tammy: i joke around. i am the person who gets to talk about this because i am the chick on the staff. [laughter] tammy: i have a very close affinity for harry and bess. i have always loved first ladies. ss important to me, independence and the truman story. we will talk about harry and bess and how they came to be married and some of the letters they wrote back and forth to each other. this is their high school graduation picture. they attended the same school from the age of fourth grade on up. bess always sat behind harry, alphabetical order, and you can utch of yourcr great school life for years and years. that is what harry went through. this is their graduation in 1901. bess is in the second row on the far right, and harry is in the top row and he is third from the left. he has his hand resting on the person's shoulder in front of him, and he is wearing glasses. this is in front of independence high school, which does not exist anymore. they lived kind of near each other but did not necessarily socialize very much. bess was very much from an upper-class family and harry's father was a farmer, so even though they were in school together they did not , necessarily do a lot of things together. bess's house is on the left. the approximate house number is 608. 608 north delaware. it does not exist any longer. the tree in the front yard does, at least for a little longer. it is dying sadly. the house on the right is the house that harry's family lived in here in independence, which used to be on waldo. bess dated other guys around this time. she dated other people she went to school with, things like that. her father committed suicide in 1903, forcing bess and her mother to move in with her grandparents, which is at the house we now consider to be the truman home. that is the gates' house. that was built by her grandfather, george porterfield gaetz. gates. harry's life after high school, he worked for the railroad, for commerce bank in town, and wrapping newspapers for the kansas city star. their family moved to grandview in 1906. this is a photo of the truman farm home. it's and you can visit it. exists and you can visit it. this is what we know as the truman home today. her family moved in with her grandparents in 1904 after her father died, and she attended barstow. how many people are local? yes, barstow back then was considered a finishing school. it was not the kind of school we think of now. and bess went there. many of the girls she went to school with were planning to move on to college, planning to go to some of the 7 sisters schools on the east coast, and sadly, bess could not do that because her family could not afford it. how many of you know the story of truman and the cake plate? [laughter] tammy: according to family legend, truman visited his cousin, mary ethel, who lived across the street from bess and her family at the gates house, at 217 north delaware. harry had a close relationship with his cousins and visited them a lot. according to the story, bess's mother had sent a cake to the nolan family and of course, the cake plate had to be taken back to the home, and so harry's cousin, mary ethel, said harry volunteered and jumped up with something resembling the speed of lightning to volunteer to take the cake plate back across the street and when he took it back, who else answered the door but bess wallace? and there it is. the very first -- the first letter that we know of in our collection is from december of 1910. that was the earliest letter we have from harry to bess, but they probably had corresponded before then. it was a challenge for harry to get to independence from grandview. nowadays, we just go right up the highway, but back then, it was like planes, trains, and automobiles to get from grandview to independence. he had to walk to the railroad station and hop on the train to get to kansas city and then take a trolley or some kind of other conveyance to get from kansas city to independence, so they wrote a lot of letters and were grateful for that because they -- because now we have that to read and study their courtship. so we have letters that started back in 1910 and their early years. we are assuming there wrote about every two weeks. if you look at the dates on the letters, assuming we have everything which is a big , assumption. they talked about books, they talked about -- harry talked about things going on on the farm. they would go out to shows and the theater and musicals and things like that. that first letter was december, 1910. june, 1911, harry proposed to her in a letter. [laughter] tammy: not the best move. he wrote to her. he said, "speaking of diamonds, would you wear a solitaire on your left hand, should i get it?" he goes on rambling about other stuff in this letter. he says -- she won't say yes and he hopes they can stay friends. he says he knows he is not good enough but he wants her to say yes. this is one of the letters where harry uses some racist language, so it is an interesting window on those times. this is what harry and bess look like around 1911. the hat pins on her hat are something fierce. [laughter] tammy: that was june 22, 1911. he wrote to her again on july 1 because evidently she had not written back, and he wrote her asking if she had indeed received the letter. he asked her to write, only to get him fits for being so fresh. july 10, she still had not written back, so now he is starting to worry that maybe he has offended her and he said if being in love with you is any offense, i am sorry, but it can't be helped. then he asks if he can see her again on saturday. he wrote her two days later, and she must have informed him in some way that we are not