David Kern

Veterans Memorial Hall Oral History Program
Interview with David Kern

October 13, 2011

Interviewer: Dan Hartman

DK: David Kern
DH: Dan Hartman

DH: Today we’re conducting an oral interview with Mr. David Kern. And what year were you born?

DK: Born in 1949.

DH: And what was the date?

DK: January 29th

DH: Say your full name and please spell out your middle and last name.

DK: My full name is David Ralph, R-a-l-p-h, Kern, K-e-r-n

DH: And your parents’ names were…?

DK: Robert L. Kern and Elaine Charlotte Kern.

DH: Robert and Elaine, did they live in this region for a while or did they come from somewhere else?

DK: My mother was from Superior. My father born in Duluth.

DH: You have a very Duluth family.

DK: Yes.

DH: And how far back does your family trace this lineage in Duluth?

DK: My mother was a second-generation from Sweden and my dad was about a third generation, mostly Danish and German.

DH: What religious background were you from?

DK: Lutheran

DH: Both Lutheran?

DK: Yes.

DH: And are you Lutheran today?

DK: Yes.

DH: What part of Duluth did you grow up in?

DK: I grew up in the east end of Duluth, on London Road.

DH: What was the address?

DK: 4115 London Road

DH: Was that a fun place to grow up at, or…?

DK: Yeah, it was. It was a nice neighborhood – a good place for kids.

DH: Did you guys play a lot of games…?

DK: Very involved in sports from a very early age, yes.

DH: Any key games? Do you remember playing a lot in certain sports?

DK: Um, mostly skiing and in the summertime, it was baseball.

DH: How many kids did you generally have in that neighborhood? A pretty good gathering of kids?

DK: It was a good gathering of kids, yeah.

DH: Any local parks you remember playing in a lot as a kid?

DK: I played a lot around Ordean, and I played a lot around Lester Park.

DH: Were there any other games you guys used to play as kids that it’s kind of weird that kids don’t play those anymore? Anything that’s kind of part of your generation?

DK: Oh, jumping off the railroad bridge at Lester River. They’ve kind of put the kibosh to that. And hanging out in “The Deeps” (a large deep hole at the bottom of Amity Falls) and “The Shallows.” (Lester River Falls. Locals will swim and slide down the waterfall during the heat of the summer.)

DH: Things that people do today. So, obviously you had a pretty good time growing up in that neighborhood. Did you guys move around to different parts of the city quite often, too, or did you just kind of stick to that part?

DK: No, I stuck mostly to that area. I went to Lakeside School and then went to Ordean.

DH: What are some differences in that neighborhood today versus when you were growing up?

DK: I don’t see a whole lot of differences. I think it’s still mostly a good community for the city. It’s fairly affluent. It’s a lot of nice homes, nice families.

DH: Growing up, I would imagine your family still went through downtown Duluth and you probably saw the transformation from what it is today, to probably what it was early in your life.

DK: Right. Before the free land. Before some of the buildings left.

DH: How is that, going through all of that? Was it a scary thing or kind of an exciting thing to watch the change take place?

DK: It was kind of exciting. I think that the modernization was good. We used to go out to Fond du Lac all the time in the winter to ski at either Mont du Lac or at the Fond du Lac ski jump. It used to take you like an hour and 20 minutes to get out to Fond du Lac, and now you can get there in a very short period of time on the freeway. Because it was all stop, go, stop, go from Superior Street and Grand (Avenue) all the way out.

DH: I’ll jump right into that. Where is the Fond du Lac ski jump?

DK: It’s no longer in existence. Let me see if I can describe where it is now today. Where you come into Fond du Lac, before the bridge, there’s a park that you turn right, right at the park.

DH: Is that the Mission Creek Park or the Chamber’s Grove Park? Chamber’s Grove is on the end along the river and Mission Creek is…

DK: Right before it. So Mission Creek Park, turn in there and it’s blocked off now and you really can’t get in there. It’s hiking trails and stuff. But the Fond du Lac ski jump used to be there.

DH: Did they take the whole jump down or is it still…

DK: They took the whole thing down.

DH: About when did that happen?

DK: Oh, that happened about 10-15 years ago. Maybe more.

DH: Now, Mont du Lac, that still exists…?

DK: That’s still a ski area, downhill skiing.

DH: But I don’t know if there are any jumps there.

DK: No, there’s no jumps out west.

