Oral History Interview with James C. Bishop

[Interview Begins]

RIEWESTAHL: Today is August 8th and this interview is taking place at the Spooner Memorial Library. My name is Emily Riewestahl, and I'm here interviewing Jim Bishop about his military service.

BISHOP: And my name is Jim Bishop and I was in the United States Air Force.

RIEWESTAHL: So, can you start by telling me what your connection to Washburn County is?

BISHOP: I started with the Department of Natural Resources as a public information officer in November of 1980, and I've been in Washburn County ever since. I retired 11 years ago from the DNR and I planned essentially to make my home here. Well, this is my home.

RIEWESTAHL: And what led you to serve in the military?

BISHOP: [Laughs] When I got out of high school, I didn't know, I didn't have any plans whatsoever. I thought about college and all of my friends were going off to college. So, then I just decided I would go into the Air Force. My father was in the United States Air Force during World War Two, and I thought, well, yeah. The Air Force. I didn't want to go into the Army. At the time, I had a very high draft number and I knew I wouldn't have been drafted, but I just thought I would try the military as a start.

RIEWESTAHL: And why did you choose to serve in the Air Force?

BISHOP: My father was in the Air Force during World War Two, and he served in the South Pacific, and he was a radio operator on B-29s. Doing a lot of flights 00:02:00over Japan.

RIEWESTAHL: And what was your specialty?

BISHOP: Well, okay, let me-- I put in, when I went into the Air Force, I put in for aircraft engines. To fix aircraft engines, and it looked like I was going to do that. But then, as I was processing out of basic training in Lackland Air Force Base, I'd gone to basic training and I was sitting there getting my orders together and this sergeant was, he said, "I'm curious, Mr. Bishop," he says, "You put in for Vietnam was your first base of choice," he says, "Most people don't put in for Vietnam. So I'm just curious. Why did you put in for Vietnam?" And I said, "Well, sir, my older brother, I'm the second oldest in the family, 00:03:00he's the oldest, and he's over in Vietnam right now in the Army." And he looked at me and he stopped for a second and he grabbed my orders right out of my hands. And he said, "I want you to go back to your barracks and sit on your bunk and we'll come and get you in about 2 hours." And I went, okay, and obeyed the orders, went back, sat on my bunk. A little while later, another sergeant came and got me and escorted me back down to the processing and said, "Congratulations, Mr. Bishop, you are now an ICBM. You are going to be an ICBM missile mechanic." And as I later found out, they did not want two brothers in the war zone at the same time. They had some bad, bad history with that. So, because my brother went over to Vietnam and the set of circumstances, I was put 00:04:00into the ICBM missile system and it literally would have taken a congressional order for me to go any place overseas. They had me stationed in and they must have found some hole for me to fit in. And that's what they did. So that's how I got into the missile system.

RIEWESTAHL: And what is ICBM stand for?

BISHOP: Intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those are the ones with the nuclear warheads on them. And essentially what a missile mechanic does, I was trained for, was you take off the warheads in the guidance control cans and some of them have got dummies on them. And you literally learned how to take the whole missile completely apart and work on it. And eventually I was sent to a place called Great Falls, Montana, which is a terrible place for a guy who likes to 00:05:00hunt and fish, right up next to the mountains. And I had four really, really great years there. And another interesting thing about when I was in basic training, I had a little bit of a rough time with this one drill instructor. And yeah, he literally turned my head completely around. And I admit I didn't know where I was going in my life. And the military, especially basic training and a good drill instructor like the one I had, he sat me down and he said, "Son," he said, "You've got to start thinking about your future." And I literally went back to my bunk and for about two or three hours I sat by myself and I started thinking hard. And lo and behold, I decided, yeah, I am going to change my life. 00:06:00And because of that sergeant, and I wish I could meet him today, I'm sure he would be in his nineties now, but he turned me around. And from that time forward, I started making goals and objectives and then-- I credit the military very much for kind of who and what I am doing today.

RIEWESTAHL: And you talked about how much of an effect he had on you, but kind of what did he do that got you to see that or to change how you were living?

