Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Erik Moshe
Interviewee(s): Michael Baimbridge Jr.

Erik Moshe: What branch of service did you serve in?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: The United States Air Force, active duty 1989 to 1993. I was part of Desert Shield, Desert Storm, the first one. I started an E-3, when I got out, E-4.

Erik Moshe: Where were you living at the time you enlisted?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: I was from Texas. I joined the Air Force to see the world. My basic training was in Texas, and my technical school was in Texas. I had orders for Elmendorf, Alaska, and the person I was going to be replacing decided to reenlist, I got Texas again. Back down in San Antonio, Wilford Hall. I loved Texas. I was born in Texas. I wanted to see the world.

Erik Moshe: Why did you decide to join?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: I had a bachelor’s in political science and international relations from Austin College in Sherman, Texas. I wanted to go to law school when I very first went to college, but then I got burned out educationally. I like languages, so I took the B-Lab, and I had a pretty good score on it. I wanted to be a linguist for the Air Force. I thought maybe somewhere at the end of the road being an international lawyer, maybe an interpreter for the United Nations. So I had my package put together, but then we had a Senator from the State of Texas named Phil Graham who passed the Gramm-Rudman Act, which said we’re going to do proficiency pay for enlisted people’s natural language abilities, only use them 75% of their normal duty time as opposed to recommissioning bonuses for officers. My mom had severed the invisible umbilical cord of financial protection, said you’re on your own, this is back when the rural economy tanked. I really wanted to be a linguist, so I went over and talked to the enlisted side and said, yeah, like an 18- month window for delayed entry for a guaranteed job. I’m like, I can’t do that. They’re like, oh, well, go open general and volunteer, and you’ve got a pretty good chance. I did that. My choices were cook, cop, dog cop, box checker, medical box checker, airborne weather specialist, imagery interpreter specialist, medical services, technical/medical admin, and nothing to do with languages I had volunteered for. In my four years, they were looking at the START Treaty and putting together officer and NCO and some lower level enlisted people to be linguists for the dismantling of nuclear weapons over in the Soviet Union. And said, “hey, if you’d like to go, we’ll take you.” And I’m like at that time I’m ready to get out.

Erik Moshe: Do you recall your first days in the service? What was it like?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Yes, it was a little bit different. You get off the bus, you stand in line, you grab some chow. For us, we got in super late, so we went in and they bunked us the first night, got up the next day, got your haircut, had to pay $1.15 or $1.25 for your haircut that came out of your first paycheck. Everybody’s dressed in their different clothes. They called us rainbows, and then we all get our BDUs, that’s Battle Dress Uniforms, and started to look alike. You just shut up and you listen and you observe and you absorb, whereas others learn the hard way. You never open your mouth. Somebody’s always got something for you to do with it. It was somewhat tough getting accustomed from being in college and getting up whenever the hell I wanted to—and now we’ve got to get up at 4:30 in the morning so I guess getting acclimated to the early morning stuff. Physical fitness in the Air Force was a joke. We did like 20, 25-set side-straddle hops. We did 20, 25 pushups. We had to run a mile and a half with our entire flight in like 18 minutes. The physical aspect was a joke. I don’t think I ever really had any tough parts other than just dealing with the fact that any kind of Federal holiday was not considered an active duty day even though you still may have to scrub the deck or scrub the toilets or something like that.

Erik Moshe: Do you remember your instructors at all?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Yes, Staff Sergeant Scott and another Staff Sergeant. Sergeant Scott was cool. We had a guy in our unit that had a mental episode. I’m not going to give his name ‘cause he’s probably still around. And Sergeant Scott, we had to deal with that situation. I thought it was over and done. I went off to technical school and then I went on leave for a while before I went back to my permanent duty station, which happened to be Lackland as well. And I ran into Sergeant Scott; his wife was pregnant, and we talked about this other airman, and this other airman, this is like 6 months, 8 months later, was still in the mental health unit. But yeah, no, I remember my NCOs. They were cool. They were hard. The thing that got me is when I got in, the very first couple of days we saw a tech sergeant that was leading morning PT, like what the heck is a more senior NCO doing leading the morning PT. And he’d actually been a master sergeant and he got busted down in rank supposedly for hitting somebody. And in my mind it’s like, I’m in the military, you should be hitting me, if I can’t take a hit, what am I going to do, call time out with the enemy? And they’re like, well, he did something intentional to an airman. I’m like, still doesn’t matter, you know? He broke his arm. Maybe there is an issue if it wasn’t involved with training. I had an incident where my sergeant, you know the Smokey the Bear hats? He bopped me in the nose ‘cause he was trying to get my attention. And I have a tendency to bloody noses real bad and our flight training commander came out and saw me bleeding on my shirt and asked me what happened. I’m like I have bloody noses. And he thought he saw my sergeant being physical with me. I’m like, no, he wasn’t. He was just trying to get my attention. My nose just bleeds naturally. It was just one of those weird things.