DH: Was it kind of sad to see these things be taken down?

DK: Yeah.

DH: And what do you see as the cause of that? Just a lack of interest?

DK: Just a lack of interest. There used to be a real drive in the City of Duluth. You have ski jumps up at the Lakeview ski area, you had ski jumps in Birch Park, in West Duluth you had ski jumps at Chester Bowl. There were jumps all over, and ski jumping was kind of a real promoted sport when I was young.

DH: So what was the best?

DK: The biggest was Fond du Lac.

DH: Oh, that was actually the biggest?

DK: Yeah. That was a seventy meter hill. It was the largest hill around – in the area.

DH: So that’s really kind of sad that it went down. And, how was it to ski jump? That’s something that most people will never do in their life, including myself. Was that kind of a thrilling experience I imagine, the first couple times you did it?

DK: Well, you kind of start out pretty young. You start out when you’re five, six years old. You just get used to it. It was a fun sport. It was something my dad loved, and my second home was up at the Chester Bowl. Walter Mattson was my second dad; we used to run the clubhouse up there. It’s where we were brought out all the times on weekends, which was sometimes at night, went up and ski jumped at night under the lights. But I started at a very early age.

DH: Five to six years old is pretty early. At what age were you hitting jumps like the Fond du Lac one?

DK: Probably not until I was like in my teens.

DH: To me, that’s something that never occurred to me to try that.
So, do you remember any of the other people who worked at the Fond du Lac one? Any people involved in that? Were there any ski teams out there?

DK: Oh yeah. The Duluth Ski Club. I was a member of the Duluth Ski Club for many, many years. That was quite… It’s a famous ski club because there’s been many Olympians that have come out of that Duluth Ski Club. I’d say it was a good place for kids, it really was.

DH: And where was that based out of?

DK: Out of Chester Bowl.

DH: Do you remember any of the characters involved with that? Any names?

DK: Oh, are you kidding? I could go on with Gene Kotlarek, Glenn Kotlarek, Dave Hicks, Dave Lundmark, Adrian Watt, Greg Score, Kenny Harkins, all those kids were Olympians at one time and really promoted ski jumping here in Duluth. At one time there were probably more Olympic ski jumpers in Duluth than anywhere in the country.

DH: Why did that change? Was it just an overall lack of interest?

DK: Overall lack of interest. It takes a lot of work, a lot of training. It’s a young person’s sport. A lot of young people nowadays don’t want to carry 12-15 pound pair of skis on their shoulder and walk up a landing, walk up a ski jump. They’d rather ride the chairlift and ski or snowboard downhill only. There’s not the glamor there was back in my day.

DH: How long did you ski jump for?

DK: Oh, I ski jumped until I was probably in my early 20s. Because I jumped after I got back from the service for a while. But, jumping is not always my favorite sport. I jumped because it was a family thing and I enjoyed it. But I was not just a special jumper. I got into cross country skiing and I was a Nordic Combine skier, where you’d have a cross country meet one day and a jumping meet the next and then your scores were combined. That’s how I competed when I was young, in my teens.

DH: Do you still cross country ski today?

DK: I still cross country ski today. I skied in Book across the Bay not that long ago. I still like to get out. But the “juice” for competing is not really there. I just like to get out and enjoy, just go.

DH: The ski jump thing is a unique history of Duluth that a lot of people don’t really hear about real often. How often do people fall ski jumping?

DK: You can fall and it’s… It’s a sport you can get injured at very easily because some of the big hills, your takeoff speed is 50-60 miles an hour and you’re flying 30-40 feet off the ground. You just have to look out for sudden stops. When you have an 8-foot pair of skis underneath you, it’s not like downhill skis you can maneuver easily. It’s a sport that, yes, you can get injured at, sometimes pretty seriously.

DH: Sounds like you were fortunate and you never had a massive injury or anything.

DK: Oh yes I did. I had a bad fall up at Ely and I triple compounded my arm.

DH: So you’re well aware of the risk.

DK: I kind of ended my… Because it was my right arm, I love baseball, (and) it kind of ended that career because I can’t really snap my wrist like a normal person can.

DH: How old were you when that happened?

DK: I was about 14.

DH: It sounds like baseball was your other passion, so… Did you work to try to do things left handed, or…?

DK: No, I did a lot of things to exercise and get some strength back. So it didn’t really handicap me except for throwing a ball and stuff.

