945 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a1bda66d14e6843e00210a641a2191b2.pdf 7da93ae59ade883956fd2b01e582b03b PDF Text Text Speaking Out Western Michigan’s Civil Rights Histories Interviewee: Terrence Harris Interviewers: David Bauer, Eric Pete, Stephanie Homan and Victoria VanDragt Supervising Faculty: Melanie Shell-Weiss Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 3/23/2012 Biography and Description Terrence is African American and Atheist. He grew up in a neighborhood that is predominately White, Christian. He discusses religion. Transcript The person were interviewing today is Terrence Harris from Grandville, Michigan. We’re going to start by having Terrence tell him about himself. Let’s see. I grew up in Wyoming. shoot. I was born in Grand Rapids. I lived there for about three years, then came to Wyoming which is like a bio-center. Then, I lived there for about eleven years, then moved to good ole Grandville. that was probably when I would say I became the person who I am now because of moving to Grandville. Did you participate in any activities in Grandville, extracurriculars, sports? Yep! I played basketball. I actually got cut from the 7th grade team in Wyoming when I was in Newhaugh. Which is pretty sucked, (Laughter). But, actually I liked Grandville after I made the team in eighth grade. So, I played basketball in high school for all four years, and I played track in high school for two years. How was the atmosphere for sports in Grandville? The atmosphere for sports? Well, pretty good. Not too bad. I would say as far as during the games or during the practices. Like what do you mean? Sure. Now lets just jump right in here. We’re interviewing you because you may have been discriminated. Can you tell us why you may have discriminated in a community like Grandville? Ah. (Laughter). It’s a funny thing and its ironic at the same time. Because when I went to Grandville I was instantly like because I was black which is very, very weird. (Laughter). It’s like “oh, you’re black you’re cool”, and I was like what’s up. (Laughter). I don’t know if it was more discrimination than just an annoying stereotype. I would probably say that was the biggest thing in Grandville. Was stereotypes and, then once certain people get close to you, like a lot of my white friends, when they get to a certain Page 1 �comfort level, then they’ll start to say certain discriminatory things that does not sound so hurtful since I know them. I guess they were just testing the waters to see how I’d react., eighth grade I was very immature. Ninth grade, I was very immature. Tenth grade, ehh. Eleventh grade, I just didn’t give a fuck anymore (Laughter). Twelfth grade, is the person I have become now. Did you ever call your friends out on things they said that may have seemed discriminatory? Let’s see. I would say I have a few times. I will try to not let it get to me. I wanna keep my composure and let them know that I’m not gonna flip out based on something like that. But, you know, after doing a lot of research, a lot of Africans will explode on a situation because of a lost identification of themselves. So, when they’re being branded, you know, something negative, they’ll reject it of course in an ignorant type of way. Like, so I saw this film and this black chick was tripping on a professor because he cannot prove why evolution kills black people. Did you see it? I heard. I actually was gonna watch it but my video player wasn’t working. I saw that and I was like oh my God are you serious and this is why people think all black people are the same because chicks like this. Just put her in jail (Laughter). So, even though some of the way treated had positive connotation did it bother you that you were treated differently at all? Oh yeah! Even though it appeared to be positive? Oh yeah! Yep! There is always gonna be that like üh why is it me type factor. Kinda playing the victims card. it was kind of more of a them getting under skin but I won’t let them get under my skin type of thing. I’m not gonna show that it’s bothering me. So, I’m just gonna keep it cool, keep calm, collective; you know, stuff like that. What were some things that your friends said that may have offended you without them knowing it. Oh man! Just the typical things. Fried chicken, big kool-aid, watermelon. I don’t like watermelon. A lot of people get surprised when I tell them that. Like people say, “why don’t you sag your pants?”. I don’t wanna sag my pants! (Laughter). And that’s why! Does every black person have to sag their pants (Laughter) in order to be black? It seems like there is a certain level of ignorance you have to be in order to earn the title of being black which I was like I’m not gonna snoop down to that level, because I plan on being successful. One of the biggest things that drove me to where I am now, is I told myself when I was twelve years old I would not be another black statistic. You know, going to jail, selling drugs, ain’t got nothing, hardly ain’t got a job. I said flick that! Why would I want to choose that way. So it sounds like you’re almost using your race as a motivating factor for you? Oh yeah. If I were to grow up in Wyoming, if I were to stay there I wouldn’t be the same. I probably would be just like another person that went to Wyoming Park. Not saying that there is not successful Page 2 �people or successful Africans that come or have came from Park, but Grandville was a huge motivator for me. What prompted the move for your family? My mom wanted a better educational system. Wyoming Park did not provide it and my mom saw that and said I guess we’ll go to Grandville, and I was like I don’t want to and she said too bad! Let’s go! (Laughter). All of my friends were in Wyoming, so I didn’t want to do a complete new start, but my mom saw the opportunity and she went out and decided for my sister and myself, and I’m very grateful that she did. Because I don’t know, to be honest I’d probably just be in jail if I would have stayed in Park. A lot of my friends in Park are in jail, selling drugs, ain’t doing much with shit to put it in blatancy terms. I’m a very blunt person. I tell it like it is. I don’t hold back. If you see my Facebook statuses, I don’t hold back. You know Eric. Very true! I don’t play. I’m gonna tell it like it is. Because I don’t believe in holding stuff back. Tm not gonna get to the core issue if, you know, I’m softening it up a bit. We’ll touch on Facebook later (Laughter). Now staying on the subject of education, have teachers ever treated you differently or made assumptions about you. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I would say even a little bit in Wyoming too actually. The thing is, with the teachers I didn’t like, it was kind of like I’m gonna try to work with you, but if you be disruptive a few times I’m gonna brand you, point you out every time, and get you nowhere! (Laughter). And I was a hard headed little boy. Oh my gosh. I feel sorry for the teachers that dealt with me. I’m not even gonna lie. I was a hard headed, knuckle-headed, bad...whatever. I didn’t care and then it carried on to seventh grade when I left, came to Grandville, and there were a few teachers. I’m not sure, I don’t know. Have you ever had Ms. Badgearna? No I don’t know. It was very I think she just hated us all. I mean she hated everyone equally. You guys can blank that one out (Laughter). No, Ms. Badgeama was really cool teacher. I saw her a few years ago and all smiles, nothing bad. High School, wasn’t that bad. I think,, they treat everybody just like it was a college course. Do your work or you’re not gonna get shit. Just plain and simple. High School wasn’t too bad. I think probably Elementary was worst. Would you like to go into Elementary at all? Elementary. Oh man! I remember one memory I have is; a friend of mine, Erika reminded me of this story the other day. I was in class, her name was Ms. Norman, and I just saw her at my job last week. Funny that that happened. Erika, a friend of mine, last week Wednesday told me about that story and reminded. The very next day, I went to my job and I went to get some tea because I love getting tea, free tea, you know come on! And I go to my job and saw her and said holy shit, we were just talking about you last night. And what ended up happening is she, I don’t remember much, like I said I was Page 3 �immature. You know, I had discipline but I chose not to show that I had that discipline. I wanted to act out. I was a little kid. I was a little black kid. Not too many little black kids, you know, stick out, can’t blend in. You’re already not gonna blend it when you’re black (Laughter). I remember I told her, I was like, ‘Man, screaming, you’re just doing this because I’m black”! And I was screaming and I was like crying and shit, but I don’t remember too much but I probably did that. Let’s see, we actually had a black principal in seventh grade, which wasn’t too bad. I think that was one of the only incidents that I’ve had. There were a few others of course, but I don’t remember it too much. Any incidents with coaches? Coaches. Or assumptions? Ahh, no. Fifth grade; there was actually like six black people on the team my fifth grade year. First time I played basketball. seventh grade, nope. I just didn’t make the team seventh grade because I missed the first day of practice. Eight grade I made the team so no prejudice remarks there. Then ninth grade throughout senior year, I performed. So, I don’t think there was much of any prejudice or....I was gonna say prejudice and racism at the same time (Laughter). Pracism! (Group Laughter) Going outside the walls of Grandville high school, in the city of Grandville itself, going to stores, gas stations, anything like that? (Laughter). Was it different for you or tough for you? Oh! I love it! I love when I went to stores in Grandville man! Those mother flickers always think I’m about to steal something. (Laughter). I come up in the store, and I carry my backpack with me everywhere because I’m a huge reader. I read anytime. You never know when you’re gonna get a book. You can be in the store when someone’s you know robbing it and I’ll just kickback and read a book; your ass is going to jail (Laughter). You know I carry bags with me everywhere... .or books in my bag. Oh man, and Grandville’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s extremely prejudice. God! (Laughter). I can tell you stories of my brothers man, all throughout. It’s,, you gotta watch the eyes, and you can watch it if you’re by any African American; watch like other people’s eyes and you’ll start to see them, or use your peripheral vision, if you’re really good at that, and you’ll see them tend to look maybe do it again, look again and they’ll just do a little of it a few times. I think it’s subconscious. I don’t think they try to do it, but when Africans are portrayed on T.V. as nothing but thugs, gangsters, criminals, drugdealers, thieves, you know, of course they’re gonna think that then. That’s how they portray us in the media. So, that’s the first thing that they think. Any particular stories that you would wanna share? That stands out? Page 4 �Oh, that stands out?, I wouldn’t say Walmart. They pretty much hate everybody. It’s so depressing there. My sister used to work there. It was so depressing! She’d come home with stories and stories. I would say, probably like the local stores. Not too much the local stores. They have to have, or I think they have to have diversity there. So, they just deal with it. Oh! Jenison, good old Jenison. Oh yeah! Everything in Jenison. I ain’t even gonna label something. Everything in Jenison! A little bit in Hudsonville; not too bad. Not that I’ve seen so far because I’m hardily ever out there. I would say those three areas, and my house is right dabbed in the middle too. Did your family experience any of the discrimination or prejudice like right when you moved in to like the neighborhood for example? Not when I moved to when I first moved in, oh man those were probably the worst places I’ve ever lived actually. Not because of prejudice but the landlord was just awful, horrible. In Grandville? Yeah, Grandville! That was the first place we stayed there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom that mad before. My mom is a black Christian lady. (Laughter). They’re supposed to be happy, you know, according to what you see on T.V. of course, and (Laughter). Man, it was horrible. My mom. I was like, “Mom, if you want, I will find somebody, get some drugs, put them in his mailbox and call the cops on him so he can go to jail. But that was just because he was such a shitty landlord. I would say, I don’t think I had any problem with like prejudice. It was more the stereotypes. Of course, you know, we had a few ladies my neighbor downstairs, she used stereotypes. She was like, she said she was trying to hook me up with her daughters, and she was like my daughters real cute and she likes black men. I was like, ok! Cool! I’m ironically black. Did you say that because I am black? How about, she likes an intelligent man. A man who knows how to handle his business; that’s mature; that can handle his own. Nahh, she just would like a black a man. (Laughter). Stuff like that. Like I said, it would just get under my skin, or not anymore. But, I would just brush stuff like that off. Not so much at the place I live now. Oh my gosh! There was this guy who was Hispanic that made the best steak though! Oh my gosh! His name was Robbie too. His steaks were so good! He got deported, but I was so mad, I was so mad. (Laughter). Where do you live now? I live right down the street from where I used to live; Brook Meadow. It’s not too bad. yeah actually that place is not too bad at all actually; it’s a pretty nice place. I don’t think I’ve dealt with anything dramatic there. Now, we met up and our group met up and talked a little bit before this interview, and you told us about a story about what happened in East Grand Rapids. Oh yeth! East Grand Rapids. Yes! Can you tell us about that? (Laughter). Oh man! We came. It was my brother and I. Will, and another guy named Will whom I met for the first time that day; a mutual friend of ours, Sky, and we’re in East Town, you know, just chilling at Page 5 �2 o’clock in the morning. And then all of a sudden, you see like one cop roll by. No big deal. You know, they’re just chilling. They’re always watching the area. Then, another one comes. It’s like 2:01. Another comes. A few more, wow! Something’s going on tonight. (Laughter). So we, you know are just joking around, stating the obvious, but joking about it. And,, they’re just there! They’re not bothering us, they’re just there, and that was the most annoying part. I hate when like cops try to be, like they know that you know that they’re watching, but they’re like you can’t do anything about it. Watch me not do something about it! (Laughter). Man, if I knew my rights back then I would’ve been like excuse me officer is there a problem? No? Pardon me for saying this but get your ass up out of here, or something like that. Man, I think someone probably called the cops on us. We were just chilling though. No, nothing. Weren’t making any trouble, just two in the morning; nothing! But they feel the need for four PT Cruisers or bring like the SWAT team or something. Mr. President, Mr. President! (Laughter). On the subject of that, have you ever had any run-ins with the law, or have you ever had to deal with police officers? Oh my gosh! Look at Grandville man! Of course! Of course! I hate Grandville cops! I’ll get that on the record. I hate Grandville cops. They are the most prejudice mother fuckers I’ve ever met. I got, I say that and when I say that it bs me so much because that gets under my skin. They take their power for abuse so much, and all the one’s I’ve met so far are complete pricks, assholes, and they’ve probably crash their cars a few times from being pricks. I remember let’s see, my brother Carlos was with me when this happened. We were just crossing a bridge and this guy in a PT Cruiser pulls us over and tells us that someone called the cops on us for throwing a rock over the highway. I said, none of us threw a rock over the highway. Backup comes. You know, of course they’ll come for a few black people. Check this out too. Side-note, when you see someone get pulled over, check to see if they’re black. More than likely, you’ll see another cop with them, but if they’re white, only one car. I’ve never seen that happen. I’ve never been around for that so far, anytime. Just watch, Just watch! But, so, the guy pulls up and they’re trying to t us against each other saying all these lies and stuff, saying he said this and he said that. They were trying to get us to commit to something that we did not do., something that I am not a fan of at all, you know, good ole divide and conquer technique. That was one experience. Another one was when it was the whole fam. Me, my brother Carlos, Will, Mo, other Carlos, my cousin, my sister, a few other people, and we were pretending. Now we went to Steak and Shake. We always go to Steak and Shake. They know us there. We practically pay the bills. We went there that often. We pretended to jump our friend Will because you know that’s how we do; we always play around. We actually went to Steak and Shake that night because all of our hearts were broken. My ex cheated on me. My boy, my brother Mo, his ex cheated on him. Will, he, well he was just happy. He was always the happy one! He’s always happy! Never gets anything bad happen to him. I hate that. Well I guess I don’t hate it, but fuck him! (Laughter). But so we were there for that reason, and later on that night, like 3 PT Cruisers, I’m talking about spotlights, flashlights, yelling. Like, dude that’s not necessary! They,, I guess someone in Steak and Shake called saying that we jumped someone and ran, but I was like no! They know us. They know us. We tipped pretty good there too We stopped tipping that night. (Laughter). But yeah they were a bunch of complete pricks. I got pulled over No! This actually happened a month ago. I was walking home from work. I saw a PT Cruiser drive down and then t around and drive back. Page 6 �I’ve seen them six times by the time I walked over the highway. Then, I saw another one because I was taking a note of the number behind the truck, and it was a different one. They went by another three times. Then, when was just getting across the street from where I lived, I saw another one come by and I was like really. I called my mom and I was like, if you don’t see my tonight that’s because I’m in jail about to beat some cops ass! Like that is not even necessary to go back and forth almost ten times. hat’s just, that’s just, I don’t know! Makes abrother wanna really do something! That, that, can you imagine how enraged I felt? To be you know kind of pointed out that strongly. Fuck the Grandville cops! So how many times, have you counted having any problems with police total? Psht, 8 that I can say off the top of my head. How many times have you guys actually done anything wrong? Once And what was that? smokin and drivin. Only time. What happen, would you say you were treated (Yeah) worse because... Actually no that was the nicest cop I have ever met from Grandville. He said he was going to let me go, until his prick boss showed up. And I know when he who he was too, he was the other one, he was the guy that pulled me over that night at Steak and Shake. He was the one that was yelling at us. I remember because of his mustache. (snicker) Yeah that was him, wow, I just now realized that. Buth yea it is, it is besides Grand Rapids cops, Grandville has to be the worst. What about Grand Rapids police makes them worse? I would say because their downtown, were a lot of the Africans are. And they, I feel like they have such a mindset that whenever you see a black dude in the hood, they say ‘get him, he is up to no good’. Grandville give at least one percent of the downtown, at least, Er,, Grand Rapids cops none. Yeah. When I actually went to jail,h, last year forh smoking and drivin, heh, one of the guys that I was with in my holding cell he said that we wasn’t doin nothing. He just got,h, for jay walkin. Jay walkin, Two in the morning. Two in the morning! Jay walking! For real? Take him to jail for that? WOAH! I didn’t know that you get pulled over for that. Haha I thought the most that they could give you was like a ticket. Like a fine. I think he didn’t know his rights, I think that what it was. I think heh,h, did a little selfincriminating himself, maybe he had a pass, maybe he had a warrant or something. But,h, but for jay walking. What is that? So go to jail, I was like dang man. When did you start paying attention to your rights and like your experiences with the cops and being able to stick up for yourself? Page 7 �Umm it was, man, it was like last year, soh, I would say after the judge after he told me aft... I would say, NO! it was my first probation check-up. I just got off probation yesterday actually Wooh! Congratulations. Thank you very much, never wanna do that system again.I would say right after probation because you know in my mind, Yeah. I should say in my mind I chose to justify what I did. You know that I shouldn’t happen driving while I was high but still don’t let, don’t even let me get started on why it should be illegal. Don’t let me get started. I will run, I will run every single fact. You know to Chad, who was my probation officer, why marijuana should not be legal. Or Illegal or at least decriminalized because it is just a herb. It will beat out the pharmacy industry (Snap) just like that, because you can grow it. Boom. There goes all these pharisaical industries that making millions of dollars off that. You know to keep us sick constantly. Now how many deaths has marijuana had, Zero. How many from overdosing on pills? I can’t count on my hands because I don’t have that much. What they say like ten people, or at least like 10 people die every hour from overdosing on pills? That’s a fucked up statistic right there. NowI started paying attention to after that, that mindset. And I was like, h something’s not right. Why are we, why am I kind of in this bondage right here. This is a system set up to fail. Not just for Africans, but for minorities. Or I wouldn’t say minorities because the people who concerned this land was minorities themselves. So I would say the natives. System set up to enslave the natives once more. Because Christopher Columbus he came here and how many Native Americans did he kill? Whoo. And then they want to label them the illegal immigrants. For real. Haha. So after that, after that I was like I need to learn my rights because the constitutional, or well our constitutional rights that we have or so called constitutional rights, I need to know those. Because I have no idea that I could have told the officer, no do you have a warrant to search my car officer. If I would have said that I would have been good. Constitutional rights. Did not know that at all. So I was like I need to start educating myself on the land that I live. If this is, if this is really a system set up to fail for myself I need to know, I need to learn the rules, I need to learn how to play the game. So at least learn how the game works and thankfully a manager at Art Van thath, that helped me understand that. I was like, yeah learn my rights, I learned a whole bunch. flaha. I learned a lot and that is what, now that I am off probation,I know my rights. And I know what I can and cannot do. And I cannot say, and I will exercise every single rights that I have. Haha That’s so good because I cannot say that I, that I know my rights, to where if! was pulled over or something like that. I kinda wondered the same thing like I didn’t know any of my rights at all. Until I would say some time last year me and a couple buddies were just drinking in the dorms and we didn’t even have to let the cops in. And like they were saying all this stuff like oo you have to let us in like making us like rethink like what we were doing like you have to let us in. Like if you don’t right now we will break down the door. We were like shit. You know they came in there we were being completely cooperative and gave them all the alcohol we had. And they still gave us all MIPs and shit. Mhm. So I mean form like that moment on we were all like shit we need to learn like all the stuff about underage drinking and all that. Just so that like all that stuff doesn’t happen again.uu. I mean I agree with you, I mean like it is almost like not just for minorities but the system sets up to fail you just... Page 8 �Anyone who is ignorant, anyone. I would say defiantly to that to, that was like abE. Like when you go to parties, you know people are freaking out. Oh my god cops are here! Cops are here! Everybody runnin, just dippin out. Yea and what they don’t know is unless they have a warrant they can’t do anything. Exactly. Yeah you give them permission to come in. That’s a whole different topic right there. Haha right. Shifting gears, you originally, yeah we are just going to forget Segway’s. You when back to Grandville High School recently and an interesting observation you told us about a few weeks ago, about the stair case. Oh yea man, we had, we called it the cool, it was where all the cool cats went. You know. Wasn’t even discriminating against no blacks whites man. You know blacks are supposed to skip