Erik Moshe: Which wars did you serve in and where exactly did you go?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Desert Shield, Desert Storm. We went to the Cotswolds, the Midlands in England, near Brize Norton. Did you ever watch M.A.S.H. back in the day, the TV show? So M.A.S.H. was the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. And what they do is they would stabilize you, and then once they stabilized you, if you go back to the front, they give you a little convalescence and send you back. If it was more extensive medical needs, they would send you to Tokyo General—we essentially set up Tokyo General in England. So Wilford Hall was a 1,001-bed training facility for the Air Force. And when we mobilized, we built an 1,800-bed facility at Little Rissington and the airfield. So we were ready to go. We had the neurology, nephrology, OBGYN, and the Army setup, the burn unit and the psych wards. I went to England, I was nearby Norton for building, but the actual location where the hospital was Little Rissington Air Field or Air Base.

Erik Moshe: Was that the first time you were ever in a foreign country?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Yeah. It wasn’t bad. I mean the crazy part is, I like beer, so we’d buy Guinness and we’d buy Bass and we’d buy all the local stuff but for like pennies on the dollar of what we were paying back in the States. But then you always had some crazy kid from like Kentucky or Tennessee and they charged him £6 and that’s like $12 bucks for a Budweiser, it’s like dude, you’re drinking the wrong stuff. I liked cheeseburgers, or I did like cheeseburgers back then. Cheeseburgers in England are way, way, way different. Like a nasty Salisbury steak on squishy bread with wilted lettuce and squishy tomatoes. It wasn’t the same thing. We got to go around a couple of the towns and villages. I mean, you know, it’s nice seeing a different culture and everything. But you’d see the vegetables out. You’d see somebody cutting meat and cutting meat on like a piece of ply board that they painted white and they cut it fresh right there and barely wiped it down so. Never bought the fresh meat. Bought the fresh beer. They had a real cool bingo game that they played, and they turned it into a beer drinking game. That was kind of fun. But when it comes to putting them back and holding them down, I’m going to say the Brits got us, on average, they got us covered. I mean we were some flyweights. They were just pounding pints left and right and left and right and left and right.

Erik Moshe: What was your job assignment?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: So the 906 Medical Admin, if you’ve ever gone to like sick call in the military and you went to outpatient records to pick up your records, I was the technician that either took your request or pulled your record. So I managed and maintained your medical record, both inpatient data, outpatient. I did Patient Squadron for about three months.

Erik Moshe: Did you see any combat while you were out there?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: No.

Erik Moshe: Were there a lot of casualties in your unit?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: No. None in my unit. We actually at the hospital for the whole time we were deployed received three patients, only one of them was a POW. That’s it. So that’s a good thing.