BISHOP: Like I said, he called me into his office and he just read me the riot act. He literally said this and I quote, "We found, Mr. Bishop, wandering around 00:07:00without any kind of direction." And he said, "The military wants someone with their head on straight and you don't have it. So you'd better start thinking along some lines about what you want to do with your life and how you want to spend the next four years, or we can wash you out or keep putting you into basic training. We can send you back to day one until you learn how to do it." And I did not want to be sent back to day one. And no one had ever talked to me like that before. So like I said, I went back to my bunk and I sat down and I started thinking and I said, yeah, okay. And from that time on, I kept my bed extremely neat and my locker extremely neat. And I followed orders and I learned everything I had to do and I graduated out of basic training. And again, that's when I went over and as I was processing out, they changed me. But yeah, I've often thought about Tech Sergeant Minchinton, my drill instructor and what a 00:08:00great kind of a boot in the butt he gave me and set me straight.

RIEWESTAHL: Is that something you pass on to other people?

BISHOP: [Laughs] Well, I'd like to think of that. Yeah, simply because of some of the things that I learned. I raised a son and a daughter and they both turned out very well and I'm very proud of them to this day. But yeah, I mean, you have to pass along and I was also a scoutmaster. I became a scoutmaster here in 00:09:00Spooner. I had my own Explorer's Scout troop for a while. And then when my son went in to Boy Scouts, I became an assistant scoutmaster. And that was for about four years. And I'd like to think that I helped contribute to some of these young men and some of the things that I learned along the way that helped those guys out.

RIEWESTAHL: And when did you serve, what years was it?

BISHOP: I went into the Air Force in December of 1969 and I got out in December of 1973. While I was in the military over in Great Falls, Montana, we had kind of a small base newspaper, and I started writing articles for the newspaper, and they thoroughly enjoyed-- these guys thoroughly enjoyed what I wrote. So when my 00:10:00four year enlistment was up, I thought, well, maybe I'll go into journalism school. And then I went into journalism school from there down on Eau Claire, Wisconsin, graduated four years from there, and then I got hired by the DNR. So, bing, bing, bing, bing. I mean, things just kind of-- well, you take advantage of the opportunities as they come up. And that was another thing that the drill instructor said. [laughs] You take advantage of opportunities. If they fit what you want to do and it fits your goals in life, go for it. And I did. And it was a great thing to learn because even with the Boy Scouts and with the now serving today with the-- I serve on the honor guard, military honor guard. A couple of 00:11:00weeks ago, I was elected commander. A couple of months ago, I was elected commander of the local AMVETS Post 190 here in Spooner and I've always believed that a military veteran, we serve but I also believe that we should keep on serving our community. I believe that a strong community makes for a strong nation. Like the saying says, it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a good, healthy community to build a strong nation.

RIEWESTAHL: Would you say that what you learned in the military kind of prepared you for your role in the DNR and in the community?

BISHOP: Yeah. Mainly because it helped set me straight as far as seeing what my 00:12:00potential was. The twenty-one weeks of missile mechanics school was pretty grueling. You literally got up early in the morning and went over to the school and you spent, I don't know, eight good hours in solid training. And then you went back to the barracks, studied for a while, went over and ate, went back and studied until lights out at probably about nine, ten o'clock in taps. And then you got up the next day and did that all over again for 21 weeks.

RIEWESTAHL: What got you through that?

BISHOP: I enjoyed it. I was having a great time. In the first week of missile mechanics school, I think it's rather hilarious, the first week was tool identification and the first week they had a hammer-- for our test, they had ten 00:13:00tools out and one was a hammer, one was a screwdriver [laughs], oh, there were-- I can't remember the rest of them, but there were just ten tools that people use almost every single day. And I thought, well, this is kind of funny. So, we passed the test. But by the fifth week, we were into advanced electronics. And I remember just beating my brains out, studying at night, trying to memorize all the intricacies of electrical wiring that we had to know in order to work on the missile system. And after 21 weeks, like I said, we were full fledged missile mechanics and we could completely take a missile apart from the first stage all the way down to the engine, the propulsion system. So, yeah, I mean, I enjoyed 00:14:00it, and of course, I graduated with seven other guys. We started out with eight. One guy went Section 8 on us. He literally went crazy. But that happens in all the military branches. You have guys that just can't take this military system and they wash out. But I enjoyed it.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you keep in touch with any of the seven that you graduated with?

BISHOP: No. Well, I shouldn't say that. There was a guy in one of my classes behind me and then there's another guy that I'm still in on Facebook with, one of my roommates that I roomed with 21 weeks down in Illinois. We're still on 00:15:00Facebook, but as far as getting together with him, no. I once went and saw one of the guys and unfortunately he was in kind of a bad way. And we shook hands, we talked for a little bit and and then I left but and I haven't seen the guy since. He's another kid from Wisconsin, from Janesville. But it was a good experience. I like the camaraderie, the brotherhood of the military. I always thought the food was great and people complained about the food. But in the Air Force, we had great food. And once you did your job, you were free to do what and whatever you wanted to do. Like when I was stationed out in Great Falls, Montana, I spent almost every weekend up in the mountains or on the plains or 00:16:00someplace like that.

RIEWESTAHL: What did you find yourself doing when you were in Montana?

BISHOP: I did a lot of going up into the mountains and hiking, hunting, fishing. Did a lot of trout fishing right from the time of the trout fishing open till the time it ended we were on the streams. And I had a-- [laughs] I had a a big electrical frying pan in my barracks room. And I would go out and catch all these trout and bring them in and prep them, roll them in this seasoned flour, put them on, and I would have these-- put on these little fish fries and there would be a knock at the door and the guys soon knew that if they wanted some of that trout, the entry way was a six pack of beer. So if they bought a six pack, 00:17:00I'd give them a fish to eat. [laughs] It became a lot of kind of a social fun thing for us to do was for me to go out and get, I don't know, five or six of these nice big brown trouts and rainbow trout and bring them back to the barracks, cook them up and drink beer and talk smart.

RIEWESTAHL: Sounds like you had a lot of fun. What was the--

BISHOP: It was.

RIEWESTAHL: --job of being a mechanic like? Did you like that job?

BISHOP: Well, actually, when I got there, they needed people to work inside the hangar, loading aerospace ground equipment for all of the programs. So, you got your missile mechanic and then you got your electricians who work strictly on the electrical systems in the military. You had the guys who serviced the guidance and control cans, who sighted the missile systems. So, you had five or 00:18:00six different divisions working on separate division. And our job in the hangar was to load this aerospace ground equipment for all of the programs. So, I got lucky. I didn't have to go out into the field and work on the missile systems. I got to stay in the hangar themselves. So, what we would do-- and you could be called out. The field guys could be called out any time. If a missile system went down for something, some electrical, sometimes electrical storms would knock out power and they had to go on. The missiles are very sensitive to air pressure changes, and when severe air pressure changes, it would knock out a few of the missiles and the guy would have to go out. And then you had regular-- what they called about, I don't know. Hope I'm not giving any kind of 00:19:00confidential information. But every so often they had to service the missiles. They would completely change about ten or 20% of the missile systems every single year. And those guys could be called out at any time. They were on call. Sometimes they never went out. Sometimes they went out for four or five or six days. Some of our missiles were in the silos. They were, I don't know, some of them were 150 miles away. That's a pretty long haul. But I was in the hangar and loaded up the ground equipment for all these different sections. I got a license to drive big diesel trucks because that's what drove the big vans that held all the equipment. So we loaded all the vans and loaded all the trucks that went out and 00:20:00serviced the missiles. And we would work, say, from six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night and then we were done for 6 hours. You had to work three days and four days off, four days on, three days off. Every other weekend you got a four day weekend. And that was kind of nice. I didn't mind working the 12 hours. Sometimes the hangar was extremely cold, especially when it got down to 30, 40 below zero outside on the Montana plains. I got one interesting story about the weather. It took me a while to get used to the weather out in Montana because they have something called a Chinook wind. Chinook wind is a warm wind that comes out of the southwest. It's very-- comes off the desert. It's a very warm 00:21:00wind. Well, Great Falls the station, probably the city's maybe 150, 200 miles from the Canadian border. And then right above that, of course, Alaska and the Arctic. So, you would have these cold weather systems that would sit on top of Great Falls for two weeks and it could get down to 30 or 40 below. So they had us in these big boots and these big parkas. When it got down that cold, my car really wouldn't start very well. So, I would walk just five or six blocks down to the hanger when the car didn't start and no problem. It would take me probably 10 minutes to get dressed, walk to work. And so one day, early, my first year there, my first winter there, I got all dressed, went to work, got 00:22:00done. And when I walked out of the hangar, well, that night. I noticed that there was a south wind and it was blowing really hard. And I noticed it wasn't quite all that cold. It wasn't the twenty below biting cold. But anyway, I went over and it was a night shift. So I worked for six a.m. to six p.m. that night to six a.m. the next morning. And I walked over to the barracks and I caught 6 hours of sleep, got up and I decided to go over and get lunch. I walked out of my barracks room, my barracks door and opened up the door and here the guy comes in and he's in a t-shirt. I'm thinking, what's he in a t-shirt? He looked at me and he looked at all the clothes I was wearing, and we kind of laughed at each other. And I thought, oh, that's odd. So then I walked out a few feet and it was 00:23:0060, 65 degrees. Within about 6 hours. It went from 0 to 60, 65 degrees. It changed that much. It stayed nice and warm for about two weeks. And then the north wind shoved all that warm air out and it got down to 20, 30 below zero again. And the winds were just horrendous. And we put on all our clothes again and I walked out and went back into the barracks, changed into some light clothes, just like that guy who walked in, [laughs] and I got on some nice almost summer clothes, went out to my car, started right up, and I drove over to the cafeteria there. [laughs] I thought that was kind of fun. So, some of the things you kind of learn about the weather system.