because they don’t like to go to class. Minorities come and so we are all just chillin back over there probably abouthh two and a half months ago they sealed it up. And I know that I was because it was all a bunch of minorities there you know blacks whites also. and everybody was just chilling there. I would say it was race motivated but covered up very well. You know just like they always do with everything. Haha. It is very, you know it is a distraction. Well why is it a distraction? Because you just a talking too loud about standing there. Some people have KCDC they get out of class and they would just go and chill you know like right below the stairs. You know it’s not that much of a distraction, kind of like when I I think that they were afraid. Actually I think that some of the people on the staff were afraid of a littleethnicity. I have like when I have a keffiyeh I don’t know if you ever saw it but I have like a keffiyeh wrapped around just like this you know it is cold. Seven in the morning ya’ll got, ya’ll told me I had to be here at seven in the morning. I am going to wear something to keep myself warm. I’m sorry, I don’t wanna come here in the first place. Hah. Who wants to go to high school at seven in the morning. I remember Mr. Vanderslice started chasing me down because I was like no I’m not taking it off. NO! It was a shirt, it was a shirt on top of my head. That’s what it was. I had a shirt on top of my head. That’s stupid! That’s what I am saying! I had a shirt on my head, and one of the ambassadors, chased me all the way to my class just to yell at me. And you best believe that I did not just step back. I was yelling right back. Thankfully my mind, the thought in my mind was to check out the rules. You know, understand everysingle rule, and use that against him. I was like naw there aint nothing against that code book. Your wrong, it does not say that I cannot wear something on my head that’s not seven. Lets see school starts at 7:15 and it aint 7:15 yet. So I don’t have to take the shirt off. Couldn’t do nothing about it. School started at 7:50 7:50 yeah. Couldn’t do nothing about it, I was like ppht, what are you going to do? Violate it I dare you! Page 9 �So was the anything about the shirt, or was it just a regular shirt? Plain old white t-shirt man. I just wearin it on my head, just wearin it on my head. Now moving on to the keffiyeh. Which is? Which is Middle Eastern, soyou know automatic I am Muslim. So people think automatically he is a terrorist. You know lets get, it out of the way. Anytime anyone is wrapping a keffiyeh around their head, in fast the wrap it around their heads because there’s deserts snow storms, So in order to keep the snow, ornot snow Sand storms Stand storms yeah, so they want to keep the sand out of their face. Well its Michigan, it snows I wanna keep the snow out of my face. So I used to water that tornm, when I walked in, everybody’s lookin at me. Whats he doin? Muslim. He is a terrorist. Because that all the, that’s all the media labels them. So we see Muslim terrorist, let’s be honest, let’s be real. Hahah. That’s all they see. They made a big deal about that. I was like yo, it’s not 7:50 yet. I’m not taking it off. You know this is a, I’m not Muslim or Islam, buth I do respect their culture. It is part of my history because remorse. So as part of my history, I embrace all of my culture, not just a little bit of it. So, they couldn’t do nothing about that either. Fight the power. Yeah you mentioned like the media, and how minorities seem to be misrepresented in it.do you have any thoughts about how that could change or, if it can change? Oh man was have to go to the core then because how that started was actually a break off from the Crow laws. That is how they got that in there. They intertwined Jim Crows laws with the media so that whenever someone sees a black person the automatically, you know subconsciously he is up to no good. Yeah like stereotypes Yeah exactly. He is automaticallyh, you know a grand banger. He is automatically high as hell right now. He is black, he is supposed to smoke weed. Dark lips, big dark lips you know. Lie Obama, what is it with Obama, they said that he had weed lips or something like that. I don’t remember, but they they put that, they attached that stereotype to him as well. In order to beat something like that you gotta take down the media because they have control of the mass. Everybody watches TV, everybody watches TV. So if everyone is tuned in on this psychological brainwash machine. Of course everybody is going to think that black person, he aint up to no good, no good at all. So I would say yeah, to, I like to get to the very core of everything I don’t like to,racism isn’t here you know it is 2012 we all matured (In a sarcastic voice). Really? Did you just tune into the Zimmerman case? Why aint he in jail? He shot and killed a 17 year-old who had a bag of skittles. For one the dude was 28 years-old. He shot him dead in a gated community, which was predominantly white in Florida, And why isn’t he in jail. This kid was 17 years-old and he is dead, isn’t that murder? Supposedly he is the head watchman of the, you know the supervising, you know that watch ting. So to say that racism isn’t still here in the United States, that is Page 10 �ridiculous. Racism is still here. It is just in a different way. It is just like energy. Energy was never created of destroyed, it was transformed. Racism was BOOM right in your face, now it’s you know transformed into this thing called the media and I lables every single race, not just blacks, Latinos, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, even American, everything! They have got a label for everyone. And why are we trying to be labels, im not trying to be labeled. I wanna created my own identity. That’s the problem, nobody has their own identity. On the subject of identity, earlier you said you talked about stuff that was part of your heritage. You are obviously very proud of you African American heritage. And one way you show it is through your Facebook name. It is very unique. Would you like to tell us what it is? Oh yea that’s why I tell people anytime they wanna find me on Facebook, you will not find me. I will find you. Hahah. My name on Facebook is Brotha Taffiti Savo Hakeema Jafarr . And the reason why I chose that name was it is the name Hakeema is Swahili for wisdom, and I have that tattooed on my back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. I believe in that so heavily because without wisdom, or the name Taffiti means knowledge seeker and Savo means order and Hakeema is wisdom so you know with the right knowledge and wisdom comes order, creating your identity basically. And that propelled me into what I want to do. It gave me a new foundation for myself. how to give like a new label for myself. And not even a label but to just know who I am period. You know, growing up as a child where are all of the black figures. There are hardly and African doll figures. Identity crisis right there. You know you want to get your niece a doll, but there’s only white ones. Not saying there is anything wrong with white ones, but why give a white one to a black one who is constantly seeing all this propaganda against blacks. You know, she has no idea who she is, she is getting this false identification of herself. So just right away that shows the importance of a diverse. You know be a little diverse. Why have too much ofjust one thing? Spread it out, shave to love. You know? Share the wealth, or at least get another black baby doll damn. Put that on the store shelves jeeze (laughing). Just change it up a little you know, that all a brotha can ask. There is one other thing about you that makes you unique. Especially for Grandville is that you are Atheist.and Facebook is the biggest, most notable way that you talk about it. Have you, has anyone ever called you out on it? Oh man we have a different idea that goes against the traditional or mainstream way, no everybody believes this, but that one idea that is controversial to everyone else. It was like what’s up with this guy. What’s wrong with him?I wasespecially, I wouldn’t say. Well I learned actually that there are different forms of Atheism. There is an Atheism that does not believe in a god at all, or super natural things. And there isthe atheism that does not believe in the three main traditional religions, the Abrahamic religions, Islamic, Christianity and Judaism. That came for a lost identification of myself. I grew up as a Christian, you know my mom told me that I was going to church, I was going to like it, no if ands or buts. As a little kid I was like I have to, and ah I went not because I wanted to but because I had to. And it never gave me a change tochose what I wanted to believe in. and the problem with a lot of religions, the problem I would say is just based on my research, a lot of people do not do research on religions or what they believe. A lot of people go to history. People don’t wanna research the dark things, the positive and Page 11 �negative. Everybody is looking as the positive, which is great cool, but if you’re not looking at the negative... Well remember if you do not know you history, then you are going to repeat it. People repeating history because of their lack of knowledge, with is also the Facebook thing. Every time a see Taffiti is motivates me. Knowledge seeker you know, that’s what I am. Keep studying, keep reading, keep bringing books everywhere. Nothing is going to stop me. And that was one of the biggest thing I ever had to do. Was let go of my belief of Christianity because it was a grips of fear if you do not believe in a doctrine, you are going to hell. Who wants to go to hell? Somebody raise they hands if they wanna go to hell. (nobody moves) Exactly! That was the biggest thing for me, I had to let go of the fear of risking my sole that is eternal in an eternal place where you die even though you are already dead. You di even more I guess. So I did a lot of research of the translations of hell You know all the translations of Hebrew of actually Arabic to Hebrew to Latin to English; you know studying all those words because I am a big studier. I study every single word, I don’t do broad things. If I am going to check Genesis 101 I will check every single word in every single translation. I will get the idea, I am not just going to go skating by. That’s what most people do, well I have the King James version so. Well did you know King James was a really wicked dude. He performed bestiality, he was extremely in to.. I forgot what it was. But the dude rewrote the bible to keep his throne in power. Now anybody that reuses, or rewrite something against his or against his people or against his power, not going to be like woah what did he change so he could keep his power? A lot of people change things, I like to get to the source, like I said to the core. And I found my identity you know the furthest that I have researched so far, which is Egypt, also the Comets. The traveled for Ethiopia to Sudan, followed the Nile River and the landed in Egypt, or Comet at the time. And that is the my belief system because that is the very core that I have seen so far and it may change. I love when my, what I believe in is challeneged, because that gives me the chance to learn because I get to see another area. So that yeah especially going to Grandville to, you know there morals are all white and Christian. But my joey spiritually has not started since last year. No it was probably about a year and a half. So I would say if I want to Grandville High School with the knowledge that I have now shit would be completely different. I would probably be in college right now. Well I would be in college actually right now if I didn’t break my wrist. Was there a certain like factor that like caused you to start studying and following Atheism? Umm I would say that, I would say that I am very passionate about the black community If there is somebody that doesn’t know this I love who I am. I love being black. I love being who I am not say that being not black isn’t cool. That is just who I am and I would say that I was I questioned what is wrong with the black community today. We are not educated, we do not know our own history, I cannot even find or think of any history class that taught me that starting civilizations in Africa. I had to figure that out on my own. They didn’t tell me that my ancestors where ancient Egyptians were astrology came forum, and mathematics, and a lot of the Greeks got their information from Ancient Egypt. Where Plato always referred to Ancient Egypt. I was not told that a lot of the three religions are deep rooted in African traditions. So I questioned that. And I didn’t really have a bone to pick with Christianity so I was really upset that no one ever told me what was really going on. Because my mom didn’t know, she didn’t ask those questions. My mom actually grew up on Rockford, Oh my god my whole family actually grew up in Rockford. Now they are my age, the grew up in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s so I don’t think that they Page 12 �had time to think about that, They were having a hard enough time just getting through the day in Rockford. So I questioned my community, and the thing is they were mentally brainwashed through generations and generations and generations of slavery. A lot of Africans don’t know that their ancestors were already here before Columbus was here. I’m not talking about the Native American. I’m talking about the Africans that traveled from Africa to America and was here before Christopher Columbus came here and slaughtered them all. There’s a Holocaust that’s worst then the Jewish Holocaust. They didn’t teach me that. I can’t even tell you how many of millions of millions Columbus killed. This mother fucker got his own national day! What is going on? I’m celebrating Christopher Columbus in elementary school and I ain’t learn that this dude killed how many of my people? Did that go over your head America? (Laughter). Oh yeah by the way you know. After that I was just like wow this is bullshit I wanna learn a lot. That’s what did it. That’s what sparked that into me and I was like I gotta make my brother and sisters, I have taken it on my own personal mission to educate as many Africans, brothers and sisters, as we can. Not limited to Africans but that’s my field of study right now. So that’s what I have to focus because if one particular group is lacking you know in success and everything then that creates an off balance you know? If I can be the foundation or the starting black for that to happen then cool you know. That’s very interesting that you say that you wanna try to educate as many African Americans as you can. What means or steps are you taking to do that? Right now? Learning. Only thing I can do. I can’t teach them if I don’t know them yet. So I have to learn every single thing or as much as I can at least. The history, all the contradictions, even what I believe I have to study the contradictions against that so I can make sure that’s the right information. If Tm learning you know everything started in Africa you know blah blah blah, and Tm being hard headed for that then if Tm not having any information to go against that, then I’m just blindly following this just because I’m solely for it but if I have you know a pro and a con, you know and I can make a wise or intelligent decision based on that fact you know then I’m pretty good for it. You know ask me anything that might contradict and I’ll probably know the answer to it and I can probably overcome that projection because that’s what I study. Have any of your friends that you have shared some of your knowledge with, what is their reaction to it? Are they interested in it? Do the believe it? Man, let’s see. I would say who? More specifically my brothers and sisters or like white friends I have? Yeah Let’s start with family I guess Oh I’m always educating my mom and sister constantly. That’s kind of why they’re upset that I’m moving because I have studied a lot I think and there hasn’t been a day in the past two years that I have not been studying. I am a hard core studier. I have a fiery passion to learn and a lot people don’t do that. Especially in the black community it is considered geeky or nerdy, or they will call you one of them smart niggers. What does that mean? I’m a smart what? So it’s not cool to know you shit but it’s cool to be in jail acting all stupid, shooting you own brothers and sisters, calling your sisters hoes, bitch. Calling them Page 13 �all these names that aren’t necessary, but yet that’s cool? For real? Dog you’ve been brain washed so good and I’ve been teaching my whole family and my mom and sister. Every time I have family come home from Georgia I always give a little bit more knowledge you know. Even going out to my brothers, my brother Carlos I’m always teaching him. Sharing stuff that I’ve learned. Even if it contradicts that he’s learned but that’s the best part you know? Not forcing stuff that I know in his head, but going check this information, what have you learned about this? Does it seem right? Does it contradict? Let’s get an answer for this. My brother Will, smartest mother fucker I know so far. I think it’s because he’s half black and half white. I think that’s what it is. He has the perfect balance. (Laughter). He’s very crucial, fucking hard headed, he has facts. He’s been home schooled actually. He’s been reading since he was ten years old. I’ve only been reading, legitimately reading, for like two years now. So I have an eight year gap to catch up to him. Motivation. Pure motivation right there. What about when you tell your friends of what you know? Black or white. Leave that to Facebook my friend. Facebook, like I said I don’t hold back. I say it like it is. Why hold back you know? I’m not gonna put like a band aid solution on things I’m just gonna tell it raw. In my past I’ve been very stupid and ignorant, and one-sided with my posts just because I was in that mind where I was rebellious or I was rebellious to you know Christianity just point blank, but that’s because I’ve always known you know? I’ve only met you know certain Christians that are like love Jesus, stop saying blah, stop smoking blah. devil is real blah, you’re going to hell you know? Well fuck you. Some were my family. Some were my friends. So it was a really tough time for me. So after that, I was like hmm let me re-think this? You know, I’m acting just like the people that I do not like. So i completely re-switched the way I come out with information and it’s actually helping out. People are actually seeing it from my point of view now. Questioning. Why? Why is everything like this? That’s the big thing, questioning. You don’t question, you won’t get answers, and when you question everything until you can’t question why no more. There you go. That’s the core. When you tell a religious person that you’re Atheist what’s the typical response from them? Oh, you know I don’t even tell people I’m Atheist. Actually, it’s so funny I was on the bus before and there was this white dude and I don’t what put, what, I don’t know. It was just out of nowhere. I’m just on the bus listening to my music. You know, jamming. Out of nowhere he goes are you Christian? Im like no. Why? And this is in my time when I’m like completely anti- Christian and I’m like blah blah I don’t wanna hear it. Stop forcing this shit. Get out of my face. Stop! Stop! You know, he was just like talking about Jesus stuff like that. I was like cool, cool. Stop forcing it down. Stop. I’m gonna tell you a little bit something about yourself or about your religion and you’re not gonna like it so chill, and he got off the bus. See, I said it nicely, you know, but that kinds of like what I was giving him. I dropped a little bit of knowledge and he couldn’t even understand what I was talking about. A lot of people don’t know about Jesus. What is Jesus? Jesus comes from, if you look at the history of words, Jesus comes from the Greek god Zeus and Jahova, the Hebrew word for god. They put Jahova and Zeus together and it’s Jesus. That wasn’t his name because he spoke in Arabic at that time. Arabic is basically Hebrew. The Hebrew word that they translated from Christ which was Greek for one who’s anointed his real name was Oshua. There’s no J in the Hebrew Bible so how can his name be Jesus if there was no J in the Hebrew Bible? Oshua was his name and he didn’t even know that. So I was like people don’t research their own history. They don’t look in those dark corners. Page 14 �Going back a little, back into the family issue, you talked about earlier how your mom is a dedicated Christian. More specifically, how did she deal with you converting to Atheism? I told her gently, slowly, very calmly. Me and my mom are extremely close. She is the only female who has not broken my heart. So I’m like big ups to you Mom. Single parent you know? My dad’s out doing his own shit. He was not a big factor in my life except for buying me a lot of shoes. Go dad! Thanks for the shoes. Like I said, my mom and I are really close so wow, that was tough. I was like, I don’t know how to tell you this Mom, but I don’t believe in what you believe in anymore, but I still love you, but I’m not going to hell because I know this. Don’t judge. But, you know, it was not tough, it was really hard actually. That was the probably the toughest three months I’ve ever had, was constantly thinking, how can I tell her without being extremely upset. My mom cried because Kia got a tattoo. Now, she is definitely not gonna like when I tell her I don’t believe in Christianity. I was like holy shit. So you know Kia has a daughter. Beautiful, beautiful daughter. So how many times, have you counted having any problems with police total? Psht, 8 that I can say off the top of my head How many times have you guys actually done anything wrong? Once And what was that? smokin and drivin. Only time What happen, would you say you were treated (Yeah) worse because... Actually no that was the nicest cop I have ever met from Grandville. He said he was going to let me go, until his prick boss showed up. And I know when he who he was too, he was the other one, he was the guy that pulled me over that night at Steak and Shake. He was the one that was yelling at us. I remember because of his mustache. (snicker) Yeah that was him, wow, I just now realized that. Buth yea it is, it is besides Grand Rapids cops, Grandville has to be the worst. What about Grand Rapids police makes them worse? I would say because their downtown, were a lot of the Africans are. And they, I feel like they have such a mindset that whenever you see a black dude in the hood, they say ‘get him, he is up to no good’. Grandville give at least one percent of the downtown, at least, Er,, Grand Rapids cops none. Yeah. When I actually went to jail,h, last year forh smoking and drivin, heh, one of the guys that I was with in my holding cell he said that we wasn’t doin nothing. He just got,h. for jay walkin. Jay walkin, Two in the morning. Two in the morning! Jay walking! For real? Take him to jail for that? WOAH! I didn’t know that you get pulled over for that. Haha I thought the most that they could give you was like a ticket. Like a fine. I think he didn’t know his rights, I think that what it was. I think heh,h, did a little self incriminating himself, maybe he had a pass, maybe he had a warrant or something. But,h, but for jay walking. What is that? So go to jail, I was like dang man. Page 15 �When did you start paying attention to your rights and like your experiences with the cops and being able to stick up for yourself? Umm it was, man, it was like last year, soh, I would say after the judge after he told me aft... I would say, NO! it was my first probation check-up. I just got off probation yesterday actually Wooh! Congratulations. Thank you very much, never wanna do that system again. Umm I would say right after probation because you know in my mind, Yeah. I should say in my mind I chose to justify what I did. You know that I shouldn’t happen driving while I was high but still don’t let, don’t even let me get started on why it should be illegal. Don’t let me get started. I will run, I will run every single fact. You know to Chad, who was my probation officer, why marijuana should not be legal. Or Illegal or at least decriminalized because it is just a herb. It will beat out the pharmacy industry (Snap) just like that, because you can grow it. Boom. There goes all these pharisaical industries that making millions of dollars off that. You know to keep us sick constantly. Now how many deaths has marijuana had, Zero. How many from overdosing on pills? I can’t count on my hands because I don’t have that much. What they say like ten people, or at least like 10 people die every hour from overdosing on pills? That’s a flicked up statistic right there. NowI started paying attention to after that, that mindset. And I was like, h something’s not right. Why are we, why am I kind of in this bondage right here. This is a system set up to fail. Not just for Africans, but for minorities. Or I wouldn’t say minorities because the people who concerned this land was minorities themselves. So I would say the natives. System set up to enslave the natives once more. Because Christopher Columbus he came here and how many Native Americans did he kill? Whoo. And then they want to label them the illegal immigrants. For real. Haha. So after that, after that I was like I need to learn my rights because the constitutional, or well our constitutional rights that we have or so called constitutional rights, I need to know those. Because I have no idea that I could have told the officer, no do you have a warrant to search my car officer. If I would have said that I would have been good. Constitutional rights. Did not know that at all. So I was like I need to start educating myself on the land that I live. If this is, if this is really a system set up to fail for myself, I need to know, I need to learn the rules, I need to learn how to play the game. So at least learn how the game works and thankfully a manager at Art Van thath, that helped me understand that. I was like, yeah learn my rights, I learned a whole bunch. 