DH: Sorry to hear that. So what other… It sounds like you were into cross country skiing pretty big, too.

DK: Correct.

DH: Was that something you did at an early age as well, I’d imagine?

DK: Yeah, I did it at a fairly early age. Charlie Banks who used to have a trail up north of Duluth here, up the North Shore, he was a ski coach at Duluth Central and my dad went to Duluth Central and he wanted me to go to Duluth Central, even though we lived in Lakeside. So I did go to Duluth Central and Charlie was my ski coach.

DH: Yeah, Charlie Banks was one of those famous people from the ski world.

DK: But the person who got me really into cross country skiing, and there was an article on him not that long ago, is a gentleman by the name of Peter Fossied.

DH: And how do you spell that last name?

DK: F-o-s-s-i-e-d, Fossied. And he was old Norwegian and he taught several young people how to ski. I’d say George Hovland also, who was an Olympian had something to do with my interest in cross country skiing.

DH: So you had all these natural athletic talents. At some point it sounds like… From our past conversations… How did you get involved in the military side of this?

DK: I was on the Junior National Team my senior year of high school in Nordic Combined. The coach from the U.S. Biathlon Team at the time, had attended the nationals and he basically recruited me to become a member of the U.S. Biathlon Team.

DH: I think I may have skipped some stuff. What other sports were you part of?

DK: As far as….?

DH: You were involved in baseball, cross country, ski jumping…

DK: I was involved in track.

DH: And what did you do in track?

DK: I was a half mile in relay.

DH: Was it that skill that he recruited you for or…

DK: The skill he recruited me for was my cross country skiing. My coach’s name was Sven Johansson.

DH: A Swede!

DK: I got along with him very well. Nice man. Tough as nails.

DH: About how many people were on this team with you?

DK: There was about a dozen of us on the team from all over the country: East Coast, West Coast.

DH: What year was this?

DK: 1968-1970 – ’68, ’69, and ’70. In ’67, I graduated.

DH: Were you allowed to play any other sports as well, or just your primary focus was cross country?

DK: My primary focus was cross country training and targeting shooting. In the summertime, I rode bike. I liked to ride a 10-speed and I rode bike quite a bit. But that was basically my focus.

DH: Now this was a military related Team, correct?

DK: Mmhmm.

DH: So what branch of the military…?

DK: I was in the U.S. Army. I did go to basic training.

DH: Where did you go to basic at?

DK: Fort Campbell, Kentucky. What a hole! What a pit. I remember that – the old barracks, the old coal-fired barracks from probably World War II. They were the coldest thing you can imagine.

DH: It didn’t impress you a whole lot.

DK: Um…no.

DH: Was it pretty tough training, or…?

DK: It was real tough down there. They had that spinal meningitis going on and so they wouldn’t allow us to do too much or go too many places. They kind of confined people because I think there was kind of like a…

DH: A panic of some sort?

DK: Yeah. And so we didn’t really do a whole lot. We went through all the basic stuff and I really… That was my first time away from home. Take a train to the Cities, a flight to Nashville, and then to Fort Campbell. That’s where I got my wake-up call. [laughing]

DH: You describe that as a wake-up call. What went through your head, or what was the training like?

DK: There was… I can’t remember how many exactly was in a company, but there was 250-300 people in a company and there was actually only five of us from the north in the company. Mostly everybody else was from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, all around there. It was quite a culture shock for me when I went in.

DH: Did they give you a lot of grief, being from the north, or….?

DK: Oh yeah.

DH: Basic is generally not the most entertaining thing for everyone. It’s kind of a test to see where you’re at as a person.

DK: No. It wasn’t. I got along better with a lot of the blacks. They were at least respectful. The southern whites, as soon as they learned you were from the north, they hated you. Oh yeah.

DH: So the Civil War mentality is still going on?

DK: Still going on, yup.

DH: Did they know you were there for your athletic ability?

DK: Ah…no. I kinda kept my mouth shut. I learned to avoid conflict.

DH: But I imagine your athletic ability also helped you go through the training, too.

DK: Oh, absolutely.

DH: You probably had a lot easier going than others?

DK: Very, very easy compared to a lot of other people. I mean, I could run under a five-minute mile in combat boots, and usually it was closer to 4:30 or 4:40. I could really run. I was very fast when I was in. Considerably skinnier, too.