Erik Moshe: Can you tell me about a couple of your most memorable experiences?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Memorable experiences from the military. Well, I met my wife. She’s now my ex-wife. In the military. It was a military marriage. Most people said, oh, those don’t last. We just recently divorced. Our military marriage went 26.5 years. We had two wonderful, beautiful daughters while we were in. I got my MBA while I was in. I have an MBA from Webster University. I guess the most memorable thing to me was that being in the military and being assigned to a hospital you’re not really in the military. But Air Force doctors and nurses get this thing that’s still called MMSO, Military Medical In-processing or something, they teach them how to wear their uniforms, use their name stamper plates and that’s it. The hospital people were very condescending for the most part, not that they actually did any combat. They had just come out of school and they’re paying back their tuition. And they’re just, it’s a different breed. But once you actually get into the stuff, people change. So I guess my education, my kids. Going overseas. I had to actually come back on emergency leave for my firstborn, who was born with a medical condition that required me to come back in case she passed away. And so I had to go from Little Rissington to Heathrow. I had to stop off at another Air Force base, pick up some travel orders, pick up some tickets, and all this I was trying to figure out as an E-4, by myself, from Texas, first time overseas, trying to get from Point A to Point B to Point C to get on a plane, couldn’t go through customs because I didn’t have a passport. All I had was my Red Cross ID and my military ID so you have to go in the heating/ventilation, underground pipe chambers of a major European airport to come up on the other side of customs. That was kind of weird to me. You hear about the Bobbies and they never carry weapons, but we ran into SALs, they had all kinds, AK’s and they were checking anybody and everybody that looked like they were from the Middle East. They were checking trash cans. They’d pat people down. They had dogs walking around. On any given week, Outpatient Records had 100,000, on average, outpatient records. So it’s broken up into the 10 color series. And that’s all based upon the last two of your Social. So if you told me the last two of your Social I could tell you what color your medical record was. You have like a foot of loose paperwork per week that you’d have to be responsible for putting into the appropriate file. So that’s very mind-numbing, and it can be boring, and so I just made it a game, competition. I competed with the civil servants who I hated at the time because they were making so much more money than me. On the 1st and the 15th of the month I’d get $375 as an E-3 to live on, and they got a GS-2 and a GS-3 that were just making fistfuls of money compared to me. So I’d play a game in my mind, you know, visual competition. I’ll be them and then I’d beat the other airmen so that’s like trying to set my own record. So I would sleep thinking about terminal digital orders, thinking about a color coding, thinking about sorting. I liked sorting. I’m good at the game. Actually I got three extra days of leave for my wedding. My civil servant GS-7 on this crew at the time, and I don’t think she liked me so much, but she loved my future wife. And she said if I could come in and do all this extra paperwork, she’d give me an extra three days. I didn’t realize the power of civil servants at that time. Well, the volume of paper was about six feet worth of paperwork. So I did six feet worth of paperwork sorting and filing it as well as my work within 2.5 weeks. So make it a game. The other part that was good about it was the educational opportunities. They don’t tell you about traditional systems in basic training because they’re pushing the GI Bill. But I got my master’s. I probably paid $24,000, Uncle Sam probably paid $76,000 for my master’s. So that was super beneficial. Being able to be deployed and put overseas, service to my country, that’s the good stuff. The bad stuff was people who were condescending and people who thought that they were better than everybody else.

Erik Moshe: Were you awarded any medals or citations?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: We got the National Defense Service Ribbon. We got an Outstanding Unit Ribbon. Other than that basic training, yes. Nothing that stands out. You don’t get medals for paper cuts and being an exceptional filer and technician. I got the three days of leave. I got to be an Airman of the Week, Airman of the Month, and Airman of the Quarter. I got to sit for Airman of the Year. Didn’t win it. I had those opportunities. I met some really cool people.

Erik Moshe: How did you stay in touch with your family?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: So if we’re talking basic training, then it’s obviously a letter or a postcard. Technical school, you’d get a phone call in every now and then. I’d call my mom. This is way, like old school for all the millennials or people that are ever past the millennials listening to this. Way, way back in the day we had these things called landlines. And we didn’t have cellphones. And so call up your family every now and then. When I was deployed overseas, because my wife was also military, you may understand this, non-military may not, and you used the AUTOVON System. And make AUTOVON calls overseas back and forth. They come maybe once a month that you could do it because my wife was pregnant at the time, they let me do it like once every couple of days.

Erik Moshe: What was the food like?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: The food wasn’t bad. I heard we had it off better than Army and Marines and with the exception of senior NCOs; we were probably comparable to the Navy. I mean you couldn’t be a picky eater. In basic training you ate whatever you got. You didn’t waste anything. I remember putting a lot of hot sauce on the meals, like salsa, because we were in San Antonio, just to give it some flavor. That was the only thing. It was either too salty or no spice at all. At the end of, towards the end of basic training we had to do a confidence course, which was a joke in the Air Force. They give you an MRE. And an MRE, I’ve had MREs that were pre-Tabascos and then the ones that now come with like the mini-Snickers and the mini-Tabascos and all that kind of stuff. We had the pork patty—it was like a hockey puck. The best MRE was meatballs and barbecue sauce. I’m not a chicken fan so I’d always trade the Chicken ala King and that was the thing when we were deployed overseas. Our folks didn’t send us cold-weather gear, and they allowed the Ministry of Defense for England to take care of our transportation. The hospital that we set up was at Little Rissington, and they had about 800 beds in the facility, so they had most of the doctors and most of the officers there in their base housing. All the enlisted people they essentially pushed offsite into old World War II apartment complexes near Brize Norton. They had one bus to pick up about 1,000 people. And obviously not that many people could get on there, so in our complex it got to the point that we realized, hey, we’re not all getting there, so we would take our IDs and we would give our ID to somebody from our housing unit and let them show up at base that day so that they could get a hot meal and then they would collect boxes of MREs to bring back to everybody else. We just did a rotation until they figured out the transportation issue. And that took them about a week and a half before they started getting the rest of it. It cycled through. I still think it’s a full complement every day, I mean it would have had everything hit the fan. I’m sure they would have had us out there in tents or something like that. The other thing was, and I don’t know what other Air Force food really tasted like because I worked at a hospital, and they do not add any kind of spices in there because you never know when a patient’s going to come down and have an allergic reaction or something like that. So you had to doctor it—a great variety, but you had to doctor it up, whatever it was.

Erik Moshe: Did you feel pressure or stress?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: A little bit in basic until I figured out the mental aspect of it, the game of it all. And the only problem I had was I was quiet. Somebody told me before you go in, don’t open your mouth, don’t say anything because you never know what you’re inadvertently volunteering for. And so I took that to heart. We had a meeting in a day room, and Sergeant Scott was talking about how he’s going to go home and nail his wife tonight, and oh, by the way does anybody know how to bowl. And a bunch of people raised their hands. I know how to bowl but I’m not going to say anything. And so he goes through and we had a bunch of guys from Kentucky and Tennessee and Texas in our group, and we had a couple of guys over from Germany. And he’s like, okay, well, who’s a real good bowler? Who’s got like a handicap of like 150? Lots of hands are still up. And then he’s like how about 180? A couple of hands drop. So how about 200? Couple more hands drop. And then you’re stuck with these two guys. And they’re trying to say they carry like a 260, 265 average. Finally one of them looks at the other one and stares him down, and he’s like, ah, that’s great. You’re really good at bowling? The guy’s like, oh yeah, you know Sarge I’m really good, I’m really good at bowling. So he said, good, you get to be my latrine queen, you’re in charge of all the toilet bowls. I didn’t feel pressure about that, but after I got my sergeant out of bumping me in the nose and everything, he figured I’m not out to get him, I’m more of a mental person anyways, we had four squad leaders: two guys that were super athletic, body builder guys; and then we had two older guys and I was one of the older guys, I was 22 and then we had another guy that was like 24. And so if the sergeant had problems, the pressure that I got was like if he had problems with the people in the different flights and the different squads, he’d switch them out between squad leaders to get them fixed. And there was pressure that if you don’t fix whatever this screw-up is with this individual that you’re going to be held accountable as well. So there’s either somebody who’s exerting physical influence or somebody exerting mental influence over somebody. So there’s a little pressure there. Other than that the only other pressure was for me to better myself while I was in. And get to the point where I could start pursuing my master’s. And so just cranking out my job, being as competent as I could have been, not mess up anybody. That’s the only pressure I had.

Erik Moshe: How did people entertain themselves?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: So for me, if it’s just like regular routine day it’s like work—like I said gamification, making it somewhat different for me mentally, challenging myself or not challenging myself trying to figure out how to pace myself. And make it like full bore, hardcore, 100% of the time doing actually just gliding. Lift weights, go play racquetball. Back in the dorms, booze and socializing.

Erik Moshe: Where did you travel while you were in the service?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: I went from basic in San Antonio to technical school in Wichita Falls. I had orders for Elmendorf, Alaska, the person I was going to be replacing decided to reenlist. And I was actually on Air Alaska Airlines. I had purchased the little earphones and was starting to chill, somebody came and knocked on my head and the only person that knocks on your head is your technical instructor. I’m like, I thought we got rid of one another. He’s like, yeah, well here’s the deal. Explained the situation. Like where am I going? He’s like you’re going to Happy Valley. I never knew that Lackland was called Happy Valley, so I went back down to San Antonio. Other than being deployed for Desert Shield, Desert Storm, I went from the permanent party side of the base to the training side of the base and back and forth, moving records around. That was it.

Erik Moshe: Did you take any photographs?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: I have some personal photographs of me in my military uniform and my wife in her military uniform, but when I was in the only thing I had, you know how you go through basic and you get your flight picture or whatever? I got the flight picture and the one that they give you, that’s like the 5 x 8 or 8 x 10 or whatever. The wife actually got a little hardbound book. She’s got lots of photos from friends that she hung out with.

Erik Moshe: Do you remember the day that your service ended?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: October 3, 1993, I was in San Antonio, out-processing. I already had my master’s by that time. I did my master’s in a one-year timeframe. So I was probably out of work maybe a total of six weeks until I found a job at the University of Texas Medical Branch down in Galveston.

Erik Moshe: Was your education supported by the GI Bill?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: At that point in time, no. I had my bachelor’s in political science and international relations that was paid for by my family prior to going in. I got in, figured out tuition assistance while I was in, where Uncle Sam pays 75% of your stuff as long as you get your skill levels passed. I had received an inheritance while I was in, and so I used part of that money to crank through my master’s and get that knocked out. So I didn’t use the GI Bill at all. I actually ended up losing it as did the wife for not using it all for 10 years.

Erik Moshe: Did you make any close friendships?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: I had close friends while I was in but didn’t maintain any relationships afterwards. The wife did. One of her good friends prior to going in and afterwards was an airman that became godfather to one of our daughters, but he dropped off the radar for me, but she kept in touch with him from now and then.

Erik Moshe: Did you join a veteran’s organization?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: No, not really. I took advantage of state benefits in the State of Texas. Through the Texas Veterans but no, no like VFW or anything like that.

Erik Moshe: What did you go on to do after the military?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: It was better. I was making about $1,100 every two weeks as a married individual. Well not every two weeks, on the 1st and the 15th and it wasn’t a ton of money. I got out and I started making $36,000 when I was working at the University of Texas Medical Branch and doing a whole lot more than just specialized niche areas like—I wasn’t doing the grunt work anymore as much as I was doing some of the management, some of the analytical type stuff. So did you ever hear of Steven Covey and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? It’s management theory. I actually helped reengineer myself out of a job at the University of Texas. We had a staff of like 30 or 40 people, and by the time I left, we were down to 6. So I left the University of Texas Medical Branch, went and became the records manager for the Houston Airport System. I’d been looking for a job for one of my employees when I came across the job with the National Archives in 1999. John Carlin was the Archivist of the United States at that time. And he was looking to bring in new blood. He wanted people who could perform records management, essentially business consultation on behalf of the National Archives to other federal entities. You didn’t have a good records management back then, and it’s highly preferable if you have an electronic record management back then and put in a package for that and haven’t looked back since.

Erik Moshe: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Yeah, if I ever had to do it over again I wouldn’t do anything in the medical field because in my mind, that’s really not the military. I do feel like I served and everything. I don’t know that I had any kind of great impact. It gave me great skills and opportunities to pursue education for myself on the outside but if I were to go back knowing what I know now . . . I’m also a Freemason, I’ve got lots of brothers that are prior military in Masonry that didn’t do the hospital side. They were in combat operations or deployed as ground troops, frontline troops, things like that. I’d probably go back and I’d join the Navy and try and be a Navy corpsman. Either that or go and become a Marine. But sometimes they’re a little too physical. I think I have the mental aspect for it, but I don’t know. And maybe that’s why I joined the Air Force. So I have a military joke for you now that I’m thinking about it. So you’ve got the Army and you’ve got the Marines and you’ve got the Air Force all bivouacked at the same location. And the next day, they have to get from Point A to Point B. So the Army and Marines wake up early in the morning and they do this thing called PT? Yeah, yeah, PT. And then they eat chow. And then the Marines plot the most treacherous course possible. They ruck up and they head off. The Army forms up. They get their little road toads out, and they start marching down the road. And then about 9 o’clock rolls around, and the Air Force guys wake up and wondering where the hell their Blue Birds are. Do you remember Blue Birds? Blue Birds are the big blue buses. Meaning we don’t do any physical in the Air Force. We don’t march. We don’t hike. We wait to be bused.

