAKER_07 2:38:16

Yeah, and and the people in New York said that's devastating because she when she rents the big auditorium and put two hundred thousand people in there. And people come from all over the states to go see her. Yeah. And she'll be there for three, four days. And what they're afraid of is a trickle down now. You know, some other groups would say we don't want to go there because you know we've got that socialist, that communist there.

SPEAKER_02 2:38:42

The biggest thing for me is just you look at the devaluation of the dollar. That what the dollar and that's why it's so impressive for me that you're making$96,000 commercial fishing back in the early 70s. I mean, that'd be almost what about a million dollars a year right now. Yeah. That's some significant money commercial fishing. But you just look at that gap of what a house used to be. I mean, I think my parents were saying when they first came up here they were making like$4,000 a year as teachers in the in 64. And uh well, my dad showed me every once in a while before he passed, or even my mom now bring like his hand his handwritten business plan when he was starting the store or something like that. His his insurance cost for a year like$50 or something. I'm like, the heck, dad, why didn't you build it twice as big?

SPEAKER_01 2:39:32

That was that was that was cheap.

SPEAKER_07 2:39:36

Um well, you know, look at um were juicy trooper uh cop juicy.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:44

Yeah, Max Juicy.

SPEAKER_07 2:39:45

Where he lives. Billy Albecker built that house in the seventies for seventeen thousand dollars. Yeah. You look at what it's worth now, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:54

Probably close to three hundred.

SPEAKER_07 2:39:56

Well, I built mine for what, three hundred and fifty thousand? Yeah. And it's 5,300 square feet. And Carlos told me it's$450 to$475 a square foot. There's no way we can sell that to anybody at Haynes. No.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:16

You'll just have to stay alive and keep living there. Jesus.

SPEAKER_07 2:40:18

I told Joyce back when we moved to town. I was still involved with the logging industry. A friend of mine said they had a couple of Skikorsky helicopters. Because we can pick half that house up, move it to town if we had a foundation and put it on there, move it down here. It might be twenty thousand dollars a trip or ten thousand, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a house now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:45

Pick your house up and bring it down from Cluckwind.

SPEAKER_07 2:40:47

Yeah. Still there, it didn't burn down. I did all the wiring and plumbing in it.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:52

So you must you must have some skills as an electrician, too.

SPEAKER_07 2:40:56

Yeah, I I bought a complete set of how-to-do books. And then Hertz come by and check my wiring out.

SPEAKER_03 2:41:04

So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:07

All right. Well, I appreciate your time, Bill. Yep. It's been great catching up and hearing stories.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:13

More stories, huh?

SPEAKER_02 2:41:14

More stories. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:17

Yeah, people say, yeah, we always once in a while get some weird. How many people did you kill in Vietnam? I says, if if I really knew it, it'd be a astonishing. So why is that? Because we would know we get five uh U-toni and Alphas in an airstrip with uh two, three-star generals plates on there, they're getting ready to do something.

SPEAKER_03 2:41:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:41

You know, and so they did then you hear about the A Shaw Valley, you hear about this battle, you know, thousands of people getting killed in them, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:51

So the more stars that were together, the bigger the operation.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:54

Oh yeah. We we we knew we the chiefs would sit there because we could the players wouldn't leave until the meeting's over. No, they weren't planning a ball.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:09

They weren't planning your birthday party.

SPEAKER_07 2:42:11

No.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:14

But thank you not only for joining us, but also thank you for your service in in the military, in the legislature, and local government, all the different ways you've served our our community and and our country, and uh and thank you for your friendship over the years.

SPEAKER_07 2:42:33

There's one thing that I'd like to have done a do before I do die with we have two signature people on the uh state constitution, um Burke Riley and uh Leonard uh King. But I said, I think we should have like a um a memorial for people that did something good, like Hank Reeves was our first state rep we ever had at him here. You know, maybe even Carl Heimler, people that did something, like your dad did something for the community, even if it's Peter Gallery. I said, You don't need to worry about me, but let them know. Hey, these help people help change things, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:13

And thank you for bringing that up because that that was one of the one of the topics I wanted to talk to you about was the Clinkett Code Talkers.

SPEAKER_03 2:43:21

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:22

That we had that please share that story because that was something that just came out what, 10-15 years ago?

SPEAKER_07 2:43:29

Yep, I was on the C Alaska board then and and they uh had announced uh actually they got a hold of C. Alaska to talk to them. And uh George George Lewis and Jeff David from Haynes and uh two brothers from Sitka and a guy from Cake, Bean. But they were found out they declassified the restrictions, they were code talkers. So Jeff David Jr. was invited to go back and receive recognition from the U.S. Congress. And he he said he didn't know how to get back there, so they said, Well, you take him back, Bill. So he went there. And I'm sitting like from here to your back wall from the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate and the majority leader, minority leaders, and all the Congress people, the rest of the room there, and they went through the history, and they had they had other co-talkers sitting there and and they said out of respect, but those were, you know, like again, Jeff David and George, and they were sworn to secrecy. And I said, it's hard to believe because I knew both Jeff and George, it was always about how great I am, you know. We wanted to know how great I am, ask me, you know, to have them take it to their death without being able to say that I was a code talker and may have saved thousands of American soldiers and something else. And so I've been trying to get uh oh, I tried to get another headstone for Jeff David, through the VA, and they said you're only entitled to one. And I said, come on now, he's a code talker. They should we should have a monument somewhere. And and so I'm after uh CIA to do that. I said maybe we should do it ourselves and put it put a statue up at cemetery or something like that for the code talkers for Jeff David and uh George Lewis. But you know, they had they had the coins, you know, they made for them, you know, for the clinkett code talkers. Which I think it was beyond an honor, you know, to be there, you know, and just seeing it and listening to it.