DH: So, what were some of the skills that you learned in basic that you won’t forget?

DK: I started basically marksmanship shooting there and I was basically a natural shot. I learned a few things there. That was probably the first time I put my hands on a gun because my dad was a carrier pilot during World War II and didn’t want a gun in the house. He said he got shot at enough for his generation, my generation…about five generations to come and he didn’t want a gun in the house. So we never hunted and we never had a gun in the house.

DH: So it was kind of weird, all of a sudden you were allowed to have a gun, then.

DK: Yup.

DH: As a matter of fact, it sounds like you were a natural at it. Growing up, did you want to shoot?

DK: Oh yeah. I missed that because, you know, other kids, their dads would take them out hunting and stuff. I never got a chance to do that.

DH: So, what were some of the guns they were allowing you to shoot?

DK: On the Biathlon Team or…?

DH: No, in basic.

DK: In basic, just the M-14. We didn’t have the M-16s back then.

DH: So, basic is over. Where did they send you right after that?

DK: Right after basic, I came home for two weeks and then I went up to Anchorage, Alaska, which is the training base at Fort Richardson for the U.S. Biathlon Team. I was Department of Army Sports, detached through the U.S. Biathlon Team, which is part of USARAL Alaska.

DH: So I’m going to ask the obvious question here: Why is it important for the military to have a sports team? What was the purpose of it?

DK: Back then, the military supported several sports. I know they had their own basketball Teams that would go around and play people. I know they had baseballs Teams, they had bands, they had…a pentathlon Team… those types of sports were all supported by the military.

DH: And what do you think the purpose of that was?

DK: Competition, representation… It’s something that they had done for years and so they continued it.

DH: Each branch didn’t have their own? You were just part of an overall one?

DK: No. I had… Some of the people that were on the U.S. Biathlon Team, some were from the Air Force, and I think there was one that was from the Coast Guard that was on there, too.

DH: So, all different branches.

DK: All different branches.

DH: And it was all part of this, Department of the Army Sports.

DK: Department of the Army Sports, yeah. Before I left, they had kind of this all-base competition and I scored very, very high. The person that was in charge of the Department of Army Sports for that area attended it and he saw me and he tried to recruit me for the U.S. Pentathlon Team. I said, “No, I’m a skier, I’m from Minnesota. I don’t want to go… I don’t know where it was… I thought it was down in Texas someplace where they were training site was. I didn’t want to head there. I said, “No, I’m going to Alaska.”

DH: How was Alaska?

DK: Alaska was great. Real similar weather to Duluth, except for the Chinooks that would come in off the ocean. Mountains. It was a very good set up. The Army had a real good set up.

DH: What type of environment did you guys live in up there?

DK: We lived in a barracks and we had our own floor, basically. We had roommates and we had our shooting range down in the basement of the barracks. Then about halfway up a mountain right next to Fort Richardson was the training site for the Biathlon Team – the targets and trails.

DH: You didn’t have any lodging up there? You’d go from the barracks?

DK: You’d take a truck or you ran it.

DH: Do you remember what the name of that mountain was?

DK: I can’t remember.

DH: Was this close to Anchorage, still?

DK: Oh yeah, just outside of Anchorage. (Joint Base) Elmendorf and Rich(ardson) are right next to each other and they’re both right next to Anchorage. Elmendorf is the Air Force Base.

DH: So, obviously, the weather is very similar in Alaska to Minnesota. Kentucky would probably be much more of a difference than that was.

DK: It was. Let’s see… I went in in September, October, November… I think in November there, they had one of those cold frosts that left ¼ inch of frost on everything, and I can remember being so cold because the humidity was like 80-90 percent, and I wasn’t used to that. So, you really got cold and you weren’t wearing the clothes that you usually wore.

DH: So in Alaska, did you get along with the weather a lot better than others did? Something you kind of bragged about to others in the group sometimes? Some of these other guys probably complained once in a while.

DK: Yeah. Didn’t bother me.

DH: Do you remember any of the… We talked a little bit about this earlier, but… Do you remember the names of any of the guys on the team you served with?

DK: I’ve got a listing of some of them still at home. Yeah, I can remember some of them.

DH: Any in particular that you hung out with a lot? Any buddies from the team?