RIEWESTAHL: Did you enjoy living in Montana?

BISHOP: I did. I'd probably still be there had I bought one acre of land. I had a fishing license from Montana. I had a driver's license from Montana. I was all set to go to a journalism school. Oh, I can't think of the name of the city, but they had a good journalism school south of us, and I was all set to go there. But then they told me that I had to pay out-of-state tuition and that would have really, really killed me. So then I thought, well, there's a good journalism school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and I thought, well, I'll go back there and as it turned out, it worked out really well. But my goal after getting out of the military was to become a newspaper reporter. That's what I wanted to do. Either on a daily or a weekly paper. It didn't make any difference, I wanted to write. 00:25:00But yeah, like I said, I did a little bit of writing in the military for the little base newspaper thing. And I thought, well, I got kind of a-- friends of mine told me, "You got a real knack for writing," and that's what I did. And the neat thing about the military was it helped set-- gave me a mindset to, you know, if you want something bad enough, go after it. Use your energy and do that thing. Don't let anything else get in your way. Accomplish that goal. And that's one of the things that the military taught me. And like I said, before I went in the military and coming out of high school, I mean, I was a scatterbrain, I will admit it. My grades from high school were not very good. I took some college 00:26:00courses while I was in the military, which they encouraged. And I was taking some courses. I almost went into law enforcement. My grandfather was captain of the police force in my hometown. One of my uncles was head of the state patrol in Wisconsin for many, many years. So, we got some law enforcement. So, I took some law enforcement courses and those were a lot of fun. And I met a lot of people in the college at Great Fall. I studied law for a while. And like I said, once you do your job and you're done with the hanger, you had all this free time. So, between the hunting and the fishing and the college courses and, of course, you know, the occasional night out with the girls, life was good. Life 00:27:00was good. I had a great time in the military. I would encourage anyone to join the military.

RIEWESTAHL: And you mentioned-- oh, sorry, I just lost my train of thought. Oh. What got you started with the DNR, then? Because you wanted to go into newspapers.

BISHOP: Okay. I'm going to make a kind of a long story out of this. While I was in journalism school, I got a chance to work on a summer project, a three credit course, working for a newspaper, my hometown newspaper in Tomahawk. This guy wanted some-- this guy hired a student from Eau Claire every year to put together what they call a summer green sheet. So, I was hired to do that. They paid me, what, minimum wage? And it was great because I got to do all these 00:28:00outdoor stories and recreation stories. And also I was supposed to, every time the siren went off, I was supposed to chase the fire trucks and the police cars, everything else. While I was there, they had a tornado go through and I thought, well, I'm going to go down to the police station. And I went down there and here is this woman dispatcher, this young girl. She was the dispatcher, and awfully cute, started asking her questions about the tornado and she told me. And finally I said, "What are you doing tomorrow?" [laughs] She said, "Why?" I said, "I want to take you out for dinner." She says, "Okay." So, I took her out for dinner. One thing led to another, and next thing you know, we had-- She wanted 00:29:00to finish up her college, so she transferred all of her credits from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Eau Claire and for the last year, while I was waiting for her, I took a job with the West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission as their public information officer. Like I said, this opportunity came up. I took that job. While I was there, this one-- One of my coworkers, she came in and she said, "Gosh, I just saw great job on the state board that you'd really like. It's with the Wisconsin DNR as a public information officer." And I went, "What?" This job, public information officer. So I looked it up on the computer and I thought, yeah, that'd really be great. So, I went down to the state civil service office and applied for the job. And lo and behold, about six months 00:30:00later, I got it. And so, like I said, taking these opportunities when they come along. If I had gone, if I hadn't met my future wife, I probably would have gone right into another newspaper or after I graduated, because there were a lot of jobs for newspaper reporters. By the way, they don't pay anything. I was offered a job as a sports editor for the Rhinelander Daily News, and they wanted to pay me like twenty cents above minimum wage. At the time, that was like, 3.75 an hour. You're talking back in 1978, and I was being paid like five dollars an hour for the Regional Planning Commission. And I told the guys from the Daily 00:31:00News, I said, "I just can't afford to raise a family on that." And that's sports editor. I thought, gee. So, I didn't take that job. And when this other job became available, I took it and they paid quite a bit more than minimum starting out. So, yeah, I mean, I got lucky. While I was in college, I mentioned taking advantage of the DNR. I went down to the the DNR office in Eau Claire and they've got a big regional office in Eau Claire. I went down and I went, "I'm a journalism student. You got any jobs for journalism students?: "By the way, yeah, we do. We need someone to write or rewrite our water quality pamphlets." I said, "Well, great." So, I spent like, six months writing their water quality pamphlets. I think they might have paid me minimum wage to do that. I spent two 00:32:00or three hours a day doing that. I'd drive down there and so-- and then also, during my summer months, I worked for a logging magazine. This editor of the logging magazine saw some of the stories I wrote on the green sheet and they really liked those stories. So, they hired me the next year. That would have been my senior year, for writing all the stories for the logging magazine. Then when I went in to interview for the DNR, they said, "Yeah, we heard that you were working down in Eau Claire for the DNR." And I said, "Yeah." They said, "Well, we got some great reports about you, and you also worked for this logging magazine." And the guy who was interviewing me, he was a member of the board of 00:33:00that organization and he loved all my stories. So, it was just kind of a unique, I don't know, a system, but a sequence of things that happened that got me this job. There were 111 applicants for that job. But I had, like I said, I had all the right qualifications. In college, I majored in journalism and I double majored in geography with emphasis on land use and the environment. So I got a double major and emphasis on land use and environment. Yeah, that's all DNR stuff. So, I was a natural fit.

RIEWESTAHL: And you said that you retired after the DNR. What have you been doing in retirement?

BISHOP: Anything I want to do. Anything I want to do. Retirement is so much fun. Oh, I used to go up to the Boundary Waters a lot. Winter, summer. I'm a winter 00:34:00camping enthusiast. What else? Do a lot of hiking and backpacking trips. But since I've been in the military honor guard and I've been doing this for the last, I don't know, four years or so, we have funerals maybe four or five times a week, and they take up a lot of your time. I built a house. I found a nice few acres of land outside of town. I cleared it all by hand and built a house with the help of my friends. So, I mean, that's kept me busy. Still like to hunt. Still get a couple of deer every year. Kind of living off the land a little bit and just really enjoy it. But again, anything that I want to do, I can-- you 00:35:00wake up going, what's fun? What can I do today?

RIEWESTAHL: Can you explain a little bit about what honor guard and and AMVETS are?

BISHOP: Yeah, AMVETS is American veterans and they've been around since about 1946, 1947 and they literally will take in any service branch, including the Merchant Marines. You don't have to serve overseas. The prerequisites for getting in are fairly easy. And I was invited into the honor guard by a good friend of mine who I used to go up to the Boundary Waters a lot, guy name of Bob 00:36:00Dreis from Spooner here, Bob's gone now. He passed away at 92. [laughs] And anyway, Bob and I were good friends, so he got me into that. And then he also was a member of the honor guard. So he kind of got me into the honor guard. Honor guard is essentially going out and doing military funerals. A twenty-one gun salute. We play Taps. And it's kind of the last sendoff for the funeral before they put the individual, man or woman or whatever, into the ground. So, it's a very social club, too. We get together once a month on a Wednesday night and we have, like I said, the honor guard, the AMVETS and the honor guard, both 00:37:00organizations, serve, like I said, the community. We have moneymakers called our White Clover Drive, and we recently did some car parking for the county fair and they give us some money for that. But all that money goes back into the community. We have 1,000 dollar scholarships that we give to students from high school. If a veteran is down and out, we will give them some money to help kick start their whatever. Oh. Yeah, we pretty much support any community organization that really needs some money to keep going. We send some money down to the King Veterans home. But it's a nice civic organization. Like I said, we 00:38:00as veterans continue to serve and serve our community and I've enjoyed my-- I think I've been with the AMVETS for almost 20 years and with the honor guard for about four.

RIEWESTAHL: I guess, reflecting back on your service, what is your military service mean to you today?

BISHOP: I credit the military service with truly giving me a start in life. Right from basic training all the way up, I found a way to study. After I went 00:39:00from basic training and we did that 21 weeks of pretty intense studying to become a missile mechanic, they had you, like I said, studying from sun up to sundown. You had the weekends off. But even then, a lot of guys studied on the weekends just to try to keep up with all the stuff. So it prepared me in that way, I think, for college, where, of course, it's pretty intense studying, too. Like I said, I was never a very good high school student when I went into college. My grades were so bad that the college admissions person said, "Mr. Bishop, we would not normally accept you into this college with the grades that you had from high school. But because you're a veteran, we have to take you. 00:40:00Now, if you can't maintain a three point average, we're going to dismiss you." Three point average, wow. But I maintained a 3.5 pretty much all through my college years. And again, I credit that a lot from my discipline that I learned in not only basic training but also in training itself. Of course, the GI Bill paid for my whole entire college. I had no bills coming out, so I'm pretty grateful for that. And that's another one of the reasons why I think that I'm dedicated to kind of paying back to my community for helping me along. I'm extremely lucky and grateful that I had the experiences that I did.

RIEWESTAHL: And what advice would you give to anyone thinking about joining the service?

BISHOP: I would say look inward and find out what your strengths and your weaknesses are and what you want to do. For example, if you like meteorology, the weather, I think the Air Force and the Navy, they've all got those kind of staff. You may want to try to go into that for a few years. If you like it, I mean, stay in forever, if not, get out and become a weatherman or, work in that field. I've got a friend of mine who loved to work on cars, and they went in and joined the Army and got into the the maintenance shop and fixed all the vehicles 00:42:00on their base. And then when they got out, a couple, three years later, they went in and they got hired right off the bat because they were good mechanics. Military trained. [laughs] Contrary to when I got out is that ICBM missile mechanic, they had-- my civilian counterpart was they said rocket engine mechanic. So if the thing-- I could have gone into rocket engine mechanics. Outside of that, not a big, big need for it. But funny story behind that, too, is when I was with the Boy Scouts. If something couldn't be fixed, they always said, "Well, let Mr. Bishop do it. He's a rocket engine scientist. He's a rocket 00:43:00scientist." So, [laughs], guys, I tell you, I don't know, where were we?