SPEAKER_02 2:45:34

Because everybody knew about the Navajo code talkers and everything. And so to find out that there were some clinkett code talkers as well, and that two of them were from Haynes.

SPEAKER_07 2:45:44

Yeah. I went to went to the museum, the American Indian Museum, and they had uh a terrace, you know, four corners, and they had different steps going all the way up, and they were doing presentations there. And so they had the floor level, and then they felt eight different levels going up, huge. So I'm down there looking around, walking around, and by then everybody's calling each other chief. They says, Chief. They looked at a couple of old old guys, co-talkers from uh Arizona, New Mexico, and what are you doing? I says, Oh, I'm just looking around, see what Custard might have felt like in his dying moments. All you need is that's a good one.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:34

Yeah, that's a that's a that's a good idea. We need to figure out a way to have some kind of a memorial here in Haynes.

SPEAKER_07 2:46:40

Well, you know, we we could take some of that tourism money that they keep gouging the people out of, you know. See, why not? It could be an attraction too, you know.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:48

Yeah, I would I get uh we we had tried to get the state to change the name on Front Street, yeah, two different ones to have have that, and that didn't go anywhere in the legislature.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:02

They can do it citywide. They got Code Target Street by the A and B hall, but that's kind of insignificant.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:08

Well, we need to do something else. We need to figure out a city street that we can name after those gentlemen. But I think you're right. Having the we we I don't think we do a good enough job of recognizing people and Haynes that have done well over the years.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:26

Well, they with the head of the Lundy Toby says we didn't want to name anything for you or after you because of what Carl Award did.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:35

And that's where um oh what's the name Well, because now there's the the borough has a five year, you have to wait until five years after somebody passes away before you can name something after them.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:46

Well, you know, it's like uh what's her name? The the gal for the you know we built the uh sister's living. I funded the back the back half of the state grant. The rental unit for the people. But she said we don't have to name it after Bill, name it the Ravenswalk uh Harbor Area after his boat. Yeah. They didn't like my harbor anyway. I built that wall. That's ugly. The tourists won't like it now.

SPEAKER_02 2:48:21

So the the the frustrating thing for me on that is because I was on the I was on the assembly, made two trips to Washington, DC, trying to get money for that. And one of the things when they first did the preliminary drilling is at the end of the old rock breakwater, they said it's clay. Yeah it's not gonna, it's not gonna hold up. We cannot put uh of rubble mound breakwater any further. You have to do uh steel. And then when they're coming in and driving the steel, they charge us what a million dollars extra because 900,000 to go do the ground was so hard it took longer to drive the pile. I'm like, what when um I stuff like that drives me crazy.

SPEAKER_07 2:49:07

Well, we I had gotten out of the legislature by then and they were gonna do the juna dock, and Sean Sean Parnell had called me. I was in Genoa. Bill, come up to my office, come on in. So I did. He said, How much did Haynes spend doing exploration for drilling for that uh sheet piling dock? I said, My understanding is about$900,000. We're gonna build a Juna dock. He said, we ought to appropriate the money, but can we change the language to an as belt, you know, and not let them use that expiration money? I said, I have no problem with that. So when they issued the money there, there was nobody out there drilling and doing anything. Yeah. They had the company came in and they did the preliminary themselves. They didn't do it, it was all part of the as belt. But you know, he said, I don't that's what that was a waste, what they did in Haynes.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:06

Yeah, because I was I was talking to Heather about that, and she said, Yeah, when we talked to them, they said, Well, if you'd given us more money to do more drilling, we would have found that.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:17

Well, she didn't like it anyway, and then what would they have the first time they used that parking lot was for in memory of uh that young lady and that guy that that got killed in the slide.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:29

For uh yeah, for David and Geneve.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:31

Yeah. And they didn't like that parking lot, it was too big, well. They used it first thing they used it for was to for a memorial.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:39

It'd be nice if we get the rest of the floats in.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:41

I come up with an idea for Henry, really, but he doesn't want to go forward with it. We call it call it harvesting fee with inside Boat Harbor. They caught a million dog salmon in there this year. And I told Hen I told Don and them, I said they should have a harvesting fee because it's within the borough. Most 90% of that money leaves there. You take a million fish times seven dollars is seven, it was uh seven million pounds seven dollars or seventy six five cents a pound was uh five point uh five million dollars, let's say. And it at two five percent of that would have been, you know, it'd be like a two two million dollars, million and a half dollars a year, yeah. Then you could build the floats if the borough was dedicated back to the harbor. Mm-hmm. They'd get their hands over it, you know. Because they're gonna be weird. They're gonna worry about where the money's gonna come from. It's like they put that nine dollar head fee, right? You saw that? They tried to do it at the CIA dock, and I told told uh Zach, what did you tell her? He says, Bullshit, it's it's a private dock, isn't that a borough dock? They want to put the nine dollar assessment.

SPEAKER_02 2:52:01

Yeah, they don't I don't think the CIA dock needs to do that because that's like you said, that's a private right.

SPEAKER_07 2:52:08

They were gonna put it on there because of the uh American cruise line ties up there. They don't they can't get the nine dollar fee off of them when they tie to our dock. That's the hell of them, they didn't earn it.

SPEAKER_02 2:52:21

Hey, you guys can charge nine dollars. You can do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_06 2:52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:52:30

Alright, we'll let Marty go. Yeah. He's a young kid. Don't know if he's used to staying up this late. Again, thanks, Bill. Okay, you bet. Thanks for watching this episode of Doug Had's Questions. Just a reminder: if you've enjoyed the conversation today, please like, subscribe. You know, we're available on YouTube if you want to watch us, if you just want to listen. Uh, it's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you have new uh episodes being launched every Thursday. So thanks again for watching or listening and following us. We appreciate your support.