Richard & Carolyn Green: NASA, Christianity, and the RV | #30

Richard and Carolyn Green are Tom’s Grandparents on his mom’s side. In this conversation they tell Tom about their entire lives from growing up in the 1950’s to how they spent their retirement traveling in an RV. Richard worked on satellites at NASA for most of his career. Carolyn was a school teacher and then also worked for at NASA at the end of her career. Christianity was a big part of their life. They taught at the church and went on a mission trip to Costa Rica after they retired. In retirement they traveled all over the America’s in an RV and they discuss some of their favorite places to visit. They also detail how to live a healthy life and maintain a healthy relationship.

Transcript

Tom 0:00

Hello everyone, my name is Tom Driver, and welcome to another episode of the Drive program. Before we get started with today's guests, I do want to let you guys know that I did have somewhat of an audio problem recording this episode. So I used three different microphones, and the worst of the three microphones had some issues. It was making a lot of crackling noises, and I ended up paying to get all of those noises removed, and it for the most part worked great, but also at times it removed our audio voices a little bit as well. So I just want to give you guys a heads up that at times you might hear the audio cut out a little bit. Just know that it was a lot worse before I was able to clean the audio up. Also, if for some reason the audio quality is getting in the way of enjoying the episode, uh the second half of the episode, the audio was a lot better. And in fact, the last hour of the episode, I don't think there was any issues at all. So if you're kind of annoyed by the audio quality, you can just go ahead and skip to the last hour. But honestly, it is so much better than how it originally was, and everyone who's listened to it so far says that it doesn't really get in the way. So I'm hoping you guys can enjoy the episode without the quality interrupting. But I just felt like I had to let you guys know, first of all. Alright, so my episode for today is actually my grandparents, Richard and Carolyn Green. I was lucky enough to go visit them this summer, I think it was August, and I sat down with them and we essentially talked about their entire lives. Uh this episode is about two and a half hours, and we start in their childhood and we go through their whole lives and talk about as much as we we could in that time frame. These are my grandparents on my mom's side, and they were born in the 40s, so we talked a lot about growing up in the 50s, what the technology was like at the time, what the culture was like, uh, all sorts of things that they can remember from their childhood. And then we talked about the careers. So my grandfather actually his whole career was at NASA, and he worked on a lot of different projects, but he mostly worked on satellites, and then my grandmother started off as a teacher. I think she was a physical education teacher and then a science teacher, and then at the end of her career, she actually worked for NASA as well and helped them design an education system. So we talked a lot about NASA since they both ended up working there. Uh, next we talked a lot about Christianity. Both of them are very religious, and religion played a huge part in their lives. So we took a deep dive and talked about Christianity, uh their experience reading the Bible, praying, working at the church, and they they did go on a mission trip to Costa Rica uh once they retired. So we talked about that as well. And then after they retired, they actually bought an RV, and for about 20 years they traveled around uh the United States and Mexico and Canada in this RV. And so we talked a lot about that and their experience with the mobile home RV. And at the very end, we talk about just living a healthy life and having a healthy relationship. So this was a deeply meaningful conversation to me. Um very profound and and definitely, I would say, a life-changing conversation. So I really look up to these two people and and think the world of them. So I hope that you guys enjoy this conversation as much as I did. This is episode 30 of the Drive Program with guests Richard and Carolyn Green. Um, so we can really talk about anything, but uh what what year were you guys born? Let's talk about that.

Carolyn 4:06

Oh, that's easy. 1940. 1940? Both of us.

Tom 4:11

Oh, both. Okay, same year? Yeah.

Richard 4:13

Same year. Only about a year is 1900. 1900. Why is that when Carol that's when Carolyn's father was born? Oh wow, exactly. So his age was the same as the year.

Carolyn 4:22

Just like Jonathan. Just like Jonathan, yeah. That's what I said. Jonathan's that way.

Tom 4:26

It's always easy to know when it's Jonathan's uh or how old Jonathan is.

Carolyn 4:29

Oh yes, yeah.

Tom 4:31

So what was it like growing up then in the 40s and 50s? Do you guys remember the 40s?

Carolyn 4:37

That was World War II, remember? Okay, yeah.

Richard 4:40

And uh we grew up in the best of times. We've concluded. Okay, looking back on it and talking about it, the best of times. Um everything's been kind of good for us. However, if you go back to the Great Depression in the 28s, when back in the roaring twenties, everybody was having a good time. Money was plentiful, and then the whole thing collapsed. And then we had all kinds of um poverty and you know, people not getting enough food. Kind of got bad around the thirties. And then and then towards the late thirties we started getting ready for the war. And in nineteen forty we started World War II.

Carolyn 5:22

Well Well we came in in forty one, the country.

Richard 5:29

But from then on, the comp the country has kind of done well. You know, we all of our industry got geared up.

Tom 5:36

Okay.

Richard 5:37

But during during the wartime, um things got scarce, very scarce. Um you remember Raffert, um what do they call those tickets we got? Coupons coupons.

Carolyn 5:50

It was some kind of coupon book, uh each ration ration. Ration books, ration books. And everybody had their own, including children. Uh and um you were allowed so much for shoes and so much for food. Wow. And um apparently I must have been growing fast and I didn't have enough coupons for shoes. So Aunt Ruth, who'd been looking at some high heels, gave her a ration card to me so I could have a pair of shoes.

Tom 6:20

That's very nice of Aunt Ruth, then.

Carolyn 6:22

Yes, it was.

Richard 6:22

But the big thing was tires for the car. Okay. We found out during World War II that all of the rubber came from Africa somewhere. Okay. And all that supply got cut off. Wow. So now, I mean, rubber for the tires was like gold almost. So did just the price of a car go up a lot or in the tires?

Tom 6:42

The well it they couldn't you couldn't get tires. Okay. I mean, it was hard to buy them. Okay. So people were just driving on used tires then a lot. Yeah, they drive them and you walked a lot.

Carolyn 6:51

You walked a lot. A lot of people walked to work where now, if they had the same identical job and the same distance they would ride. Okay. And uh, I mean, my dad was one of them. He he uh walked to work frequently.

Tom 7:03

Is is that one of the biggest, you know, um innovations of you know that time is automobiles and the ability to drive places? Did that change life?

Richard 7:12

People didn't really drive that much.

Carolyn 7:15

Radio came more into being. I mean, the that's when the president started communicating with the country by with the radio. I mean, it had been around for quite a while, but not in every home. And with um Roosevelt, it was nearly the fireside chat. The fireside chats. You know, he he spoke to the the country as a whole over the radio in what they call fireside chats, just because of where they were located in the White House. And um he spoke frequently. Now, now we were still young, you have to remember that when the war ended, I you had probably already turned five, and I was not quite five, but um my brother and my uncle who had lived with us, um they were both in the war, so they came home, and that's my first memory of my brother.

Tom 8:05

Oh wow, Alec.

Carolyn 8:06

Okay, and um that was nineteen forty-five. And I you know, I have pictures of me when I was a toddler, but uh I do remember his coming home.

Richard 8:15

How old was he when you first saw him?

Carolyn 8:18

Uh well, he must have been twenty nine or thirty. Oh no, he wouldn't have been that old, would he? He'd been in his twenties. All right, he'd been in his mid to late twenties, somewhere on there. Okay. Uh because you know, he was fifteen years older. Yeah.

Tom 8:35

So you're the youngest sibling, all your much older, right? Right.

Carolyn 8:40

They're twelve, fourteen, and fifteen years older than me.

Tom 8:43

What was his experience of the war then? Did what are you talking about?

Carolyn 8:46

He had an interesting exp well all of it you have to uh uh understand was very difficult. And he served in India and um uh in India mainly because he was one of the hump fliers, which means that he flew these stripped-down planes down to the ribs to lighten them so that they could have the enough power to get over the Himalayas to get into China, and they were carrying supplies in and rescuing people, among them some of the missionaries that were there, they rescued. Uh, one which ended up being in Richmond later. Um and less than 50 percent of those pilots and planes survived that flight. It was just the mountains were so high for the planes that were available at that time. So he was one of the fortunate ones. And my uncle, who lived with us and came back to live with us for a while until he got married, um, he was a military police and he was in Italy and Germany, which was probably the worst of the fightings. So it was so bad he wouldn't talk about it for many, many years till he was elderly. Then he would wouldn't say too much.

Tom 10:01

Yeah, it seemed like a lot of guys kept it themselves after the war, right? Yeah. He wrote it down.

Carolyn 10:07

He finally did. He finally wrote a long paper. And we have a copy of that. So, but uh, you know, the thing that we noticed is that people um started going back to church uh more. I think you saw more um the morale, morale and morality were good. Uh so from that time on for quite some time, it was I think a very good time.

Richard 10:36

A lot of change. That's when Rosie the Riveter came out. All the men were at war.

Tom 10:43

What's Rosie the Riveter?

Richard 10:45

When they tr when they tried to get the women to go back in. Okay.

Carolyn 10:49

To the factories. Well, they were they started during the war because the men were having to go to war. Uh huh. And so they were working in the factories.

Tom 11:00

And there's that uh lady with the bandana on her head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's from that time period, right? That's the first time that's that's that's Rosa the Reef.

Carolyn 11:07

Well, they called them all that, but I think she was the poster person for it, you know. The poster girl. Yeah, yeah.

Richard 11:12

So something else was a little different in that time, which I think is interesting. Uh I have to go back to my grandma. She she lived in Richmond, and my grandfather had died, so she had three children, three teenagers that she was raising. And the the oldest one, um, Lewis, he got married, but when he married, he moved back in with them. She made a little apartment for him in the in the house. And then when my parents got married, they moved back in and she gave them another little piece of the house. And then when Aunt Evelyn got married, she moved in with her husband. So here you've got three children, all of them get married and move back in with their mother. They're all in the same house? All in the same house. It was a big house, though. And well, it was big for the time, but it was kind of the like the one you grew up in.

Carolyn 12:09

Yeah.

Richard 12:10

It was a row house.

Tom 12:11

And is that just one bathroom? Is that just because after the war people wanted to be closer with their families?

Carolyn 12:16

And uh the money wasn't enough housing for one thing. Enough house it wasn't enough housing available. Oh wow.

Tom 12:22

Yeah.

Carolyn 12:23

I mean, that's when for the first time in our life that we remembered uh when they built whole neighborhoods.

Richard 12:28

Okay.

Carolyn 12:29

You know, and usually there were small homes.

Richard 12:31

But there were multiple families in the house. And we lived with our grandmother until I was what, six or seven? Okay. So we were living my mother and father and myself and my sister lived with her well, I reckon eight years after they got married. Did you have siblings? You had siblings, right? A sister. A sister. Jane Sidney. Okay. Yeah. Younger? Three and a half years younger. Okay. Three and a half years younger. Okay. So, and when we moved into a new house, the it was just my mother and father and myself and my grandmother, and then we rented out a room upstairs, and so we had another family living up with us upstairs. Okay. Um, you don't see much of that anymore. We weren't poor. I mean, we didn't do that just because we were poor. It's just there wasn't a whole lot of money around.

Carolyn 13:30

I mean our parents did the same thing.

Richard 13:31

That wasn't unusual. Carolyn's family had all the women.

Carolyn 13:35

Yeah.

Richard 13:37

Yeah.

Tom 13:38

Okay. And one bathroom. And so people were just in need of housing and it was just common to the water.

Carolyn 13:44

Right. And and then um, like in our case, uh, we had people who uh like and my parents' siblings were coming from the farm and needed a place to stay until they got established. So some of them lived with us from time to time. So we had just a a string of people coming through the house during that time.

Richard 14:05

My grandmother, when all three of her children married, were living with us, she gave them the key and went to Pennsylvania and got a job up there. Left a company. Yeah. With all of that.

Tom 14:19

That seems like a move, I guess.

Carolyn 14:21

Yeah. But then if you skip up, uh, and of course, then you had um the Korean War and Uncle Bill went to that. He was in that. In fact, he was called back at the end, he was called back for the um what do you call it when you rebuild a country uh of Japan. And then he was called back. He was a paratrooper, but he never actually did that. But um he uh was called back during the Korean War to serve and he never did get involved in the fighting, he was always shifted off to a different responsibility. But um that put his education off. He got called out of college both times when he was have in class. And um, but fortunately they had what they call the GI Bill then, and so he and my brother both uh were able to go through on the GI Bill, which was wonderful.

Tom 15:15

What was the GI Bill? Um pay for education.

Carolyn 15:19

Paid for their college education. I don't know whether they paid everything or not because they did live at home. Okay, but it it paid for we'll say tuition and I don't know, maybe books, enough of them to be able to go to the University of Richmond.

Tom 15:31

Okay.

Carolyn 15:31

And um and then if you if you skip on up to um our high school days, during 1957, of course, is when Sputnik went up, and that changed the outlook on everything. And you you might want to tell them how that affected everybody. Um certainly affected us in school.

Richard 15:52

The r the Russians, the Russians put up a satellite, first satellite ever.

Tom 15:56

Yeah.

Richard 15:56

And we woke up one morning and all of a sudden we heard news that there was a satellite going up, you know, and and pinging, ping, ping, ping, ping, flying over us, and it was Russians. And I mean, people didn't even know hardly what a satellite was back then. And we got we got very fearful in the whole country that the Russians had the high ground thinking about military, and they could drop a bomb on us anytime they wanted to. So that fear was already building in the 50s.

Tom 16:28

That fear was already building in the 50s then.

Carolyn 16:31

Yes. People started building bomb shelters. A lot of people did, including um Uncle Bill's future father-in-law.

Richard 16:40

Wow. But having a satellite up there was a whole different game. And we didn't have any presence in space. I was in high school at the time. And so the word went out that we were gonna have to take a lot of uh uh young men and turn them into at that time we called them space cadets. Turn them into space cadets. And so we would have a presence in space, and I kind of got wrapped up in that. That's yeah.

Tom 17:05

I was gonna say we're gonna definitely talk about it, but you worked for NASA. Yeah, that's how I ended up with NASA. And so that that kind of inspired you? Um the Russia pushing putting up Sputnik was like an impact.

Richard 17:18

Yeah, it inspired the whole country, and I just kind of got wrapped up in it. I mean, that's what we were doing. So then you were technology started off. I mean that it was kind of the beginning of a lot of technology.

Tom 17:31

Okay. What was the culture like in the fifties before we move on and talk about in the f the culture?

Richard 17:39

Well, we had we had no air conditioning, we had no television, we had no cell phone. So just radio. We had no internet. I had radio. You guys have refrigerators, microwaves, ovens.

Carolyn 17:53

No microwaves. No.

Richard 17:55

We had um where we lived it had an ice box in it. An ice box was different. You just put ice in a box to keep things cold. And it was a door on the outside on the porch and a door on the inside.

Carolyn 18:07

That was early on.

Richard 18:08

Yeah. That was a little bit before us. Running water in the 50s?

Carolyn 18:11

Mm-hmm.

Richard 18:12

Yeah. Uh dishwasher.

Carolyn 18:13

In the city.

Richard 18:14

In the city.

Carolyn 18:15

I had relatives that did not have running water in the country.

Tom 18:18

Do you have dishwasher? No.

Carolyn 18:20

No, no dishwasher, and and not a washer or dryer like you imagined.

Tom 18:25

There's a washer and then you hang them up. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then what about like culturally? Was Elvis really popular, right, in the 50s? No.

Carolyn 18:33

Oh no.

Tom 18:34

That was like do you remember like music or anything from that time period that stood up?

Carolyn 18:39

Well, a lot of it was like a big band music. And the only reason I'm aware of the only reason I'm aware of that is because, you know, I had older siblings and they played the big band music, you know. And then um by the time we hit junior high, you were beginning to hear of Elvis. And so, you know, like Love Me Tender and some of those songs. And you and the um the big dance for our generation was the Bop.

Tom 19:05

The Bop.

Carolyn 19:06

And then later in college, The Twist and and Um, I don't know, some others um that I can't even think of now.

Tom 19:14

The beat were the Beatles coming up yet?

Carolyn 19:16

No. No, that was more than your mom's generation.

Tom 19:20

Interesting.

Carolyn 19:21

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Tom 19:23

And then so you went to college at GMU, right? And you went to tech. Right. What did you guys both study?

Carolyn 19:30

Well, uh, when I was in college there, I studied health and physical education. Okay. Uh, I had wanted to be a gym teacher since I was in grade school because we didn't have one at our school for our age group, and it always upset me that I didn't get to do all those fun things that they were doing. And um uh and then later I got a a um master's degree from William and Mary, and that was in um high school science.

Tom 19:57

Okay. Wait, what science?

Carolyn 19:58

High school. High school science. High school science education.

Tom 20:02

Okay, and then you went on to be a P teacher and then eventually a science teacher.

Carolyn 20:06

Yes, and and that's where I spent most of my years was teaching science.

Tom 20:10

Okay.

Carolyn 20:10

Okay.

Tom 20:11

And then you studied engineering, right? But what kind of engineering?

Richard 20:15

Yeah. Um Mama told me the day I was born that she and her my father were gonna try everything they knew to get me to have a college education. I heard that all my life. Um it get that piece of paper. Daddy called it get that piece of paper. That's what's important. And so all I heard is college all my life. I had no idea where I was going, what I was gonna do. And I was in I was good in math and and not so much in English and history and everything else, just math.

Tom 20:51

Mm-hmm.

Richard 20:52

And I heard one of the guys in high school says he was going to tech because um he was good in math, and that's where you get to be an engineer. Mm-hmm. So I thought, okay, I'll go there. Nice. It was about that simple. Yeah. So I sent in one application to one place and then went in the army for six months. Oh, okay. And um because I was on a half year. People people don't have half years in the when I went to school they sent me home for six months because they had thirty chairs and thirty-two children. So the so the youngest ones had to go and wait another six months. So I started school in February. Okay. And what sixteen years later, I twelve years later, I graduated in February. So I went in the army for six months.

Tom 21:44

Okay.

Richard 21:45

Got home, and if they'd have turned me down, I reckon I wouldn't have gone to college. I just had one application, one place. Wow. And they accepted me, so I went up to Virginia Tech. By the way, it was VPI then. Okay. Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Interesting. Yeah, and that's what's on my ring.

Tom 22:06

Okay, what does polytechnic mean?

Richard 22:08

I don't know. A whole lot of a whole lot of engineering, I reckon. Yeah. Poly mini. Okay. Um, but on the application, I had to put down my first three choices. And I put down civil I called Mama and I said, Mom, what's civil engineering? I didn't know what it was. She says, I th I think it's got to do something with building highways or and building things. And I thought, well, I always like to build tree houses and dig holes on the ground and foxholes. So I thought, okay, I'll put that down. And the second one was building construction, and the third one was architecture. Okay. And I got into civil engineering.

Tom 22:49

Okay. And I feel like oh wait, are you guys both first generation to get college degrees?

Carolyn 22:55

No.

Tom 22:56

Your did your parents have college degrees?

Carolyn 22:59

Um my mother had a degree um or teaching certificate, and her mother, my grandmother had a teaching certificate. Uh, which was a little different as far as educational requirements at the time. But it's what allowed you to do basically the same thing that I did. So she did go off to college for um they yeah, I think you had to go three summers to get certified. Okay. As I understand it.

Richard 23:27

Another interesting point is daddy told me my father was real good in in sports. He got uh he got um what uh scholarship. He got a scholarship to the University of Richmond to play football, which was a good thing. But the family at the time didn't have enough money to pay for his books, and so he couldn't go. I mean he was that close to going to college. But daddy told me back in when we were talking about back in 1938, a college education was not that important. It was for the very elite to learn how to speak different languages and history and you know, to read literature, but it didn't have a whole lot to do with the job. So he said, you know, he had a he had a brother-in-law that went to the UVA and Daddy was making more money when they started at um the drugstore. Daddy worked in a drugstore when he got married. It just wasn't that important, he said back then. Later on he found out it was important.

Tom 24:34

Yeah, so I wanted to ask, like in general, like how do you guys think about education? Because I know it's something at this point you guys very important. Very important. Spoken like a teacher. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you're a teacher and all three of your daughters went to um college and specifically JMU, right? But why why do you place so much value on a college education?

Carolyn 24:55

Well, you know, you your education is more than just books, but it definitely is books. Um you mature a lot. It opens your eyes to a lot of things and a lot of different people. You learn how to get along with different kinds of people. But um it just it certainly broadens your mind and and um helps prepare you for what the reality of life is all about, I think.

Richard 25:28

Um It gives you four years to grow up.

Carolyn 25:31

Yes, I I think so. I think so.

Tom 25:34

I appreciated that.

Carolyn 25:35

It took me five years to grow up, but Well, you weren't the first one that took five years to get through. I think I heard about some others that were too.

Richard 25:43

We were very fortunate in that we could send their three girls to a university, a big school away from home.

Tom 25:49

Yeah.

Richard 25:50

That was important. Um in Carolyn's generation, her brothers had to live at home and and go to the University of Richmond.

Carolyn 25:59

Yeah, and Ruth did also.

Richard 26:00

Which is harder.

Carolyn 26:02

But um, yeah, they were very upset with me because I did not go to the University of Richmond, like they considered that the family school.

Richard 26:10

Not anymore. She was a rebel in the family.

Carolyn 26:14

Yeah, and I but I I guess I just had a little bit of an independent spirit and wanted to get off. And plus I knew some of the girls ahead of me that were there, and I and I went and visited them and just fell in love with the campus. The first day I walked on it, I said, This is I am home. I just knew it.

Richard 26:35

I felt the same way.

Carolyn 26:36

Yeah.

Richard 26:37

One one of the important things that I think comes out of education um is that when you have a college, a person who's been through college, when they get to something in life and they don't know how to do it, they're gonna figure out how to do it. There's kind of a marked difference there. Um a lot of a lot of kids will say, Well, I don't know how to do that. I never did that and I don't know how to do it. And that's the end of it. Whereas a college student has, well, go find a book, go find a person that'll help them and teach them how to do it. They have this sense that I can learn this. I can do that. You know, it's confidence. Some of it's confidence.

Carolyn 27:17

Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of it, I think a lot of it is.

Richard 27:20

Expectation and confidence are big motivators.

Tom 27:23

Yeah, I think it's a lot too of just completing something you set out to do, right? And just now you have the confidence of like, okay, that seems scary. At one point I did that. Now I can do anything or learn anything, right? Because I think the continued education is more important than going to school for four years, right? Just continuing to educate your whole life.

Richard 27:43

Well, you've done a lot of that. You've ventured out in some different areas. Yes, yes, I have. And I think if you'd have come right out of high school, you might not have had the confidence to try some of these things you've been trying.

Tom 27:53

Yeah, I definitely was able to really, you know, at least with the smart gym idea, really kind of figure out what I wanted to do and how I had to get there. And um, yeah, I'm very grateful for those years to kind of be figuring that all out and go. I was able to go take classes too that would help me like with the idea I had that I had it going into college. Took a lot of different courses that um really aided kind of my my my journey uh as a with a startup. Um, but how you guys continue to stay educated post-college?

Carolyn 28:27

Have you stopped?

Richard 28:29

I always felt like I was highly trained and poorly educated. Um I uh when when I went to Virginia Tech, I mean I just studied math and engineering, except for uh one course in English and one course in history, and that was about it.

Tom 28:46

Yeah.

Richard 28:47

And since then I've just tried to I have the confidence to read history and read biography and you know, fill in some of that. But I when I went to NASA, I went to a research outfit, and and we took graduate classes right there on the field while I was working. Wow. The George Washington University had an extension at the university, I mean at the research center. And a lot of the um engineers there were actually the professors that taught these classes. Oh wow. So I took I took classes for I read 18 years after I Okay, through NASA.

Tom 29:27

Through NASA. So you didn't get like one degree through them? You just continued to I got I got two master's degrees through.

Richard 29:34

I took every class. Wow.

Tom 29:36

What were your okay? So what were your two master's degrees in?

Richard 29:40

I had no idea. One of them is you might know better than I do, Carol. One of them was like a professional engineer. That's not right.

Carolyn 29:50

One was I think civil engineering, and one was and one just says engineering. That was your last degree. She said degree of engineer, which is a big deal.

Richard 29:59

I took enough classes to get an engineering type master's degree. Okay. And then I just kept on taking classes.

Tom 30:05

Does this engineering degree kind of encompass like a lot of the different engineering um kind of sections?

Richard 30:12

No, it was more more tailored to um what NASA was doing at the time. Okay. No, what NASA was doing at the time. But the second one, I just took classes because I was interested in them, and the professor told me, he says, I this is not a degree, these are not gonna fit. So after I got enough classes, I pleaded that he would put it into a some kind of package and give me another degree, and he did. So you were just learning just to take classes, just yeah, and stuff that I used at work.

Tom 30:39

Yeah, yeah, I did the same. Uh so wait, let's let's actually talk about NASA then for a while. What year did you start? Or NASA?

Richard 30:48

I started in 63. 63. And I started in September of 63, and I was in on orientation. Um about 300 of us were hired at the same time. That was the end of the big boom to hire. Okay. And make space cadets. And while we were in our orientation, they they told us that um Kennedy had just been shot. Wow. And I think it was, is it October 63? November. November. November 63.

Tom 31:22

Well, now I want to talk about that for a moment. What was it like when Kennedy shot?

Carolyn 31:27

The whole country shut down for one thing. I mean, I I was teaching uh at the time, and someone ran in and told me. And the next day, everything just shut down. No school, no work. You stayed comasy.

Richard 31:45

We all went home and watched television.

Carolyn 31:47

Yeah, and just stayed glued to the television the whole time.

Tom 31:52

Do people hate him before that leading up to it?

Carolyn 31:54

I think Oh, I think every president's gonna be controversial, but he was very well liked, especially by the younger generations.

Tom 32:04

Um started the PCO.

Carolyn 32:08

He also started um what is this physical fitness program, president presidential physical fitness, and uh he the head of the department at um at what was Madison College now, JMU, the head of the department that I was in was asked to serve on that committee, which was quite an honor. And uh and that was something that just spread all over the country to get a young people physically fit.

Richard 32:36

And um she had a beautiful wife, young, beautiful wife. All the men in the country respected that. Oh, yeah, yeah, we respected that.

Tom 32:45

So in this day and age, I don't know if you guys are familiar, but people like there's a big conspiracy around it, and people think like the government did it or someone in power did it. Well, what was your perception at the time that it was just a terrorist attack or a random crazy person? Was there any like concern that uh oh it was a lot of time?

Richard 33:04

Yeah, we always yeah, we we wanted to know, but there was just so much stuff flying that um, kind of just have to it you you could hear whatever you wanted to hear. Yeah. It didn't matter, I guess. It did it didn't matter. Um it didn't seem to be a conspiracy, nobody was gonna invade that country.

Carolyn 33:25

It still is going on. I mean, you can still hear programs about somebody's come up with a new theory that you know it was it was, but I think as far as myself, I I think I finally accepted the fact that there was one man just acting independently.

Tom 33:41

Just one guy didn't like him.

Richard 33:43

But he had been to Russia for a while and he he had some training, and we were tied in, we were trying to assassinate um what Castro and Cuba? There's a lot of stuff flying around then. Yeah. Um and still is.

Tom 33:59

Still is. Okay. So then let's bring it back to NASA. When was NASA founded? You know that? Was it like how old was was the organization about when you joined?

Richard 34:11

Um NASA they used to have a now I'm talking about something I don't know anything about before my time, but it we used to have a national research um institute. Okay. And I don't know exactly what they did, but when when Kennedy decided that or when the government decided we had to have a presence in space, they took that old national research group and turned it into NASA. Okay.

Carolyn 34:41

At first it was NACA, wasn't it?

Richard 34:43

At first it was NACA. I don't know what that stood for, but um and that was in Lou Smith was in NACA. I think it was 59, 58, 59. Okay. Soon after soon after Sputnik. Yeah. Okay. And so they reorganized it, they gave it a new name, they pumped money into it, they went out and hired people by the busloads. And that's kind of when I got swept up and all that.

Tom 35:09

Okay. And so then when you joined, they they hadn't made it to the moon yet or built a space.

Richard 35:14

No, they didn't make it to the moon until 69. 69. Okay, so and I just started in 63.

Carolyn 35:19

So the year your mom was born.

Tom 35:21

Okay, wow. So were you working on that project or were you helping with the engineering?

Richard 35:28

They put me when I got there, of course. I'm I'm I'm low man on a total pole. Yeah. We had a Mach III wind tunnel that Langley was the beginning of NASA. That's where the that was the mother research center in Hampton, Virginia. Uh the astronauts started right there in Hampton, Virginia. Um, they put me at a wind tunnel because we test we tested airplanes there and wing foils and all kinds of stuff like that. And they put me at a wind tunnel Mach III. Um, I had no idea what Mach III meant when I got there. And they had to have an engineer at the wind tunnel. Everybody there knew what to do. You know, you bring in a piece of flutter panel and you put it in the wind tunnel and and make it flutter and measure it and all of that stuff. Um they knew what to do. They didn't need any engineer to tell them what to do, but they had to have an engineer there. Actually, they had to have two of them. And so I got assigned to go there and do nothing for a year because I filled a slide. It says I got two engineers here. Okay. I went out in a shop one day trying trying to say, okay, I'm supposed to organize these guys out in the shop, and they ran me out. They really did. And I went back into their crib and took a tool. I couldn't get anybody to tighten up a bolt I wanted to tighten up. So I went in the crib and got a got a wrench to tighten up. And that's a no-no. You do not mess with that tool, Ben. Okay. So anyway, I learned that I was supposed to stay in the office and mind my own business and do nothing for a year. And so I got upset about that. That's a hard year. And I went and talked to my boss and I said, Look, I I trained for four years to do research. And I said, I want to do research and I'm not doing it. He said, Son, you don't know how to do research. Which which killed me. Because I thought I was pretty hot at the time. He said, if you're serious, you go back, get your graduate study and come back and talk to me. So that's what I did.

Tom 37:37

Yeah, I'm in the beginning of my career now. It's it can be frustrating because you feel like you're ready to take on the city. Oh, yeah. But it's really hard to work your way into a leadership position, you know, at a company in your 20s. Once you started taking more classes and you got another degree, what kind of position did you move up into? What kind of projects were you working on like in the middle of mid middle of your career?

Richard 38:01

When I when I went back to tech, they forced us to take one of three different courses. One of them was one of them was dynamics. I didn't want to take dynamics. I tried to get out of it. He says, You've got to take dynamics. So I took it. And there was a guy from Thermodynamics? Or is that thermodynamics or uh no? This is this is motion dynamics.

Tom 38:24

Okay.

Richard 38:26

There was a guy from um California that was teaching a course, and he taught us all about satellites for the first time and orbital mechanics and Keplerian mechanics. And his job was to figure out statistically how to locate ships because we were dropping the astronauts in the ocean there. You had to have ships scattered around just in the right place to pick them up as soon as possible. And it's not all of that's random. It's not sure where that satellite's gonna land. I mean where they're gonna drop them. And he started telling us about satellite motion and orbital mechanics and trajectories and um just blew my mind. So when I went back to Langley, I got the telephone book and went through it and found a place called Space Mechanics and went over and went with them. Okay and I did a lot of orbital mechanics there. Okay. That was going on when I was there. Before we went to the moon, we had to have a map of the moon. And so they put a satellite around the moon with a camera on it and took took film pictures, yeah, and came back and printed all of them in eight by ten pictures. Hundreds of them, and laid them on a on a basketball court that we had at NASA. So they actually put put a map of the moon together with individual it was like you use your own camera and take a eight by ten of it, put them all together and and try to make a map of the moon. Of course, we got a whole lot more sophisticated in a hurry with that. Yeah, that was at the moon. I did a lot of orbital mechanics on on going to Mars. No, how what's the what's the um cheapest way to go? How do you go to Mars with the least amount of fuel and that kind of thing? Okay.

Tom 40:27

And then was there a specific um satellite or something that you guys sent to Mars that was a significant breakthrough? Um no.

Richard 40:38

The main work I did for the last fifteen years, I reckon, we decided at one point we were sending satellites to the moon and Mars and all away from it. We need to learn something about space. And so we actually had a program called Mission to Planet Earth, where we put up satellites around the Earth and measured, and the in the case I was with, we were measuring uh the radiation, shortwave, long wave radiation that was coming off say Earth. Um, and that feeds into these big models, these um weather models that they have, computer computer programs that tell you where the storm is going. And so we fed data into that. Um but it was all the radiation on the earth. So last the last third or maybe even half of my career was dealing with that.

Tom 41:32

Interesting. So without getting too far into the engineering, what is some of the challenges about sending a satellite satellite into orbit?

Richard 41:44

Uh what are the challenges? Well, it's it's a dangerous thing. I mean, if you have people in it, of course. Um some sometimes they blow up on a pad. Um my my job was my job was well Mathum we we developed some instruments that flew that scanned back and forth on the earth and took pictures. And then they had other cameras on it that just took big pictures. And somehow all of that data had to be put together, it had to be located on the earth, you had to define what you were looking at, and put it into a position um where the scientists could look at it and make their scientific conclusions. So by that time everything had gotten so specialized, I mean, it was like stages. There's one group that just put up the satellite, I mean, just put up the satellite, the the booster. It was another one that built the the cabin, it was another one that designed the instrument, it was another one that took all of that information and relayed it back to Earth. There was another one that tried to combine all that information. And I was in the loop in that I had to locate it on the Earth and determine what I was looking at, what kind of cloud cover and that kind of thing. Okay. And and do all of the geometry on it and the mathematics on it to get it into a very usable state.

Tom 43:18

Um to get the satellite orbiting um like what cons without any movement or um Yeah.

Richard 43:29

Combined and all of that.

Tom 43:31

Okay. What kind of equations were were you using like calculus or kind of math feeds into calculating working with it?

Richard 43:44

A lot of it was geometry. Geometry. Um we we had to transform from um um from space or like a coordinate system. A coordinate system. You worked with those in high school, X and Y. Yeah, yeah. Well, in this X, Y, and Z. Yeah. Well, we actually are working in six dimensions. Okay. X, Y, and Z, and velocity and time. All of that was in a vector. You have to do transformations between data like you see it on on the satellite and data like you see it on Earth. Um, we had to make sure that the instruments were doing right. But that was my I was just part in a link. And and that's what I did.

Tom 44:31

So did they have any computer programs at the time to help you with your like complicated mathematics, or were you still doing a lot of these by hand?

Richard 44:39

When I got when I went through four years of college in the 60s, there was no commute computer course.

Tom 44:45

Okay.

Richard 44:46

My senior year, there was a graduate student that was trying to see if you could use a computer to do structural problems. It wasn't clear at the time. We went over and took a a course from him. But we had a little bitty computer. Um it looked like a dresser or something. You had to load um cardboard um cards into it every time he ran something. Very, very primitive. When I got to NASA, they weren't even hardly using computers. Um 65. Um Yeah, that's hard to believe because we were sixty. But I was in a group of orbital mechanics and there was about ten of them. Only one of them knew how to use a computer. Wow. So I got close to him and learned everything he knew. Okay. I just soaked him perfectly. So then I started doing a lot of the orbital transforms things.

Tom 45:55

So what was was there any like powerful programs that came out of NASA around this time? Like, did they eventually have a program that could run all your calculations for you? Or, you know, I d I don't know, maybe um, but they would use In the early 60s there were no programs. Okay. You had to program everything you did. Yeah. Still all engineers are working on those.

Richard 46:20

You know, you hear about having having the computers. The women did a lot of the computers and grinded the numbers for the engineers. Um we still had that in the in the sixties. Okay. Um the big joke is our computers wore sweaters. When we wrote up some of equations and we wanted to run numbers through these equations, we'd take it down the hall to the computers. Well the computers were the women in there that had like calculate freedom to freedom calculate or add machines, that kind of thing. Yeah. They would work up the numbers and give it to us. No nobody knew how to program a computer. Okay. I got in on the bottom on a startup or that.

Tom 47:01

So were you guys constantly worried about making mistakes then? Like someone punched in the numbers wrong and yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard 47:08

And well, even even after we got a little bit more sophisticated, we had to type up our own. When we wrote an equation, and we are using the computers now, you'd had to write your computer, your equation out, and then you had to program it with Fortran language. Then you had to go in and type up cards. It was a typewriter that punched holes in cards. Then you take that pack of cards together and carry it over to our computer center. Now is a big compute a whole building with nothing but a giant calculator in it. We had to keep it at the right temperature. There was just a crew of people running around trying to keep it. Yeah. Wow. You probably got more than that in your watch now. Yeah. But um you'd you'd send them that that pack of cards and you'd come back the next morning and get your run. And if it had an error in it, you didn't you didn't get but one run a day. You didn't get but one computer run a day. And that's the way we were operating. So you had to be very careful, accuracy with everything. When you when you wrote up a little program, you went over and over in your mind to make sure it worked. Because you didn't get a second chance. It cost you another whole day to get a second. You just touch a button in a thousandth of a second, you got your answer. Yeah.

Carolyn 48:35

Tell him about your uh right radiation story.

Richard 48:38

Radiation story.

Carolyn 48:39

Your radiation there is the Earth's radiation. Uh am I using the right word?

Richard 48:46

The um When we thought the moon was red?

Carolyn 48:50

No, no, no, no. No, no. Wait, what? The amount of radiation coming off of the earth. The albedo. That's what I'm trying to do with the albedo.

Richard 49:02

Well, I I was up there doing a lot of the geometry and trying to take all of um all of the data, kind of raw data we call it, that was coming off the satellite. I had to put it all together and then estimate what the earth was doing, you know, in a big sense. One of it was the albedo of the earth, which is how much how much um radiation hits the earth and how much of it bounces back. It's a it's like a third. Um and so I did all that calculation and we found that the instrument was a little off. So I went to my boss and said, as far as I can determine the instrument is a little off. Um I think we ought to change it. So we we talked about, he said, Yeah, I think you're right. So I changed that number that went with that data. And on the way home, I just got weak in the knees, and I pulled over on the side of the road, and I thought, I just changed the albedo of the earth. I just changed the albedo of the earth. I mean, that's that probably made God angry for me to be doing that. Kind of make me weak in the knees. Yeah. No, it's weird then.

Tom 50:21

It's weird how the instruments we use to collect data, right, um, can have errors, you know, with them and can sometimes be way off. I mean, especially when it comes to astrology, I've heard of some uh astrophysicists talk about we used to think um, you know, like Pluto was a planet or something, and we were doing some calculations on it, and um turns out all the instruments that were recording those calculations were off, and that's why we thought Pluto was bigger than it was for a while. Turns out it's actually the size of like just an asteroid, but it's because all of the equipment that was you know calibrating the data we were looking at was not calibrated correctly. Yeah.

Richard 51:00

So well, that was one of the big problems with space. I mean, you were asking, you know, what are the problems you run into? Well, the instruments, I mean, they vary a little bit and they can drift a little bit, you know, and the voltage can vary a little bit on them and they'll give different readings. We actually had calibrators. We had calibrators on the satellite to where the instrument would turn and look at a calibrator, mm-hmm, you know. Which we were controlling. Well a calibrator started drifting. Yeah. And and so you have to come up with some other clever ways.

Tom 51:36

Yeah, that's dangerous. That's dangerous to to try to get to space based on some calculations, based on some instruments that are not perfect.

Richard 51:45

Yeah. One of one of this that gets into Carolyn a little bit. I don't even know where I started on that. One of the one of the problems that I had was to identify the cloud cover. Take all of this data and tell when we were actually making maps of the earth then, with cloud cover on it. Whether ocean, land, forests, clouds were. And and we weren't sure we were doing it right. I mean we had chaos, we had clouds, we had partial clouds, we had clear. Well, we didn't have any ground truth, know exactly um what we were looking at. And that kind of got Carolyn in into NASA. I was sitting at as my career was getting uh older, or towards the end, I thought, one of these days, some young kid's gonna come walking down this hall. He's gonna be twice as smart as I am, he'll be twice as quick as I am, and he's gonna work for half the money. And he's just gonna push me out of here. Well, I couldn't believe it, but the the kid walking down the hall that pushed me out of my desk was Carolyn. They actually took me out and moved me down a hall and gave her my desk. What? Okay, so let's back up. Yeah, you got to back up. I could I could so how did you How did Carolyn get to NASA though?

Tom 53:14

Yeah, how'd you move from so you did um PE teacher to science teacher then to NASA?

Carolyn 53:20

Right.

Tom 53:21

Okay. Uh let's wait, let's just start with the PE teacher for a second. Um like what what do you think is one of the most important parts about just staying healthy and living a healthy life? And like what did you learn from the degree you got and teaching physical?

Carolyn 53:37

You know, I was teaching um at that point I was teaching middle school. And I I think it's important to um to realize that the life is not just one little segment of development. And if you get more broad-minded in what needs to be developed, you have a more balanced life and everything works better. So I was very committed to being uh active and exercising, and I always loved to study, so that wasn't a problem. But you know, and I also felt like you needed to to um exercise and keep a healthy body and do do things that were good for your body. And um, so that was I think part of it. And plus I just always enjoyed my physical education. Um, you know, what you had what you played, and um I loved field hockey, I loved the swimming, the dance, and um uh and I played some of the other sports that I didn't particularly care for, but you had to learn a broad spectrum, including marching, which was a real shock. I didn't know we had to learn how to march, but that was because they said if you go out west, that's what you're gonna be teaching because it marching bands were so significant in the West.

Richard 54:53

But Bill was teaching physia too. He was kind of your idol.

Carolyn 54:57

Well, he was. Um Yes, he was, you know, professor at univers maybe at Wake Forest then, but then he went on to University of Richmond. But um Okay. Anyway, that was significant, and then I I was home with three little ones for about 10 years, and then as they got old enough, I w I started substituting and going back to school, taking classes to sort of get back into it, because I knew that you know that's where I was headed. And so then I ended up uh teaching science, earth science, which I absolutely loved. Um, I loved the lab work and all the things you could do, and um got a number of wonderful opportunities to teach teachers also. I became what they call a master teacher and um got to fly all over the country giving lectures to teachers, and this is while I was teaching.

Tom 55:55

Wow.

Carolyn 55:56

And and then um NASA had this um program where they they were told that they had to spend a certain percentage of their budget in educating the public on what they were doing. And so one of them, uh one of the men that worked with Richard said um, you know, uh they came to the conclusion that they were trying to do something they didn't know how to really go about.

Richard 56:26

We were trying to get PhD students to write lesson plans for high school students on this science we were developing. And it was a disaster. They didn't know how to dumb it down. They didn't want to do it. Yeah. For one, they couldn't they couldn't dumb it down. Um you just don't ask a PhD student to even try to do that. It's just kind of out of their realm.

Carolyn 56:50

And then one of them, um one of them said, Well, Richard, didn't your wife just retire? And he she yes, she just retired from teaching. And um, so they called me and I had I had collaborated with him on a few things that he was doing with schools uh a year or so earlier. Anyway, and they said, Would you consider coming to work with us part-time? And I thought about it and I I told Richard As an educational consultant. As an educational consultant, sort of.

Richard 57:21

To write these letters.

Carolyn 57:22

Yeah, they had a fancy name for it, but that's that's what I call an educational consultant. And um anyway, they um I told Richard that I said, you know, I don't know if I can sit at a desk all day long. I really didn't. I hadn't I I was always taught to teach, you have to stand and and move around, you know. But anyway, um I when I got out there, it was a wonderful, wonderful job, and it quickly went to full time. Uh I got everything I did that I was required or asked to do were things I just absolutely loved to do. I love to create new things, and um which was one of the reasons I traveled so much and when I was teaching, because I um I had several um grants to teach to go to these summer programs and get paid to go. And uh and what they were, you turned in something, work that you'd created, and if it was accepted. So I um I got to go out to um dig for dinosaurs on that trip, and uh got to go to Harvard three summers, and all of those were grants that were teachers from all over the country, and I I don't mean it went a lot of them, but it was like one was 30 and one was 20. But anyway, um so here I was now at um NASA and working with this project this called School and um the school was students collecting uh not students cloud observations online, that's what it stood for, S-C-O-O-L. And so I was with that, I was creating lesson plans, I was writing up a newsletter to go out to all these teachers, and um I was getting to travel, which I loved, and uh and give um instruction to teachers on how to use this program and become involved in it. And I was also speaking to the students. So um I went all around the country and to quite a few other countries, and uh so it was really um it was uh it was probably the most exciting job I ever had, whereas school, teaching school was probably the most rewarding, but the between the two of them, I felt like I had the best of it all as far as teaching was concerned.

Tom 59:52

What um what did you do to move up from just a normal teacher to the leader of other teachers?

Carolyn 59:58

Well, now before then I well I had gotten a master's degree for one thing, and then because of that, um, you know, I had and I I created a lot of my own activities and um and I was very willing to teach to other teachers. So I I held uh did a lot of workshops for the city for teachers. We had you know, every time a teacher has a work day, usually they have to go to c some kind of classes and get credit for it. And so um I taught a lot of those just workshops.

Tom 1:00:31

Okay. Cool. But probably the master's degree was what allowed you to move up into that kind of position.

Carolyn 1:00:38

Right, right.

Tom 1:00:39

Okay. Then when you went to NASA, so you were translating some of what they were doing into high school uh education?

Carolyn 1:00:47

What kind of things were well the satellite what the students were doing, the students were going when the they had to look up, it was it was combining a lot of different skills. They had to look up and find out when the satellite was passing over their location, and they had to go out and make observations of what clouds looked like to verify called ground truthing, yeah. What the clouds looked like and also what the ground surface was, because that particular satellite did not make any distinction between clouds and snow, for one thing.

Richard 1:01:20

We had a hard time with that.

Carolyn 1:01:21

And so the students could say, well, there, you know, 50% of the ground is covered and uh 100% of the of the sky is um overcloud uh overcast and um identify and and then to relate it to some of the things they had to do um for their own level of science, they might have to make other observations for climate. And that's how we worked. Um when we developed labs, um, we tried to incorporate what their um expectations were from an educational point of view and combine them.

Tom 1:01:57

Okay. So was this strictly educational, or were some of the observations being out of the high school like useful to NASA?

Carolyn 1:02:04

Well, they were, because when they had to send them in. They and see that's now that is one of the um things um I I probably was one outside of the business classes in our school, I was probably one of the only teachers, if not the only teacher that had a computer in her classroom because they were sending what we now call email. They were say they were we didn't have a name for it then, but we were uh sending our records and observations into NASA. And then they at first it wasn't automatic on their end, but eventually it became automatic in that they could compare them with what the satellite was seeing and and and then make some uh conclusion, draw conclusions from that.

Richard 1:02:47

So then it worked both ways. They were learning and and NASA was we were using that to see whether we were looking at the snow or clouds. Yeah.

Carolyn 1:02:56

One of the fun things about that particular uh job was well, actually this was prior to getting with NASA. Um I first got the computer in my room. They hooked us up with a classroom in New York and one in California. And uh they were doing an experiment on with radon in all those three areas and um uh for some company, and I don't know what the company was, but anyway, um I don't remember. But um anyway, the students they they were doing things their parents knew nothing about. They were very excited about this because they had to report it by what their observations were over the computer, and there was an earthquake in California, and the students came to me and said, can we email or contact them and see if they're all right? Well, we weren't supposed to use it for any personal use, but anyway, I allowed it. And the students in California answered immediately back. I mean, this was unheard of.

Tom 1:03:56

That's cool.

Carolyn 1:03:57

And they were so excited, so that was kind of a fun thing that happened with all of that. That was well, that was before the other classes got computers. And yeah, and of course, by the time I finished, you know, practically every classroom in the school had computers in it, you know.

Tom 1:04:12

So Yeah, that's crazy. That is I mean, that's faster than calling, right? I mean, if they got back to you right away.

Carolyn 1:04:18

Oh, yes, yes.

Tom 1:04:19

Then your students and yourself probably had never seen anyone communicate quite like that during an emergency.

Carolyn 1:04:25

Oh, they would come. Yeah, they would come back, they would come to school early in the morning because they knew I was there and and want to know if we'd heard anything, you know, from anybody.

Richard 1:04:35

Plus, we were getting ground truth from all over the globe. I mean, we were getting um cloud data from very isolated.

Carolyn 1:04:44

Yeah.

Richard 1:04:44

Carolyn traveled all over the world setting up schools.

Carolyn 1:04:48

I started with 30. They had already had 30, is sort of the where they were experimenting with it when I was asked to come work with them. And by the time I left, we had over 800.

Tom 1:04:58

Wow.

Carolyn 1:04:58

And um from all over. And um, but then I mean, when I retired from there, um they went on and eventually had as I know over 2,000 schools around the world.

Richard 1:05:11

And she got a call from the security at NATO one day. And it says, uh, lady, we need to talk to you. You're making these calls from all of these countries all over the world, and they wanted to know what you were doing.

Carolyn 1:05:27

Oh, yeah, and I was mailing some stuff out to her Russian comp countries, you know. So my boss had to get involved and assure them that you know she was able to do this.

Tom 1:05:41

Yeah, we we couldn't take any chances on Russian spots at the moment. Yeah.

Carolyn 1:05:45

So some funny things came out of all of that. Yeah.

Tom 1:05:48

That's cool.

Carolyn 1:05:48

Yeah.

Tom 1:05:49

Uh one more thing I want to talk about the moon landing, because you guys were in that industry, you guys understood at least that like the that went into.

Richard 1:06:00

landing uh man on the moon so what was that like um culturally and what did you guys how did you guys feel about it um from the technology I kind of knew I knew the mathematics on how we got to the moon I mean I I knew how to define uh a trajectory through space and how to go into orbit around the moon and had to decelerate it until it went down and settled on the surface that that I kind of understood. What I could not comprehend is how that Saturn V ever got off the ground. That thing is huge. That's like the s the Empire State building taken off.

Tom 1:06:45

The compulsion part of it.

Richard 1:06:47

Couldn't you calculate the force that was coming out of those exhausts and the weight of it all and how do you get something to burn that that fast that big true too yeah um and then you gotta control it so but having said all of that um I mean to think man is walking on the moon I I don't know anything in comparison to that. I don't know anything I mean here we're going you know we're leaving the earth sound spiritual like maybe we shouldn't be there you know we've we've we've gone behind the veil whatever that means yeah you know um you know And Carolyn as far as the kids are concerned Carolyn makes sure the children saw it.

Carolyn 1:07:40

Oh yeah you your mom was what five six months old and I sat her down in my lap in front of the television I said you're gonna remember that you watched this all your life no of course no but I kept reminding her that she every time we were on the television I said you saw that when it actually remembers you telling her about it I guess yeah but you know talking about um God's part and all of that too um I was actually coaching field hockey at the high school before I started teaching there and I was going on to try to major in health education and um uh I mean get a master's degree there and I I went in and talked with a one of the teachers said Carolyn there's not much out here in health and I why don't you go talk with the principal he was a wonderful wonderful man and um he said well I'll tell you what we really need is earth science teachers. I didn't even know what earth science teachers were I because I had not gone through that part of science and I started looking into it well that led to something called academic tech so which helped write the curriculum for it and and and got involved in academic tech along with earth science and I really attribute that combination to my actually getting this opportunity you understood health too you're saying yeah well not not the health so much as the science and the academic but but one led to the other you know the academic tech well is that is that technology well you you were supposed to teach the basics of earth science but you were supposed to bring technology into it so that they had this thing at that time where businesses were complaining that the students did not have to know how to use the technology that was available. Okay. So that was another plus for getting a computer in the room and and um I had to learn how to do all kinds of things that I didn't even know how to do. I was running to the shop people asking them to show me how to use these various gadgets and I'd go to the business department to to learn how to use um spreadsheets and all this sort of thing. And I was running all over the place trying to to teach myself because the next day I had to teach it in class. So that was and then you know as soon as as soon as we retired we had the opportunity to go on the mission field. And when you go on the mission field you teach whatever they need you to teach not what you may or may not be prepared to teach. So that was that was an interesting level also.

Richard 1:10:23

One more comment on computers um it was so new I went away all the way through engineering school with a slide rule. Wow I never had a computer or calculator no calculator?

Tom 1:10:35

No calculator.

Richard 1:10:36

Wow slide rule were calculators like huge at the time board you slide back for it. Wow and work with logarithms okay no it was as far as computers go it was pretty but didn't exist yeah yeah I guess they they weren't doing like um online calculations as much another kind of interesting thing with computers is we finally learned at NASA how to use computers how to run numbers how to come up with a a recursive equation that would generate a computer I mean a trajectory all the way to Mars or the moon it was 25 years when we just thought of it as a giant calculator and my mother was working for a Christian organization and people would send in donations and they would write them a real nice letter back you know thank you for your donation she was using a word processor. It hadn't even hit NASA then I didn't know what a word processor was. Wow it took us 25 years to find out you could do something other than just multiply numbers together. That's startling in it's the computer sat there for 25 years. And of course as soon as we started managing words everybody said you can't do words on a computer and that's kind of what we do now. We don't even see so to use it rather than at the time?

Tom 1:12:12

Yeah yeah hmm wow yeah I think that the technology existed at that time but I guess it just wasn't cheap enough or popular to to get like a computer to everyone or even yeah yeah okay is there anything else about your guys' careers that you guys that maybe missed or do you want to talk about the mission the retirement?

Carolyn 1:12:39

Well even before that Richard and I were very committed to teaching in church and um and that was that was very fulfilling and um we taught uh a number of different classes but I think the one that was the most rewarding maybe or fulfilling was teaching young couple married couples.

Richard 1:13:03

Okay.

Carolyn 1:13:04

Like just married and up to a year or two years.

Richard 1:13:06

Back when we were having our babies and going to church so all of the classes were separated. Women go to one men go to another there was no mixed classes. Okay. We felt like a lot of the husbands were not coming to church because they didn't want to go into men's class they didn't know anybody. And we we found out that if they were with their wives they would come in with their wives and come to church. And so we got permission to start a mixed class. It was unheard of a lot of frowns on it. You just don't do it that way you know so we started a couples class.

Carolyn 1:13:42

That was kind of we probably did that for almost 30 years.

Tom 1:13:45

Yeah one after you know not not necessarily the same class but we change classes every now and then and then Richard taught um really um a college level course uh for about 10 years in the church and um that was very um well received and um um we taught for nine months we taught a Bible study of the whole Bible wow 12 people it's pretty fast for the whole Bible yeah we covered a lot of stuff wow a lot of stuff so let's just talk about religion then and what kind of role it's played in your life what what is what role has faith played in your life for you get there let me say one other thing we were religious it bothered me that I had spent so much time studying technology and working um all my life and I had no uh I had no expertise that I could help in the church that bothered me a whole lot and when we went to Costa Rica the reason they wanted is somebody that would teach high school level high school physics and calculus and so I felt like my prayers were answered there.

Richard 1:15:03

Nice that we were teaching them to missionary children. It was in a it was in a Christian missionary school. So I felt like my prayers were answered there that I had I had the ability to use some of my technology and math in in support in the missionary movement. One other little comment is I was working at NASA and Carolyn hardly knew what I was doing and she was teaching. You know we lived in different worlds there for a while and we were trying to raise kids so it's just the survival years we called them she didn't know about my friend I didn't know about her friends until she came walking down the hall and they pushed me out of my seat and she took over my seat and all of a sudden she worked in my world um knew my friends and loved it yeah and and loved it and I didn't know anything about her teaching you know and all of the teaching that she went through when we went to Costa Rica and taught together for a year all of a sudden I walked into her world and taught for a year and it was interesting that at the end of African career that last year we kind of last couple years we got to see each other's world that we had been living in.

Tom 1:16:20

Yeah no that's beautiful that it really was you both got a chance to really connect you know in a in a career sense too not many people bump into their significant others like that.

Richard 1:16:32

And right at right at the end of NASA years um we went to some conferences we had to give scientific papers her on education and our own technology and we went to Germany and gave one and then we went to where else did we go? Australia we did those two we went together Australia and we both gave papers and then since we were so far around the world NASA decided you just well come on home the short way and so we decided why not take a vacation so we went to Fiji and New Zealand on vacation while we were over there. So the end of our career was kind of a a world trip all the way around the world yeah so that was a nice way to end it.

Tom 1:17:23

Yeah you guys got to travel a lot um after that too well yeah but let's not move past that time period sorry what were what were you gonna add?

Carolyn 1:17:34

I don't know how was it I don't know what I was getting ready to say.

Tom 1:17:42

What about going to Costa Rica? Yeah I don't remember. So I'm curious I'm probably the age of those couples that you guys um taught the class you know what what kind of advice would you have to me or what advice would you give them on you know someone who's young and and how to handle their faith?

Richard 1:18:00

We we found out that young people who've been raised in the church and gone to church and know about church well then when you kind of get away from home you go to college you kind of get away from all of that it is hard to get back into that until they start having children babies. As soon as a young couple will have a baby all of a sudden they think we ought to take this baby to church. What a beautiful time to step in and try to help them with getting back into the fold so we caught a lot of young couples and we were young at dudes.

Carolyn 1:18:40

We were in their early thirties.

Tom 1:18:42

Yeah so I'm out like of the rhythm of church where you know and I'm still I still consider myself Christian but through college and that you know I don't go every week anymore. Also the pandemic didn't help right I'm thinking uh I want to start advice what what advice does help you know someone transition back and start getting into that rhythm again.

Carolyn 1:19:09

Well number one is prayer because you want to be directed to a church that is not just there being a nice place to socialize and make friends. I mean you want to have Christian friends but you want a church that really teaches God's word you know and um then you and you want to pray in such a way I think that you're actually trusting the Lord you just put your whole faith and trust in him and at the same time you're exploring I know one year that for reasons I won't go into but we decided to leave a church that we were going to and went this is when the girls were young. And we visited almost a year I think it was and we went from church to church and we just knew none of them were right and then we we went to this one small church and we'd always been members of a big church. We went to this one small church and it it was almost instantaneously we just knew Rich and I knew and when we got in the car we said well girls how did you like and they all liked it. And so it was just sort of a confirmation that you just knew. I mean it was such that tears were coming down my face when I was sitting in the church service and that takes a whole lot to make me do that. But um you know you just you you've got to just really not just say you know Jesus and God you've got to believe the whole package I think and take on faith. And I I know there's a um Psalm 37 starting with I think verse eight and it says trust in the Lord and it goes on and then it says um exalt the Lord meaning praise him and I think that's important to know that he's worthy of being praised honored and listened to you know and then it says commit yourself to it and um and then I love the last a couple of verses later it says be still and listen and the last thing I think it shows the humor of God and says don't fret and I love that part of it. I just think that um that's the reality of you know God knows who we are he knows where we are and um you've just got to believe and trust him.

Richard 1:21:38

What I like to tell the young people I think is that all of this it's it's hard to say this all of this stuff is real. I mean you see the old people um what they're talking about is real and it's not just Jesus well it's not just the church it's a whole spiritual world out there and spiritual world means power it means understanding it means doing the right thing at the right time uh getting in tune with the way God has made you as a human being and peace is just kind of fall in place when you when you start realizing that you're living in both a physical world and a spiritual world and you gotta balance those two. Church is more than uh just going on Sunday morning um church is one part of it but but living with a sense of God in the spiritual world that he's put you in and trying to grow in that is a lifelong thing.

Carolyn 1:22:50

I'll tell you something else too the last 20 years you know we've been RVing well almost 20 years and we have really learned about trusting in God and I I mean to the point where in the last I'd say two or three years that we were RVing we began saying God what are you teaching us because we we had more things happen in that RV, weird things and sometimes we wrote in the middle of absolutely nowhere and we get hold of the right per the right person the only one person who could possibly know how to fix this thing shows up. And it has happened over and over and over again and we literally said what is God trying to teach us and um you know we we just gotta trust him and um knowing that that's what we're supposed to do be obedient to the point where I've always said I don't ever want to um uh retirement home never I've never and Rich has always said well it's a good thing and you know we helped Aunt Ruth clean out her house when she moved and all and and on the way home I said well I'm ready Richard said what ready for what I said I'm ready to move into a retirement home and he'd always wanted to so the Lord put us both on the same page with that and then things happened boom boom boom boom and I really think God was in all of that I I because as soon as we moved here we realized we haven't been taken care of since we need to see a doctor the first doctor we go to ask if he had any symptoms he said well you know I've had a few aggravating things you know around my neck and what um shortness of breath and immediately he sent us to get an x-ray and that doctor sent us to this doctor and then from then on you know the rest of the story with all the surgeries he's had this year. And everybody we went to just got right on the situation and I think I think the um it sounded it looked to everybody around us like we were we made these decisions so fast. But I think it was the fact that the decision had already been made the plan had already been there we just didn't know what it was or why it was and we were just following his direction but not not even knowing it at the time.

Richard 1:25:28

Life seems to be in about twenty year periods to me. Spend twenty years getting your education then you spend twenty years not getting through buying houses and having kids then you got to wait four years um with teen years and trying to get your career underway and trying to get enough money to retire and then you got from sixty to eighty which for us were fun years and retirement years and travel. And we have just moved into the next phase which is eighty to a hundred I think and it's a different world. I am surprised how fast changed um back on it being spiritual and feeling God moving us around and allowing him to do that. We feel like it's been about three years or so when God is just nudging us on the way until we ate it and the minute we got here we just felt totally at peace and things started happening. Um I had uh but we were here we're settled you know we've gotten out of the house a lot of the time so we feel like God has moved us into this last twenty year period. Um and been with us all the been with us all the day yeah our faith has gotten stronger in the last three years in this Roman we are closer to the Lord probably than they are we're not as involved in the church as we've always been we've always been workers in the church and teachers in the church this this period we are in I is gonna be very different. Especially with churches changes as much as they are. Uh we both separate in the morning and do our Bible reading, our study, our devotional time, our praying um every morning. And for one thing we have time to do it with now. Mm-hmm and a lot of times at lunch we'll talk about what we've been reading, you know So our world is still evolving, uh, and we're excited about the next twenty years. We're kind of convinced there's gonna be some pain in there. You know. We don't have as strong a backs and hips as we have. But uh we are we are looking at and next adventure. Next adventure.

Tom 1:28:23

Well your faith in God appeared more comforting and and you were having some medical issues.

Richard 1:28:36

I was shocked. I was surprised. I mean You know, you you read the Bible and you you you know that you're those both peace and faith and all of that. Um but when you put that beside um um a heart bypass and and and and uh lung cancer, it feels different. I went through that with total peace. I don't understand that. Um I felt like God had brought us here. We had done we've gotten rid of the family home, we've gotten rid of the furniture, we have just what we need right now. If anything happened to me, um Carolyn be well taken care of here. All she's got to do is give a call. All of the services and everything are here. I felt at peace physically with all of that, but what amazed me is the peace that I felt spiritually. Like God has gotten us here for a purpose and total peace. And I when I when I went in, I wasn't sure which side of the ledger I was gonna wake up on. Uh looking back at it, it was it was um right scary.

Carolyn 1:29:59

Um I think they scared the doctors.

Richard 1:30:01

He was out of it, but the doctors now that I know exactly what they did and and some of the problems they ran into, it scares me a little bit. But back then it's total peace.

Tom 1:30:12

Well, I'm sure there's gonna be someone that listens to this and does not believe in God, and I think that's an argument for why you should have a faith and why you should have a belief system, because I think your trust in God and that peace that you felt probably did a lot to help you through those surgeries. And I think that if you were really stressed out and worried and you didn't have a faith, and so you were worried about going to hell or whatever people who don't have a faith worry about, that probably would have shocked like you you your body probably wouldn't have handled everything as well. And I mean, I think you would have been a physical more risk if you weren't as as much peace at this point in your life.

Richard 1:30:51

I think that's true. I I think that's true. But you don't wait till the week before. No, to get ready. That's you don't wait till the week before.

Tom 1:31:00

You've been putting in work years um as far as reading the Bible, going to church, yeah, praying, building that faith up, yeah, and you were ready to to have that calm and peaceful um just mindset and yeah, it's and it's it's hard to tell the the the young couples that are having babies.

Richard 1:31:21

That's when they they are they're ready to hear that when you start having babies. Uh it's hard to tell them, it's real. I mean that's you know people that things look like they tend to go right for them. Other people it look like they tend to go wrong for them. If you know a few of those, you can kind of correlate that to people that seem to understand life and do it better. Um timing is everything. That's just one of my own philosophies. If you do the right thing at the right time, it seems to work better. But if you keep in mind that the world is made up of both a physical world and a spiritual world, it seems to work better.

Carolyn 1:32:04

One of my strong beliefs is the power of prayer. Um I I really believe it is effective. I don't question that. And I mean of course some of your prayers aren't answered the way you want them, but that's not or or when you want them. But that's not our decision. Our decision is to let God know what's on our mind and our heart, and um have to leave the results to Him. And um uh, you know, I I I I cover all of my children and grandchildren with prayers every day.

Tom 1:32:46

Thank you, Father.

Carolyn 1:32:47

Yeah, and I I do I mean we have corporate prayer together at breakfast for all of you, but then uh then we have our own individual prayer time too. And um, you know, any serious concerns, and I'll always take it to the Lord because He knows best.

Tom 1:33:04

Yeah, I've been trying to, as I said, get back into like um a religious structure in my life, and I've I've started with prayer. I've prayed a lot, I prayed a lot the past year, and then I've been reading a lot of books, kind of prepping to read the Bible again. Um, but the Bible's tough, so I know I've been reading a lot of just different books over the past year just to kind of practice, just get good at reading and reading fast because John and Romans. Yeah, but then I'll probably start reading the Bible soon and maybe go back to church depending on the pandemic. But when it comes to prayer, like what is your advice? Like, do you ask God for things? Do you like listen and do you discern some of your own inner monologue as coming from God at that moment? Or how do you decipher like what to do and or what to trust? You know, like what's going on internally in your head when you're praying?

Carolyn 1:34:01

I think prayer, um, answered prayer and all that can take a lot of different ways how you hear. Sometimes you're praying for something and you'll just be reading along in the scriptures, and that's what I'm talking about. You know, and um and then at other times it's just you you you've been praying about it, praying about it, and then it just suddenly becomes very clear. Or not sometimes. Not not all prayers can be answered the way you want them to pray to end, you know, to end.

Tom 1:34:41

So do you pray like before you make a decision?

Carolyn 1:34:44

Oh, definitely.

Tom 1:34:45

And then so how do you discern do you just get a feeling? You just or you see a sign in the Bible that maybe, or uh you look for signs in other places of your life that maybe feel like a spiritual Well one of the things big important decisions.

Carolyn 1:35:02

I think we look for agreement. You know, in each other, with each other, too.

Richard 1:35:08

That's just common that's just common sense.

Carolyn 1:35:10

I know that I mean that's probably people do that who aren't even maybe Christians, but but that to me that's important that that if it's something really significant in our lives, I mean, like choosing the right retirement home. Um, you know, we and we both liked this as soon as we saw it and came here. And and basically for some of the same reasons. And um when it came to selling the R V. You know, that was a hard decision because we really loved our R V days. And um, but you know, we we knew the time was was right for that.

Richard 1:35:48

My my prayer license is a little different than that. Um I I never have quite understood. The Bible says it, but I don't quite understand it. Long periods of prayer, all night and that kind of thing. Um I pray, but it's more or less along that lines of um pray without ceasing. Um I have more of a sense of kind of walking with God and and talking to Him during the day, during anything. Um it's more of a presence. Um and I think when you get when you get to that point, decisions aren't hard to make. Do I do this A or B? Uh if you're in tune with God, you just kind of walk on into that. And it kind of happens. Um trust in the Lord with all thy heart in all thy ways, acknowledge Him. And He will direct your path. Um that's kind of saying Keep godly things, stay in the spiritual world. Um have a feel of what's going on, have a feel for what God wants you to do, and you'll just kind of drift on into what's right. It's not that agonizing decision that most people think. Yeah. And the next rule on that is if you don't know what to do, A or B, then you're gonna have to make a decision, do the best you can. And hope the good law, if you make it wrong, the good law will fix it up. Plus, if you want to get in theology, the God has given us the Holy Spirit, which is kind of a in a voice, to help us make those decisions. Yeah. Sometimes you get a sense that ain't good. I know it's not good. I don't know why. Yeah, I don't know why, but it's it just doesn't fit.

Tom 1:37:49

Yeah.

Richard 1:37:49

I ought not be doing this. And that's probably the Holy Spirit speaking to you. And the more you pray, the more you're kind of in tune with that. The more you get in tune with it. You kind of got in the r gotta get in rhythm with it. Yeah, you gotta get the right frequency.

Carolyn 1:38:02

Yeah, it's kind of like to have a friend, you've got to be a friend. And I think you know, it's that same idea, I think, uh, in some ways that you've got to talk to God if you want him talking to you, and he can talk to you. Maybe he may be talking to you through somebody else or through the scriptures or through prayer, uh, occasionally through dreams.

Tom 1:38:20

Well, I got I got some sort of spiritual feeling that I needed to interview both my grandparents. I don't know where that came from, but I was just like, I have to do this. I don't know why. I feel like God is telling me to do this, and so I assume he's speaking to me through you guys right now. I assume that's kind of how it works.

Richard 1:38:38

That's uh that's good. That's good. That's good. That's being sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to the spiritual world. I mean, you basically said there's something out there I don't want to stand, but it seems like it's pushing me this way. It seems like it doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, I've done a lot of stuff that didn't make any sense, but I felt strong enough to where I had to go ahead and do it.

Tom 1:39:01

So good.

Richard 1:39:02

But good. I'm all for you.

Tom 1:39:04

Yeah, I'm I'm glad we talked about it. I mean, I've been listening to this one, he's a psychologist named Jordan Peterson, and he kind of tears apart the Old Testament, and he kind of talks about like from a psychology point of view, how the Old Testament kind of reveals like a lot about the human psyche, and that these stories that were passed down in the Old Testament they reveal a lot about our cognition and how we think and things like that, and that he was saying it doesn't matter if they happened or not, these stories are truer than true because they survived the test of time and they they exp they were how we understood ourselves, you know what I'm saying? And so that kind of got me really interested in the Old Testament because I like psychology a lot. And you know, as a kid, I would be hung up on things like is did this happen or did this not happen? But you know, lately I've been viewing the Bible as this book full of wisdom that I mean, I do believe that it happened, but it's more important that I understand that wisdom, you know what I'm saying, than be closed-minded towards it. And then another thing is that, like you were saying, young people don't aren't as religious these days, but we've seen society kind of move away from religion, but that spiritual side is still there, right? There's still religious tendencies within society, and and people start, you know, getting into woke culture or political culture, or there's other like spiritual things that manifest that aren't religion, right? And people still have those religious tendencies and and they grab on to other ideologies and they treat them like a religion, anyways. You know what I'm saying? So you have I've just become aware that whether I want to be Christian or not, I have like all people have a religious tendency, you know what I'm saying? And you gotta acknowledge that and that spiritual side of yourself. And so I do think Christianity is probably one of the best religions. I mean, I'm not you know, I think that it's a good choice to believe in Jesus and and have that be your focus of your spiritual side, because you're gonna have one either way, you know. Even if you think you're an atheist, you're gonna you're gonna join some religious flow of society that you might not have wanted to, you know. Um if you don't have a grounded set of beliefs, you know?

Richard 1:41:15

What you're what you're saying is very positive. I mean, what I'm hearing is is something's going on. You know, and and we've been through that. We've been we've been through every stage you'll go through. But something's going on. I don't know what it is. It might be, why does he want me to, you know, take all of these interviews with his grandparents and that? Um keep asking that question. Keep asking that question. Yeah. Why did I enjoy coming home this time? And usually it's uh it's you know, it's trauma and all of that. Uh what seems to be a little different? What is God trying to tell me? Yeah. And when you kind of listen to it, you hear. If you don't listen to it, if you don't listen to it, you won't hear it. Yeah.

Tom 1:42:06

Get in tune. No, these are questions. These interviews are spiritual because I mean, if if I could interview anyone I wanted, I'd be interviewing like, you know, the CEO of my favorite company or something. But I really can only interview certain people and their availability, and it's almost random, you know. So I almost feel like whoever I am sitting down and talking with was brought here in almost some divine way because it's it's gotta link up with who's willing to talk to me, which is not a lot of people for starter, you know. So then um, and just um where I can travel to and who I can go to, right? If I had gotten a positive COVID test this morning, I wouldn't be here, and that would be God telling me it's not time to have this conversation. You know, there's a lot of factors that go into it. And so I like I almost interviewed someone over my weekend trip, but then it just didn't work out, and that wasn't meant to be. You know, there's just a lot of factors in there that um when I do get the chance to sit down with someone like this, I know it's important, and you know, I know that it might be God or whatever you want to call it, has some something I need to hear from that person or group of people, you know.

Carolyn 1:43:13

Or you may have something to say to us.

Tom 1:43:16

Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

Carolyn 1:43:17

It goes both ways.

Tom 1:43:19

Or I might you guys have might have something to say to my audience, some person that I don't even know who's listening might need to hear this.

Richard 1:43:25

You don't know what God will do with it.

Tom 1:43:27

Yeah, yeah. It's just it's out there now for for people to hear. Um, but yeah, I'm glad we had a chance to talk about that. Uh what about wait, one more thing. Um so when it comes to the Bible itself, like what pieces of wisdom from the Bible do you think are the most important? How much time have you got? Like what are your favorite what are your favorite lessons that you've learned um or favorite chapters?

Richard 1:43:51

The big picture. The big picture. To understand what's going on, I think you have to have the big picture. Um I'll say this as fast as I can. This is what I've learned in the last uh six months, twelve months. God created the heavens and earth. Why did God create man? God created man in his own image. Why did God create man in his own image? Because he wants to have fellowship with man. And the whole Bible is just God's plan to bring man into full fellowship with himself. And God not only wants to have save each individual, God wants to save all men, but not all men will buy in on it. Some people just fade away from it. And the whole Bible is after God created man, he started with Adam and Eve, and all through the Old Testament, he's trying to raise up a kingdom, a kingdom of people, Christians that are made in his own image, who love each other, uh, they do right, they're holy. Um all of the attributes of God. He wants to, he made man with those same attributes. We have the same attributes as human beings developed to a much lower level, almost a primitive level compared with God and his love and forgiveness and justice. He's trying to raise up those people. He's been working for 2,000 years to raise them up. He started with Adam and Eve. And all of what you read in the Old Testament that sounds strange, it's that the people are so primitive they don't even know who God is. The greatest thing has happened to them is when Moses came down from the mountain and gave them some idea on ten things they're supposed to be doing or not doing. Um all of the Old Testament is physical because the people, the Israelites, were not ready to hear the spiritual part of it. But I mean, God in the Old Testament is fire on a mountain, rumbling, awesome smoke. And um, yeah, God is like that, but that's not that's not typical of God. But that's all that people could hear at the time.

Tom 1:46:20

Yeah, it almost seems to me like the Old Testament was like what not to do. It's it's right.

Richard 1:46:25

It's rules and who God does, and He's trying to He's trying to get them into this nation of perfect people.

Tom 1:46:32

Yeah.

Richard 1:46:33

The kingdom of God, they call it. When you get into the New Testament, all of a sudden things get much more abstract. Old Testament, they're physical. I mean, you know what fire on the mountain is and rumbling, and you know what it is when people get killed and um miracles. You get miracles are physical. When you get into the New Testament, miracles are a little bit more abstract. Yeah, not quite as easy to grab hold to when somebody's soul is saved and and faith comes. And then there's Jesus, and Jesus was a way to cross over that boundary of sin. Sin is the other problem. Um in the New Testament, they start talking about sin and overcoming sin, and that's what Jesus did. And the whole purpose of all of this is to create this kingdom of God, that God's gonna come back and claim one of these days and destroy this world and build a whole new nation, the kingdom of God, on these Christians that have been saved, that are in the image of God. And some of them have progressed in their understanding and attributes more so than others have. But the ones that are in the kingdom of God are gonna be saved. The others, God would love for them to be saved, but somehow they just turned away. He gave them free will. That's the other big story in the Bible, free will. God will not take your free will away from you. He's trying to get you saved, he's trying to tell you what's right, he's giving you Bibles, He's giving you the right people. He sent the people to help you with the RV when it breaks. Um, he's trying to teach us now about the the kingdom. Some people just can't hear it. And it's their fault. It's not God sending them to hell. It's they've turned their back on it, and God's done everything he knows how to do. But he will not take your free will of it. You got the choice not to not to go with it if you want. But in my mind, as long as you keep that big picture of what you're reading in the Bible, it's just a progression. All the way from primitive people that don't even know the name of God, all the way up to where things get very abstract and and the spiritual world comes in. The big picture is very important to me. And that's why I taught the Bible, yeah, the whole Bible for every year.

Carolyn 1:49:09

Yeah.

Richard 1:49:11

And that makes a lot of sense to me, but that's that that's fairly new to me to see the big picture like it is. Maybe as you get into the last segment, 80 to 100, maybe you see things the big picture is more. Well, that's good.

Tom 1:49:27

I'm glad that you are having some sort of um understanding with it then at this point, um, right, because it's not clear to a lot of people for most of their lives, you know. Even for you, I'm sure, it's you've gained a lot of clarity in a lot of clarity in retirement. Uh so let's talk about Costa Rica. Just how was it from you know, the culture and the how was their society? Was it impoverished?

Carolyn 1:49:58

We lived in a middle class. Neighborhood. Now you wouldn't call it middle class based on this country. But um, like next door to us on one side, we had um nurse living there with her family, and on the other side it was the woman was head of something. I've forgotten what now.

Richard 1:50:19

One was a lawyer.

Carolyn 1:50:21

Maybe maybe that was it. I don't know.

Richard 1:50:23

Our house was only what 400 square feet. But I mean we had 800.

Carolyn 1:50:26

400 feet.

Richard 1:50:28

But we had lawyers living there, so I mean it was a nice neighborhood as far as that went.

Carolyn 1:50:33

But I mean, you know, we were surrounded with barbed wire, uh, which was that that's a cultural thing there. Uh you can go in the nicest neighborhoods around, and up on top of their walls, which surround their compounds, they have this rolled barbed wire. And uh it's just that's just and then the backyard, we had a a wall that was, I don't know, way over my head, eight, ten feet maybe tall.

Richard 1:50:59

There's iguanas running around there.

Carolyn 1:51:01

Yeah, and iguanas and uh parrots living there. Um but the people were very very pleasant to be around. They um this is one of their customs. They might have an appointment with you at three o'clock, but they're talking with somebody at 2 50, and that person was there first, they will not stop talking to you until you're ready. Unless in the beginning you say, I can talk with you for 10 minutes, but then I've got an appointment.

Richard 1:51:35

They've taught us to set a limit on it. You don't have a 10 minutes, you don't go 10 minutes and say, Oh me, I forgot I gotta go somewhere. You gotta be up front. No, that person in front of you.

Carolyn 1:51:45

You gotta be very clear.

Richard 1:51:46

That's the number one person most important person in the world to you right now.

Carolyn 1:51:50

And if you don't tell them that, then and they they may end up staying for a couple of meals. And you're welcome to stay, by the way, if you want to stay. Don't mean that.

Tom 1:51:59

I was thinking, I wonder if I'm doing that right now.

Carolyn 1:52:01

No, no, but you know, that's I mean, that's part of their culture. Um, cause it and there are beautiful spots in that country like you just wouldn't believe. But also at the same time, they're the poorest. I mean, we saw houses that had no windows or doors in them. I mean, the weather's fine, it's just the insects and the iguanas and you know, things like that might come in and out and you push them out. But so we saw all of that. But the people that uh were wonderful. And um we were at the Spanish Language Institute and uh teaching and um that was a very interesting experience because um you had the the Spanish, the Cuba um Costa Ricans they were teaching the Spanish and they spoke no English. And then you had uh uh some like us who spoke who taught uh the English classes for the children. Their parents had to take Spanish. They had to um they had to take a year's worth of Spanish, which meant equivalent to one year every month. So by the time they were there for a year, they'd had 12 years of Spanish. It was very concentrated. But the children, they took their regular classes and they took a class of Spanish. So uh, and of course we spoke very little Spanish.

Richard 1:53:29

One of the things that was important to me is we lived with missionaries. Any missionary that's going to uh a Spanish-speaking country has to go there and study for a year Spanish before they get to their assignment.

Carolyn 1:53:44

And not necessarily Baptists, just any denomination.

Richard 1:53:46

And their children need school, so that's why we were there. We were teaching the children. But these were these were missionaries that had literally burnt the bridges behind them. They had committed themselves to the Lord. They had sold everything they had. Their cars um they had to get down to a few trunks, get rid of clothes, everything. Uh it was hard for us to come here, but nothing compared to what what they left behind. And the children were so concerned about selling the car and all of the toys. Uh the kids couldn't even bring but you know, like a couple of toys with them. These are people that sold out for the Lord, and you read the Bible and you hear about the way we should be living as Christians. These people are doing it. It's the first time I've ever been around a big group of people that were really doing it. Just like the Bible says. Um more aware of other people than they were themselves, trying to help other people.

Carolyn 1:54:46

When we came home, though, I remember someone asked me and said, Well, do you wish you had stayed? Would would you like to have stayed on longer? And I said, No, that's not what I was called to do. And they said, Well, do you wish you had gone sooner? I said, No, I was serving the Lord in a different way when I was home. You know, I was teaching or I was doing this, and and um they said, Well, it's cheaper down there to live. And I said, Well, yes, it is. It's it's a whole lot cheaper, but uh, you know, that's not why you go to live somewhere. I said, I don't want to be that far away from family. But the interesting thing, and I don't, you may not have ever heard this while we went there to begin with. Um have you heard that story?

Tom 1:55:29

Tell us.

Carolyn 1:55:30

Well, it the story is that we knew and we'd been playing, we've made a commitment 30 years earlier when we heard an elderly couple talking about their experience, and we said, we want to do that when we retire. And when the time came, you know, we you know, we've got little grandchildren, and and the Lord really let me know, said, We've I've taken all of your concerns away. Both of our parents had passed away, and um um, you know, and so we need and and you know, say we and then the the answer also came to me that I wouldn't have asked you if this hadn't been what I wanted you to do. I mean, that was so clear to me. But anyway, so we go to the conference in Richmond to see where we're going. We're there for a long weekend, and they have these books where you look through and you you you find out uh well here, they want a teacher or they want this, and they you know, we could do one of these three things. So we go and we ask about them, and they say, well, we'll see if we can find those openings. And um, the only one they came up with You put a restriction. Oh, yeah, I did put a one restriction. I'll go anywhere in the world, any I'll go anywhere in the world but Africa. I said, I absolutely can't stand the heat. And uh we didn't get an assignment, and they it was like an hour before this whole business was gonna end of assigning.

Tom 1:56:59

Oh wow.

Carolyn 1:57:01

And well, maybe it was the day before because I remember I cried that night.

Richard 1:57:05

They made some phones and phone calls in the middle of the night.

Carolyn 1:57:08

Yeah, and I I just cried because I thought the Lord has no place for us, didn't need us. So we go in the next morning and they come up and they say, We have one place for you. Africa Africa. And they said it's in the jungle, and it'll be up on stilts where you live and teach. And uh we went over, there were benches all the way around the huge like gymnasium room, and we sat over there and we said, What do we do? And so we prayed about it, and I finally said, Okay, I'm sure the Lord will take care of my heat problem if he wants us to go there. Within five minutes, we had two other offers.

Richard 1:57:58

Ah, we didn't know it, but they made telephone calls at night all the way down to Costa Rica to see if they could change a situation around.

Carolyn 1:58:07

Well, yeah, and one was India, but they said We wanted to go to India. We thought about that, and uh and but they said if we couldn't go and stay at least two years, it we would not be useful to them because it'd take us that long to adapt to the culture.

Richard 1:58:20

That'd take a year to get used to the culture then.

Carolyn 1:58:23

And so then they came in right away and said we have Costa Rica, but it's one little hitch because we were only gonna go for what six months or something.

Richard 1:58:31

We were first going for six months and then it was nine months.

Carolyn 1:58:36

Well, they talked us into it and they said, could you the school year runs eight months? And we said, fine.

Richard 1:58:46

And then I think I think we stayed for 11 months, and then I found out that if you stayed there for 12 months, you didn't have to pay any taxes. Uh-huh. So every at every turn, we just had to add another month or so. So at the last minute six months and ended up.

Carolyn 1:59:02

At the last minute, we were painting and cleaning and dusting and just to get that extra month in.

Richard 1:59:08

We were joking with each other and thought, I bet you the Lord knew that all along.

Carolyn 1:59:13

He's having a lot of fun with us right now. And and another couple did the same thing when they found out.

Richard 1:59:19

But um We've been very fortunate.

Carolyn 1:59:21

And that was a real life-changing experience. It really truly was.

Tom 1:59:27

I was gonna say, maybe one good story from Costa Rica, like a specific moment that stands out.

Carolyn 1:59:35

Well, there's a killer bees. There's a I don't know if that's a spiritual thing, but one of the things um I was talking with one of the young couples that had I think two little children. And I just mentioned to them, because I knew they were getting ready to go into a hard situation, um, because they were finishing up their year. And um I said, well, I said, you know, I pray for each one of your couple. We each one of you talking about the couples that were in our denomination, uh, because they're the ones I knew. I said, I pray for each one of you all every day. And I thought she was gonna break down and cry. She says, You don't know how much that means to me. Like, you know, I maybe we can do it now. People are praying for me. And I and I began to realize what a power uh there is, not only in praying for people, but let them know you're praying for them. So I I think that that really made an impact on me. I mean, if she was talking about it making an impact on her, but I was the one that was impacted by that. So it was, and I and the children were wonderful. I I was impressed, but we had prayer time every morning, and the children would pray for their parents, you know, that they'd be able to learn the Spanish or that that they would, like you said, be able to sell the car or you know, whatever that they needed to have done. So it was we learn from that's children teaching. So, you know, you can learn from all ages.

Richard 2:01:11

We can learn more than I reckon what we gave, but yeah. To live with the missionaries, to see the kids how involved they were in in the spiritual world and what was really going on.

Carolyn 2:01:24

And they came from a lot of different backgrounds.

Richard 2:01:26

I reckon to me personally it was a matter of committing to it, you know. The Lord has told me before, you ought to take a bag of groceries over this company. Com this family, and I'm thinking, I don't want to do that. I'll write them a check or something. Yeah. And anyway, finally it's so strong you just go ahead and do it. It's that kind of thing. But committing to a year in a foreign country that you don't know anything about and can't speak the language.

Carolyn 2:01:54

We didn't even know where it was. We had to look it up on a map.

Richard 2:01:57

I just think you didn't tell them we could commit it to a year in Costa Rica. I leaned over to Carol. I said, Where's Costa Rica? I think it's down south somewhere. And we found a map on the wall, remember that?

Tom 2:02:12

Yeah. Oh wow.

Richard 2:02:13

But anyway, for me, uh committing to that was a step forward. And that was also a step forward in personal faith. Faith proof.

Tom 2:02:23

And so for you, like you were saying, oh, I'd rather write a check. You had donated like financially, but you had never donated like your time like on that scale and and had committed not just money, but like you yourself, you know, to getting involved uh uh the Lord doesn't call you up and say you I want you to commit to a year in Costa Rica.

Richard 2:02:49

He starts you off with getting a bag of groceries. He starts you off by um doing something in church real small.

Carolyn 2:02:58

Um Faith builds.

Richard 2:03:00

And faith builds. It it's a a cumulative thing. And if if you get to the point where you're thinking, I can't I just don't have time to do that. I mean, that's a good program, I don't have time. And you get a strong feeling that you ought not to be doing it. Um but then when you step forward and you find out the the f the glory of it, the blessing of it, the building of faith, that just accumulates year after year after year after year. Until you can go into surgery and feel totally peace. Wow. Preach preach on, preach on.

Carolyn 2:03:39

And you know, along with all of that too, that doesn't mean you're expected to do everything that comes along. You know, because the church can be very, very demanding. And and I mean there have been times when I've told people, no, I'm sorry, I can't do that. And they look at me, you're not gonna help us with this? And I say, I'm I I and I don't give them excuses, but they don't know what I'm doing, maybe. But um, but I you tend to know where to place your time and efforts.

Tom 2:04:15

Well, with my startup, I've kind of burnt myself out at times and I've worked way too hard and I can't sustain that, you know, and then I have to take you know some time to recover from working too hard. And so I'm sure it's the same with you can do that in church too with religion. Yeah, you gotta do as much as you can, but it's gotta be sustainable.

Carolyn 2:04:33

Yeah.

Tom 2:04:33

Yeah. If you're not putting your own mask on first, like in the airplane, you can't help other people, I guess, you know. But there's a time in life for that.

Richard 2:04:40

It's a time of life to get involved in the church and and having children and getting them and getting them dressed and getting them to their Sunday school class and and um Bible studies and all of that stuff. You're working hard and you fall you fall into bed exhausted at night. There's time for that. And that's there's a period in your time when that's proper. It ought to be that way. But it changes. And it changes and it changes, and for us it's still changing.

Carolyn 2:05:12

And your friends change sometimes, and um and yet I think you need Christian fellowship. Um I think that's important. Because I think it kind of keeps you um, what is the word? Accountable com yes, accountable. Thank you. Um I think I think that's good. And um and I think it's good to share your stories. People are very hesitant to sit around like we're doing right now and talking about their faith and their religion and their beliefs.

Richard 2:05:45

It's kinda hard, but the Bible says if the God has blessed you, then tell people about it. And you kinda it's kinda awkward doing it sometimes, talking about yourself and what God's done for you. No, I bet I think that's part of what we're supposed to be doing.

Tom 2:06:00

Like I said, not many people listen to this, but I bet half of the people that listen to it are not Christian. But yeah, like I I didn't want to hide away from this conversation. Maybe they need to hear it. Or maybe they'll just turn it off. I don't care, you know.

Carolyn 2:06:16

Yeah.

Tom 2:06:17

But it's it's not gonna hurt us to put it out there.

Carolyn 2:06:19

Right. Well, if the Lord wants to use it, he will.

Richard 2:06:22

When I teach a Sunday school lesson, my prayer is that uh God will use that Sunday school lesson. And you can't always tell. I've taught lessons that I thought, man, this is one of the best ones I ever got together. This thing really snapped in plates. Everything about it is just outstanding. And the minute that's over, everybody gets up and disappears. Nothing. No feedback. And I have taught a lesson one day that it was so bad that I felt like I ought to apologize to the class before they left. And I think, man, I messed that one up. Nothing went right. And this lady walked down to me with tears running down her eyes. And she said, I just want to bless you and tell you how much that meant to me. And I'm thinking, what is going on here? And it finally dawned on me, it's not about me. It's whether God decides to use that or not. It's it you try to do your best, but it might not even be about what you're saying, you know. It's God is working in it too. And so uh you gotta kinda get a little sensitive of the spiritual part of it. The world is the abstract, it's going along on behind the blanket behind it.

Tom 2:07:42

Yeah, no, I'm not as confident in my faith as you guys are, but I'm sure there's someone out there who will relate to that, and they need to hear that. And, you know, it I don't even need to say anything profound to maybe have a big impact on somebody just because it can be relatable.

Richard 2:07:58

Well, we've we've seen a lot, experienced a lot, and it's still changing. Yeah, we're still growing rapidly, rapidly, right? My I am, as far as understanding the big picture and what it's all about.

Tom 2:08:12

Mm-hmm.

Richard 2:08:14

And and you get to the point where you ask, why me? And I mean it's kind of that thing in war when everybody gets killed and you're still alive, why me? Why did God why have we had such a blessed life? We really have. And it my understanding, and I've asked that question for a long time, is it's because we both came from godly parents and our family, and we had grandparents that prayed for us. Um and the family is so important. God is trying to raise up a group of people. Well, if you go back and start in Genesis in the very beginning, he's doing it with family. One of the first things he uh how do you teach people who God is and what they're supposed to be doing all the way up to Jesus and the spiritual part of it? He started with a family. Yeah. And it flowed through the family. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

Tom 2:09:11

Well, just like you said you were praying for um that one girl and let her know, like, I'm aware that you pray for me, you know. Like I guess we've talked about it before. I just know I just know that my grandparents pray for me. Yeah, and that has an impact on me. Like, I don't know if you're actually moving barriers in my life, but I actually I feel blessed, and I feel like I have to achieve more based on the fact that I have someone like you praying for me, and that I'm lucky enough to have someone care about me. And I hold that with me in a way that gives me more confidence. Maybe it doesn't, like I was saying, move barriers in my life. Maybe I I don't have like an easier road because of it, but at least psychologically speaking, I have more confidence, I have more, I feel um a responsibility to make a stronger impact on the world because I came from such a good family. And I think anyone that does come from a good family or just doesn't come from poverty, you know, they have a responsibility to go do some big impact on the world. And if you're paying attention, you feel that responsibility, you make it a lot further in life, I think. Or you accomplish a lot more or spread the word of God more, whatever your goals are, you can have a bigger impact if you do have a healthy family background.

Richard 2:10:28

God has blessed that whole family. And you guys, you guys have had a whole lot of good families. I'm talking about all the way down to the grandkids. Y'all have had a lot of advantage over and above other people. Um We talk to people now that said, I didn't even know that we're families like that. I mean, y'all do that. We don't even talk with each other now. So if anything, sometimes y'all have had an advantage.

Tom 2:10:58

And if anything, I think some people with a family like this feel embarrassed by it or something. Whereas, you know, I've kind of realized, like, no, like I want to talk to you guys and share this with other people that maybe don't have grandparents to go talk to. Like, you don't have to just feel bad about your blessings or whatever. You gotta you you gotta you gotta use them, you know. And that way you can share with people that don't have this.

Carolyn 2:11:24

I think we've been more open about sharing what's going on in our lives since your surgery. So I think we we've shared with a lot of people that we don't always talk to that often, even. You know, and um, but uh then when we were teaching, when we were in Sunday school class when before COVID, we were always sharing what the Lord had done for us on our last trip to the port. I I was teaching um an elderly ladies class there toward the end. And um one of the ladies heard that I was getting ready to go on an LRB trip. She says, I'm gonna be praying for you. Because she says every time you come home you you're telling us about how the Lord did something to help you out, Gelba Jam, you know. I say, Well thank you. You keep on praying for me. So that was real sweet, you know. But it meant a lot. Yeah.

Tom 2:12:17

The last thing I did want to talk about was the RV and just so you guys spent a lot of time traveling um after co Costa Rica, which I guess is traveling, but what are some of the favorite places you've visited?

Carolyn 2:12:30

Oh my.

Richard 2:12:32

We visited 562 places. Wow. Um when I was when I was 15 years old, we walked through a Dodge dealership, and they had a truck in there that they built a bed in and a sink. And I thought, man, would that be great to have a truck you could drive around and and live in and sleep in. And so from then on I always wanted to get an RV. Um that's another whole story about we we got a good RV that fit us perfect. And we traveled for about eighteen years. And if you add up all of the nights that we were in there, the seven and a half years we spent in the RV. Wow. We we camped in every nation, every state in the United States, except for Hawaii. Couldn't get there. Uh we've we've stayed in every providence and and Province and territory. Territories in Canada and a number of states in Mexico. Um the Lord is blessed. It's a beautiful country. Um we did it we did a lot of reading. We did a lot of reading and um reading religious books and things, reading a lot of Bible. We had time in the RV to do a lot. It's been glorious. I mean we loved it. And the Lord brought it to an end.

Carolyn 2:14:05

Yes, what are some of the most beautiful places and favorites? What would you say?

Richard 2:14:11

Well, the the northwest, I reckon.

Carolyn 2:14:14

Yeah.

Richard 2:14:14

There's a whole lot of stories that great. We've sat on the lakes and looked at some of the beautiful sunsets over the lake. All over the place. We sat in the the the port of Valdez in Alaska, right where the pipeline ends up. One night, right on the water. We we drove into the water, facing the water, so you could see all of the lights of the refinery or what it wasn't a refinery, but something. And it just it just looked like a fairyland, just unbelievable. Glaciers, mountains. Northwest is beautiful. Alberta, British Columbia.

Carolyn 2:14:55

And seeing all the animals and the different birds and all of that, they were so gorgeous. And um and then in Northern California we we walked among the the tall red trees that are huge.

Richard 2:15:09

Wow. You know one part of it that we didn't anticipate at all, uh uh is is taking the grandkids on trips. I mean, we took all three sets of the grandkids on trips every summer for a number of summers.

Carolyn 2:15:28

That's when they were available.

Richard 2:15:31

I mean, if you add up the years that we've had with the grandkids, yeah, friends of else look at it and I say, I just can't believe that. We get to see them once a year, you know, for two days. We spent a lot of time with y'all. Um that was glorious.

Carolyn 2:15:47

Yeah, we did enjoy all that.

Richard 2:15:49

We've done some silly things, sitting around the campfire and doing some oars.

Carolyn 2:15:56

But it's interesting. We did say that the very last night we camped was as pretty, I think, as any spot we've been on, and it was in Virginia.

Tom 2:16:06

Nice.

Carolyn 2:16:06

And it was on um Goose Goose Gooseneck, Goose Point Lake, Goose Point, Philpot Lake, Philpot Lake in Virginia. And we we weren't down on the water like we had been sometimes previously. We were up on this cliff, and you looked across the water, and there's a mountain right there, and a beautiful sunset. And we just had the most gorgeous view.

Richard 2:16:31

That was kind of a spiritual thing. We realized this is it.

Carolyn 2:16:34

Yeah, we knew it was elegant.

Richard 2:16:35

Last night we'd already go to get rid of it.

Tom 2:16:39

It was powerful, it's beautiful. Was a side though? Was a side to part with the RV?

Carolyn 2:16:44

Oh my.

Tom 2:16:44

Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn 2:16:46

Yeah, so many good good memories, and you know, and people coming to our aid that didn't know us, we'd never see them again, you know. And um, and then it it gave us an opportunity to visit longer with with like with you all or out at Robbins. We could stay, and and uh of course we did stay there for a real long time when she needed some help. And um, so that that made it good. We were able to go volunteer with it that we volunteered at uh Glorieta in Mexico.

Richard 2:17:19

When the Bible studies all over the United States, yeah, we did.

Carolyn 2:17:23

Um we found some in Wisconsin that were wonderful. Just you know, you just look them up in um North Carolina, Florida, uh, went to some Bible camps and so we we had some but it wasn't just that it, you know, we got to Oregon, got to see Kent and Paige out there and visited with them. And um but we always stayed in their place, you know. Um, but we got to to be here with them and do things with them. But uh the northwest, on up into Canada, where you have uh I know you've heard your mom talk about Banff. And oh, that is it's some of that area, um, and what's the one north of that? I always have a hard time remembering Jasper. Uh when you see those snow peaks, especially going between the two of them, I think it's called Ice Highway or something like that.

Richard 2:18:18

Something like that.

Carolyn 2:18:19

And it's it's like being in Switzerland. It is absolutely jasper.

Tom 2:18:26

Is there a certain time of year?

Carolyn 2:18:27

That I think it pretty much has snow all the time. And uh it's just absolutely gorgeous. But but you know, there are there are places around the country that that we've just really enjoyed. And um I mean we went up to we went up to two places. We went to where the roads end and the ice roads take over, you know, in the wintertime. Of course we're not there in the wintertime. It's real funny to see a sign across the road, you know, it looks like a dirt road and say roads close for the season.

Richard 2:19:00

For the summer.

Carolyn 2:19:01

And uh, and that's because they're not go up until they're iced over enough for these trucks to take supplies in and out.

Richard 2:19:08

Wow. We said one day, let's go to Canada and just drive north and see how far we can go. That's pretty loose when you can do that. Yeah. And we drove Yellow Knife. Surprisingly, all the people in Canada live close to the the border. You get you get three 300 miles, 400 miles into Canada, and there's not a whole lot up there. We drove a thousand miles before we got to the ice roads. And that's where they stop. You can't go any farther north.

Carolyn 2:19:37

The main highway in the Northwest Territory is a dirt road.

Richard 2:19:42

Yeah.

Carolyn 2:19:43

I mean, it's maybe oiled down or something, but it's it's not a hard surface.

Tom 2:19:47

That's it's kind of scary.

Carolyn 2:19:49

Yeah, and the only thing we saw on this road for hundreds of miles was a small herd of buffalo. And they were just sitting by the side of the road.

Tom 2:19:56

Oh that's kind of cute.

Carolyn 2:19:57

And then we went into uh uh on the eastern side, we went to um Newfoundland and what's the one above it? Newfoundland and what's the name of that one? I can't think of the name. Labrador. Labrador. And we got to where the ice roads start there. Or the I don't know what it's ice roads to say into the road.

Richard 2:20:19

They were cutting a road through there.

Carolyn 2:20:20

Yeah. And uh and we had to actually put the all of the the RVs in our caravan went on a ferry. The same ferry, if you can believe that. Twenty. I mean, this one just says it was 18 wheelers. I've never seen anything like that in my life. It was huge, huge ferry.

Richard 2:20:40

We had to drive that RV down in the the bottom of that ship with 18 wheelers. That was scary.

Carolyn 2:20:46

And and your car towed behind it, and so it was pr that was pretty amazing.

Richard 2:20:51

Probably our most enjoyable trip. Every February after I mean, after we go through Christmas, I mean go through Thanksgiving and Christmas and all of that. In February, we just wanted to get away for a while and rest up. So we'd go down to Tybee Island. Um, not really an impressive place, but it's right on the Atlantic Ocean and right on the Savannah River. And you could you could walk along the beach there. Beautiful, a nice place to go biking. We did a lot of biking down there. They've got a lot of really nice restaurants where people have just gotten tired of the big city and saying um it sounds like they're saying, I'm going to Typee Island and start a gourmet restaurant.

Carolyn 2:21:32

And there's a lot of them, they don't look like much from the outside. You know, they look almost like sea shacks or something.

Richard 2:21:38

Yeah. We didn't go into one of them for about four or five minutes.

Carolyn 2:21:41

I know.

Richard 2:21:42

Where is this?

Carolyn 2:21:43

It's near Savannah.

Richard 2:21:45

Okay.

Carolyn 2:21:45

Yeah, it's it's it's east of Savannah, obviously.

Richard 2:21:48

East of Savannah. People say you can't go east of Savannah, but you can't.

Carolyn 2:21:52

It's a nine miles.

Richard 2:21:54

Take a causeway out to we went down there for a month every year.

Carolyn 2:21:57

Okay.

Richard 2:21:57

Did nothing, read, um, got over the holidays.

Carolyn 2:22:01

Biked and walked and ate.

Richard 2:22:03

And ate and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It takes two to do this, by the way. One can't do it, which is the sad part of a lot of couples. Then we would go over and stay out on a barrier island off of Pensacola. There's a you have to go across two bridges and you get to this barrier island sand, and it just goes very narrow and it goes about eight miles down there. And we would ride down about six miles and camp on that barrier island. And you could walk to the Gulf of Mexico. I mean, it was 200 yards or something. And then you could go on the other side, just uh 200 feet. It was a Gulf of uh Savannah.

Carolyn 2:22:46

Well, no, Caribbean, uh uh the Gulf of Mexico, I guess. I'm not sure what you was called at that point, but anyway, you know what I'm talking about, the that area.

Richard 2:22:54

Yeah, I'm talking about Pensacola.

Carolyn 2:22:56

Yeah, but that was on one side and the Gulf was on the other.

Richard 2:23:00

Right. And we enjoyed walking on the Gulf of Mexico. Pure white sand. It doesn't even look real, it looks more like shoot.

Carolyn 2:23:07

It really does. Y'all probably had that in Tampa, don't you?

Tom 2:23:11

Yeah, I'm on the Gulf side of Florida, so I don't know if it's exactly what you guys were experiencing. We we would wrap beaches.

Richard 2:23:19

It was kind of cool. I was surprised how cool Florida can or Georgia and that can be in February and March. We used to wrap up, put on heavy clothes and go walk on the beach for about six weeks. We enjoyed that.

Carolyn 2:23:33

Yeah.

Richard 2:23:34

Yeah, it stays pretty warm, right? But after a while, it's more than just seeing the Grand Canyon and the mountains and the you know the Manhattan. It's it's just kind of a way of life. It's just it's just like uh total freedom. You said you read a lot, other than the Bible. What's your favorite books? Biographies. What's your favorite biography?

Tom 2:23:59

Um I like biographies a lot too, by the way.

Richard 2:24:01

What's his name?

Tom 2:24:04

Uh The show. Alexander Hamilton.

Carolyn 2:24:08

Alexander Hamilton.

Tom 2:24:10

Oh, okay, okay. Did you like did you like the whole musical they made?

Carolyn 2:24:13

Well, we haven't seen the whole thing. We've seen about half of it.

Tom 2:24:16

Well, yeah, we watched it with Jessica.

Carolyn 2:24:18

Yeah. We watched about half of it.

Tom 2:24:20

Half of it, yeah. But you like his story? Why why his story so much?

Carolyn 2:24:25

It's interesting. Neither one of us liked history or in high school.

Richard 2:24:30

We go up to Robbins in Cincinnati, and they have a half-price bookstore. And every time we were there, I went in and bought some books. And and it's got a lot of the presidential books there. It was Alexander Hamilton, $6 or something, $8. And I'm not sure who he was, but I've heard the name enough. I found out he was on the what $20 bill. We picked it up just unbeknownst, just totally ignorant, and read it. And I have never read.

Carolyn 2:24:57

This was before the musical came out.

Richard 2:24:58

Such a book and such a person. This is before the musical came. He is amazing. Which is another strange thing. We both read this book and all of a sudden the world explodes with Alexander Alton.

Carolyn 2:25:10

That was funny.

Richard 2:25:11

Yeah.

Carolyn 2:25:12

And that's probably one of the best books I've ever read.

Richard 2:25:15

He was a yeah. I'll read it then. Oh, it's He is amazing. He's brilliant. He probably does more with the with the founding fathers than any, maybe any of them. Um he did more than I think Thomas Jefferson. See, we were born in Richmond, so everything's Thomas Jefferson. Well, Alexander Hamilton is. He even had more to do it. I don't know how he did the things he did. Um anyway, you it's a lot of history now. You learn a whole lot about people and also the way this whole country was formed.

Tom 2:25:54

Yeah, I have this one author I really like who wrote a biography on Steve Jobs, um Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, which I haven't read yet, and Albert Einstein. I read three out of four of them. And so I gotta do Benjamin Franklin next. Which one I really like.

Richard 2:26:11

I got him right over here on the shelf. I can't even remember the name of what Isaac, Walter Isaac or something. Isaacson.

Tom 2:26:17

Yeah, the author I'm talking about. Yeah, Isaac. I think so. Yeah, I really like the one about Da Vinci. Da Vinci was crazy smart.

Richard 2:26:24

I haven't read that one.

Tom 2:26:26

It's really, it's really good. It's really good. Yeah. He he was basically like kind of a scientist too, but he was an artist. But he got really into drawing like the human anatomy, like all the he was the first one to ever draw like all the human bones and like detail all of them. And he was always drawing like flying machines and stuff like trying to build flying machines and stuff. So he wasn't just an artist, like he would had a he was they call him the curious man, the most curious man that's ever lived. And um, yeah, it was just really interesting to think, think about being alive at that time and walking around and trying to think about like you know, science before science was really established, you know.

Carolyn 2:27:04

Um was he the one that we went to his home in France?

Richard 2:27:10

That was a music man, wasn't it?

Carolyn 2:27:12

No, no, I'm talking about the one that had all the drawings and the the models of things. Mike Vin. Mike Vin.

Richard 2:27:19

You see people like that and you wonder how in the world do they do it? I mean, this what they're doing is not in textbooks. And and I've been I've been in NASA and I've seen some people too. I just I'm floored. I mean, we're at the state of the art and they are over on the other side of it. How do they know how to do that stuff? And my only answer I've ever been able to come up with is the great ones seem to know how to do it. I have no idea how they do it. The great ones just seem to know how to do it. Alexander Hamilton was that way.

Tom 2:27:50

Yeah, I'll read that one. I really like reading biographies because um that's one of my favorite readings. Especially about star like um like entrepreneurs, but you know, it helps to study a bunch of entrepreneurs because you never know what you're gonna run into and how to do your company, like a new company. Um the more you learn about other people's mistakes and the things that they've tried, just a different way of thinking about things.

Richard 2:28:13

There's a good book you might like on um um what's the investor guy? Oh, oh, oh. Keith McDonald's. Um, I just gave billion dollars to Warren Buffett.

Carolyn 2:28:27

Warren Buffett's Warren Buffett.

Richard 2:28:29

Read Warren Buffett's book. Okay. Yeah. Warren Buffett's book. Um it's not all it's not about financing, by the way. Okay. It it's about him. He did you're talking about somebody that's kind of ahead of the game. It's things he did as a kid. I mean, he was making money and creating things and thinking beyond beyond the book from an early early age.

Tom 2:28:55

Yeah. I think it's also important to read biographies too, because it helps you think about your own life in those terms and what you're doing, and okay, what is this chapter of my life gonna look like? Am I proud of it?

Carolyn 2:29:07

Well, you know, when we were traveling, we came we started seeing these presidential homes and um libraries, you know, like the uh I guess the first one we went to was maybe Eisenhower.

Tom 2:29:18

Eisenhower.

Carolyn 2:29:19

And that sort of turned us on we because they had a uh, you know, they had a bookstore or gift store or something, and they had a book on him. And so we started reading him while we were, you know, camped in that area. And then we so then we started looking to find out where president libraries and were, and uh went to some of them. Some of them are pretty remote, or their homes maybe, and then we would read along the line, and then we found out we were camped right on the Missouri and right across on the other side of the river was a museum to Lewis and Clark. And so we went over there and got the book and bought a in a bunch of book, and we started following the trail, Lewis and Clark, all the way out to the origin, you know. And that's cool.

Richard 2:30:00

All the way to the end of the source. Source.

Carolyn 2:30:04

Which was a spring. Which was a spring.

Richard 2:30:07

That's cool. We had to walk down, we had to walk down um a little bit down the side of the mountain. There was a little spring coming out of the side of the mountain, and that was the beginning of the river. I said, take a picture, and we forgot the camera camera with us. Oh no.

Carolyn 2:30:23

Yeah, I wanted to take a picture or a drawing, man. I can't remember which it was, but it showed either Lewis or Clark standing with a foot on each side of the Missouri River at that point.

Richard 2:30:35

It was a ratchet kind of thing. We'd read it read about uh Franklin Roosevelt. Well, you read about Franklin Roosevelt and you found out he goes to Warm Springs. Then we go down to Warm Springs and down there, and when we read about him, he wants to see his home. When we see his home, he wants us to read about him some more. You know, and we followed, we followed Franklin, the the Roosevelt family, all the way from Warm Springs, Georgia, up to their home in Hyde Park, up to Campabella, which was their summer home in Canada.

Tom 2:31:07

Yeah.

Richard 2:31:07

And just a fascinating study. But we would read and go look at the place. And just kind of let one feed the other.

Carolyn 2:31:15

Yeah.

Richard 2:31:15

Just ratchet back and forth. That's a cool way to visualize it.

Carolyn 2:31:18

Yeah, we're just. And you know, you sometimes you read about these and it just makes you ambitious to keep going, you know. There's still work to be done or or something to be done.

Richard 2:31:30

Yeah, a lot of inspiration, right.

Carolyn 2:31:32

Yeah.

Richard 2:31:32

I tried to read the history because I didn't think I got much in college on that. Like I said, I was highly trained and fully educated.

Tom 2:31:40

I'm like very focused on the future, you know. I like technology and stuff like that, but I've realized that in order to like elaborate on what society is, you need to understand how we got here. And so I look I've been reading in the past year a lot about um, or just a lot of biographies and learning a lot about history because you know, if I would do want to have an impact on the future, I think you I gotta understand like how we arrived here and the patterns and trends that are already on the way. Like, you know, certain aspects of the future are inevitable based on things that have already happened. And you know, if you want to impact them, you gotta understand these things that are already in motion, you know. Well, you know, you can read about the Titans too, you know.

Richard 2:32:20

The Yeah, they were um the uh Rockefellers, Rockefellers, the Vanderbilt, the Morgans, the JP Morgan.

Carolyn 2:32:31

And the German one that I was so good at. I tell you, and and Bill is so into history. I mean, anything doing with the Confederate war, which I'm not interested in reading that, but he very he's given me a lot of books on World War II, and I never thought I would find those interesting. But I mean, until I read one of the books he gave me, I never knew that in World War II we had German submarines right off the coast here.

Tom 2:33:02

Wow.

Carolyn 2:33:06

I didn't know. I that was never taught. If they taught us things like that, maybe I would have perked them together, you know. But um Yeah, uh and we had people who were at Buckrow Beach look spiders spiders for them.

Richard 2:33:23

And uh I never did I used to be a spider for a foreign airplanes coming over I reckon it was TJ, up on the roof. We used to go up on the roof and report any kind of odd-looking plane that was flying around. Wow. Well sorry, I'm stretching.

Carolyn 2:33:41

So well, you know all the history.

Tom 2:33:46

Yeah, I think we're almost done. I got I got questions, if that's okay. Sure. Sure.

Carolyn 2:33:50

It's your time.

Tom 2:33:51

Yeah, yeah. I mean, might as well take do a long episode while I'm here, right? Um, but just the last two I don't know if we talked about this on the podcast. The when I got here, but happy anniversary. Right? It's your 58th anniversary. Yeah. And so I just I'm curious um on both standpoints, like from a health standpoint, um, what do you guys think that you did to live healthy lives and physically just kind of uh keep bodies uh healthy and you know people don't live so what do you guys think that you did right in order to maintain lives and that um most people aren't married for fifty-eight years either. So what do you think in terms of your relationship you did to keep a healthy relationship going?

Carolyn 2:34:37

Put the other first.

Tom 2:34:38

What?

Carolyn 2:34:39

Put the other person first.

Tom 2:34:41

Put the other person first. I mean that's called love.

Carolyn 2:34:44

Yeah, it is.

Tom 2:34:45

But not everyone does that.

Carolyn 2:34:46

And Richard's really good at that. He's very good at that. Um uh I I don't know, you you you certain you have to keep a balance in your life. I mean you certainly have to well one of our themes has always been everything in moderation, but that may not be completely correct.

Richard 2:35:08

That's an old Baptist phrase.

Carolyn 2:35:10

But uh, I mean, you know eat right, eat try to eat balanced diets and that as far as health is concerned. But I think you need to have relationships too. And I think with us, family is our most important. In in the mission field, they call them your people group, whatever group you're working with. And we kind of conclude our people group is f now at this stage of life is is our family.

Tom 2:35:36

If you have a reason to keep going.

Carolyn 2:35:39

Well, and it's a connectedness there that um I'm very interested in all of you and what you're doing, and um and I I like to hear about you know what people are doing in the family and um how they're doing. But also I think you need friends. And um friends that you can it's good if you have friends that you can share with. Uh right now we're that's a little harder because we haven't been able to make friends here, you know, like we're used to having.

Tom 2:36:11

Um either important, by the way. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn 2:36:14

Oh yeah, that'd be the same thing. People are afraid to get with anybody. Um and uh I mean, we're just now I went into somebody's house just two days ago and just two doors down, and I've never been in there, but um you know, it's just that's where we've been. But I you know, and all that will change with time. Um but I do think that's important.

Richard 2:36:41

Well, one thing I think is important, and I was talking about Carolyn's four roommates in college. All four of them married their high school um sweetheart boyfriend, sweetheart. And and are still married. And they're they've all probably got this many years in.

Carolyn 2:37:01

Yeah.

Richard 2:37:01

Um part of that I think is we back back when we were coming along, you got married younger and you weren't quite as set in your ways. I worry about the new generation that's waiting until they're thirty or so to get married. Uh and those two people have been they've developed their own ideas about what they want to do and where they want to go, etc. etc. etc. Uh we just grew up together. I mean we sat out on the back porch at sixteen years old and talked about life and what do we want to do. We kind of um we kind of agreed on a whole lot of things before we got married.

Tom 2:37:43

Yeah.

Richard 2:37:43

Uh the other thing is we were from two very compatible families, and that's getting harder too. Because I mean, we we met each other and we only lived a mile or so apart. Nowadays, and we both grew up in the same city.

Carolyn 2:38:03

Went to the same schools.

Richard 2:38:04

Went to the same school. Um we had a lot of history. We we know it. Nowadays, if you wait till you're really late to get married, you're marrying somebody that might have grown up in Colorado and somebody that might have grown up in Manhattan.

Carolyn 2:38:18

Or India.

Richard 2:38:19

Or India. And they're gonna have a hard time. They're gonna have just cultural problems. I mean, it's it's it's not that a problem, they just used to doing life in a different way.

Carolyn 2:38:29

I have to tell you something funny along that line. When we had just started dating, we were both 15, and you might have been 16.

Richard 2:38:36

Still too many families. No, but this is funny.

Carolyn 2:38:39

And um Grandma B was from the old school. I mean, back when she was dating, they rode in a carriage and her father went in the front seat with the reins in his hand, you know, or the wagon or whatever it was. Well, so when we had just started dating, and um Mama wasn't too sure about this. You know, she was kind of skeptical. This she didn't know this this kid because he he was kind of young, you know, 15 or whatever. Anyway, he she found out that his grandmother was her Sunday school teacher at the first church they went to when they got married. After that, he's okay. All based on his grandmother.

Richard 2:39:25

That's good. Use what you can.

Carolyn 2:39:29

So he got accepted right quick.

Tom 2:39:32

I bet she was uh one of your favorite grandmothers from from then on. He was praying for me the day I walked in.

Carolyn 2:39:37

Oh, and she thought Richard was wonderful. She really did. She she really liked Richard and uh protected him. Even when he was away in service, she did not want to be.

Richard 2:39:49

You're done with your mama now.

Carolyn 2:39:50

Yeah, grandma Betty. She occasionally I'd go out on a blind date, somebody, you know, say, Well, Carolyn, Richard's gone. Why don't you come along and date so-and-so? I've got this extra boy coming to town with my boyfriend, you know. And I said, Okay. Grandma would get so upset. She said, Well, what about Richard? I said, Mom, it's nothing. I'm just going to the movies with this guy. Very protective of him.

Tom 2:40:14

Well, good. I'm glad you listened to her.

Carolyn 2:40:16

Yeah.

Tom 2:40:16

Yeah. It all worked out.

Carolyn 2:40:18

Yeah.

Tom 2:40:19

Well, yeah, thank you guys so much for sharing your stories. Um, I love you both a lot.

Carolyn 2:40:24

Oh, thank you. That's true.

Tom 2:40:25

Yeah, I'm glad we got to do this. This was awesome. Well, it appreciates you doing it.

Carolyn 2:40:30

Nice, nice time for us, that's for sure. Just being with you is nice, just being together.

Tom 2:40:35

Yeah, no, it was it was great for me too.

Carolyn 2:40:37

No special.

Tom 2:40:39

Well, we're gonna shut it off.