RIEWESTAHL: Advice that you'd give to anyone looking to join.

BISHOP: Advice to anyone looking to join. There's so many opportunities. There are so many opportunities. Both in the Coast Guard, I mean, if you want to find out what to do, you want the oceans, you got the Coast Guard, you got the Navy, if you want to, like I said, missile systems, working on engines, I mean, there's a thousand different jobs out there. Go through, look, try to work, but once you find, if you join the military, almost [laughs] have a lawyer look at 00:44:00the words, because they can put you into just about any kind of service that the military wants you to do. But if you're really adamant and you're saying, listen, I am putting in, say, to be a meteorologist. You know, weatherman. That's what I want and don't change it. I want a copy of these orders. Another funny thing, a good buddy of mine from my hometown, he enlisted in the Navy the same time I enlisted in the Air Force. I said to Frank, I said, "Frank, so, what are your plans?" Frank said, "Well, I've got a brother who's stationed out-- a brother who's living out in California, and right next to that base is a Polaris missile system base." That's where the Polaris submarines. He said, "I'd like to 00:45:00work on those missile systems and service those." And then the subsequent, he said, "Then I'll be right next to my brother." I said, "Oh, that's great." He said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I want to work on--" And he said, "I don't want to leave," he said, "I don't want to leave the States." Said, "I really want to stay in the States." I said, "I want aircraft engines, to work on aircraft engines, be an aircraft engine mechanic." I said, "I want to see the world. I really want to go out. I'd love to go over to Germany." You know, putting in for Vietnam, serve a couple of years in Vietnam maybe, and then go over to Germany or go to England, wherever, you know, put in for all these places. I want to see the world. Anyway, he got out of basic training and I got out of basic training, and he got into aircraft engines on an aircraft carrier in the Navy. And that's what he did for four years, went and saw the entire 00:46:00world. He had basis aircraft carrier, went all around the world. And, of course, and I was an ICBM Missile Mechanic stuck in Montana for four years. Well, you know, it's the military. They can totally do a 180 on you. But yeah, Frank had a good experience. I had a good experience. We sit down and talk about it sometimes. Oh, and then he would send me a postcard from wherever he-- whatever place he was at, you know, the Philippines and stuff. And he'd write these nice little letters on a postcard. And I was getting really bothered by it, you know, Hawaii and Australia and all these places. It was driving me nuts. So I decided, well, I'm going to send some of my own postcards. So I went down to downtown Great 00:47:00Falls, Montana, and I got all these postcards from Mehmke Steam Museum and a picture of the Civic Center and a picture of a tractor out on the prairie. I had like 20 of these postcards, and I'd write two or three of them and send them to the Frank on his aircraft carrier because he was sending me all these. So, I'm having a great time in Great Falls, Montana. You went and saw this Mehmke Steam Museum, went and saw the waterfalls here at Great Falls that they're noted for, and I'd write these fun, just humorous letters. Well, about six months later, we both got leave together and he said, "You wouldn't believe where those postcards went." He said, "I started reading them. I started laughing and pretty soon, I'd get done with one, I'd hand it off to a guy and he'd start laughing." And Frank said, "You know, Bishop wanted to go see the world, now he's stuck in Great 00:48:00Falls, Montana." He said, I've seen the world." He said, "Those postcards went around the whole ship." [laughs] Says, "We don't get a lot of really funny mail." So, yeah, it was kind of crazy. Yeah, it was fun.

RIEWESTAHL: Is there anything else that you'd like to add to the interview that we haven't covered yet?

BISHOP: I don't think so. Like I said, I'm proud to have served my country and I'm so proud and honored to serve my community and my country in the ways that I'm doing now. Like I said, it all started again with the military and taking advantages of opportunities and yeah, it's been a great ride. It's been fun. 00:49:00It's been fun.

RIEWESTAHL: Thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate it. And thanks for your service.

BISHOP: You're welcome.

[Interview Ends]