1-laha. I learned a lot and that is what, now that I am off probation,I know my rights. And I know what I can and cannot do. And I cannot say, and I will exercise every single rights that I have. Haha That’s so good because I cannot say that I, that I know my rights, to where if! was pulled over or something like that. I kinda wondered the same thing like I didn’t know any of my rights at all. Until I would say some time last year me and a couple buddies were just drinking in the dorms and we didn’t even have to let the cops in. And like they were saying all this stuff like oo you have to let us in like making us like rethink like what we were doing like you have to let us in. Like if you don’t right now we will break down the door. We were like shit. You know they came in there we were being completely cooperative and gave them all the alcohol we had. And they still gave us all MIPs and shit. Mhm. So I mean form like that moment on we were all like shit we need to learn like all the stuff about underage drinking and all that. Just so that Page 16 �like all that stuff doesn’t happen again.uu. I mean I agree with you, I mean like it is almost like not just for minorities but the system sets up to fail you just... Anyone who is ignorant, anyone. I would say defiantly to that to, that was like ahh. Like when you go to parties, you know people are freaking out. Oh my god cops are here! Cops are here! Everybody runnin, just dippin out. Yea and what they don’t know is unless they have a warrant they can’t do anything. Exactly. Yeah you give them permission to come in. That’s a whole different topic right there. Haha right. Shifting gears, you originally, yeah we are just going to forget Segway’s. You when back to Grandville High School recently and an interesting observation you told us about a few weeks ago, about the stair case. Oh yea man, we had, we called it the cool, it was where all the cool cats went. You know. Wasn’t even discriminating against no blacks whites man. You know blacks are supposed to skip because they don’t like to go to class. Minorities come and so we are all just chillin back over there probably abouthh two and a half months ago they sealed it up. And I know that I was because it was all a bunch of minorities there you know blacks whites also. and everybody was just chilling there. I would say it was race motivated but covered up very well. You know just like they always do with everything. Haha. It is very, you know it is a distraction. Well why is it a distraction? Because you just a talking too loud about standing there. Some people have KCDC they get out of class and they would just go and chill you know like right below the stairs. You know it’s not that much of a distraction, kind of like when I I think that they were afraid. Actually I think that some of the people on the staff were afraid of a littleethnicity. I have like when I have a keffiyeh I don’t know if you ever saw it but I have like a keffiyeh wrapped around just like this you know it is cold. Seven in the morning ya’ll got, ya’ll told me I had to be here at seven in the morning. I am going to wear something to keep myself warm. I’m sorry, I don’t wanna come here in the first place. Hah. Who wants to go to high school at seven in the morning. I remember Mr. Vanderslice started chasing me down because I was like no I’m not taking it off. NO! It was a shirt, it was a shirt on top of my head. That’s what it was. I had a shirt on top of my head. That’s stupid! That’s what I am saying! I had a shirt on my head, and one of the ambassadors, chased me all the way to my class just to yell at me. And you best believe that I did not just step back. I was yelling right back. Thankfully my mind, the thought in my mind was to check out the rules. You know, understand everysingle rule, and use that against him. I was like naw there aint nothing against that code book. Your wrong, it does not say that I cannot wear something on my head that’s not seven. Lets see school starts at 7:15 and it aint 7:15 yet. So I don’t have to take the shirt off. Couldn’t do nothing about it. School started at 7:50 7:50 yeah. Couldn’t do nothing about it, I was like ppht, what are you going to do? Violate it I dare you! Page 17 �So was the anything about the shirt, or was it just a regular shirt? Plain old white t-shirt man. I just wearin it on my head, just wearin it on my head. Now moving on to the keffiyeh. Which is? Which is Middle Eastern, soyou know automatic I am Muslim. So people think automatically he is a terrorist. You know lets get, it out of the way. Anytime anyone is wrapping a keffiyeh around their head, in fast the wrap it around their heads because there’s deserts snow storms. So in order to keep the snow, ornot snow Sand storms Stand storms yeah, so they want to keep the sand out of their face. Well its Michigan, it snows I wanna keep the snow out of my face. So I used to water that to when I walked in, everybody’s lookin at me. Whats he doin? Muslim. He is a terrorist. Because that all the, that’s all the media labels them. So we see Muslim terrorist, let’s be honest, let’s be real. Hahah. That’s all they see. They made a big deal about that. I was like yo, it’s not 7:50 yet. I’m not taking it off. You know this is a, I’m not Muslim or Islam, buth I do respect their culture. It is part of my history because remorse. So as part of my history, I embrace all of my culture, not just a little bit of it. So, they couldn’t do nothing about that either. Fight the power. Yeah you mentioned like the media, and how minorities seem to be misrepresented in it.do you have any thoughts about how that could change or, if it can change? Oh man was have to go to the core then because how that started was actually a break off from the Crow laws. That is how they got that in there. They intertwined Jim Crows laws with the media so that whenever someone sees a black person the automatically, you know subconsciously he is up to no good. Yeah like stereotypes Yeah exactly. He is automaticallyh, you know a grand banger. He is automatically high as hell right now. He is black, he is supposed to smoke weed. Dark lips, big dark lips you know. Lie Obama, what is it with Obama, they said that he had weed lips or something like that. I don’t remember, but they they put that, they attached that stereotype to him as well. In order to beat something like that you gotta take down the media because they have control of the mass. Everybody watches TV, everybody watches TV. So if everyone is tuned in on this psychological brainwash machine. Of course everybody is going to think that black person, he aint up to no good, no good at all. So I would say yeah, to, I like to get to the very core of everything I don’t like to,racism isn’t here you know it is 2012 we all matured (In a sarcastic voice). Really? Did you just tune into the Zimmerman case? Why aint he in jail? He shot and killed a 17 year-old who had a bag of skittles. For one the dude was 28 years-old. He shot him dead in a gated community, which was predominantly white in Florida, And why isn’t he in jail. This kid was 17 years-old and he is dead, isn’t that murder? Supposedly he is the head watchman of the, you know the supervising, you know that watch ting. So to say that racism isn’t still here in the United States, that is ridiculous. Racism is still here. It is just in a different way. It is just like energy. Energy was never created of destroyed, it was transformed. Racism was BOOM right in your face, now it’s you know transformed into this thing called the media and I lables every single race, not just blacks, Latinos, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, even American, everything! They have got a label for everyone. And why are we trying to be labels, im Page 18 �not trying to be labeled. I wanna created my own identity. That’s the problem, nobody has their own identity. On the subject of identity, earlier you said you talked about stuff that was part of your heritage. You are obviously very proud of you African American heritage. And one way you show it is through your Facebook name. It is very unique. Would you like to tell us what it is? Oh yea that’s why I tell people anytime they wanna find me on Facebook, you will not find me. I will find you. Hahah. My name on Facebook is Brotha Taffiti Savo Hakeema Jafarr . And the reason why I chose that name was it is the name Hakeema is Swahili for wisdom, and I have that tattooed on my back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. I believe in that so heavily because without wisdom, or the name Taffiti means knowledge seeker and Savo means order and Hakeema is wisdom so you know with the right knowledge and wisdom comes order, creating your identity basically. And that propelled me into what I want to do. It gave me a new foundation for myself, .n how to give like a new label for myself. And not even a label but to just know who I am period. You know, growing up as a child where are all of the black figures. There are hardly and African doll figures. Identity crisis right there. You know you want to get your niece a doll, but there’s only white ones. Not saying there is anything wrong with white ones, but why give a white one to a black one who is constantly seeing all this propaganda against blacks. You know, she has no idea who she is, she is getting this false identification of herself So just right away that shows the importance of a diverse. You know be a little diverse. Why have too much ofjust one thing? Spread it out, shave to love. You know? Share the wealth, or at least get another black baby doll damn. Put that on the store shelves jeeze (laughing). Just change it up a little you know, that all a brotha can ask. There is one other thing about you that makes you unique. Especially for Grandville is that you are Atheist.and Facebook is the biggest, most notable way that you talk about it. Have you, has anyone ever called you out on it? Oh man we have a different idea that goes against the traditional or mainstream way, no everybody believes this, but that one idea that is controversial to everyone else. It was like what’s up with this guy. What’s wrong with him?rn I wasespecially, I wouldn’t say. Well I learned actually that there are different forms of Atheism. There is an Atheism that does not believe in a god at all, or super natural things. And there isthe atheism that does not believe in the three main traditional religions, the Abrahamic religions, Islamic, Christianity and Judaism. That came for a lost identification of myself I grew up as a Christian, you know my mom told me that I was going to church, I was going to like it, no if ands or buts. As a little kid I was like I have to, and ah I went not because I wanted to but because I had to. And it never gave me a change torn chose what I wanted to believe in. and the problem with a lot of religions, the problem I would say is just based on my research, a lot of people do not do research on religions or what they believe. A lot of people go to history. People don’t wanna research the dark things, the positive and negative. Everybody is looking as the positive, which is great cool, but if you’re not looking at the negative... Well remember if you do not know you history, then you are going to repeat it. People repeating history because of their lack of knowledge, with is also the Facebook thing. Every time a see Taffiti is motivates me. Knowledge seeker you know, that’s what I am. Keep studying, keep reading, keep bringing books everywhere. Nothing is going to stop me. And that was one of the biggest thing I ever had to do. Was let go of my belief of Christianity because it was a grips of fear if you do not believe in a doctrine, you are going to hell. Who wants to go to hell? Somebody raise they hands if they wanna go to hell. (nobody moves) Exactly! That was the biggest thing for me, I had to let go of the fear of risking my Page 19 �sole that is eternal in an eternal place where you die even though you are already dead. You di even more I guess. So I did a lot of research of the translations of hell You know all the translations of Hebrew of actually Arabic to Hebrew to Latin to English; you know studying all those words because I am a big studier. I study every single word, I don’t do broad things. If I am going to check Genesis 1011 will check every single word in every single translation. I will get the idea, I am not just going to go skating by. That’s what most people do, well I have the King James version so. Well did you know King James was a really wicked dude. He performed bestiality, he was extremely in to.. I forgot what it was. But the dude rewrote the bible to keep his throne in power. Now anybody that reuses, or rewrite something against his or against his people or against his power, not going to be like woah what did he change so he could keep his power? A lot of people change things, I like to get to the source, like I said to the core. And I found my identity you know the furthest that I have researched so far, which is Egypt, also the Comets. The traveled for Ethiopia to Sudan, followed the Nile River and the landed in Egypt, or Comet at the time. And that is the my belief system because that is the very core that I have seen so far and it may change. I love when my, what I believe in is challeneged, because that gives me the chance to learn because I get to see another area. So that yeah wxpecially going to Grandville to, you know there morals are all white and Christian. But my joey spiritually has not started since last year. No it was probably about a year and a half. So I would say if I want to Grandville High School with the knowledge that I have now shit would be completely different. I would probably be in college right now. Well I would be in college actually right now if I didn’t break my wrist. Was there a certain like factor that like caused you to start studying and following Atheism? Umm I would say that, I would say that I am very passionate about the black community If there is somebody that doesn’t know this I love who I am. I love being black. I love being who I am not say that being not black isn’t cool. That is just who I am and I would say that I was I questioned what is wrong with the black community today. We are not educated, we do not know our own history, I cannot even find or think of any history class that taught me that starting civilizations in Africa. I had to figure that out on my own. They didn’t tell me that my ancestors where ancient Egyptians were astrology came forum, and mathematics, and a lot of the Greeks got their information from Ancient Egypt. Where Plato always referred to Ancient Egypt. I was not told that a lot of the three religions are deep rooted in African traditions. So I questioned that. And I didn’t really have a bone to pick with Christianity so I was really upset that no one ever told me what was really going on. Because my mom didn’t know, she didn’t ask those questions. My mom actually grew up on Rockford, Oh my god my whole family actually grew up in Rockford. Now they are my age, the grew up in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s so I don’t think that they had time to think about that, They were having a hard enough time just getting through the day in Rockford. So I questioned my community, and the thing is they were mentally brainwashed through generations and generations and generations of slavery. Yeah and she has a daughter named Zira. My first niece. Yeah uncle over here. Kia is pregnant and she gets pregnant again. So, not to mention that Zi is here and she’s pregnant again by the same piece of shit. So, I’m already talking to Mom. I’m actually talking to Kia before. She told me and I was like oh but don’t tell Morn today because I’m talking to her right now. Having a little somewhat, excuse me, somewhat of a religious argument but kind of toned down because I’m trying to have that respect level and Kia, she didn’t tell her yet, but just as were getting done Kia goes, she’s like I don’t if I should tell you this, I’m kind of nervous you know and I laughed so hard. My face was priceless. I was like Kia no! Page 20 �No! You should have waited thirty minutes. No! She flipped out when you had a tattoo. She slammed a door on your face when she found out you were pregnant with Zi. I just told her I’m not a Christian anymore in the nicest way. Now you’re about to tell her you’re pregnant again. I left the house. I was scared. I left. Kia told Mom. Silence. Dead silence. What’d I do? Get my bag, headphones, going for a walk. I’m not coming back into the house for another three hours. She did not say anything for the entire night. I was like holy shit, but that’s kind of the thing. That’s the biggest bone that I have with religion. Religion is of course can be a very good thing, I’m not dogging it, but it has that fear factor. If you do not follow this doctrine then, as I told my mom several times, Mom you know if a Christian says that an Islamic person is going to hell or a Muslim person is going to hell because he does not believe that Jesus is his savior. That means that an entire population is going to hell. Also Judaism and also people who believe in... .what were the other ones. Fuck I forgot their names. You know the one’s from Eastern China. Buddhism Yeah Buddhism. Stuff like that. So I was like they were all going to hell just because they don’t believe in a certain doctrine.That’s pretty fucked up. You know I had a heart to heart talk with her and I was like dude I’m not going to hell. I’m doing research. Mom sorry to say but I know a lot more than you do about the own Bible. So don’t tell me that type of stuff with still having that respect level, but it was very frustrating. Mom Ijust wanna tell you all this stuff that I learned, but it contradicts with everything that we grew up on especially Africans because mind you that slave masters said hey did you want to believe in this? No they forced Christianity down their throats. Broke them. Told them that they were gonna accept the white Jesus for you know Michael Angelo’s picture of Jesus you know for a kind of psychological domination type of thing. Having blacks think that if their God is white then that means automatically white people are closer to God then they are. That type of thing. I mean hey look it up thats what they did. I’m not saying that one race is better than they other. I believe in unity I just love being black you know. (Laughter). Ask all my brothers. It’s ironic. I love being black. I love my brothers and sisters. I’ve never dated a black chick. I’ve only dated white chicks. I love red heads. I love white chicks. What can I say, but that does not make me any less black since I know my history you know? Some type of people will attach that to you also. I’m a very unorthodox type of person. The more I talk, the more I’m like damn I’m fucking weird. That’s what’s up because I’m not trying to be normal. (Laughter). Alright, one last question and we’ll get you out of here. We did a project on what causes prejudice and we had a whole presentation. In your opinion, what do you think causes prejudice? Oh man. Ignorance. Ignorance is not labeled or is not limited to race, gender, color, nothing. It is pure. If you do not know your history, or if you do not know your shit then you’re gonna be ignorant and you’re just gonna accept anything you know. If you don’t have a strong foundation or a set of beliefs than you’re gonna easily be like oh this makes and oh this makes sense too. I’ll follow that. A lot of people, a lot misconceptions on what ignorance is and like I said I’ve done a lot of research. Part of my name on Facebook is Enjur and a lot of people think the word nigger or negro comes from the word ignorant. That’s completely untrue because in ancient Kemit because, you gotta remember there were gods and goddesses, you know. Technically it was not the monotheistic you know religion. Their kings, remember even Egypt. Egypt was Greek and that shows you that’s not even the real name of that body of area. The name was Kemit and the names that the pharaohs, which is Greek for like upper house or something like that. The name for the pharaohs was Enjur and they didn’t have vowels and Enjur or negro is what they Page 21 �called gods and goddesses. So nigger and negro has a connection in that word. When they got invaded by the Greeks and the Romans they twisted and manipulated that word to attach a negative vibe to that word so when they’re calling nigger, negro like slave masters are like get out of here nigger and all that shit, they’re attaching a negative you know situation or vibe on that. So, they’re gonna t away from that name. That’s why you don’t hear people go what’s up nigger? It may make people feel uncomfortable but that word all it is Enjur with a few other letters in that you know. If I went around calling other black people what’s up my Enjur they’d be like what the fuck are you saying. That’s the core word for negro and nigger and where it came from, but most people don’t know that. They just think think it means ignorance so everybody is just you know yeah blacks are saying stop saying that word. It’s got such a bad history to it. It means ignorant. It’s so negative. Then you have dumb niggers who are using it like what up my nigger, what up making a fool out of themselves. Then you actually have the intelligent ones who know, which are a very selective few, that knows the meaning of the word and they use it proudly. You know? I even have white friends that say nigga and nigger. You know, it doesn’t bother me because I know who I am. I have a pretty solid identity of myself so you know it doesn’t bother me. If someone was to say that to me in eight grade, man, I would have whooped their ass so bad. I’m not saying it’s acceptable because today especially with society now if a white person says nigger, they’re about to get their ass whooped. But that’s just because of the black community doesn’t have identification of themselves. They don’t know that. They don’t know the history of the word so they accept it as something negative so they flip out. Does anyone else have any other questions? I guess just one thing, don’t have to get too much into it. Overall, how was your experience in the conservative West Michigan like communities been with you being an Atheist? Like have people called you out on it much or has it been pretty normal? Nahh. I usually keep it to myself. i usually keep my beliefs to myself. If someone asks me then yo I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them with a smile. I love life now. I don’t hate life. So, I’ll gladly tell anyone what I believe in because I believe in unity. Were all one. Were all one consciousness. I don’t believe in religion and sadly that’s what religion does. Divide and conquer. The best technique every because even with the whole black and white thing, you’re white you’re black. So what! Cool. I drive a blue car. Are you gonna call that out to homey. (Laughter). Like, people get so attached to names and labels and stuff like that. They have to hold themselves up to a higher degree. Like yo I’m just here living, what’s up. That type of thing. That’s kind of what I believe in just like yo. I live in the now. I don’t do that prejudice shit no more. I’m glad that I’ve matured. It was a long road. Long road. through trial and error. That’s one thing I’m most interested to see is how it’s gonna be in Texas. Texas is a little different than Michigan. Actually, the job that I’m at right now my boss has traveled all across the world and he told me that Michigan is the most racist place he’s ever been to. That blew my mind. He’s been to Mississippi, Florida, he’s been to China, Australia. Africa. You know, he said that out of all the places he’s been to Michigan is the most racist place he’s ever been to. Wow! I do not know what to expect in Texas. Thank you for your time Terrence for this interview. Thank you, it’s always a pleasure. Page 22 �END OF INTERVIEW Page 23 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fc37d171c51cabff623d9246613b1b4a.mp3 3f335172564596d90f0ad44c593a1863 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History Personal narratives Oral histories African Americans--Personal narratives Gays--Personal narratives Lesbians--Personal narratives Bisexual people--Personal narratives Transgender people--Personal narratives Veterans--Personal narratives Women--Personal narratives People with disabilities--Personal narratives Muslims--United States--Personal narratives Hispanic Americans--Personal narratives Homophobia Discrimination Islamophobia Stereotypes (Social psychology)--Upper Penninsula (Mich.) Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history recordings documenting the history of civil rights and social justice advocacy in Western Michigan. The collection was created by faculty and students as a project of the LIB 201 (formerly US 201): "Diversity in the U.S." course from 2011-2012. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project (GV248-01) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-05-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV248-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1930-2011 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV248-01_Harris_Terrence Title A name given to the resource Terrence Harris audio interview and transcript Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harris, Terrence Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Bauer, David Pete, Eric Homan, Stephanie VanDraggt, Victoria Description An account of the resource Terrence is African American and Atheist. He discusses growing up in a neighborhood that is predominately White, Christian. Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History African Americans--Personal narratives Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Relation A related resource Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-03-23 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ddd97a16ceba371029c3aeae0ecc29e3.jpg b6f023a8895175410b0b689b7d80aa7b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_M3221 Title A name given to the resource Terror class mine layer Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Terror class, US CM (mine layer), June 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-06-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a6ad98b5e8938a2141df2a003e923d49.m4v 75190e40576c114d8918b2bbd77dd550 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/70172d5de5cd82de703774579ad1c659.pdf 5877ef6842b7f9ce9bbb1d9252a7b646 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Howard Terry: Disc One Length: 2:17:45 (00:15) Background Information         Howard was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1927 His father was born in 1853 and fought in the Civil War, then became a street sweeper and lamp lighter His father later retired from the city of Nashville and met his mother who was much younger than he Howard’s mother was born in 1900 and was an orphan; it was his father’s third marriage Howard’s father died when he was only 5 years old and then his mother brought him to stay at an orphanage after the funeral As he grew older Howard moved through a few different orphanages and worked very hard while he was at them They had to cut their own wood for fire to heat the building, pick vegetables for food, cook, and wash their own laundry by hand They never got to eat any of the good food they picked and/or canned and he suspected the orphanage actually sold the food (29:05) Marines  Howard ran away from the orphanage and visited a recruiting station  He was told he was too young and would need his mother’s signature, so he returned to the orphanage and snuck back in  His mother only lived 2 miles away and so he took off another night to visit her  She agreed to sign the papers for him to join the Marines and claim that he was 17 years old as long as he would send her a portion of his pay every week  Howard was really only 15 years old and signed up for 4 years of service  He was sworn in and shipped to Parris Island, South Carolina (44:15) Boot Camp 1942  Howard was always worried that someone would find out his real age and send him back to the orphanage  They got up every day at 4 a.m. to stand at attention in their Quonset huts  They worked a lot on close order drilling, running obstacle courses and with weaponry  All the sergeants knew he was under age and made bets on his shooting abilities  Boot camp was fun for Howard because he was actually getting paid to do less work than he had when he was in the orphanage  He was in boot camp for 6 weeks and then took a train to Quantico �(59:15) Overseas  In Virginia the some of the soldiers had to stay in small tents while they waited because the barracks were already so full  They took a train to New York and then boarded a Spanish liner  Howard was with most of all the same men he had worked with in boot camp  They were not traveling in a convoy, but still moving pretty slowly because of the zig zag course they were taking to avoid enemy submarines  On their way they occasionally ran into wreckage from other ships that had blown up  The trip took 2 weeks and they landed in Belfast, Ireland (1:05:30) Ireland  After arriving they walked to a train station where they loaded another train and headed to Londenderry  They stayed near a Navy base and there were oil fields in the back ground  Howard often worked on guard duty at night, watching for German saboteurs that wanted to blow things up on their base  There was also a large ammo dump, which was their main target  There were often German bombers flying over the base and air raid sirens were always going off around 3 a.m.  They would then have to move to the air raid shelter and it was very cold sitting there in the middle of the night for hours in their pajamas  Howard was working with the First Provisional Marine Battalion, guarding facilities in Northern Ireland  Howard and some other men formed a bagpipe band in an attempt to get the civilians to like them  Howard was in Ireland for 2 years and then sent back to the US after the Normandy Invasion (1:18:15) Time Off  Howard was sent back to Quantico and then spent some time in Washington DC on liberty  He was in the Marine Corps for 4 years and only had time on leave once when he received furlough and traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan  Howard went to Michigan because his mother had moved there with her new husband  He was 17 years old, but could still go to the bar in his uniform and everyone would buy him drinks  People always wanted to hang out with him because he could get gasoline while in his uniform, but they were not able to themselves because it was rationed �(1:30:00) Camp Pendleton, California  Howard went through extra combat training and finally qualified as an expert shooter  On his time off he was a contestant on a trivia game show; he won, but the only prize they gave him was a box of soap  He worked part time sometimes for extra money  Howard was part of the replacement detachment awaiting to be assigned to a unit  They shipped out from San Diego on an escort carrier that was loaded with fighter planes (1:40:35) Okinawa  On their way they stopped in Hawaii and Howard visited Honolulu  He and a few other men got arrested for swimming in the women’s pool area  They were put in the stockade, which was very hot and filled with an awful chlorine scent  They were never actually charged with anything, but just kept in the stockade for a few hours  They boarded their ship again and headed towards Okinawa  Howard was assigned to a machine gun platoon of X Company, 2nd Battalion, 29th Marines, 6th Marine Division  There was fighting all over the island and Howard did not like seeing the civilians get hurt, as well as their rough living conditions (1:58:45) Daily Life  They were always hungry and could never get seconds for their meals; they barely ever had hot meals  The island was filled with an absolutely terrible odor from all the bodies, but they got used to it after a while  There were flies al over the bodies and it was hard to eat or breath without them flying into your mouth  They had to blow up caves to look for the Japanese that were hiding in them  They had to use very short fuses on the bombs because if they used a long one, the Japanese would put out the fuse while they were waiting for it to blow up  Many of the Japanese hiding in the caves would actually blow themselves up before the Americans could get to them; even some of the women were blowing themselves up (2:07:25) Attacked  Howard had been working on a rig in the South of the island and was attacked with artillery shells  Then they began shooting at the Americans with machine guns and charged towards them  Howard hit the deck and played dead so the shooting would clear up in his general area, but the shooting continued for about another hour �  Finally an American tank came up along the area and the shooting stopped Howard often worked as a machine gunner carrying ammo and then as a rifleman to protect the machine gun while it was going off Disc Two: 02:26:41 (01:55) Grenades  While in boot camp Howard had been instructed to throw a grenade like a baseball  They practiced with grenades from WWI because they were made differently and did not go off right away when the pin was pulled  In Okinawa Howard had been attacked and stuck up against a large wall while being fired at  He threw a grenade, but it did not go far because they were on a slight incline  It rolled back towards them and went off, with shrapnel going everywhere, but no one was seriously hurt (10:50) Island Secured  Howard fought on the line from June 10-22 until the island was declared secure, but there were still many Japanese soldiers throughout the island  Many of them were hiding in the jungle and in the caves, still attacking with machine guns  During an attack Howard’s friend was shot in the head and Howard was grazed with many bullets himself, but not injured  There were many civilian women that killed themselves because the Japanese had told them the Americans would do terrible things to them if they caught them  Some of the women even jumped off cliffs while holding their babies  The majority of the civilians did not believe the Japanese and were much more scared of them  There were dead Marines all over the island whose bodies needed to be gathered  In Okinawa there were more Americans wounded than actually killed (34:50) Guam  They moved South of Naha and then boarded an LST in early July to go to Guam � Once they reached Guam they set up their tents and began training for combat  The food was terrible and there were mosquitoes everywhere  They were eating a lot of mutton from Australia and New Zealand and Howard did not like it at all  They trained through September and then took a ship to North China  They landed in an area that had been taken over by communists (41:50) China  They remained on the ship for about 10 days before going ashore  While on the ship many of the men were lowering buckets to pull up bottles of liquor thy bought from the locals  They locals were very poor and starving; they had likely made the liquor in small tubs in their homes  Some of the men that drank the home-made liquor got sick and/or died  Once they did go on land the locals were all very nice to them  They caught some of the Chinese stealing and tried to scare them by threatening to do what the Japanese used to do to them; cut off their hands (58:35) Working in China  There was no war damage in the Northern area where Howard was working  He stayed in Tsingtao the whole time and worked on water purification and supply  Howard met a Japanese man who had gone to school in the US and was completely against the war  The man invited Howard over for dinner and he told him about how he was in the Japanese Army, but refusing to fight  There was not much crime in that area and the Americans often tried to help the Chinese (1:17:15) Leaving the Pacific � While in the Pacific Howard had lost track of time and was surprised when he was told that his 4 years of enlistment was up  He did not want anything to do with the service again and did not even consider reenlisting  He arrived back in the states and bought a fancy suit and a fifth of liquor  Howard rented a hotel room and took a shower and then drank all his liquor  He left his uniform in the hotel and never saw it again  Howard took a bus to Michigan and stayed with his mother and stepfather again for a while  He got a job working with his stepfather with UAW, but was fired after about 4 weeks  Howard went through many jobs for a while, but kept getting fired because he was sick of taking orders from people after being in the Marines  He then traveled to Chicago to try to find a job, but was unsuccessful (1:29:20) Army  Howard later took a bus to Kansas City in 1947 to look for a job, but still no one was hiring  He decided to go to Fort Riley and enlisted in the Army for 18 months  He was made Corporal and had to take a few refresher courses to begin  Howard was then transferred to Fort Knox in Kentucky in July of 1947  For the 4th of July he took a bus to visit his cousin in Nashville, and on the bus ride he met his future wife  He traveled with her and her sister the whole way and they talked a lot, getting to know each other  Howard was transferred for Fort Bliss about a month later and she came there to meet him, where they got married on August 1, 1947 (1:51:25) Virginia  Howard had to go through a 90 day course in correctional custodial methods at Fort Lee  Once he passed the course in Virginia he was sent to New Cumberland, Pennsylvania � His wife got a job waitressing, but they had a hard time and neither of them was making enough money  Howard worked watching prisoners at a compound in Pennsylvania  They were all men who had been court marshaled for some reason, but at one point he was given too many to watch  He complained to his superior that he could not keep track of so many men, but he was told to just follow orders  2 of the prisoners took off on him and Howard was put in the brig and later court martialed for neglect of duty  He was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor, lost ¼ of his pay for 3 months, and was demoted to private  Howard was sent to Fort Meade to work on the stockade for 4 weeks and then his sentence was rescinded because it had somehow become clear that he had just been following a superior’s orders  Howard was very angry at that point and wanted nothing else to do with the Army  He told his captain he wanted a 369 hearing to be honorable discharged and he was soon finished with the Army (2:15:10) After Service  Howard hated being in the Army, but really enjoyed his time in the Marines  In November of 1946 he took flying lessons with a friend of his and really enjoyed flying over the Grand River in Michigan  Unfortunately his good friend was later killed in a plane crash  In 1949 Howard began going to watch-making school in Kansas City, Missouri  He later wrote a book about his time in the service with the help of his granddaughter and is currently seeking a publisher � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TerryH Title A name given to the resource Terry, Howard (Interview outline and video) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Terry, Howard Description An account of the resource Howard Terry was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1927 and lived in different orphanages from the ages of 5-15. When he was 15 years old he lied about his age and enlist in the Marine Corps to get out of the orphanage. Howard went through boot camp for 6 weeks and then began traveling east until he eventually made it to Londonderry, Ireland where he worked with the First Provisional Marine Battalion guarding facilities in Northern Ireland. Howard was in Ireland for 2 years and then sent back to the US after the Normandy Invasion. After having some time off and going through more training Howard was sent to the Pacific where he fought in Okinawa and Guam. He was later stationed in Tsingtao, China before his 4years of service was up. Howard then signed up for 1.5 months with the Army, which he did not enjoy and decided to leave early. He later began working on a book, detailing his life in the orphanages and his time in the service. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American United States. Marine Corps Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4167ec56e18e526a1a67bf6c0a11c525.jpg d7d56d58a3148a60cb5181ffd328eb36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TerryMartha Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Terry, Martha Description An account of the resource Martha Terry, Librarian Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f2fd6423db407fa83c497c1850b8bc2f.pdf 8276dda062f9a45929a264e5650e9f45 PDF Text Text PROGRAM TL 'Tl0JO I I and (,01.DC. l BOOK DEDIC'AT!O 1 s :".l)AY n E'-1 . G NO\'L\lBLR 6 . ]!)1() ():00 P.'-1. 1·0,mrnc ..1Tio,· 1L, .\1 1:--11.u:1, • olt �!7/4eaJCUJ-t1t!f on t/ieouteJtjiaJtlo/7t/iiajiJto,?1<am 6a Jle/1,Jloducu'on o/tlie COJPe Jt o/t/4e <§olden !?,look o/<'tf'o-n!/"e!/alion p,j,,n ai ,_/i)(ae/ �AGE SAID THAT JI[ FOUND REASON FOR IIONORING ALMOST EVERYONE KNEW. ACROSS ONE I '1 HAVE EVER COME WIIO!'l I FAILED TO RECOG, 17.E SUPERIORITY OVER MY ELF. I IIAVE SAID IIE IIA WERE IIE OLDER, DONE MORE GOOD THAN I; \VERE HE RICHER, I SAID HE IIA · BEEN CHARITABLE; WERL HE YOU 'GLR, I tORf" AID I HAVE SINNED MORE; WLRE IIE POORER, I SAID HE JIAS S FFERED HEAVIER TRIBULATION; WI ER, I HONORED 1111'1 FOR lll HE OT WISER, AID HIS WERE HF. WI DOM; WERE FAULT IS THE LIGHTER." / �I ~ I l tll/.1 / kJ linu 1urrl'; ll'-e. ttfe 0 !»~//It' «~u:/ 1)(/feL!~J/~ @-o-~re:_.qa.1'i.on liitai 3,sFaei ¥7'l11Jli'7.~n. ~llt'cl/t?__an ~nnhe ,{n,_,,,,z lib- a/I' 11u111'l,',iul l"1✓r-y,'Olt'l11de, IMHJ. 4,mr>'" and e~Lee,u p-r l4e ,,uzny el',n ,nnu!u/l'e Je,,..,l._ ieeJ rtwrfrM« /f!~1u--ff'~n7-1-eyalu,n a 11d Mt/r, ccn1 ,n 11 ,u'ly ~: \\tubat~e,~nuutI fu6it-Cira"%matt f a.'.Ualt-~ilein, ·~bu~CL- j,ltmo~kltv 3L~ =llo~,nb(,ttiS a.~lllJ L~matt ~~a.iro-{¢ ~~erc- \ia.v~ a-. :$i%ht-v 3~fo'g,lt f. ~r~iinp • ~:gmatt • tr~ ©ti~. jmi±:h- l(a%ia,lt, Wiene~ J30rA,~iunco~ ~o-bev-f. ~he1tin:. ~( -t tl\'Ultt~CUCe~.OttJ/t iu 1ult,nrt tile .J/u·~tt ii/ tfi.1fi//'t,.11,c-,e,-,.eat,l/H.f taAe .d.e.t'tjht; Ril htrn/ th,, .y,/,,/t '!/ a// IA'e 11~~enl laheJ d--e//jlft. ':l!Cr" ~. c:?'--'-o/--~·~:·:~~-<>t~ •l ~ ~ ~-Y,~- 1 l �z:!lro!/ raJn ,--/r~Jli11w11ial!?),-n 1ze1 1 a nd[/Nlir·alionojCIJolclen !/Jook S/411(/ff!J 01w11iny,. fO-IJ!f-'11,tfe-1! 6: f g1;g (/·00 !!J.,,,,(( ... .,~ . :J. · I A~ I - NA TlO AL ANTHEM Audience I VOCATIO Ral,hi Samuel Umen GREETl 1GS f-lerherl Fisher Pres. Young People's LNu1ue VOCAL SELECTIO PRE F. 1T ATJO l Ilene Giiclelsky OF TEST! IONIAL RE PON E TO TE Tl 10 'I L Paul M. \Viener Pres. Cong . B'nai Israel Harold Rosen ( Representing Group) PRE E"\JTATJ01 OF GOLDEN BOOK EXPRCS IO Elaine Baru Pres. Confirmation Class ·so I DEDIC/\ TJO . francis Fme Member Golcfon Book Com. OF GOLDE 1 BOOK ~ omuef Umen Rabbi Cong. B'nai fsrael A IER1CA BE EDICTIO Auclicnce ~ amuel ( 1,,1en Rabl,i Cong . B'nai lsra,,{ �congregation is a social unit and like society as a whole. is made up of different individuals striving toward certain definite goals. ln ib struggle for existence and for the realization of ils objectives. the con gregalion has its ups and downs, ils headache , prohlems. f ailurc~ and achievements. This struggle for existence is what makes history. The hi tory which is made by society from day lo day. and year lo ~ ear. is regularly rf'curded by il historian . Smaller units within the social make-up such as con- grertalion for example are not alway inclined to keep a record of their own special history. A a result of this negligence, po terity is deprived of a good deal of infor- mation, inspiration and guidance in problems which the past has successfully olve.-1 and which nevertheless crop up again for the fulure. Bearing these facts in mind. we of Congregation B' nai Israel have therefore created a hook. to serve as a record for the Congregation's hi tory as ii is made from day lo day by our trials and achievements. Tonight. we are happy lo dedicate this book which all agree is a thing of b«"auly. Beginning tonight this Golden Book remains a challenge lo all of us . \\'hether or not we hall meet the challenge in the form of great and worlhv dPeJs depends upon our altitude toward the acrifices, altruism, courage and vision demanded by our work and goals. Let us on this historic occasion, resolve lo meet the challenge of the "Book" in such a manner so that the fulure may call us blessed. �DI NER COMMITfEE FRANCIS AUGUST ARRA CEMENT COMMITTEE PROGRAM COM!\ lllTEE EUGENE FISHER * CHAIRMAN GOLDE * CHAIRMA HERBERT FISHER * CHAIRMAN BOOK CO 1MIITEE LEO S. ROSE * CHAIR 1A 1 IVITATIO SA D RESERVATIONS COMMITTEE IRENE STEINDLER * CHAIRMA'.'J TESTI IONIAL COl'll\llrIEE PAUL l. \VIENER * CJ IAJRl\lAN � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Temple B'nai Israel Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Temple B'nai Israel (Muskegon, Mich.) Description An account of the resource Collection of photographs, scrapbooks, programs, minutes, and other records of the Temple B'nai Israel in Muskegon, Michigan. The collection was created as part of the L'dor V'dor project directed by Dr. Marilyn Preston, and was supported by grants from the Kutsche Office of Local History and Michigan Humanities Council. Original materials were digitized by the University Libraries and returned to the synagogue. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital objects were contributed by Temple B'nai Israel as part of the L'dor V'dor project. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Jews--United States Muskegon (Mich.) Scrapbooks Synagogues Women--Societies and clubs Minutes (Records) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Preston, Marilyn Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Relation A related resource L'dor V'dor (project) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-08 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Text Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Circa 1920s-2018 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-08_Testimonial_Dinner_&_Golden_Book_Dedication_1949 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B'nai Israel Temple Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1949-11-06 Title A name given to the resource Testimonial Dinner and Golden Book Dedication Program Description An account of the resource Program outlining the dinner proceedings, the meaning of the Golden Book, and the different committees involved. Subject The topic of the resource Jews--United States Muskegon (Mich.) Synagogue dedication services Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital file contributed by the B'nai Israel Temple as part of the L'dor V'dor project. Relation A related resource L'dor V'dor (project) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e6dbb3ab2afe4b728de1d1cca48f7ea8.jpg cb1105a8d5ffb9edfcbe8cd7fcaa7be7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TevebaughJohn_Photo01 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Tevebaugh, John Description An account of the resource John Tevebaugh, History Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/114f2baaebb827455e4cc11ba4d3da2d.jpg b0ad8667b5065c806906548870c277aa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TevebaughJohn_Photo02 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Tevebaugh, John Description An account of the resource John Tevebaugh, History Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/04796f348c643bf5adfd5e0bc92c23d0.jpg 2167b8bfae9f4786ef8c8cf4cb334467 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TevebaughJohn_Photo03 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Tevebaugh, John Description An account of the resource John Tevebaugh, History Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/06847baf7e6f489df5124cb8510b7898.jpg e619478a2d533a6802a83134b76ac232 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TevebaughJohn_Photo04 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Tevebaugh, John Description An account of the resource John Tevebaugh, History Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. 