going to get married now. he wrote and said he was grateful she did not make fun of him for pouring his heart out to her. he said all my girlfriends think i am a cheerful idiot. he was glad she agreed to remain friends with him. he said i never met a girl in my life that you are not the first to be compared with her to see wherein she was lacking, and she always was. when i come down saturday, which i will do if i do not hear from you, i will not try to put on any hang dog airs, and try to be the same old harry. what did they do when they went out together? a lot of their dates, they would go to the shubert theater, which is what this picture is at 10th and baltimore in kansas city. they would go see plays and operas. this letter pictured right here, he talks about going to the shubert to see the hms pentafore. harry would usually go home on sundays for dinner. he tried to get bess to come out to the farm. then never actually worked. bess was an avid tennis player. he tried to build a tennis court on the lawn of the farm. supposedly over labor day weekend, 1911. it rained and she could not make it. no one ever knows what happened to the tennis court. he writes, in 1913, he says if only i could make money as easily as i could stir up a racket. i had congealed you that cajoled -- i had cajoled you into thinking harry was the nicest boy in 17 states. if it does not have you aboard, it will be a charred hulk and not worth the candle. i have been crazy about you ever since i can remember. this time, his second proposal, he did it right, in person. we do not know exactly the date, but we kind of assume it was probably around november 2, 1913. he went to see bess at her home, and that is probably the time he proposed. this letter is from november 4 of 1913. he said your letter has made a confirmed optimist out of me sure enough. i know everything is good and grand in this footstool before her is a fine place to be. i have been all up in the air, clear above the earth ever since it came. i guess you thought i did not have much sense, but i could not say anything. only sit and look. it does not seem real that you should care for me. i have always said i would have you or no one, and that is what i mean to do. that was in 1913, so she must have given him some kind of indication that she would get married to him. so why didn't they get married? in 1914, harry's fortunes improved a little bit. he got a car, and that made travel exponentially easier. he could hop in the car and just kind of drive, although roads being what they were, it was a bit of a precarious journey. so after that, their relationship changed a little bit. they went out and did things together. this is harry sitting on the right side of the car, and bess is on the left in the front, and his cousins are sitting in the backseat. and his sister. so why didn't they necessarily get married right away? part of it is reluctance on the part of bess's mother. [laughter] tammy: everyone gives madge wallace a hard time. i tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. she was a lady of the times. her husband had committed suicide and she struggled with that. she was a little bit fragile, and bess was her lifeline, and bess took a great deal of care not only of her mother but her younger brothers as well. part of it was also harry wanted to figure out some kind of way to earn money. he knew he wanted to be able to keep bess in the life to which she had become accustomed, and as a farmer, he was not entirely sure he could do that, so he went through a lot of schemes coming up with ways to make money so he and bess could have a decent life together. then world war i happened. harry had been in the national guard before in the early 1900's. he had volunteered and joined the national guard, and when president wilson declared war in 1916 -- 1917, he eagerly joined up. of course, that gave bess a gave her a little bit of pause. by this time they were in their 30's, and bess was a little bit eager to get married, but harry, not so much, which is a little bit counterintuitive, but harry thought of it that he did not want to tie her down. in this letter he wrote to her, he said bess, i would be dead crazy to ask you to marry me before i leave but i am a going -- i am not going to. if you do not marry me before i go, you may be sure i will be just as loyal to you as if you were my wife. i will try not to exact any promises from you either. if you want to go with any other guy, all right, but i will be jealous but not begrudge you a good time. this is a crazy letter, but i am crazy about you, and i cannot say all these nutty things without making you weep. when you weep, i want to. all i ask is if you love me always. if i have to be shot, i will try not to have it be in the back. i am afraid not to do you honor for real. that is what he wrote to her. he left and it is interesting to see the progression of how he signs his letters to her. for most of the time when they were dating, it was very sincerely or most sincerely. once he leaves for camp donovan oklahoma, to begin , training for world war i, he starts signing his letters, yours always, or yours, harry. once he got to france, he was bored a little bit before they actually made it to the front and he was training. he was constantly begging bess to write. this is also the where he starts point writing, i love you, by the time he gets to france. in february of 1918, he had not received a letter from her in five days and he says if i'd you not hear from you, i will disgrace the service by going awol. if only i could see you, i would be all in heaven. in june, 1918, he got some candy that bess had sent to him, and he said