Erik Moshe: How did your experience at the hospital affect your life moving forward?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: Well, it gave me a foundation for records. Sorting and filing and maintenance, creation and maintenance, use and final disposition. I actually used to box stuff up annually, medical records, or the ones that weren’t being used and ship them off to the NARA. I thought they were a bunch of idiots because they said, yeah, they have a complete folder level inventory in Box Number 1. And Box Number 1 has to be in the bottom left hand corner of this pallet and then you build up this pallet and it has to be shrink wrapped. And then you’ve got to call somebody to—and you can’t fill in any of this or any of that with a permanent marker. Nobody ever explained the process. I was the E-Nothing. And so I wasn’t a huge fan of the NSR guys, I’d call them every now and then to get somebody’s medical record back but their processes seemed dumb. I mean how are you going to look in Box Number 1 when it’s on the bottom? And they didn’t think their process through. Then when I came to work for the National Archives I actually saw a pallet come in and I also saw a technician unload it so that Box Number 5 goes on the ground first and 4 goes on top of it, 3 goes on top of it. When they unload these from the pallets, Box Number 1 actually come out on top. Kind of makes sense. Structure, discipline, having parameters, using Air Force regs, we had file plans. All this stuff that I train folks on now, I didn’t think about it then, I was just stuck doing it. So foundationally it’s an education. I am kind of a linguist. While I didn’t get to go to the Presidio and study Mandarin or Farsi, through my MBA program I had an emphasis in computer resource and information management. And while the English language is pretty intuitive, a lot of our words have multiple meanings depending on who’s using them. So I translate records management, the IT terminology and vernacular and back. Now you say Archive to a records management person, I’d say that means it’s going to go historically some place. You say Archive to IT, that’s tape backup. Everything just kind of fit how I wanted to but it all kind of came together unintentionally. I just got lucky. Now I’ve got a daughter. She’s thinking about criminal justice, and she’d like to join the military either the Marines or maybe the Army, and I’m like you don’t do anything until you get a degree and you go officer. That way you can get out whenever you want to. Otherwise you’re stuck until the military says they want to get rid of you or until your enlistment comes up and even then they may hold you past your enlistment date. And I actually had that for my wife and I, medical admin was a retained career field. And it’s like, really? You have to retain people who push paper, yet you’re letting doctors and nurses opt out now. You’re letting them opt out, it’s just kind of a little weird. When they do their reduction in force and they want to retain certain elements, you give up your legal right, your piece of property to Uncle Sam.

Erik Moshe: Is there anything else that you wanted to add that we haven’t covered yet? Any last words you wanted to say to the public about Veterans Day or veterans in general?

Michael Baimbridge Jr.: So veterans in general. When you look around, you don’t necessarily know who is and how isn’t a veteran. They come from all walks of life. Different age groups. Different colors. Different religions. But they actually took the time out of their lives to serve, either for you or for themselves. When they’re doing to for themselves, they’re also serving you. They gave up a portion of their lives. Some of them have given up more than just a portion of their life. They’ve given up some of their sanity. They’ve given some of their body. They’ve given some of their soul. So be thankful for those that have served. Try to not disgrace them or demean them for their actions. Some people do it because it’s a mechanism for living. Some people do it to serve. So I guess that’s about all I have to say. Other than I’m thankful for the United States military. One other thing, just kind of like a personal aside. I was an only child and joined the military, and my grandad was in the Navy. And it was kind of cool that when I joined NARA—I was actually working with the Fort Worth regional facility, and they had us work on the Record Center on their side of the house, the IRS Group and all of that. I got to pull my Selective Service Card, my biological father’s Selective Service Card, and my grandad’s Selective Service Card. And I just thought that was kind of cool. And then I remember— married into a family, my wife is like one of seven. Out of the seven, four of them were in the military, and one brother-in-law, he was an E-5 in the Air Force, he bootstrapped, went reserve, and he just retired as a colonel. Full Bird Colonel from the Reserve. I’ve got another brother-in-law that just retired as a senior chief from the Navy, the Navy Intel, and he was able to translate his job to civil servant job. The wife got out as an E-4. I got out as an E-4. Her old man, her dad, was a retired master chief from the Coast Guard so yeah. The military’s been good to us.

Erik Moshe: Thank you for your service and thank you for the interview.