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Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TevebaughJohn_Photo05 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Tevebaugh, John Description An account of the resource John Tevebaugh, History Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7abd153191fe877fd0ef1890a1fba064.mp4 9eafd0034086710a4d7b9da24ee9329d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/426332353896d3450c6ec1e17dac91f8.pdf 2b4483dfe11df545acf98209fe6d08b1 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 1] FRANK BORING: We'd like to start off with Tex, what were you doing before you got involved in the AVG? TEX HILL: I was a Naval Aviator. I went through Pensacola and after graduation was assigned to the fleet. I went to the Saratoga. I was assigned to Torpedo 3 and I was on the Saratoga for a year and then I was transferred to the Ranger to Bombing 4 which later became Scouting 41 and I was recruited out of the Navy to go to China. FRANK BORING: Well how did you first hear about this opportunity in China? TEX HILL: When I was on the Ranger we actually were at war, really. We were helping the British with the convoys. These convoys would make up in Bermuda and then they'd pull out and we would go out ahead and run these search patterns out there and anything we'd see why we'd just report it in the clear. The British had a task force. I remember they had the Aircraft Carrier Eagle and they had the Diomedes, they had a couple of heavy cruisers and so we'd call out whatever we'd see in the clear and then the task force would come over and take care of it. As a matter of fact on one of our searches, we picked up two submarines and a tender and when we made our next run over there, why the Diomedes was steaming around and there was nothing but debris and oil slick all over the place, so I presume they must have sunk them. �FRANK BORING: When did you first hear that there was an opportunity in China? TEX HILL: Well then we came back off this cruise and Ed Rector and myself and Bert Christman, we were inseparable, we were very close friends, so we had just come down off a flight and go into the operations shack there and Gus Widhelm, who was the operations officer, he said "here's some guys that'll go with you" and he was always very intense and he grabbed us and we didn't even know what he was talking about, and he introduced us to Commander Irvine and he said "Commander Irvine is looking for some people to go to China to keep the Burma Road open." Well, hell, we didn't even know where Burma was. So he pulled a big map down and said "This is Burma, this is the Burma Road, and these are the way supplies are going into China." So we said it sounded like a great idea. So a few days after that we shoved off and we didn't think we'd ever hear any more about it. But when we came back in March, I believe it was, of '41, here this guy was, had a bunch of contracts and the Navy was very much opposed to it. As a matter of fact, our Skipper flew up to Washington to try to block it, his name was Bill Harris and he tried to block it but he came back he said "I don't know what this is all about fellows, but it's bigger than me" so he gave us a party. But actually, Hap Arnold was against it, Admiral Tyler was against it and it was only by Presidential Decree that we were able to have this thing happen. FRANK BORING: What was your personal motivation? Why would you want to go to China? Was there anything in your background that would lead you to want to do that? TEX HILL: Yes, there really was. My father was a missionary. I was born in Korea and I'd heard him talk about the Orient and particularly about the Japanese because the Japanese occupied Korea at that time and my Dad wasn't real happy with the treatment that the Japanese gave the Korean's. But I'd always wanted to go there. As a matter of fact, I had already put in for a transfer to the Houston �when I was on the Saratoga. In those days in the Navy, if you could find someone with comparable experience, you could effect a transfer and I'm glad it didn't happen because the Houston was sunk. So then when this opportunity came when I was on the Ranger, why, I jumped on it right away. Actually there were six of us off the Ranger that went. You see the Ranger at that time was the only carrier that we had that was really ready to go to war. I mean we were trained. The Navy was undergoing expansion and they didn't want to let people go with any kind of experience because they were getting spread pretty thin. But the President decreed that the recruiters could come on base, Army, Navy and Marine Corps facilities and try to get whoever they could. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v01 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 1 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill describes his work as a Naval Aviator prior to joining the American Volunteer Group, how he first heard of the opportunity in China, and his personal motivations for going oversees to serve with the AVG. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cc3a3ff794d64b42317b79d474475334.mp4 c469fb45a2eeab766a7a4278e82ba588 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6e4267bddf2b490ead6c5015520b1ee4.pdf 475293213af36032f7277b7ce8f7a02a PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 2] FRANK BORING: You had already thought about transferring to the Houston at that point because it was going to the Far East. TEX HILL: Well I'd thought about going to the Far East because having been born over there, my father was a missionary there and I was born in Korea, so I had an interest in getting back over in that part of the world and I had actually thought about, had even tried to get a transfer to the Houston. In those days in the Navy if you could find someone who had comparable experience, that you could effect a transfer, they would try to accommodate you that way. The Houston was in Southeast Asia in water. So that would have given me an opportunity to get there. But I'm glad it didn't happen because the Houston was sunk. So when I got to Norfolk to the Ranger I was able to take advantage of that opportunity to get over there. FRANK BORING: Once they actually said that it was all right for you to go, what was the process like of getting out and then getting in to the AVG? TEX HILL: Well there wasn't any problem at all once the decision was made. Commander Irvine was right there with the contracts and all we did was sign the contracts and they mustered us out of the Navy. One of the things that happened to us in the Navy, we got a complete discharge. Whereas the other branches, they had some �kind of reserve status so they didn't lose any service time. But we lost a year of service. See our contracts were for a year. FRANK BORING: What was the contract like? What were they actually promising you in the contract? TEX HILL: Well they set forth - well there were a lot of legal things in there but they mostly basically the thing we were interested in was the pay. So they set forth in there depending on what your status would be, what the pay grades would be. In my case, I was a Flight Leader and then of course later on I became a Squadron Leader. FRANK BORING: In terms of you, yourself, if it was a Navy operation and they were going to give you Navy pay, would you have gone to China anyway? TEX HILL: Yeah I think I would have. Yeah, I don't think that pay - of course it was attractive, gosh we were only making - an ensign - making $125.00 a month you know and then the lowest pay grade was $600.00 as a wing man, $650.00 for a Flight Leader and $750.00 for a Squadron Leader. That was some incentive, but it's just like the bonus - and incidentally that was not written into the contract but the $500.00 bonus for each airplane we shot down, that was a gentlemen's agreement, but they honored it and they paid off on 297 airplanes. FRANK BORING: In the contract itself did it say that they were going to guarantee your trip back home? TEX HILL: Yes, they paid our way both ways. FRANK BORING: What was it you were expecting? They told you this is what you were going to be doing and you'd never been there, but what were you expecting before you ever got there? �TEX HILL: Well you know we went over on these Dutch ships and you get a bunch of guys from different branches of services and strangers and everybody's sitting there evaluating each other and it's a funny thing. The guys you think are most likely to succeed will be the ones that don't. The little guys that you wouldn't think could do anything, he's a tiger. But I think that it was really just an unknown. We really didn't know what to expect. We knew we were going to fly airplanes, we thought we'd be patrolling the Burma Road, it would be our primary mission and we certainly didn't anticipate the living conditions that we had there. They were very, very rough. However, everybody was in the same boat and it didn't affect our morale. When we landed in Rangoon they moved us immediately up to Toungoo and we started our training there. The forward exit line that went ahead of us, the first group, they were all down at the train to meet us. We pulled in there late at night and they were all down there to greet us and some of them had been shipmates that we knew in the past. But the environment there was really hostile. Insects, heat, no refrigeration, it was just…The only really surcease you would find would be at night when you got under the mosquito net. We had a funny instance there, speaking of mosquito net, we had a guy named Fred Hodges and we called him "Fearless Fred Hodges". He had a thing about insects and they'd just drive him up a wall and once people knew about that then they really made life miserable for the poor guy. They'd put those bugs under that net, you'd have to have a net to catch him. He'd come out and just go wild. But actually when they served the food there, they'd have two plates - have a plate on top of a plate and you'd pull that lid off and get after it as fast as you could before the insects beat you to it. You know you bathe with a bucket over there, they didn't have a shower. Of course outhouses, everything was very primitive. FRANK BORING: Before we get into more detail about that, could you tell us a little more about the trip over, the boat trip itself? �TEX HILL: The trip over was really great. We were on the Bloemfontein and we had about half missionaries and half AVG people and I'm not sure who converted who on that trip over, but they had a fertile field to operate in I'll tell you that. We were at sea quite a while. From San Francisco we went in to Honolulu and then from Honolulu we went in to Australia, to Brisbane, and then we went up through the Barrier Reef on into the Philippines and then into Batavia, which is now Jakarta and Surabaya and then on into Rangoon. But we were running under blackout. The Dutch were at war so we running under blackout from the time we left Australia. FRANK BORING: What were some of the job descriptions that you guys were listed under that you can recall? TEX HILL: Well they were just pay grades really. As far as the flying guys were concerned, you had Squadron Leader, Flight Leader and Wing Man. FRANK BORING: No, I mean on the boat? Because you guys weren't listed as Squadron Leaders or… TEX HILL: Oh no, no. Our passports. Oh yeah we all had phony passports. I know mine was a rancher and some of them were clerks, bankers. The Japanese, really though they knew everything that we were doing. They had I'm sure very good intelligence. Of course they didn't know - the intelligence wasn't all that great once we got into China. But as far as our moves and going into these different places, they knew about it. I mean they weren't fooled by the passports. FRANK BORING: So they did want you to maintain some semblance of secrecy. You're saying you didn't think that was effective? TEX HILL: Well because we didn't know a whole lot about what our operation would be. We were just going over there to patrol the Burma Road, we're not going over there to go to war with the Japs, but that in �fact was what we really were going over there for. That's probably why one of the reasons the President was convinced that it was necessary to keep China in the war. Otherwise, we'd have been out of that whole area. There'd be no presence there at all. FRANK BORING: Who else was on the boat with you? TEX HILL: Well Ed Rector was there, Bert Christman, Bill Reed, R.T. Smith, P.J. Green, Jack Cornelius. We had about 30 people and you know we lost some of our people that defected. A lot of the guys got out of the service. It was very difficult to get out of the service at that time. Some of our guys just used this contract as a means to get out. I guess they picked them up later after the war started and the draft started, well I'm sure they probably got these guys. But a lot of them jumped ship. We only got over there actually with about out of the 100 pilots that were recruited - I think we got over there with about 87 or something like that. By the time we weeded them out, we actually had roughly 87 ready to go to war. FRANK BORING: Once you arrived - we'll talk about the shipboard - there was apparently a bunch of missionaries that were on there and a few of them caught your eye I understand. TEX HILL: Yeah there was a little Ceylonese gal that I got very much enamored of. She was from a little town of - she was from Ceylon and she'd been in training in the States, going back to do a little missionary work and I kind of coached her a little bit. Really there weren't that many eligible women aboard. You know when you're drowning and a log floats by you don't ask how big it is. FRANK BORING: Once you arrived at Toungoo, what was the procedure? I mean you got there, they billeted you, they told you where the mess tent was or whatever, what was that whole process like? TEX HILL: Well it's really hard to remember. I know that they took us right to some barracks and our barracks were just a rectangular building �with bunks side-by-side with mosquito nets and that was it. Then the mess hall - we had a place for the mess and that was it. There was no furniture or anything like that at all in them, it was very sparse. Then of course we drew our equipment. They issued us a flying suit, a flight jacket, helmet, goggles, oxygen mask and that was about it. FRANK BORING: What about sidearms? TEX HILL: No. Most of the guys took sidearms. I know I had a 45 that my uncle gave me from World War I. It was a government 45, I still have it. But a lot of guys had some rifles, pistols of different kinds. FRANK BORING: What were your first official duties, if you will? I mean who from the AVG greeted you? I mean introduced you around and when did you start working on the airplanes themselves? TEX HILL: Well the airplanes were just being put together down in Rangoon. This was all held by CAMCO, Central Aircraft Manufacturing Co. That was their job to do and we had 100 P-40's except one that was damaged, got some salt water on it but we used it for our Hangar Queen. Then as they put the airplanes together and they had a Chinese down there - as a matter of fact he was General Lo - I wish you could have called him on an interview. Of course he died - Lo Yin [?] I'm sure you knew him. Anyway he was the acceptance pilot for the Chinese and he flew all the P-40's before we did. Of course we had to put him on about 3 cushions so he could see out of it. Then they brought them up there, then we started our check-out and it was pretty hairy because in the Navy we were flying round engines and that big, long nose out there boy I'll tell you it was really awesome! But we managed to get by pretty well on our check-out. The big boat people had the guys that came out of the big boat squadrons, flying the big sea planes. They had a little problem. They'd land them about 50 feet in the air. They had to take these people because actually Chennault wanted 100 pilots with 500 hours pursuit time. That's what he would have �liked to have had. When he went to Arnold to tell him what his requirements were he said "if I were to give you that many pilots with that kind of experience, that would be my entire pursuit section." And the old man said "General if you can't spare that many pilots with that kind of experience, you don't have any pursuit section to begin with". So that always endeared him to Hap Arnold. They had to recruit whoever they could and they finally got down to where they were having to take P-Boat people, but some of them turned out real good though. FRANK BORING: So your first experience was then with the P-40. What can you tell us about that? TEX HILL: Well just as I said, the thing was awesome, the P-40B or the Tomahawk that we had, it had a real bad ground looping characteristic and you had to stay on top of it all the time. I was very happy to make it around the pattern and get used to it. Being an experienced pilot, we were all professionals and it didn't take us very long to really get the feel of the aircraft. FRANK BORING: What's ground looping? TEX HILL: Well that's when you lose your directional control and your tail comes right around and you're going the other way. FRANK BORING: What's a Hangar Queen? TEX HILL: A Hangar Queen would be an airplane which you use to salvage or take spare parts off of to repair other aircraft. FRANK BORING: What is your first impression, your first memory of meeting Chennault? TEX HILL: Well he greeted us there at Toungoo and my first impression of him was he was very dynamic guy. When you first meet him he just exuded strength and you had a lot of confidence in him right �off the bat. You knew he was a guy that knew what the heck he was talking about. He didn't do a lot of talking. If you read anything that he's written everything is right to the point, there's no verbiage. When you listen to his tactical lectures why you knew the guy knew exactly what he was talking about and when the test came for us, why things were just exactly the way he had told us, so we had no surprises. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v02 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 2 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill discusses his desire to return to the Far East after being born in Korea and his father being a missionary there. He also discusses the process of getting into the AVG and the group's journey aboard Dutch ships on their way to Rangoon. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/95f0f22cf732fc9c45bd7ec9c370945f.mp4 a096e8615d00f253631d0045b84ad048 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/424563e27c214b190349054c7bab1c84.pdf 58cb8a231ab3e9f5d43413cec730ae18 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 3] FRANK BORING: How effective was Chennault's training in the classroom and how did that translate into the actual fighting? TEX HILL: Well Chennault gave us roughly 60 hours of classroom training, teaching us tactics. Having been over there since 1937, he had observed the Japanese and maybe in fact had done some flying against him. We don't know for sure. But in his tactical lectures, he told us exactly how to use the equipment we had against the Japanese. He knew the Japanese equipment, he knew what their capability was, and he knew the P-40 and how to use it properly. Well basically it was that you just don't turn with them. I mean you've got to use the strong points of your airplane against the weak points of his. The Japanese had the maneuverability, they had high rate of climb, they could climb faster than we could and they had the altitude advantage. But we had two big advantages and one of them was speed, we had the speed advantage and if you have the speed advantage you can choose the time you want to fight and if you don't want to fight, you can go home, but they couldn't. We could catch them and make them fight and that was a big advantage. Then the other thing of course was that we had a very rugged airplane and heavy fire power, we had more fire power than they had. As long as we used that, the tactics of trying to make contact with a guy and get a shot at him, but don't stay in there and try to turn with the guy, just dive out, come back up again and try �to make contact again with something. Now in theory, we used a two ship element, which is a basic formation. And Chennault was the first guy to do that. Now Admiral Thatch, we were shipmates, he had Fighting Three when I was on the Saratoga, and I know when I left the Saratoga we were still flying ABC formation, three ship formation. But he got credit in the Pacific as the Thatch Weave, they called it. But Chennault was the first guy to develop that tactic with the two ships and it gave us a lot more flexibility so we built up from there. Just as a basic concept, say you had three flights of four, say you had four, four, four. Okay, the one flight would come in and hit the fighters, the Japanese would come in with bombers and they'd have these fighters stacked up. The first flight would go in and you'd hit the fighters and that would pull them off and the bombers were fast and they never would catch them again. So then the second element would go down and go to work on the bombers, and then the third was in reserve and then as soon as they saw everything was clear they'd join in wherever. But that was the theory, but in practice actually when you made contact, hell, there were airplanes all over the sky. Everybody trying to get on something. But theoretically that's the way it should work. But like I say, once contact was made - and not only that, we never had enough airplanes to really just do these things. I think the most we ever got in the air at one time was 16. And there may be 80 or 100 planes coming in and boy, I mean that's a lot of airplanes in a small space and your chances of a mid-air collision were pretty good. But you could always find some guys up there scratching their butt or something and didn't see, and slip up behind him. FRANK BORING: Can you describe what it was like - they called it a beehive I guess? TEX HILL: Yeah it's like a beehive because the minute you made contact these guys are going around and around and around like that and you get in one of those things and you're going to really get shot up bad. But I know later on some of the Army pilots that came in after our �group broke up, I can remember one in particular was a guy named Dallas Klinger and of course the inclination is to dog fight 'cause that's what you're trained to do, try to get around on the guy's tail and he got in a beehive then and really got his airplane just about totaled and Chennault called him in and he said "Look we can get some more pilots, but we can't get any more of those airplanes and you use that airplane properly." So he really chewed him out. But you see they had the same equipment down in the Pacific when the war - the P-40's and they came off real bad with it because they didn't use them properly, same thing. But our tactics were simple, direct and as a result, why we came off very well. FRANK BORING: Prior to December, you were still in training and a new batch of guys came in. What was that like as new people started to come in? Was there a difference in terms of you guys were there first or any of that? What was that like when new guys would start to come in? TEX HILL: No we just greeted the guys. You know it's a funny thing about our group. You probably noticed, we're like a family. We're a very close knit organization. We've had our reunions and we've taken care of orphans and widows and we still have some money in the till and we subsidize guys who can't make a trip to our reunion and it's just like a family. The new guys coming in, they were welcomed into the family. Our operations got under way after Pearl Harbor. I mean we really got very busy. FRANK BORING: So prior to Pearl Harbor then it was basically just training, routine. Was there an anticipation? Did you feel like you were about to get into war? TEX HILL: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I came down off a flight in Toungoo and the word came that the Japs had just hit Pearl Harbor and I remember the remark I made. I said "well I sure hope free problem 21 works". That free problem 21 was a rehearsal to guard against just exactly what happened. We'd divide the fleet up and assume �some foreign power could come into the Philippines primarily we thought, we weren't thinking so much of Hawaii and we'd divide that up and play these war games and sure enough it eventually happened. So the Navy, they definitely figured the Japanese were the only people who had any capability to do that. FRANK BORING: What was your reaction personally and what was the reaction of the guys around you when you heard? TEX HILL: Well I guess it didn't come as a shock except we couldn't believe that they hit Pearl Harbor. We just couldn't believe that the Japanese could have done that. But as far as getting into the war, I think we were pretty much aware of it when I was still on the Ranger and we were out doing this scouting mission for the British. So I don't remember any big reaction, other than the fact that on down the line when we had some problems that our country was at war, so we got a different ball game as far as discipline and doing the things the General wanted us to do. FRANK BORING: Were you there with the General? What was the General's reaction? TEX HILL: Well the General's reaction, and it's something I brought a copy of it, I don't know what anybody did, but on the 11th of December he put out a memorandum, proclamation, a charge to us that we were now at war and so forth and it's a historical document and it should be published, it's not too long. But he charged us with our responsibilities, that now our country is at war and we should do this and do that and what to expect. FRANK BORING: What was your first encounter with the war - there was a 3:30 a.m. alert and you ended up crashing. This was before the war… TEX HILL: Yeah down in Toungoo I lengthened that runway down there at Toungoo. I came in - we had an alert - and of course there's no lighting facilities for the runway, we just had lamps on the side �there and they had a jeep parked on the end and however we had about 4000 feet there which is pretty long - it's not today - but it's pretty long for us - and I believe it was Ed Rector that just landed ahead of me and he was coming back down this way and it's a fairly narrow runway and I came in and I should have gone around, I didn't and so I went off through the boonies there. But you know flying out of a field at night down there, we had another very tragic thing happen with Pete Wright. I don't know whether you knew that or not but the same operation. We went down there on a night alert and Ed and I weren't flying, but we were in this car that was parked on the end of the runway there for the light. We got out and one of our guys just stayed in there and was asleep and Pete Wright came in and when he put his gear down, a hydraulic line ruptured and the fluid got up in his face and he set it down and he