he had not seen any girls he cared to look at twice, and he was signing his letters, yours always. it is interesting to see the progression of his letters in france. for the time when he was going to his training, the letters turned up almost every other day he was writing to her. and then, knowing where harry and his unit were in france, and once you know they are heading to the front, marching to the front, he writes maybe once every two weeks. you can look at his travels in france and what his unit was doing and see that reflection in the letters he wrote, not only to bess but to his sister and mother as well. the war is over. 1918, and the soldiers are still stuck in france for a wild. you cannot just up and leave. people were having to leave in waves and things like that, and it took a while to process the soldiers. december 14, 1918, he is sitting around france, wishing he could be at home, missing his family, knowing he is going to miss christmas again with his family. he says it is a dark french day, and i am homesick and lonesome. christmas is approaching and i cannot possibly see those i want to, and i do so wish i could. i cannot even send you a present i am sure you will get, not even a cablegram. he says if he brings men home safely, he will be nearly as pleased with myself as i expect to be. until the one great event of my life is pulled off, what's up finally hoping will take place immediately on my having returned which of course the , greatest event in his life was marrying bess. he wrote he wanted to go to west point so she could be the of the palace or empire or whatever it is i wanted to build. he does come home and they get married in june of 1919 at trinity episcopal church. and they move in with bess's , mother. harry's moved his worldly possessions into the truman home, what we now know of as the truman home, and there they stay. this is a photo of harry and bess and margaret around may of 1928, about the time harry was county judge. margaret is 4-years-old. of course, things had changed a little bit. again, it is interesting. you can know what they are doing and trace it through what is going on in their letters. after world war i, harry joined the army reserves and so every summer, for two weeks, he would go to the army reserve camp, and that is when the letters start showing up again. of course, when he was not there, they were together. we don't have that kind of correspondence but you can trace it. two weeks in july for 1924, 1925, 1926, on and on through the rest of the 1920's and some of the 1930's. it is interesting because he becomes a little bit more affectionate. they are married now. this was a letter written july 8, 1926, and he mentions margaret. he says i never wanted to come home so badly in my because he becomes a life as i did last night when the young lady said she cried, and he would address those letters, dear sweetheart, and dear honey. he does the 'xoxoxo' thing across the bottom. it is fun. this is a picture of harry with some of his army reserve comrades. he says, i am the only person here who has written his wife or sweetie as many as two a week, as to cause for comment. apparently bess would yell at him for letter writing because she felt like he was saying letter writing was a chore, not something enjoyable, and of course it was something enjoyable for harry. he loves communicating with her, with everybody. this is one of my favorite letters. he says i do not see how i got along until i was 34 without you. just think of all the wasted years that could have been pleasantly and profitably spend. -- profitably spent. i like the underscore on the wasted years. that was in 1930. this letter is from april, 1933. bess and margaret were in mississippi. margaret was kind of a sickly child. her doctor thought the weather in mississippi would be better for her. he said, i am glad to get your letters, even if they are only an envelope with an address. i can remember how i used to wait for a letter from you and then read the old one. those were the days. why didn't you marry me when i first asked you? i don't know. do you? they were not afraid to give each other a little bit back and forth. later, when margaret was old enough to write, he would write to her as well and encourage her to write to him. the very first letter that we have that he wrote to margaret was written in 1927. written in 1927. she was 3. this is two pages of my very personal favorite letter, of all the letters harry has written to bess. this is january of 1934. this was right about the time harry was trying to figure out what he was going to be doing with the rest of his life. he could not run for county judge again, so he was trying to -- harry and the democratic political machine were trying to figure out what he was going to do after that. was he going to run for senator, run for governor of missouri? what was he going to do? he had gone to washington, d.c. to talk to some of the members of the missouri congressional delegation about issues. this is january, 1934, and he saw senator jim clark in other people. he says want to get things as i want them, you always be with me. no matter what comes and goes, you are always my sweetheart with the prettiest blue eyes in the world and all that goes with blue eyes. most of the men i meet and go around with wonder why. now, i am lonesome and writing you instead of going to a show. i got disgusted last night because i did not have your hand to hold. that is all i go to shows for anyway, so i did not try any tonight. exactly. it is interesting to look at it now because of course he was not president then. but that is the president of the united states talking to his wife, and it is a fascinating window on their life together and how much he truly loved her. this is harry and bess. i love her hair net. i don't know if you can see it in this picture. there is a little partner her curl is right there. there is not as many letters that survive from truman's time when he was campaigning for the senate, which is somewhat unusual because truman traveled a lot in 1934, when he was campaigning for the senate. sometimes, it is mystifying the things that survived in the things that did not survive. and so, bess really did not want to go to washington, d.c. much at all. her and harry finally had to have a meeting of the minds, and she would go to washington, d.c. for part of the year to be with him, and do the sorts of duties that is expected of a senate wife, and harry would be by himself and washington, d.c. for the second half of the year, the other half of the congressional session, and i imagine that was hard for everybody. bess and harry and margaret. nobody much liked it, but that was what they did. this particular letter is from around bess's birthday in and he writes about sending 1937 her a birthday present. her birthday is technically on the 13th, and it says he also wrote her letters on february 11, 12, and 13, and this is an interesting letter because he called her juno, venus, minerva, and proserpina. i don't know how many of you are up on your greek and roman gods, but minerva is the goddess of wisdom. juno was the goddess of marriage. venus was the roman goddess of love. my favorite is from proserpia, the goddess married to pluto and spent six months of the year in hades. [laughter] tammy: does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what hades was for bess. 1943, he sent her this letter and said these flowers were all i could do from a distance, but each one of them is a kiss for a happy year with your old man. he also wrote he hopes they make it to their 50th anniversary, which they did in 1969. this particular letter, he wrote from olympia, washington, when he was working on his committee to investigate the national defense program. he traveled quite extensively throughout his second term in the senate, and this letter is from march of 1944. he says, i especially missed the evening ceremony and taking the medicine with you. we do not really know what that means. we are assuming that is maybe their evening cocktail. he says i hope someday you and i can just sit around and enjoy a perpetual honeymoon without worrying about bread and butter in public opinion. sadly, that was not going to come to pass for a wild. in 1944, truman was nominated for vice president. chairman and franklin delano roosevelt -- truman and franklin in 1944.osevelt won he became president in april of 1945. this was an interesting picture. this is the only picture that i have ever seen of them smooching, being truly affectionate in public, so i jumped right on this. i love this picture. sadly, not as many letters survive from the period because of course, they were only writing letters when they were not together, and they were together a lot more when he was president, so it makes sense that there are fewer letters around. this was a letter that harry wrote when he was in potsdam. july of he says it makes me 1945. terribly homesick. i spent the day after the call trying to think of reasons why i should bust up the conference and go home. since he is president, he has a few more perks. the army can set up a three-way phone call between washington, potsdam and independence so they could chat on the phone. this is another really fascinating letter and story. those of us here at the library call it the cat dragged in letter. their first year as president was hard on everybody. it is hard on harry and bess trying to negotiate her role as first lady and trying not to be compared with eleanor roosevelt, how do you compare with her? and, trying to figure out their roles and get settled. christmas 1945, harry was not able to leave with bess and margaret to come back to independence right away. he flew out. they had flown to independence several days ahead. harry left at 11:00 in the morning on christmas day. to get to independence and spend christmas with the family, and flew back to washington, d.c., like two days later. and harry and bess must've had some kind of discussion, argument, and harry wrote this letter, and he said you can never appreciate what it means to come home as i did the other evening after doing at least 100 things i did not want to do and how the only person in the world whose approval and good opinion i value look at me like i am something the cat dragged in and tell me i have come in at last because i could not find any reason to stay away. ouch. wow. it must have been quite an argument. the interesting thing about this letter, and this happens quite frequently with harry truman, is he never sent it. harry vented on paper better than most people. he was very good at not pressing send on the email. [laughter] tammy: and his staff also knew that harry liked to vent on paper and he would tell them to mail something and they were like maybe we should not do that one. this letter was found in mr. truman's desk, in his oval office desk. they were moving out and getting ready for president eisenhower to move in and it was not discovered until many years later. it was probably a good idea he did not send that letter. even this many years later, harry would still get excited when he would hear from bess. he said there is no busier person than your old man, but he is never too busy or too rushed to let his lady love hear from him every day no matter what portends. he always