DK: Mike Gallagher who was from Michigan. He was the coach for Michigan Tech, the cross country ski coach from Michigan Tech. After I got back, and went back to school, for three years I was the ski coach for UMD. So, we got to get together and spend time with each other at meets. It was nice to see him. One of my best friends on the team, his name was Johanny Isakangas. Don’t even try to spell it. He was a naturalized citizen, Finnish, a kid born in Finland who was on the team with me. We shared a lot of laughs and a lot of good times together.

DH: Tell me a little bit about… What was training for this like up in Alaska? What did you guys do to train?

DK: Like I said, I didn’t have shooting experience and I did have some of the best marksmanship training up there. We had some shooting sergeants that were unbelievable. So I was trained in that – in shooting – and we constantly shot. You always shot five dry fighters for every live round you shot and you’d go on days the weather was inclement you’d be shooting down in the indoor range. When the weather was decent, you’d be up on the mountain.

DH: How long were you guys skiing? How many K’s (kilometers) were you guys doing per day?

DK: A kilometer, I mean a biathlon race is 20 kilometers.

DH: So were you constantly doing 20 or were you doing longer?

DK: A lot of the training was… You’d do a biathlon every day. You’d shoot at the range. In the summertime you’d do it on foot and leave your rifle on the range. In the winter time you’d be doing it on skis. Our Swedish coach believed in distance training. One of his favorite sayings that we used to kid about on the days we wouldn’t shoot, when we were doing distance training, he’d say, “Fifty kilometers or 3:00, whichever came first.”

DH: So what was the longest he made you guys do?

DK: 50 K

DH: 50 K?

DK: 32 miles

DH: Did you guys ever, as a group, ever allowed to go out and be part of actual competitions?

DK: Yes we did. We shot in Big Bore competition. We’d go out to Eielson and Fairbanks. I’m trying to think of the name of the base in Washington Sea-Tac, I can’t think of it. Wainwright? So we traveled around a little bit and shot in the Big Bore competition. That was fun, competing against other service people. Most of the shooting was with our biathlon athletes.

DH: So, at what point could you guys compete against other people outside of the military?

DK: We competed against the Canadians. We competed in the national championships. And they’d be held different places in the country – East Coast.

DH: How did you do against the Canadians?

DK: We used to do pretty good. We competed one year. The Canadians came up with this idea that they wanted the Top of the World Games. They held it in June of ’69 in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, which is real close to the Arctic Circle. We went up there. (When) we left Anchorage, it was like 75 degrees out, sunny. We got up there and it was snowing and they had like 40-50 inches on the ground.

DH: When you competed in the national championships, how did the team compare to the… How did you guys do?

DK: We had a few guys that did fairly well. A lot of times I think we were slower than the Europeans and slower than some people because our coach believed in long distance and not interval training and speed training. So you kind of got into a rut when you do too much distance and not enough interval.

But we had some very good people on the team. I remember – do you know the name Jon Bowerman from Eugene, Oregon? His dad was the track coach – the one who coached Steve Prefontaine. His son was on the team with me, and we had some other really good athletes on the team.

DH: And did any of you guys have the opportunity to go on to the Olympics, or anything of that nature?

DK: I did. I made it at the National Championships. I had a little trouble with my shooting, so I was out of the top three that were sent. They sent an alternate and I was like fifth. So I just missed out going to the Olympics. I also was young at the time. I was only 18-19. A lot of the people I was competing with were in their 20s, mid-20s, even.

DH: So you were actually very young, compared…

DK: I was very young compared to a lot of the other ones, yeah.

DH: For the team you were on, were you young or were you generally around the same age?

DK: I was the youngest. They kind of looked out for me. They made sure I didn’t make too many stupid decisions.

DH: Do you have any fond memories during the training? For the record? Anything we passed over?

DK: We also had a training site during the summer at the Independence Mines, which was about 70 miles out of Anchorage. It was up on a glacier. We used to go up there in July, August, September for season training. We were out on the glacier and they set the trails and we’d be skiing and shooting. They set up a rifle range and we’d be shooting.

DH: That’s pretty neat.

DK: It is kinda neat to go up there. We lived in some old mining barracks up there and you didn’t get down to Anchorage except on weekends. So, they had you confined.

DH: It was probably some pretty intense training, I would imagine.

DK: Very intense training, yup. Very, very intense.

DH: How many on the team ended up being Olympians?

DK: While I was on the team, there was four.

DH: You guys had a pretty intense team.

DK: Very intense team.