set it right on top of that car and killed the guy's name was Ken Merritt of Austin, Texas, and he was killed. But I mean operations were so primitive up there with the facilities they have now, but when you start thinking about lamps and the jeep on the end of the runway, short runways. Up in Yin Lang later on, my God, we operated off that field at night and every 900 meters, that's less than 3000 feet. FRANK BORING: On January 3rd, Newkirk led you and Christman and Jim Howard on a mission over Thailand. I wonder if you could tell us…? TEX HILL: Yeah this was my first taste of combat and we took off in daylight hoping that it - as a matter of fact it was still kind of dark - just before daylight and we arrived at this little field of tack, which is just right on the western edge of Thailand, right close to the Burma border, and so Christman had engine trouble, he turned back. And I was flying Howard's wing, Newkirk was leading. So we got there to the field and of course we didn't bother to look around, we thought we were going to have complete surprise, but the first thing I noticed there were more than 3 of us in that traffic pattern and this guy got on Howard's tail and he was really - and I got so excited I didn't even look through the gunsight at all, I just pulled �right up behind him and the tracers were there and I just kind of hosed him down. In the meantime, another guy came over and did an overhead pass on me and shot 33 holes in my airplane and I was just pulling into another one head on. It all happened I guess, within two minutes. Howard kept strafing the field. He didn't even know he'd been attacked, he really didn't. When we got back I said "look at your airplane." But on this second one, it was a head on deal and some of those bullets stuck in the prop and it threw the prop out of balance and, hell, it was just like the engine was going to come right through the side of the airplane. So I throttled back and limped back to Mingaladon, back to Rangoon. I got out of that airplane it looked like a sieve. So Howard didn't have a whole lot of holes, he had about 11 bullet holes in his plane, and Newkirk pulled into another one. I saw him get one head on across the field. He went down and made a strafing pass and then he pulled up into one. FRANK BORING: On your first encounter, were you thinking about Chennault's tactics? TEX HILL: I wasn't thinking about anything, just looking through that windscreen and all I could see, I was just right directly behind the guy. No I wasn't thinking about anything. You see the thing about it is, you're apprehensive any time you get an alert, getting ready to go into combat. You're not scared, but you're apprehensive - is a better word I think. And once that contact is made, why you immediately go about doing what you're trained to do and just hope you do it better than the other guy. Those were my feelings. I never was frightened, but I always was apprehensive and waiting for that first contact. FRANK BORING: You had to fly under some very unusual circumstances. One thing was your areas were not exactly mapped out very well. I wonder if you could talk about how you got around, navigating? �TEX HILL: Oh Lord! We were issued these French maps when we got there. And any resemblance between those maps and the terrain would be a coincidence. They were just terrible. So the first Japs we got, why then we began to get a pretty good map and it wasn't until the last part of '42 that our government started flying these big trimets [?] over there and really getting some good maps. But we used Japanese maps right up to the time, during the AVG period. FRANK BORING: What about communications between airplanes? TEX HILL: Well we just had those little old Command sets, a little coffee grinder deal and it really wasn't all that great. Another thing on the communication and navigation, there was no age, there was no navigational age at all. If you were lucky enough after your first mission, when you get engaged in combat you get disoriented, but you pick up certain landmarks and big features that you have some area and hit it and orient yourself, like on a river or something like that. It was real hazardous. Though that net system, that's the thing that really saved a lot of our guys. Chennault had set up this net. He had every little village in the area which had these little command, what we call CW dah dit dah dit deals, and when we'd move into a base, say if you moved into Hengyang, why you'd put the map up on the wall and this would be the center of concentric circles. You'd draw these hundred kilometer circles on out to about 300 kilometers. Then all the Chinese villagers would have to do is say I hear something, I see something, it was very simple, or engine noise, heavy engine noise, light engine noise, that was about all the refinement in it. So immediately that village would send that report in, we'd put a flag right on that village. And pretty soon those flags would line up and you knew the guys were coming in. It was very accurate. When they hit that 300 kilometer mark, why then we'd launch and had to give us time to get to about 20,000 feet, which was our best altitude to fight and then they'd be there. Not only that, it worked real well for us in navigation because if a guy got lost, the procedure was he'd just first village he'd come to he'd go down and give them a short burst over that �village and boy, they'd have a report right in to your field immediately and then the guy could give you a vector. He knows where that village is, you don't know, you just see a village down there. But the guy back here, all he does then, he says well you're over this village here and fly heading of so and so. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v03 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 3 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill describes the training the AVG experienced with General Chennault and how the group welcomed the new batch of members into the family. He also goes into detail about their reaction to the news of Pearl Harbor and how it informed their work for Chennault during wartime. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/09796df49db5e5773e43eff342e6e03a.mp4 0ab65bc9331bd839791eefa9ec26c0a9 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5f5f1fae0df27c5e67bb74f7a26f332a.pdf 105cc135b54a7b23fac54754dfd46cd9 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 4] TEX HILL: …airplane and people were getting killed and that was from the Philippine side of it, that's from the AVG side and they had to go talk to the people in the plants to tell them that the P-40 was a good airplane. Johnny Housman had demonstrated them up in Russia but Wagner, he gave it a real bad name. So the people in the plant working on the airplane, they just didn't want to work on an airplane that was giving [?] You know it was a bad airplane. FRANK BORING: What do you account for - you say the airplane was good - why were these planes getting shot down? TEX HILL: Because they didn't use them properly. The tactics that they used like I was telling you that you cannot turn with that Zero and that's what they were doing. Because everybody's trained in fighter aircraft, it's a classical dog fight and you're trying to get more out of that airplane and get it around on the guy's tail. And sometimes you don't have that going for you. Now that was the problem that we had when they moved the Brewster Buffaloes, they only got that one squadron out of Singapore. They shot all the rest of them down. They got one squadron left and they came up to Rangoon. They were great guys. They had a lot of experience. Some of them had been through the Battle of Britain. But the Brewster Buffalo and that environment had nothing going for it, couldn't turn inside of it, couldn't get away. Nothing was working. But that same �aircraft on the Russian front, the leading living ace guy that I was on the program with, he made his record as a Brewster Buffalo on the Russian front, but he was in a different environment. Now the Hurricane, which they brought over then and tried to get us to take for replacement aircraft, and we flew the Hurricane and said "hell thanks, but no thanks". It was another case. That was a great airplane in the Battle of Britain but in our environment, there again, it would turn inside of a P-40, but it still couldn't quite get inside of a Zero. So it too didn't have the speed and couldn't get away. So it's very important in any theater to have equipment that's tailored for that environment. FRANK BORING: Chennault was a master of that. TEX HILL: He was an absolute master. I mean anything you did, I'm sure that if we'd had Burst of Buffaloes, he would have devised some kind of a tactic where we'd had a better survivability than these other guys did. But it's just natural for a guy trained in a fighter aircraft to dog fight. And it's come right on back around to that now in the high performance aircraft. They're back into dog fighting. Because now when you make contact with a guy, if you can't get around on his tail, you can't break it off, because if you do that they've got a heat-seeking missile right up your tail. FRANK BORING: In January, in fact January 8th we have Newkirk, you and Howard were attacking Tack again, but apparently there was a formal Japanese ceremony going on in honor of one of the Thais. Could you tell us a little bit about that? TEX HILL: No I don't think that's right. I didn't go back there. Now, I'll tell you who did go back there though on that deal, was Charlie Mott. He was our first POW and we had argued that day. I wanted to go back and he said "hell you want to hog all the missions" he said "I'm going to go back." He was all revved up. So he went up and the first mission he got shot down and spent the rest of the war up in the River Kwai. Incidentally, he's still alive and he's in �Washington, one of the smartest guys we ever had over there. He built the gun sights that we used, the optical gun sights, you know we had to ring and bead. He got a hold of some of the British equipment and he located in the floor board of the airplane and he'd throw a beam up on through a radicule [?] he had there that would project it on the windscreen, and it was just a circle with a dot in it. And that circle was a certain width so if you were within, we knew what the wingspan on the Japanese bombers were and you could actually use it like a range finder. You could move in on the airplane and when that wingspan filled that circle, you knew you were set like 250 yards. FRANK BORING: In the same line as this, what were some of the additions that you guys had that sort of jerry rigged together to make that airplane fly the way you wanted it to fly? TEX HILL: Well different requirements - well like they say - necessity is the mother of invention. Like dive-bombing, for instance. We decided we wanted to try to use it as a dive-bomber. Well we had to rig up racks for it. The airplane didn't come with any kind of racks. We also had to do that for belly tanks. You talk about primitive. Your Chinese - we had no belly tanks as such. The Chinese made these out of bamboo with plaster and it had a bamboo stem in there that would hook onto a hose that would feed into the airplane. They were good. I'd say they'd carry maybe 30 gallons. Sometimes they'd feed, sometimes they wouldn't feed. But we'd burn that out first and it gave us quite a bit more range. Because once we had to start going out after them, why we were always operating at the extreme range of the airplane. But that was another example of creating something there that we could use. FRANK BORING: What about - we talked earlier about communications between the airplanes. We didn't get into a lot of detail. I guess they used hand signals. I mean how did you actually communicate with the other guys you were flying with? �TEX HILL: Well we had radios all right, but they weren't all that great, but we had radios. So were able to communicate okay. We didn't have any problem with the radio size - you see during the AVG days mostly all of our fighting was done mostly over our own field. It was a fighter pilot's dream. He's got to come all the way over and fight and then we had the speed advantage. They couldn't go home unless we let them go home. As a result, they were about - there's a new history coming out, they found over 50 airplanes between Rangoon and Moulmein that nobody'd claimed, that we'd shot down, but nobody claimed them. FRANK BORING: Could you describe and perhaps have any stories you have about the actual scrambles? I understand it wasn't just one plane after another, when the alert would go out you guys would go up to fight the airplanes. What were the scrambles like? TEX HILL: Well everybody would make a mad dash for the airplane and of course the runways were a lot of dirt and stuff on them and we'd take off in a real big cloud of dust. You'd jump in and you had your parachute in there and usually your helmet would be sitting on the stick and you were buckling up and everything while you were rolling. Particularly when that interval got real short down at Rangoon, the British had a rudimentary kind of radar set up there, but it really wasn't all that great. But we did get a little early warning. We never got caught on the ground there. Of course it was when they pulled the radar out and everything that's when we finally evacuated. The Japs were almost there anyway. FRANK BORING: Do you have any humorous stories or anything you can recall about one of these scrambles? TEX HILL: I remember one we had. I was off duty and we had an alert and I ran and jumped in Jim Howard's airplane and he's got a head much bigger than mine and that helmet of his fell down over my eyes and I was trying to get that thing adjusted and trying to get in his parachute and take off and he got mad at me too because I got up �there - well Lawlor and I were the two guys that got off and we shot down 4 airplanes that day and I got his airplane shot up that day and he came down mad as heck because I'd gotten bullet holes in his airplane. FRANK BORING: How did that work in terms of your airplane or his airplane and how did it work in terms of you had days off and days on? TEX HILL: Each evening, we'd have posted what the next day's operation would be and everybody was listed by flights and you had two or three backups on there and everybody was assigned a flight whatever the mission was. But in the early days as I said all we were doing was sitting on alert and waiting for the guys to come in. I'll tell you an interesting thing that happened down there. I took off one day, the guys were away on a mission and I was off duty and they had an alert and I got in an airplane, the Crew Chief said they've got an airplane out of engineering that's ready. So I got in that airplane and I got up there and I looked down and I saw this black airplane and hell, I'd never seen anything like that before, but it was an alert and I knew that we didn't have anything like that. I set up on it and I was coming down, had my gun switches turned on and I saw the stars on their wing and I pulled off. It was what they called an LB30, it was a B24 and on that airplane was General Wavell and General Brett and most of his staff and those guys came that damn near to dying. I talked to his boy up here at Langley just recently, Rocky Brett was retired a two star General, he said "my daddy kept a diary and writes that incident in his diary, when they landed he dove out of that airplane in a slit trench and broke his glasses.” But that's how close that guy came to dying. FRANK BORING: In January, as we understand it, the Panda Bears were basically strafing Japanese bases. Do you recall any of the missions that you had? There was Newkirk and Howard and you were strafing the Japanese bases? �TEX HILL: No I don't. Other than going over there to attack, but there was a lot of activity whether they were strafing like the Chiang Mai raid which was really a big one. But I was not on that. FRANK BORING: We have here also that on January 23rd the Japanese attack almost catches AVG by surprise and only 2 airplanes got up. You and Lawlor. Later on some of the AVG came in and… TEX HILL: That's the one I'm talking about yeah. FRANK BORING: You recall when Christman went down? TEX HILL: Let's see. Christman… FRANK BORING: That was late January… TEX HILL: Christman. Yeah I wasn't in the air that day but apparently Bert was killed in his parachute. They didn't see these airplanes. They really got shot up that day. As a matter of fact Paxton came in and his airplane was absolutely riddled. He came in and landed and he still had his gun switches on and those tracers, when he pulled back on the stick, the tracers were bouncing off that runway and it came to a screeching halt and we went out there and pulled him out of the airplane and he was bleeding like a stuck hog. One of the bullets had hit the armor plate and it shattered and in his shoulder it looked like he'd been shot with a shotgun. But a funny thing, he got up and he said "I still say those little bastards can't shoot" and he fainted. So after that we put Paxton - and he was an old guy - I mean Paxton had lied about his age. He was behind me in flying school and he must have been 30 something years old when he went through Pensacola. But anyhow he had had some banking experience and so they put him kind of like a comptroller and put him in charge of our finances and everything. But he was pretty old to be flying combat. �FRANK BORING: What would you say was your most dangerous experience? What was the one that really got to you? TEX HILL: Oh gosh. I never had really thought about it. They all …all they time you know you had quite a bit of exposure. I really didn't have any one particular time. All the combats were … well on one occasion we back to Toungoo after Burma had fallen and we went back there to Toungoo and these bombers were landing and we went down there to strafe these guys and they an antiaircraft gun set up down there and when I pulled up, which was real bad, when you're strafing the field that's another bad thing that you just get grooved in when you're training, to make a short interval, you come in and strafe and you pull up to make that interval short to come back down, and you just do it instinctively when you - but what you want to do is when you come in and you're strafing, just pull up just enough to miss the ground and bend it right back over and get the heck out of the area and then come up. Well I pulled up like that and this guy hit me and knocked a hole about that big in my wing. Then the other time that worried me, I shot down a bomber. There were 7 bombers that came in and I remember Bob Neale and me and there was an RAF pilot, we were flying a Brewster Buffalo and we shot down all 7 of the bombers, but the third to the last one it blew up right in my face and a lot of the debris and stuff knocked some big holes in the wing and I didn't know what damage had been done so that really worried me. FRANK BORING: During this period of time when the fighting was intense and everything, did you have much contact with the Chinese people when you went into the villages or went into the town or anything like that? Did they react to the fact that for some reason the skies weren't full of Japanese as much anymore? TEX HILL: Well every time we'd have a big battle, I know up in the Hengyang area where I was most of the time, the village would turn out and they'd give us presents. I've got some of the most beautiful embroidery work. See the Changsha area is where most of that �work comes from. The villagers would just shower us with presents. They were very grateful. But a lot of this stuff was personalized and I have a translation on it and like the people of Kweilin or the people of Hengyang they just showered us with gifts. We had a very good relationship with the Chinese and did right up until the day we let them go Communist. Because when we let them go Communist we set the stage for all the bad things that has happened to us. FRANK BORING: When did you first start hearing about this term "Flying Tigers" Fe Hu? TEX HILL: Fe Hu. You know I've been trying to pin that thing down but they hung that handle on us real early. I'd say probably maybe as early as January and I don't know how the term came about, but I do know that the markings and everything on the airplane that was picked up from some publication that came out of India and they were showing the P-40's in the desert. Now the Germans also had this shark’s mouth on them, but the one that was copied really, was the one - and contrary to what a lot of people believe - Charlie Bond is the guy that really put the first one on the airplane. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v04 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 4 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill discusses his most dangerous experiences flying with the AVG and the reaction they received by the local Chinese people, in addition to his thoughts on the term "Fe Hu" or Flying Tigers. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/142757713941c752af9b15e3bbfdb184.mp4 d53547cebf1dff4ed27cfecb21fe9eec https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/71cebd38dd6834f53ac678cf8334f3d9.pdf c24951d48636504e9f133d7f3636567f PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 5] TEX HILL: You know it was just a toy, it wasn't worth a damn. Gun platform on the damn nose… and then we were so short legged that in 25 minutes you were looking for some place to land. FRANK BORING: We're going to talk now about personalities, people that you knew that were there. So I'll just be asking you about some of the people that were there. First of all I'd like to start with - as I understood it, Christman was a fairly good friend of yours in the very beginning. TEX HILL: Yeah. Bert Christman and I were shipmates. Actually we were in flying school together at Pensacola. He was a class ahead of me, one class ahead of me. Then when I wound up on the Ranger, I ran into Christman and we renewed our acquaintance and at that time Christman was doing this Scorchy Smith column, comic strip. He also did a strip on the way over there called Logan's Log. If somebody could get a hold of those drawings, but each day he would depict some highlight of that day and depict it with a cartoon. I don't know what happened to all of those things. I know they probably sent them back to his folks, but what happened to them, I don't know. But he was one hell of a good guy. As I say, He and I and Ed Rector were just inseparable. FRANK BORING: How did that affect you when you heard that he'd been? �TEX HILL: It was a terrible, terrible experience. I can tell you there was no such thing as funeral parlors in those days, and no way to embalm anybody and they picked him up and had him in that box and Ed and I were taking him out to the cemetery and here's your best friend in there and the body deteriorating and everything, it's really terrible. But they buried him there at Rangoon. FRANK BORING: Would you say that was - of all the Tigers that you knew - that was the one that affected you the most? TEX HILL: Yeah. I saw two other occasions where people had premonitions that they were going to get killed. Newkirk was one of them. Newkirk, when he went on that mission to Chiang Mai, he sat down and wrote a letter and he asked Chennault, he said "if something happens to me and I don't get back I want Tex to have this squadron". See Jim Howard was senior to me, but the old man called me in and said that Newkirk wanted me to have his squadron, so he gave it to me. Then the other guy was Donovan. He wrote a letter and he didn't want to go on that mission, but this guy had called him and said "let's go down to" - somewhere in Indo-China, I forget now it might have been Hanoi. They were going to go down there and strafe the place and Donovan said "I know who that is and he wants me to go", so he saddled up and he never came back. FRANK BORING: Do you know how Christman was killed? TEX HILL: He was killed in his parachute. He got shot down and he bailed out and the guy shot him in his parachute. He got shot down twice and they got him on this one. FRANK BORING: Did you ever get a chance to have any contact with P. Y. Shu, who was Chennault's interpreter? TEX HILL: Only when I was around the old man. P. Y. was right there, was his right hand man and interpreter and stayed right with him all the �time. And then over the years I've seen him off and on over the years - a wonderful person. FRANK BORING: How about Tiger Wong? TEX HILL: Tiger Wong was a real great guy. I didn't have as much contact with him during those days, but he was more or less in charge of monitoring the people that they had along the coast. We'd get this information - it was real good - like they'd say there's so many airplanes taking off from Hanoi or whatever. Why he was kind of in charge of that operation at that time as I recall. FRANK BORING: You've talked about the Tigers as being like a family and this question always has to come up. I guess the bad boy of the family was Pappy Boyington? TEX HILL: Yeah. He hurt us worse than the Japs. You know Pappy - I didn't have any real problem. I can tell you the first time I saw him. See he was the last guy to get there and the first one to leave. Moose Moss and I were down at Toungoo prowling around and we heard this commotion and we jumped back in the brush and here comes Pappy pulling a rickshaw with a [?]