wrote. handwrote letters to her. they were never typed by a secretary. no one else did that for him. these are all handwritten. what else that harry do on the day in 1946? he saw delegates, met with the council of economic advisers, signed the g.i. furlough pay bill. you can look online at his appointment calendar for that day and see everything he did, and he still managed to squeeze in time to write a letter to his wife. and then, this is the classic picture of harry and bess standing on their front porch. in 1949, he wrote an anniversary letter to her. he said 30 years ago, i hoped to make you a happy wife and happy mother. did i? i don't know. all i can say is i tried. so he spent a whole lot of time talking about harry's letters to bess, but what about bess's letters to harry? we have over 1300 letters that harry wrote to bess, starting in 1910 and going all the way through mid-1950's that he wrote to her, and those are the ones we know about. we have precisely 186 letters that bess wrote to harry. and there are stories that bess was at their home and harry saw her throwing letters, documents, who knows what into the fire, and harry said, bess, think of history. and she said, i am. [laughter] bess was a very private person. it is interesting to think about and to wonder, because you know that harry probably kept all the letters that she wrote to him, especially since he was in france. he would have reread them, so they had to make it back here, but what happened to them? we don't really know, and we don't know how the ones we do have came to be saved, so it is one of those mysteries. if you have ever been to the truman home, it is one of the big rambling victorian houses , that has lots of room to stuff stuff, and i think they just kind of forgot about where they put everything, and things just got saved or thrown out, we never know. these are two of my personal absolute favorite letters that , bess wrote to harry. bess's letters to harry are not always super interesting. there is a lot of -- it's really hot. i should give this letter to fred because he's waiting for it. i am sitting outside margaret's voice lesson. natalie and i are going shopping. it is a lot of the weather in what is going on with the family. but she also advised him about certain things. she would listen to his speeches on the radio and talk to him about what he did well and what he maybe should improve on. she could kind of run political interference for him and say this person called looking for you and i told him i did not know where you were, and are you want me to send a telegram or flowers to this person's funeral? she was capable and she could take care of stuff, and she did. but these two letters are from july of 1925. this is around the time when harry was at army reserve camp, so there are letters from harry to bess and bess to harry, so you can see the back and forth in the conversation. it is july, 1925. it is hot. margaret truman is one-year-old. bess is running around after a one-year-old, and it's hot, and the house is not air-conditioned. and it is 1925, and all the cute young girls are bobbing their hair, and bess is 40 and still wants to be young and cute and wants to cut her hair. however, harry, throughout his life, said he fell in love with bess and her blue eyes and her golden curls. and they must have been sniping at each other back and forth about whether or not she could get a haircut because she wanted to get her hair cut, but she also wanted to please her husband and not make him mad, so they must not have come to an agreement before he left for summer camp. and so, this letter that is on the left, she says nellie had her hair cut and she looks perfectly fine. ethel is going this week. while won't you agree enthusiastically? my hair grows so fast. i am much more conspicuous with with it short did she doesn't hear anything. she writes again. she says ethel had her hair cut today and she looks great. when may i do it? come on be a sport. ,ask all the married men about their wives. i will bet anything there is not one under 60 who has long hair. that is on july 8. july 9, harry writes and says if you want to get your hair bobbed so badly, get it done. i want you to be happy regardless of what i think about it. that was july 9, but keep in mind these are letters, so it takes a day or two for it to get where it is going, so she wrote on july 11 to him -- what about that haircut? she must have gotten the letter he wrote on july 9 because she says on july 12 that was a dear letter you wrote me about bobbing my hair. it almost put a crimp in me wanting to do it. i'm like, woman, he said do it. go get your hair cut. [laughter] tammy she wants to get it done, : but she wants harry to like it. so it is interesting to see that kind of exchange, and harry did the same thing to her. they both probably had teeth problems. going to the dentist was not fun. she must have been having teeth issues, so harry was writing to her saying did you go to the dentist yet? have you been to the dentist? when are you going to get your teeth fixed? in one of the letters he wrote to her in all caps at the bottom of the letter, he writes "fix your teeth." so they could both go back and forth with each other like that. it is interesting to have this kind of window on their relationship. it is one that we may not necessarily get to see again from a president and a first lady that they corresponded with each other as much and as profoundly as they did. does anybody have any questions? >> did she get her hair bobbed? tammy: yes, she did. i could scroll back. that picture that -- it is hard to see she got it bobbed, but she has that wave going on. yes she did get her hair cut, , and it is another interesting story because sometime in the -- i don't remember exactly when the movie came out. there is the marilyn monroe movie, "gentlemen prefer blondes," and harry always said real gentlemen prefer gray. [laughter] tammy: as much as he loved the golden curls, he was also diplomatic about it and wanted her to look her age. yes? >> where in their history did her mother died? was that one reason why she did not want to go to washington? tammy: sort of, yes. bess did not have the patience for political maneuvering and things like that it happened in washington, d.c. as a senator's wife, you have to be on, and part of it was not necessarily wanting to leave her mother. madge wallace died in december of 1952, so right before they left the white house is when she died. and as far as i can tell, had madge not died, they would have still moved back into the truman home with harry's mother-in-law. >> what was the last correspondence between the two of them? tammy: the last one that we have i think is around 1958-ish, i do not remember now. clearly as they got older, they , did not travel without each other as much as, and they were together, so they did not write. as harry got older, he wrote to everybody like this, not just his wife. he wrote to his mother, to his sister, his maiden cousins who lived across the street, to everybody like that. and it is interesting. as he got older, especially here at the library, his secretary started typing letters and he would just sign them. up until about early to mid 1960's, he would handwrite a lot of letters to everybody. >> did either of them keep a diary? tammy: harry did quite frequently. again, he liked -- he was very fond of venting, and we have some notes that he would write on paper, just writing to people. there is an interesting letter where he is complaining about a lot of labor leaders, and he is wanting to haul them into the white house and give them what for, and he talks about the s.o.b. from some union, so he wrote a lot. as far as we know, bess did not necessarily keep a diary, and it -- she had appointment books. we kind of can trace sometimes where she was going, what she was doing, but -- and we know she wrote letters to her friends because her friends wrote letters to bess. we have those. but the letters that she wrote are not there anymore, which makes me sad. no more questions? all right. yes? >> one thing why we don't of the letters from truman on is because the technology of all the telephones and things that was taking place, really getting going at the end of the 1950's. tammy: and one of the reasons why there are so many early letters is because harry and bess did not necessarily like talking on the phone because back then it was kind of a party line and you did not know who was listening in on your phone conversation on whatever line you might have been on. that is why there are so many letters from the early years. because they did not necessarily like using the phone. i know there is a lot of correspondence between nancy reagan and ronald reagan. i imagine there might be for george h.w. bush and barbara bush. i would like to think they have some of those things. and maybe since mrs. bush's passing some of those will be open to the public. all of the letters that we have from harry to bess and bess to harry can be found on our website. we have transcripts of them so they are searchable and you can read them. i lived with his handwriting for many years. it took me a couple of years to s's and writing. we don't expect everybody to do that. all of those letters are transcribed and available on our website for you to read and enjoy. yes? >> i think your program is one of the best. tammy: thank you. >> also, i grew up thinking that bess was a picklepuss, and you have certainly confirmed that for me. [laughter] tammy: she did not age well. and again, as first lady, you kind of always have to be on, and in many pictures that you see of her she looks like her feet hurt. she is wearing uncomfortable shoes or something. she is so shut down. but if you read some of her correspondence, she is a much more lighthearted person in private with people that she knows. as opposed to her public face is very different than her private face. but she does have some really good, amazing facial expressions. amazing. all right. [applause] tammy thank you all for coming : today. >> thank you very much for coming this evening. i hope to see you next month at our next history happy hour. thank you very much. [applause] [crowd talking] >> interested in american history tv? visit our website, c-span.org /history. you can view our tv schedule, for the upcoming programs and watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. american history tv at c-span.org/history. when the new congress takes office in january, it will have the youngest, most diverse freshman class in recent history. new congress, new leaders. watch it live on c-span starting january 3. former nasa >> former astronaut walter cunningham talks about his career. he was on apollo 7, the first manned apollo flight which launched in october 1968. this hour, 45-minute interview from the nasa oral history program at the johnson space center. >> when did you decide want to fly an airplane? >> one of the -- in fact, maybe the only recollection i have as a young child is i wanted to become a lieutenant commander in the navy air corps. >> lieutenant commander of the navy air corps? >> i'm sure it was because i had seen a movie, 1940, might have been "hell divers" or something like that. and it was a navy pilot. and i wanted to be a pilot. >> so when you got out of chool? >> well, i