DH: Were there any really great scenic places that you went to? Any fun little things that….

DK: Anchorage, if you haven’t been there in Alaska, it is gorgeous. One of the guys that was in the Air Force, he was a captain that was on the team, and he had his private pilot’s license and he’d fly us… Once in a while we’d go in to Talkeetna (Alaska). That’s where all the big-name bush pilots would fly in people that would be climbing Mount McKinley. They would fly them up to where they would start their climb, and stuff like that. So that was kind of interesting. I got to do a little bit of hunting towards the end of my stay up there. So I got to see some of the country and it was just unbelievable.

DH: Do you ever miss Alaska?

DK: Yeah, I’d kind of like to go back and see it, but, I’ve been a Minnesotan, born and raised so, I kind of like it where I am.

DH: What happened in 1970? You’re only allowed to be on the team a certain number of years?

DK: Right. There was some talk that they were gonna do some things to cut back on sports and stuff like that, so I didn’t see enlisting. I didn’t see continuing in the service. I did have a couple opportunities and a couple offers for scholarships for skiing in college, so, I decided to take advantage of that.

The other thing I didn’t mention: while we were on the Biathlon Team, we were also used for high mountain rescue. There were several times we were called out to go find people. I can remember one time in particular, there were five kids that had skied off on the other side of a ski area, which was way on top of a mountain, and skied down into a valley at night. It was getting towards the spring of the year and we were called out to try to find them. That was quite an ordeal. We were lucky enough to find them. They had followed a river. As a matter of fact, it’s the watershed for Anchorage, the river there. They almost got up to where it was dammed, and the ice was really thin, and they probably would have drowned. We were able to find them and bring them out.

DH: So besides actually being a sports team, you also had these “side missions” that turned out to be useful on multiple levels.

DK: Yeah.

DH: You were doing this right during the heart of the Vietnam War as well.

DK: Correct.

DH: So, I imagine you were partly kind of happy…because of this you weren’t having to be sent over there, too? Or is that the opposite, that you were actually kind of bummed about that?

DK: No. I really had always questioned the Vietnam War for our country. I had a lot of discussions with my dad about it. I was willing to serve, but I didn’t really want to go over there. In fact, in ’68, after I’d been in, we got tentative orders for Vietnam, the Tet Offensive. Yeah. And, because of my training and all, I would have ended up being a sniper, been out in the woods, and long lengths on patrol, stuff like that, is what they were looking at putting me into. Luckily we got “stood down” and didn’t have to go. But I really questioned that.

DH: So it worked out pretty great.

DK: It worked out really great. I still got to serve the country. It’s one of the reasons I went in the Army; I enlisted for three years because they basically committed for me to compete and be part of their sports team.

DH: Is there anything else that you want to have for the record in regards to your veteran’s story?

DK: No. I’m very proud of what we did. I mean, we would go to different places sometimes and talk to different military groups and talk about what we were doing. Also, we were used as guinea pigs, by the way. I never mentioned that. We were used as guinea pigs; they did so much testing on us for the space program on our lung capacity, heart, all of that. I’ve been x-rayed and wired up six ways from Sunday, even wired up to the point, when we ran in some races, they would follow us with their electronic stuff. They were studying the heart under stress, the lungs under stress… They were studying all kinds of thing for the space program. So we were kind of guinea pigs for that, too.

DH: That’s actually kind of a neat story too. So, yeah, you guys were helpful on a whole bunch of levels.

DK: Oh yeah.

DH: Were there other departments you intermingled with besides that?

DK: As far as…?

DH: You intermingled with the space program, you’re doing high mountain rescue… Were there other things they had you doing as well that really wasn’t related to the sports side?

DK: Well, we certainly, we also competed in every single marathon and running race, all around the state of Alaska. I’ve run in the Midnight Sun Marathon three times. I’ve run in the Equinox Marathon three times. I’ve run in the Seward Mount Marathon three times. I mean, we did a lot of different things. We’re competing against civilians, of course, and it was interesting.

DH: You guys probably did alright, I would imagine.

DK: Oh yeah. We did quite well.

DH: This has been a real fun interview. It’s a unique part of history that rarely people ever hear about.

DK: Right.

DH: Thank you for allowing us to do this today.

DK: Not a problem.

DH: And thanks for your service to our country.

DK: You betcha.

End of recording
Track 1
41:05

Transcribed by Mary Beth Frost

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