. He was tough as hell - I mean he was really a tough guy. But I don't know, he may have flown maybe 6 missions the whole time he was there. But you see, you know to get a dishonorable discharge from our group, you really had to work at it, it wasn't easy. But Pappy managed it. You see we had those flight schedules we were talking about. Well when you're drunk and not fit for duty some guy's got to get up there and get his butt shot off and guys took a very dim view of that. On one occasion where a guy was killed, how do you live with stuff like that? But that was his problem. He would be drunk and not fit for duty. So that really hurt us. See he got there in November and he left in March. So he was only there about 4 months. FRANK BORING: How about some of the non-pilots, non-crew chiefs and whatnot, like Dr. Richards, for example. Did you get a chance to? �TEX HILL: Oh yeah. Doc Richards - I had more contact with Prevo. Doc Prevo was a real great guy. He and I became very close friends. They used to call him "The White Hope of Purdue". He was a great big guy. He was an Orthopedic Surgeon and he did a little plastic work too and I remember Moose Moss had a gunshot wound where some irate husband I think had shot him, and it was pretty bad up in here and so Prevo did a little repair job on that. He was really a great guy. He could drink a quart of whiskey for a nightcap. I never will forget we had this party that Governor Lung gave us and as a matter of fact it was quite a while before we knew how Governor Lung - we didn't know exactly what his allegiance was he was one of the War Lords that they never conquered. He had his own army and everything, so anyway it finally looked like he wanted to give us a big party. But the old man didn't want us to go because he thought he might poison everybody, wipe us all out at one time if he was aligned with the Japanese. But he wasn't and he was our very close ally at that time. He threw a big party for us and Prevo didn't go, he had the duty. But one of our guys by the name of Cribbs turned over in the jeep and cut his head so they brought him in and Sam was sewing him up, woke up Sam, his hand was shaking, he turned around and he said "Nurse" he said "hold that patient still". Old Cribbs was out cold, he wasn't moving. But he stayed on over after our group broke up and came on in with the 14th Air Force. FRANK BORING: How about the nurses? I understand they were real popular. TEX HILL: Oh yeah very popular, yes. And both of them are still alive. I made passes at all of them. I didn't score well but I gave it a go. FRANK BORING: Now there was another personality there too that a lot has been written about and that was Olga Greenlaw. TEX HILL: Yeah oh yeah. She was quite a character. Lord, man, that Olga was something else. She was a good looking gal and I had quite an �encounter with her one time which I can't go into detail on. But Duke Hedman and I had gone over to pick up some P-40E's over in Karachi and we stayed. Chennault sent us over there because the first two flights didn't get - one of them got back with one, one got back with two and there were P-40E's scattered all the way across India. So the old man sent Duke and I over there so we got them all back to as far as New Delhi and Olga and Harvey were there at the Cecil Hotel. So they invited us to stay there in the hotel and we just made up some bunks in the place. We had a big party one night and Olga and I were singing Mexican songs. I could speak Spanish pretty well and I was raised among Mexicans and Olga came from down south of Ensenada, down in that area there's a White Russian colony down in there and that's where she originally came from. So we were having a good time. Harvey got mad at her and I grabbed her by the arm and started off from the mezzanine floor there there's a stairway in the New Delhi Hotel that's just a straight shot down to the next floor and Harvey had her by the arm and she kind of balked a little bit, got him ahead and gave him a shove and boy he looked like a teddy bear going end over end. So Duke and I we decided we're not going to be very welcome there, so we slept by the swimming pool that night. That's about as far as I can go with that one. FRANK BORING: How about Harvey, himself, though. There's some guys, at least in the books, they talked about - they didn't see what he was doing there. I mean he just walked around with a pipe in his mouth. TEX HILL: Well Harvey was a West Pointer, he had some military background, he was a pilot and did some of the training over there. There weren't a whole lot of people available to go to China that would want to live under those conditions, it was real primitive. You know that Yunnan Province, they were living just the way they were 5000 years ago. Still binding feet and I've got a lot of their little old shoes, but it was very primitive. So it wasn't easy to get a lot of people. But Harvey he was ineffectual really, I mean �Chennault ran the show. Harvey shuffled a little paper and that's about all. But he never got involved at all in any of our operations. FRANK BORING: One of the major events that we've read about, that everybody's talked about was the fall of Rangoon. Were you around in any of that period? TEX HILL: No. We'd gone out. Bob Neale was the one. Have you talked to Bob? FRANK BORING: Not yet. TEX HILL: He'll be a good one to talk, because that guy really did a job coming out of there. He drove himself. Bob was one of these kind of guys that really had to he was absolutely a nervous wreck when he came out of there. FRANK BORING: That leads me to another point. Towards the end when it was getting closer and closer to your contract running out, there was a lot of frantic activity and some of the guys apparently were just getting perhaps battle fatigue might be one way of putting it, but there was a lot of stress and whatnot, what can you tell us about that particular period of time as you got closer and closer to [?]. TEX HILL: Well Chennault could see that they were not going to be able to have replacements in there and he asked me to go around and talk to the different guys and see if I could get them to extend for two weeks. The Third Squadron, they wouldn't extend. Most of the guys out of Bob Neale's Squadron did and mine all agreed to stay. During that period of course I lost Petach and Shamblin, God, it just killed me. Petach had his bag packed, he was over at Paseit [?] that time and the headquarters was at Chungking. I'll never forget old Petach had his bag packed and suitcase, and sat down and was going in to tell the old man goodbye and I asked him, I said if you'd extend. He said "oh sure", unpacked his bag. And I put him and Shamblin on a mission that was - I knew they wouldn't get into �air opposition. There was a ground target that the Chinese wanted hit over there, a little village, insignificant. But apparently it was a pretty important thing because they both got shot down by ground fire. They had heavy, heavy ack-ack [?] and Ajax Baumler and a guy named Butch were the other two guys. See this was right after our group had broken up, it was during that two week period. FRANK BORING: There was a period of time where, as I understand it, the Chinese wanted these morale missions, so to speak, for you to fly over areas and perhaps strafe or whatever and some of the pilots didn't think that there was any real strategic advantage to this. Can you tell us anything about that? TEX HILL: Yeah, I'd come out of Burma, and it was real rough on these guys. I mean the evacuation of Burma was real rough and then the guy that came up through Magwe, it was a hell of a deal. I mean the driver had no early warning, Japanese catching them on the ground and real heavy fighting. They backed on up into Loiwing and I was at Loiwing and I had the Commander responsibility there. So when this thing came up about the morale missions, these guys were in a frame of mind where they just didn't want to get down there. They'd taken some pretty good beating, so Arvid Olson, Third Squadron guys, they signed a petition. My guys didn't sign it. So it was kind of labeled as a revolt or something, but the guys were just expressing the deal that they just didn't want to do that. Well, it never really came to a head because the Japanese were moving so fast. They moved into Lashio and from the time they hit Lashio, I had to figure how long it would take them to go from Lashio up a back trail into Loiwing and not up the road, because there's a trail there, some troops could come up there, and the weather socked in. Good God and we had these airplanes, we were fixing to burn them. We didn't know, and then take off on foot, car, or anyway we could get out of there. The ceiling lifted about 800 feet and we were able to sneak out and go up to Paoshan. But that revolt, so called, it resolved itself real fast because we were too damn busy doing other things. It wasn't any big deal. �FRANK BORING: During this period of time also, the rumors had already started and I guess some of the American military, official American military people, were starting to come in. What was the reaction of AVG and you, specifically, to the fact that it looked like there was going to be a transfer? AVG was going to be over with and something else was going to take it over. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v05 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 5 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill describes his friendship with Bert Christman and how his death affected him. He also discusses the other personalities he encountered such as P. Y. Shu, Tiger Wong, Pappy Boyington, Colonel Harvey Greenlaw and his wife, Olga. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/819b39565b37a4a31cb94b66af89c200.mp4 a0fda6b64d06ba5c4c66a7f5d3dd55c8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/936fa889a46d27c34fb08d06f55801cb.pdf 70bf5cf728a9af874d0a5bf0f45a2f8f PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 6] FRANK BORING: Towards the end you were already getting rumors and you started to see American military personnel starting to come on the scene. What was the reaction from you and from other AVG people as to the change that was now occurring? You were coming close to the end of your contract and what was going to happen next? What was going on at that period? TEX HILL: There had been plans for a second AVG, another contingent of people to come in that was in the plans. We would like to have seen it stay that way because the supply problem was so critical. Everything - by that time the Burma Road had been closed everything was having to come across the hump and they… it just made sense. We could do so much with a small group of people. A good example of that is that …(break) …but just for an example as I say, the hump tonnage was so critical there, but I had about 4 to 5 ground personnel and about 20 pilots and the same outfit that I activated, when our group broke up in July of '42, I came down off a flight , and a guy said, take your oath, sign here and I just put on a different hat and did the same thing I was doing the day before. Except the table of organization for that squadron was about 265 ground personnel and about 35 officers. And that's what happened really. But we knew that eventually we were going to have to be replaced, but they weren't doing this. These guys they said we will no longer give you any more supplies, so that's when we knew that �we were short-lived. So the 4th of July was set up as the date for the AVG to come to an end. But the units that we activated, which was the 23rd Fighter Group, actually there were about 80 - roughly 80 AVG people involved in that, counting the two week period that stayed over to get that organization going. Plus the guys that stayed over and took a commission like Ed Rector, there were five of us that stayed over to activate the 23rd Fighter Group, and about 20 some ground personnel. They took commissions and stayed over there. But that 23rd Fighter Group, it had a hell of an infusion of American Volunteer people to get it rolling. So when the time came, that's what happened, some of us stayed … well like Bob Neale said, "I'll come back" and they were going to make him Group Commander, give him a Lieutenant Colonelcy. And Bob said "if you just give me some time to go home and rest and come back, I'll do that." And it was a problem too because Ed and I were Navy and Gil Bright was Navy, he stayed over. So we came into the Army Air Corps that way. But we knew that they had to have somebody there to take these new guys that were coming in and never had any combat experience at all. And here, we'd been out there a year. Not only that, but the tactics that we developed over there, they never imparted those to the people back in the States, they never taught them. So it finally came to an end and that 23rd Fighter Group was probably the best fighter group in the war because of the heritage that they had. FRANK BORING: Did you ever meet Bissell? TEX HILL: I have. I've met him on about two occasions. FRANK BORING: But you weren't at any of his lectures where got up and…? TEX HILL: No, no. But I sure heard about them. I guarantee you those guys really took a dim view of it. But it was people like that that turned our guys off. Most of them wanted to go back in the military when they got back to the States. And they would have gotten a lot of them to have stayed if Bissell hadn't come over there and �approached them the way he did. It's a shame because a lot of that talent was lost. See a lot of the guys went to work for CNAC, a lot of them went to work for Pan Am. About 12 of our good pilots went to work there and then the others with CNAC. FRANK BORING: I wonder if you could tell us about the incident they called the Salween Gorge, the Salween Bridge - what do you recall about that? TEX HILL: Well, the Japanese - when Burma collapsed in about - I can almost tell you the date - it was about the 23rd of April, 1942, and the Chinese had two armies. They had the 6th Army, which was kind of a green army, and they had the 5th, which was a pretty good army. When they broke through, you could stand off a road 100 yards and watch the armored cars go by. They drove right on up to Salween. Well the bridge was knocked out and they had a pontoon bridge across there. So we were running missions strafing and dive bombing missions, Ed and I, were trained in the Navy and came out of a dive bombing squadron, so knew something about it and we went down there and bombed that bridge out and also the road. We'd knocked the edge of the road off. If you hit above it and a bunch of dirt over the road, they shoveled it off, but the idea was to try to - see they had to cut into the mountain to make that road you knocked the edge of that road off and then they got a real problem. So we were able to do that with our dive bombing. Something happened. We must have gotten a bomb - there's a big overhang on the approaches to that bridge and we must have gotten a bomb under there some way, where all the headquarters and things were because, on our last mission that evening, all that army column was turned around, they were going back the other way and then that was the end of it. They never tried to cross it again. FRANK BORING: What was the importance of the Salween Bridge? TEX HILL: Well it was the fact that if they'd have gotten across that one point, China would have collapsed. I mean China was on their last legs. �As a matter of fact, we'd already started talking about going out through that old Marco Polo route - how we were going to get out of China. And I feel sure that that was kind of a turning point in history because at that time Rommel was just about in Cairo and there was a diversion of some of the forces from India that went over to assist in stopping Rommel. But had China collapsed, we'd have had no place to go. We'd have been out of it. The Japanese and the Germans probably would have linked up across India and Africa, that's my opinion. The infrastructure was there. The Indians hated the British and all they needed was some leadership and somebody with some forces to go in there because all of their forces were out of there and they would have taken over India and I think it would have been a different ball game. The forces that came out of India, they were able to help stop Rommel. FRANK BORING: Looking back now to that period of time now, what do you feel personally about your experience there with the AVG? TEX HILL: Well I think we made a big contribution because the whole basic thing was to keep China in the war and that really was what our mission was. We definitely accomplished that. Of course the forces that came in later and everything, even strengthened our position even more. But that little handful of guys in the AVG who really kept China in the war when things were really dark. I think that was the major contribution that we made. I mean hell, we shot down 2 or 3 hundred airplanes, but that's not going to win the war and I know a lot of historians put our effort down as not very significant, but I think they lose the bubble because it wasn't shooting down airplanes to win the war, it was keeping China in the war that enabled us to win the war. FRANK BORING: How about you personally - what do you feel that you accomplished over there? TEX HILL: Well it's one of the few things that I ever did in my life I wasn't sorry for. No, it's something about war, if it weren't for so many �people getting hurt and killed, it's very stimulating. My God, you wake up in the morning you're ready to go out there and get them. It's a very stimulating experience. I'm just happy that I had the opportunity to experience it. FRANK BORING: In terms of the Chinese people themselves, they view the Tigers in a very - If I may say - exalted position. How do you - when you deal with the Chinese, themselves, how do you look at how you affected their lives? TEX HILL: Well the friends that I made with the Chinese over there - and we really made friends with the Chinese - they've been the best friends we've ever had. You make friends with those people and you're friends for life. It's just very unfortunate that we let China go Communist because we set the stage for every bad thing that's happened to them. These guys were our friends and we have people today - these activists that get in there - they don't like Batista, so you get Castro. You don't like the Shah, you get the Ayatollah, you don't like Chiang so you get Mao. You know they never look on the other side of the coin. These mothers they go back in the woodwork, they come out and not responsible to anybody, to anybody, and they create all of these problems and a lot of people get killed, they go back in the woodwork. They don't take care of the consequences of their actions. When we let China go Communist we set the stage for every bad thing that's happened to us. FRANK BORING: When you look at the scheme of things in terms of the history of World War II, one of the things that always bothered me is they usually start with December or they start with the European war and don't even begin with the early days. Where do you think AVG fits into the history of World War II? TEX HILL: Well I think the very dark days. After Pearl Harbor the Japanese moving right on down through Indo-China and Indonesia and Hong Kong falling and Singapore. God, these were real dark days �and that's when we were doing our best work. We were the only good news anywhere. I mean coming out of Germany or anywhere else. But in the Far East we were the only people that were winning. That was a big deal. That's why we got so much press coverage back there during our period. People back in those days God I've got tons of clippings. That's all that people had to write about. The rest of it was all bad news. FRANK BORING: What was your reaction to the press clippings and people coming over taking pictures of you and all that? TEX HILL: You know I don't know. I never have thought much about things like that. It's nice to go back and reminisce. Like Time-Life people had a real nice thing - you know the one that's got Shirley Temple on the front in March of '42 - that was during the time that we were in Rangoon. Then of course, I don't know I've been in about 6 or 7 Time Magazines. But it was a real important time there that's why these guys were over there. Teddy White, he stayed over there even after the AVG broke up with the 23rd Fighter Group. FRANK BORING: Especially given the fact that when you came out to China you had this desire to be in the Far East and you had the background of your parents, what was the effect on you of witnessing the Japanese bombing of the helpless Chinese population? TEX HILL: Well really that's the first thing that made me realize what a terrible thing war was. See, when we got that first report on the Japanese coming in and bombing Kunming, we immediately moved two squadrons up there, the Hell's Angels in Rangoon. And all these dead people laying around there. Gosh there must have been 200 or more people dead that were laying there, their bodies, people trying to identify them and whatnot. There was no defense at all. They were just using it for a bombing target right in the town. That first encounter with them that cured them forever. They didn't come back for a year. You know when you send a force out and you don't get any of them back, you wonder what happened. �But that was one of the important things too, though, about our operation over there, is that we had such high mobility. I mean we could take a squadron like we did from Toungoo and move that thing into Kunming and do it in just a matter of hours. And we even had many occasions where we moved crew chiefs in the baggage compartment. You know a guy gets in the baggage compartment and we had to stage out of some advanced base and that's - if we'd have had the forces to sustain our operation, we could have attritioned the Japanese Air Force from China bases. But we'd move into one of these areas, the Japs would be there the next morning, we'd fight till we'd lose our combat effectiveness, and then we'd have to move back to a rear echelon area and regroup and put the airplanes back together and get forced and go again. FRANK BORING: So unlike the Japanese, you didn't have a supply route coming in with regular tires and everything else to replace your stuff. TEX HILL: No, it was a baling wire deal. Very soon after our group broke up, we had to drain fuel out of bombers just to keep fighters with the air alert. FRANK BORING: There was a period of time in May, which was the evacuation of Mengtse [?], that your squadron and the Third had to evacuate that area and you reached Kunming. I guess you were being chased from one …could you tell us more about that? TEX HILL: Yeah, but I can't because I wasn't on that part of the evacuation. I came from Loiwing. But we went back from Loiwing to Paoshan and that's when we lost Bennie Foshee, a nice guy from Red Level, Alabama. We didn't have enough planes for the guys to fly out of Loiwing, so he brought one of the convoys up. When you get all these refugees coming in - and you know how it is over there in China, you just got one road, there's no network of highways you've just got one way to go. Well Paoshan was a big choke point with all the refugees coming out of there and the Japanese came in �there and bombed right in the middle of the people. And it blew Bennie's leg off and in the meantime Charlie Bond had come in and had gotten off the ground and he shot down a bomber, came back over the field doing a victory roll and there were two Japs set him on fire and shot him down. So Doc Rich was taking care of Charlie and there was such a mass of humanity, they could not get to Bennie Foshee to save him, bled to death. FRANK BORING: What can you tell us about Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek? TEX HILL: What contact I had with him and the opinion I had of him over the years was he was a very benevolent person. I've heard people - I know the Sung family there was a lot of stuff going on in that family, that side of it. But the Generalissimo lived a very austere life. He never took money or anything. Now where they get mixed up I think is that H. H. Kung was Minister of Finance when we were there and he was married to one of the Sung sisters and H. H. Kung was in that position. He I'm sure made an awful lot of money. Of course T. V. Soong was also a big financier. But the Generalissimo himself was very benevolent. I don't know of any case where he had anybody actually killed, even the guy that kidnapped him. He was benevolent to him. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v06 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 6 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill discusses the period of change when the AVG was approaching the end of their contracts and American military personnel arrived on the scene. He also describes his overall experience with the AVG, their accomplishments and the relationships made with the Chinese people during the dark days of World War II. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d4c5bcf2c59e048e0ee405401110d28e.mp4 5fae61830df6ce885900043278050bf2 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3706ba193b586b2782c35cbd4ba9ecd7.pdf f5f57e32517323d7342e7276c5600d6c PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Special Collections & University Archives RHC-88 Fei Hu Films Flying Tigers Interview Interviewer: Frank Boring Interviewee: Tex Hill Date of Interview: February 22, 1991 Transcriber: Frank Boring [TAPE 7] FRANK BORING: … his time fighting the Communists than he did the Japanese towards the latter part of that. Did you ever get any inklings of that or did you ever, during AVG period time, did you ever hear anything about that or was that anything that was even brought up in conversation? TEX HILL: No I think he kept some of his best armies intact up in the north there. Because after the war they were bitter enemies and just because of necessity, they allied together. The Communists never had used any sizeable force to fight the Japanese. They were just kind of guerillas. They were responsible, of course, for picking up a lot of our people. We had a remarkable recovery of our people, unless they just happened to fall right in the hands of the Japanese, the Communists were the guys who got them out because they were behind the lines all the time. They Communists never committed any big troops at all against the Japanese. But the Generalissimo kept his best armies up there. FRANK BORING: What was your opinion or first impressions, if you will, of Madame Chiang Kai-shek? TEX HILL: Oh she was just a beautiful person, lovely person. She used to come down to the flight line to encourage people, mingle with them and her presence meant a lot to the morale. Because we had a �lot of Chinese help, we used the Chinese a lot. She was very, very generous to us. FRANK BORING: Speaking of the Chinese again, Dick Rossi said he had uncovered some evidence that some of the Chinese were actually trained by Tigers on the P-40's. Do you know anything about that? TEX HILL: Yeah the Chinese Air Force was in name only. I went up to Shin Du, I was hospitalized up there and up at Shin Du was the headquarters, nothing, it had all been decimated and they were just beginning to rebuild. Some of our people I guess did check them out, but a check out in P-40's is just going in and showing a guy how to crank it and take off. Hell I mean you're no piggy-back. Up at Shin Du when I was hospitalized up there I got an opportunity to fly a Japanese I-97, one of the first two airplanes I shot down were 97's and I had an opportunity to fly it and I didn't want to miss it. I couldn't get in it with a parachute on. The damn thing was real small. It throttled backwards, like this, had no trim tabs, had a skag, no tail wheel. So they showed me how to start it. It had a kind of a funny fuel system on it. You had a high octane fuel about a gallon that you'd start and take off and land with that and then you switched over to a low octane fuel. Anyway I got it cranked up there and started cracking that throttle to taxi out and so it started to move and when it started to move I just instinctively cut it back and I threw it wide open and of course I was airborne in about 100 yards. I rassled that damn thing around, finally felt like I could walk away from it, I stalled it a few times out at the field and came back in and landed. I'll tell you who wrote an article on that, it was - do you remember a guy named Spenser Moosa? Spenser Moosa wrote an article on that thing. FRANK BORING: I understand you were present at Chennault's funeral? TEX HILL: I was one of the pall bearers, yes. FRANK BORING: Can you describe that at all? �TEX HILL: Well they had a small funeral. Anna called me about 11:00 at night and I think she was a little bit worried because the old man, you know the relationship with the rest of his family wasn't all that great, so she asked me if the old man wanted me to be a pall bearer, so I go down to New Orleans and they have a small service there that evening. Then the next day SAC sent a plane down and then we flew the body up to Arlington, up to Washington and then all these Generals and people came out of the woodwork and I just thought to myself, where in the hell were they when we really needed support for him. But they all - all the big ones showed up for his funeral. They gave him the full treatment. They had an awful lot of respect for that guy. Everybody there that worked for the old man, they just loved him. FRANK BORING: One of the things that's always disturbed me, and I'd like to get your opinion of this too was when the signing of the surrender of Japan on that ship, that one man wasn't there. TEX HILL: You'd better believe it. That was the most disgraceful thing. And I'll tell you what, General Stratemeyer, who was - I liked him - he was a nice guy, but I think if I'd have been Stratemeyer, I'd have hung my suit up before I'd have taken that man's place over there on that ship, because he never did a damn thing. Stratemeyer never did nothing. But they maneuvered and put him in the position where he would be the senior guy and it was all contrived - and to cheat that man out of the fruits of 7 years of labor over there, why I think that was real bad and I've heard - I don't know how true it is but someone told me that when MacArthur came aboard, he looked around and he said "where's Chennault?" I don't know whether that's true or not but I've heard that several times. FRANK BORING: What is your personal reaction, your personal opinion on the way that the military treated the rest of the AVG? I mean someone like Burma Bob had one hell of a time trying to get back home. What �was your reaction, did you even know that they were having problems? TEX HILL: Well see I didn't, I really didn't. As I say I was always out in the east part of China and I was away from headquarters, so I didn't know a hell of a lot about what was going on, but I do know that for instance, Charlie Mott spent 3-1/2 years in a prison camp over there and he got down and they kicked him off the airplane because he didn't have any I.D. You'd be amazed at the stories that I heard of the guys and their treatment. When I came back the first time, even after I was in the Army Air Corps, and I stopped off then in India and they were having a whiskey, it was rationed - see we had no whiskey over there - but they had it over there in Karachi and I was passing through, I was going to be stuck there for 2 or 3 days, I went in to get it and they said "well you're not in this command, sir". They wouldn't give me a bottle of whiskey. So the guy right behind me said "you can have mine". There was a lot of that, there really was. FRANK BORING: One final question for you. How did you feel about the way they treated you? Why do you think they did that? TEX HILL: Well it's through ignorance. These guys they'd never had any experience. They didn't know what we went through. They had no feel for it at all. And some of the first guys they sent over there were really kind of low grade. There were a few good people but a lot of these guys, some of them would come over there with a lot of rank and they had no experience and that was one of our big problems. But we didn't have it so much because Casey Vincent, General Vincent, I don't care what rank I had, when he came over there why he sent him right down to our squadron level and he'd fly missions just like a GI until he learned the business and then he'd bring him up on his staff, but he had to fly every mission that we were charged with. �FRANK BORING: One final question that has to do with Chennault. I've asked this of everybody. If he was sitting in the room with you or standing in the room with you, what are you seeing, what do you see when you looked at him? The facial description or just the way you looked? TEX HILL: You know he always looked kind of stern faced. But he was so funny, you'd talk to him about different things, little anecdotes that he would come up with. He'd say like "Now Tex" he said "if you want teach a dog tricks, first you've got to be smarter than the dog." Stuff like that you know. And he always had an answer for something. I remember when I took the first 51's into combat and I thought we were just going to really eat them up. So I took the Squadron Commander and flight officers always flew my wing and another guy, Colbert?, who was flying the Squadron Commander's wing and went down to Hong Kong and looked up and I saw 3 airplanes that I'd never seen before. I knew they were Japs because I'd never seen them, so I called them out and pulled into them and when I did, why they went straight up, I saw we couldn't stay with them, so we rolled over and they rolled over and shot those three guys down with me. They were with me and so they riddled me, they chased me on down to about 8000 feet and I got back to Kweilin. So I told the old man, I said "we ran into a new type up there. I don't know what it is yet, one hell of a big radial engine on it." I said "I don't think we can beat them in the air with what we've got." He thought a minute and said "Oh Tex don't worry about that, get them on the ground, then you don't have to fight them in the air." So that's what they did, they went up to Shanghai and a lot of these other areas where they had them and wiped them out. Chuck Older was in on a lot of that strafing those fields up there in the Shanghai area. Then the other thing, I never will forget when we first went down to Kweilin to look over the field, they had an alert and we were up on top of one of the little ice cream cone hills, typical of that country, and the Chinese had an antiaircraft battery up there. Well this Jap came in there and he put on an air show like you wouldn't believe right over the place, strafing, whatever. There wasn't anything there. So the old man �told the battery Commander, he said "why don't you shoot that guy?" He said "oh no, if I shoot at that guy he'll come back and really work me over." And Chennault said "don't you know if you shoot that guy, he can't come back." That's the way his mind worked, he said "you shoot the man down, he can't come back." He was a great guy. I really, really missed him. I used to fly down to see him before he died and I'd land at Monroe and Anna would come out and pick me up and I'd go back and spend time with him - oh maybe a couple of hours and then fly on back to San Antonio. He'd go out and show me the garden, he loved that and show me the fish he'd caught. He enjoyed it. FRANK BORING: Did he ever talk to you about what it meant to him that he wasn't on the Missouri or none of that huh? TEX HILL: Never, no never complained about not being on the Missouri. He knew he should have been on and when he came back, I'll never forget it, I flew down to New Orleans and, flew a 51, went right down the main street. Casey Vincent came in from another area there and we had those two 51's we went right down the damn main street right on the deck, but the Mayor was a guy named Maystry [?]. Man you talk about a guy that's a thug - I mean this guy was really something, but he laid it out for Chennault. That town - you talk about a ticket tape parade! They really laid it on for him. They really appreciated it. But Chennault never was - he never seemed to be - I'm sure it hurt him deeply and felt that he should be there. But I asked him one day, I said "you know you're up here, you've got all these damn problems and these guys, you have to not only fight the Japanese but you're having to fight the guys over in India to get anything done." He said "Well, Tex it makes my job a lot harder, but I know what my job is and I'm going to do my job every day to the best of my ability. If the other guy don't do his, it's going to make it harder for me, but I'm going to do mine every day." And that's kind of the way he operated. �FRANK BORING: I know he was fairly modest, but did he ever talk to you about what he felt he had accomplished out there? Did he ever talk about, not just the good old days kind of recollection, but did he ever tell you about what he thought the AVG was all about? TEX HILL: No, other than what I expressed earlier. I think that he felt the same way, that we kept China in the war and that was our big contribution. Well, later on after the AVG broke up, of course the 14th Air Force, they really hurt the Japanese. Just wiped out all the shipping, there just wasn't any. You couldn't take a row boat down the coast over there. FRANK BORING: There's been a lot of - especially with the press and Life Magazine and Union League and all these various books that have come out characterize the Tigers as this band of guys that were hard drinking and hard fighting and all that. How do you personally characterize the Tigers? What were the AVG? TEX HILL: Well they were all professional people. You take a group of guys that are trained in the military in those days, that training was the best in the world. Chennault was able to take a group of guys like that from different branches of services and just in a very short period of time we had one of the finest fighting outfits in the world. FRANK BORING: Okay. I think we got it. TEX HILL: I think I'm gonna have a Bloody Mary. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Flying Tigers Interviews and Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Chinese World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Description An account of the resource Collection contains original 1940s films and interviews conducted in the 1990s, documenting the history of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) "Flying Tigers." The Flying Tigers were organized by the United States to aid China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Original filmstrips were recorded by AVG crewmen Joe Gasdick and Chuck Misenheimer, as well as Chinese Air Force Interpreter P.Y. Shu, who was assigned to assist Col. Claire Chennault as he trained Chinese pilots and established the AVG. Interviews with members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) “Flying Tigers” were conducted by Frank Boring for the documentary film Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, which he co-produced with Frank Christopher under the production company Fei Hu Films. The AVG Flying Tigers were a group of American aviators, mechanics, medical and administrative military personnel, led by Col. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force in their defense against Japanese air strikes from 1941-1942. The AVG Flying Tigers also flew in defense of the Burma Road, a major Chinese military supply route. The group disbanded and returned to regular U.S. military service after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boring, Frank Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films Research and Production Files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1938/1991 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Fei Hu Films Christopher, Frank Gasdick, Joseph Misenheimer, Charles V. P.Y. Shu Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4; application/pdf Language A language of the resource English; Chinese Type The nature or genre of the resource video; text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1938-1945 World War II Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-88_Hill_Tex_1991-02-22_v07 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hill, David Lee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991-02-22 Title A name given to the resource Tex Hill interview (video and transcript, 7 of 7), 1991 Description An account of the resource Interview of David Lee "Tex" Hill by filmmaker Frank Boring for the documentary, Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers. Tex Hill served in the American Volunteer Group (AVG) as Squadron Leader to the 2nd Squadron "Panda Bears." Prior to joining the AVG, he served in the US Navy as a torpedo and dive bomber pilot and SB2U-2 pilot. During his AVG service, he became a double ace and had more than twelve victories against the Japanese. In this tape, Hill describes the day of General Chennault's funeral and the respect everyone had for him, in addition to how the military treated the rest of the AVG and their difficulties returning home. He closes the interview with how he would characterize the Flying Tigers and their place in history. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boring, Frank (interviewer) Christopher, Frank (director) Fei Hu Films Subject The topic of the resource Oral history United States--History, Military China--History, Military Veterans China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/540">Fei Hu Films research and production files (RHC-88)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0a59c2803bd53630be4a662e9197fa84.jpg b4c1157a74c5b462f7b607bafc82a903 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Summers in Saugatuck-Douglas Collection Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Kutsche Office of Local History Description An account of the resource Collection contains images and documents digitized and collected through the project "Stories of Summer," supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Common Heritage Grant. The collection aims to document the twin lakeshore communities of Saugatuck and Douglas, Michigan, as they transformed through the state's bustling tourism industry and acceptance of minorities. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1910s-2010s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Various Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich.) Douglas (Mich.) Michigan, Lake Allegan County (Mich.) Beaches Sand dunes Outdoor recreation Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries. Allendale, Michigan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Saugatuck-Douglas History Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Stories of Summer (Common Heritage project) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Text Language A language of the resource English Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-07_SD-70s-coll_0004 Title A name given to the resource Texaco Gas Station Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of the Texaco Gas station in Saugatuck-Douglas. The trunk of a parked car is visible in the right hand corner, next to the "Washing" and "Marfak Lubrication" signs above the gas station garage. Subject The topic of the resource Michigan Saugatuck (Mich) Allegan County (Mich) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digital file contributed by the Saugatuck Douglas History Center as part of the Stories of Summer project. Relation A related resource Stories of Summer (project) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/">Copyright Undetermined</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/69bafbbdf2ccc535441f2e1c707fe186.jpg d48a9b5c4cf31aa7c644489a73b2d17c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource D.J. Angus Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography—United States Mexico Engineering Indiana Michigan Description An account of the resource An extensive photographic record of Angus’ work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Indiana resident and entrepreneur, D. J. Angus produced an extensive photographic record of his work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico, during the late 1920s -1940s. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Over 10,000 still images from 1903-1966 document Angus’ family, friends, business, and travels. Over 12,000 ft. of 16mm movie film complete this collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D.J.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus Photographs (RHC-04)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1900-1960 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-21 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus photographs and films, RHC-04</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04-0586 Title A name given to the resource Texas. The Alamo in San Antonio Description An account of the resource The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Subject The topic of the resource Texas Photographs Photography Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.) San Antonio (Tex.) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D. J.) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1934 Type The nature or genre of the resource Image https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0706978fb0fdf5315dfc3ae06cff3dd1.jpg 0f4d9ea78a1e048f9d333b97a2485f51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource D.J. Angus Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography—United States Mexico Engineering Indiana Michigan Description An account of the resource An extensive photographic record of Angus’ work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Indiana resident and entrepreneur, D. J. Angus produced an extensive photographic record of his work and travels throughout the U.S. and Mexico, during the late 1920s -1940s. The images of manmade and natural phenomenon often reflect his interest in engineering projects that include dams, bridges, mines, power plants, cliff dwellings, and quarries. Over 10,000 still images from 1903-1966 document Angus’ family, friends, business, and travels. Over 12,000 ft. of 16mm movie film complete this collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D.J.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus Photographs (RHC-04)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1900-1960 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-21 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/437">D.J. Angus photographs and films, RHC-04</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-04-0587 Title A name given to the resource Texas. The Alamo in San Antonio Description An account of the resource The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Subject The topic of the resource Texas Photographs Photography Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.) San Antonio (Tex.) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Angus, Donald James (D. J.) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1934 Type The nature or genre of the resource Image https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/270fb56161023bf87abebde47b729b75.jpg e91fd7db20862d2b3c04384c4cdefff0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_X464c Title A name given to the resource TF-86F jet trainer Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource TF-86F US jet trainer, March 1, 1955. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1955 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f4c652d96742fd794338bc736e28e343.jpg eee6056c3e7a10bfdf845f0699ff8172 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_M240-0013a Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-06/1972-08 Title A name given to the resource Thames River Walk, England Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of the Thames Path, a long distance walking trail from the Thames River's source in the Cotswolds and ending in Woolwich, England. In the photograph, a young couple is seated next to the water's edge while fishing. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Thames Path (England) Thames River (England) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cf3fbb6f63ef06c82b11f9c3e8e961f7.jpg 9bbe00ac1db6207986c3b52e5782c489 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_M240-0027a Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972-06/1972-08 Title A name given to the resource Thames River Walk, England Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of the Thames Path, a long distance walking trail from the Thames River's source in the Cotswolds and ending in Woolwich, England. In the photograph, a row of trees are reflected upon the calm waters of the river, highlighting the serene meadow landscape nearby. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Thames Path (England) Thames River (England) Black-and-white photography Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1970s Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e17525a0b5d1098ec88d6edfa5b84927.jpg 8e4427a6fbbc682c37ed8893ed1914da Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Decorated Publishers' Bindings Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Description An account of the resource From the early 1870s to roughly 1930, many publishers issued their commercial book covers with a remarkable variety of graphic designs and illustrations. This sixty-year period saw many artists and designers contributing to this art form. While some can be identified from their style or initials, others remain unknown. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Seidman Rare Books Collection Michigan Novels Collection Regional Historical Collection Lincoln and the Civil War Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-08-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>, <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source Seidman Rare Books. PS3523.I46 T43 1915 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-01_Bindings0128 Title A name given to the resource Thankful's Inheritance Description An account of the resource Binding of Thankful's Inheritance, by Joseph C. Lincoln, published by D. Appleton and Co., 1915. Subject The topic of the resource Book covers Covers (Illustration) Graphic arts Publishers and publishing Pictorial bindings Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1915 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives