>> So today is August 31, 2023.
My name is Adina Langer,
and I'm curator of the Museum of History and
Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.
Today, I'm here at the University of West Georgia for
a legacy series interview with, Jerry Ożechowski?
>> Real good.
>> Thank you. So could you please state your full name?
>> You want the Polish name?
>> Please. Yeah.
>> My Polish name is Foronium Yusef Ożechowski.
That's the way you pronounce my last name.
>> Ożechowski.
>> Great. Thank you.
And do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> Wonderful. So let's
start by talking about your childhood.
Could you please tell me when and where you were born?
>> I was born in,
the bigger city was Kovel in Poland.
Right now it's in the Ukraine.
But the town where I actually
was born was an outskirt of Kovel.
It was called Maidan.
And I was born February 10, 1942.
It was just shortly after the Germans invaded Poland.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> My father was Alexander Ożechowski.
My mother was Tekla Lisowska,
and my oldest brother is [FOREIGN] and
my oldest sister
was [FOREIGN] Ożechowski.
I have a older brother.
His name is Larry or Lawrence, there's seven.
And the next one is down.
He's younger than I am.
He's Stanislav Ożechowski. And,
of course, my youngest sister,
she was the only one born in this country.
That is Vanja Ożechowski.
>> So everyone has a Polish name
and then a name that they
came to be called in the United States.
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> And what work did your parents do?
>> They were farmers,
for the most part, but they did not own the property.
They lived in a house that was
provided by the government at the time,
because you got to remember that we
were under communist rule at the time.
Going back to history now.
Everybody in a family,
they were all grouped together,
so to speak, and they did
the farming, the collective type.
Situated. You're familiar with
history and you know what communism does.
So everybody worked, other than me.
But even that, I helped my mom,
do whatever I could.
That was my job, even being little.
But yeah, after the Germans invaded,
Polish people were lower than snake, you know what.
We were beneath them.
We were worthless to them.
But when they did finally get to Poland,
I'm talking about the Nazis,
most of my family were in the partisan.
And they disrupted everything they possibly could.
Hence, they were hunted down,
and a lot of them were sent
to Auschwitz, or Sachsenhausen.
And, of course,
they gave them a trial.
But the trial was you're guilty [NOISE] you're dead.
There was none of this court business or anything.
And just to cut in here for a second.
I took my wife to Auschwitz a few years back.
And I saw the wall.
A lot of my relatives
we know that they went in,
but they never came out.
And I know what happened to them.
At first it was just the ovens.
They used to burn the bodies.
But that was too slow,
so they usually piled them up like corn wood,
poured gasoline on them,
and set them on fire, and cremated them.
There's a little lake in Auschwitz,
and the ashes that were left they threw into that lake.
Can we stop this for a minute?
>> Yeah.
So tell me about your father's experience.
You mentioned that he was a Csak?
>> He was a Csak.
If you look on my papers over there,
when we came into this country,
they took any physical features.
And it shows where he had
a cut all the way across in his eye.
That was from sword fight and whatever.
And after the first Word War, of course,
well, the one thing
that I'm not sure was it
if he fought for Poland or for Russia.
But he was the one
that wielded the sword, anything like that.
>> And did your family have strong political beliefs?
You mentioned that it was a socialist,
a communist country under Russian occupation.
Did your family oppose that?
>> Yeah. Matter of fact,
if you ever speak to somebody
that came from Poland especially an old guy like me,
and you asked them about communism,
they hate those people
worse than just about anything there
is because of the way they were treated and so on.
But Poland doesn't have any natural boundaries.
Just look at it like a big open field, basically.
And so during World War II,
they had no obstacles.
They just went in their superior forces and so on.
Before then, of course,
the Russians had it.
So what do you do?
You get the devil on one side and
his brother Satan from the other side.
>> And was religion important to your family?
Do you remember going to church?
>> Absolutely. We are Roman Catholics.
Most of Poland, their patron saint is the Black Madonna.
And they're very religious.
They believe in Catholicism.
It's probably, I would say right offhand.
At least once upon a time this was true.
There were about 92% Catholics.
So I don't know what the figures are now.
>> And so you were still very young
when the Nazis invaded your area.
Do you have any memories of that time?
>> Not the invasion.
I was a little bit too young for that.
As I said, I was born in February.
That's one of the coldest months of the year
in Poland because of the latitude and so on.
And my family, we tried to run away
from the Germans or evade them as best we could.
And we did that for a while.
And my mother, just to let you know,
she got what the doctors
called elephantiatis on her legs.
Her legs should be like yours,
but they were huge like this.
And she was afraid that they were somewhat frozen,
trying to evade,
but she didn't want them cut off.
So she refused to have anybody cut them off,
but they did whatever they
did and they did save her life on that.
She was that way until the day she died.
>> And that was from her experience in
the cold and trying to.
>> Right. And we evaded the Nazis
for approximately three,
three-and-a-half years, something there
about because eventually they did catch us.
But one good thing about it
was is that they didn't send us to Auschwitz,
because that was automatic death camp.
Dachau, on the other hand,
if you had any skills,
they would work you to death.
But my dad, he was a very good carpenter,
and my mother was a seamstress.
And I do remember her sewing German uniforms.
Now, that was my first recognition
and so on of what's going on.
I don't remember a lot about that. Don't get me wrong.
I'm not an expert on it,
but I have a little.
It's just like snapshots,
if you will, of that place.
>> Before your family was sent to Dachau,
do you remember how they tried to evade the Nazis?
Were they hiding with people?
>> Yeah. Everybody was working against them.
Some were in a partisan, others, well,
I can't speak for the other ones,
but I do know that my family,
they were all pretty much partisan.
They would do anything and everything, including,
I do know this that
my oldest brother told me is that they blew up
railroad tracks and things like that so
they couldn't transport stuffs.
And they would have to fix the dog on thing,
anything to delay him.
And that's what they did.
That's the reason that they say.
And there were thousands
of families like this, isn't it?
Probably millions of them.
They hated the Germans.
There's a song that I learned once upon time.
I'm not going to sing it because I can't sing working,
but it's about Hitler and him burning in hell.
>> Is it in Polish?
Is the song in Polish?
>> Yes.
>> You don't have to sing it,
but do you remember the words?
>> Not all of them.
>> Okay.
>> No. But it's [FOREIGN].
But let him be struck by lightning,
let him go to hell,
and burn in hell,
or something to that effect.
[LAUGHTER] But it's been years.
>> It sounds like people then
they did certain things to keep
their morale up while they were trying to evade Hitler.
Do you remember anything else that people did to resist?
>> Don't forget that although
people were spread out somewhat,
but we knew everybody and they knew us.
And if they could help us evade
, they would do it.
Or they knew a family that would do it,
or that family knew how to get around them,
and so on and so forth.
Everybody worked together.
It was one of the reasons that a lot of
the Poles survived because of situations like that.
Everybody was working together.
>> Did your family know any Jewish people?
>> Any what?
>> Jewish people.
>> Of course.
>> And did you know them?
Did they live in the same area?
>> They were Jewish. They went
to their synagogues and so on and so forth.
Yeah, absolutely.
You got to understand that Europe is really
not that big a place when you come right down to it.
Because once upon a time,
I used to be able to talk and
speak Russian, Polish, Lithuanian.
Anyway, I knew five different languages.
But then again, for Pete's sake,
you drive a few miles and you're in one country,
you drive a few more miles and you're in another country.
It's just like the states,
only these are different countries.
>> As your family was
trying to thwart the Germans and the Nazis,
did you have a sense of what was happening to the Jewish?
>> As a kid, you know darn well
that is not the way kids think.
It was an adventure,
so to speak, if you will.
And that's just about it.
I didn't start realizing what was happening until,
and I remember when Eisenhower and
the American army came and liberated Dachau.
You got to remember, we were only three,
maybe four days away from being eliminated.
Me being a kid,
I can honestly tell you,
you're not going to see that in a book a lot of times,
but they wouldn't even waste a bullet on me.
They would just take a butt out of a rifle and
crush your head and throw you in a pit,
which they did to a lot of people in the first place.
They're still finding things in
Europe where they would walk these people in a dug pit,
and put in 150, 200 people,
300 people,
and they would have target practice on these people.
And then they just covered them over.
The only thing I don't understand
is how in God's name can
one human do something like that to another human.
My mind just cannot comprehend something like that,
but I know it happened.
>> You mentioned you were so young and there
were these little impressions that you had.
What were some of them of being, especially at Dachau?
>> I was with my mother most of the time.
But I did get out periodically,
kid being a kid.
And this is what I saw.
And if you look at the film that I have,
you will see the slave labor.
They would be picking up these dead bodies,
carrying them over to the cattle cars,
and stack them up by the railroad tracks, and so on.
I saw that firsthand.
And I kept thinking
what are these people doing hurting these people?
That was my viewpoint because,
as a kid, we were a loving family.
My father was strict. Don't get me wrong.
If I needed it, he would kick my booty.
But he was fair.
He never beat me to the point where,
use a belt buckle or something or another.
But he did kick my butt a few times.
But then again, I deserved it, I thought.
But anyway, the thing is though I've seen a lot
of them carry my father,
one of them carried the dead bodies on railroad cars and
stacking them up alongside to get picked
up and put in the cattle cars.
Personally I've smelled death, so to speak.
They call it death, but I'm talking about riding.
And if somebody can't tell
the difference they're either
lying or they don't know what they're talking about.
>> So you recall
when the American army came and liberated.
>> April 20, 1945.
I wonder how I know that.
[LAUGHTER] It was a celebration.
>> So it was a celebration.
I meant to ask, you were with your mother.
Were you separated from your father?
Did they have the men in a different place?
>> They were never together.
Not in that place, no.
He was off doing whatever they told him to do.
This is slave labor, don't forget.
I do know this,
that they used to take him out of that place.
And I presumed they took him to build shafts,
or whatever, to house all the DPs,
displaced people, or persons.
Whatever you want to call them.
>> Do you remember the camp uniforms?
Did you have to wear special clothing?
>> Stripes.
>> And even you as a child?
>> Of course.
>> So getting back to that moment of liberation,
you said it was a party.
At that point did you
reconnect with your father and your older brother?
>> I think if I remember right,
and my mother what she told me,
it was probably about two weeks later.
>> And where did you go next?
>> We were put in DP camps.
DP stands for displaced people or person,
whatever you want to use it.
And I do remember,
they would house us in barracks, if you will.
They'd be three or four storeys high,
and there'd be, I
would say hundreds of people in that one barrack.
But anyway, yeah,
it's one thing about it, the trucks,
the American trucks they called Deuce and a half.
But yeah, they would pile us
in about every couple of weeks maybe,
and ship us to another place.
Couple of weeks later or maybe a month later,
they would ship us to another.
We did that until finally we
got the okay from the United States Army,
and they checked all our records and everything,
which I have right there.
And basically what you will
see when we came
to this country is basically what we had to have,
especially the yellow ones that are laminated,
those are the true records
the day that we actually got aboard ship,
and we had to have proof.
And there were priests over there
from different areas of Europe.
And they knew us.
And they said, yeah,
that's the Wazowski family.
And so they put us aboard ship that one
I got a picture of and nine days later,
we were in the United States.
>> And who sponsored your visa?
>> Lux.
His name was Lux.
I don't know his first name, but he had,
I think somewhere around 3,000 acres of farmland,
and he grew corn
and the hills that he had on his property,
he raised cattle over there.
My job right there before I went to
school was to let the cows out,
take them out to pasture,
or their area there.
And then the bus would come and pick me up.
And I'm going to tell you this.
The first time the bus came over there,
I didn't know what the heck was going on.
I've never been on a school bus before then
and I was afraid to get on because I thought,
man, life, where are they going to take me now?
But not knowing English
and trying to go to school in Hornick, Iowa.
I told you about that.
I thought, man, what a big town that was.
But there were just a few buildings,
just a foreign community.
>> So before we get a
little bit more into the farming that your family did,
can you tell me what you remember about
the journey over and the ship?
>> What was what?
>> In the ship. Do you remember the ship?
>> Oh, absolutely, I did.
I went from one end to the other being a kid.
Like I said, this was December 5th, 1949.
So by that time, I'm pushing 8-years-old.
So I remember that thing just like it was yesterday.
And I used to go down into the galley and
I did not see a banana.
I didn't know what it was, to begin with.
And the guy in the galley he wanted to give me
the banana, I go [FOREIGN].
[LAUGHTER] Banana, you eat.
No, I didn't know what it was.
I knew what an orange was.
I would get an orange or two,
and I would take them to my mom.
She was seasick all the way from Berghof Germany,
that's where we left all the way to the Boston.
Poor mom, I swear.
But anyway, Lux.
Yeah, that was my job.
And after school, my job.
The first thing I had to do,
I used to go and round up
the cattle and drive them back
into the barn for milking or whatever.
I had a job to do,
and I had to do that first before I did anything else.
>> So with the ship,
you had told me that you were originally
supposed to go to Ellis Island?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> And you didn't because of a storm.
Can you tell me about that?
>> Yes. We didn't see the storm because Ellis Island,
New York Boston is maybe less than 100 miles away,
but it was somewhat calm.
But I do remember.
Matter of fact, if you looked at all my records,
you can actually get a hold of Ellis Island,
their record department, they'll tell you.
My whole family is listed
there because that was the center hub
of all the immigrants that were coming to this country.
And by the way, we had to have a physical.
If you didn't pass the physical, guess what happens?
Right back. They'd send you back.
So the good thing by the way is that
we all passed and we all
stuck together and got on a train.
Matter of fact, they put us right on the train
and took us all the way to Hornick, Iowa.
>> So how long
did your family have to work for this farmer?
>> Two and a half years.
And a gentleman,
his name was Pirog.
His father was Polish,
but he wasn't, anyway.
But Pirog, he had some money.
So he rented a truck,
and he paid off the rest of
our debt because we were committed
to work for this farmer and Lux for three years.
But we got out of there in two and a half years.
He paid the bill.
And of course, he rented
that truck and the little belongings that we
had didn't even fill that truck halfway.
But he took us to Iowa and we lived
in one of his rental houses, and of course,
my father, he got himself a job at Swift
and he started earning money.
And just as soon as he started earning money,
we saved up a little bit of money because
we stayed in Pirog's house for about a year,
maybe a year and a half.
And he finally got a loan through Pirog and he
went and bought himself a house finally
about three blocks from where we lived to begin with.
>> And what town was this in? The town.
>> Sioux City, Iowa.
>> And what did
it mean for your father to buy that house?
>> That's all we could afford.
For him, it was a King's ransom,
because he paid just short of $8,000 for that house.
And it was somewhat dilapidated, but by Golly,
between my father, my brothers,
me, we fixed up the house and it stands today.
Somebody else owns it now.
>> And what year did he buy the house?
>> Yes, he did.
>> What year?
>> That was 1952.
>> And so you were 10 years old?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> So what was your education like in Iowa?
>> My what?
>> Your education.
>> I went to St. Francis Elementary School to begin with.
You got to understand,
I did not know English.
My first three letters that I ever
knew in English was, and like this.
Everything was and like this, and like this.
That's the only three words I knew at the time.
So anyway, I went to St.
Francis School and they had some nuns over
there that did speak Polish and they took me aside,
and they started teaching me different things.
And of course, I did a lot of
reading at that time, a lot of reading.
I'm not talking about
Gone with the Wind or anything else like that,
but the classic comic books.
That's because I could read or at least,
pretty good at that time,
but I could relate to the pictures.
And that's how I got to
speak somewhat pretty good English.
>> That's how my son learned to read,
too, comic books.
>> Yeah, there you go.
>> You mentioned the nuns and you
mentioned the Polish family
Pirog who took your family under his wing.
>> Yes ma'am.
>> How did your family connect
with them? Was it through church?
>> By act of God, I think.
I really do believe it.
I've met people here lately.
They don't believe in God.
Ma'am, let me tell you something.
And every fiber in me believes
that there is a God or whatever you want to call.
There is a higher being.
I should be dead three, four times over.
But each time I survived.
Why? And I'll give you a couple of cases in point.
For instance, we were ready to
be executed, the American Army.
Three days before then or so,
three or four days before then.
All of a sudden, they come showing up and
they liberated all of them people.
And believe it or not, a lot of those people
think that that is their second birthday.
Then here in 1960 well,
I'm not even going to go into Vietnam
but sometimes I wonder
if I moved my head one way or the other,
if my head was still going to be on that road.
I'm not even going to go there.
It's a dirty business,
and that's the only thing I'm going to tell you about it.
War is a dirty business.
But 1969, I had a total lung collapse on my right side.
My wife was in Sioux City
visiting her folks and things like that,
and I had to work and I left by myself.
And I was going through Kentucky.
And I stopped at
this one restaurant because I was getting hungry.
And I felt like I was catching a cold.
Really. I ate and so on and so forth,
but I felt like I was catching a cold.
And after I got through eating,
I got in the car and I was driving.
The next town was
approximately 100 miles away, the way I went.
And I was getting very
woozy because I was bleeding internally.
And I couldn't go back.
I can't go forward.
I had to have a hospital.
And just so happens,
there was this little Bohung town,
had a small little hospital there,
exactly in the middle,
about 50 miles one way or 50 miles the other way.
Had I gone either way,
I would have died behind a wheel.
I pulled in there, and Dr. Cash,
the doctor that actually saved my life,
he saw it because
my lung was literally ripped away from my chest.
I mean, it didn't just deflate.
It ripped away.
And he stuck a needles
pliers almost right here through
this one area right here because I'm missing a rib.
And he cut through
that before he gave me
any anesthetic or anything like that.
I tell you what. I will trade a woman for her
childbirth against this any day.
They have no idea the pain that when you crush a bone.
It's extremely painful.
But anyway, there's the other one.
And anyway, I can give you three different other ones,
or two different ones.
But the point is,
nobody's going to sit there and tell me there is no God.
>> You mentioned to me,
when your father bought the house,
that he felt blessed.
Do you want to tell me about what it was like for
him and his understanding to be in the United States?
>> Okay. I'm glad you asked that.
Really. I was going to high school at the time.
And my father was across the street.
And I could see him maybe about
a block and a half away
before because I walked to school.
It wasn't that far.
And he was just
standing there and I'm looking
and I'm walking towards him,
and he just stood there looking at his house.
And I walked up to him and I said, what's the matter?
And he didn't say
a word to me for maybe good two maybe three minutes.
He just kept on looking in.
I could see his mind working.
And I asked him again.
I said, pap what's the matter?
And he had tears coming down his eyes.
And I asked him, I said,
what's the matter? What's going on?
And he says, Jerry,
Moroni he says he realized that if I was in Poland,
I could never own a house like this with property.
With furniture that I had to pay for.
He says, this country,
he says, is the best thing he's ever seen.
And we sat there for
15 minutes just talking about something like that.
But he was so amazed that he could afford a house.
He never had a house.
His own house.
People don't realize that something that
simple can be so profound.
>> So for you as a kid,
learning English, going to school,
did you ever feel that people
treated you differently because you
were Polish, because you were an immigrant?
>> Some. But once they got to know me,
Look, you cannot fix stupid.
You just can't.
You can have all the intelligence in the world,
but stupid, you can't fix.
And I found a lot of them.
And even to this day,
I still find a lot of them.
Just case in point.
When we were in Vietnam,
you think I gave a damn who's behind me,
taking care of my back?
I don't give a darn if he was black,
pink, yellow, green, or whatever.
His blood is still red and he shows me respect,
I give him respect,
right back at it again.
But there's some people, he's this colour.
I hate these people.
Boy you idiot.
What do you do with something like that?
That's why I say, you can't fix stupid. You can't.
>> So tell me about
meeting your wife. You met her in high school.
>> That's my favorite subject.
Actually, believe it or not,
I was Robin the cradle.
I really was.
I was an ice skater at the time.
And afterwards, I would be a ring guard,
make sure that kids behave themselves.
And I saw this this girl.
And I'm telling you,
I knew right then and there,
I'm going to marry this girl.
She looked like she was 18,
but she was only 14.
But I I was hooked.
That's the only way I can put it.
I fell in love with her two minutes.
I fell in love with that girl.
>> And so you
couldn't marry her though
till after you went in the army.
>> Navy.
>> The Navy. So tell me about your service.
You don't have to go into lots of detail,
but tell me about
how you had told your mother you were going to serve?
>> Matter of fact, on a way over
because I've seen that you got to understand
my playground back there
mostly Germany because that's where
I started to grow up and started to realize.
But my playground these kids,
they have to have swings and things like that.
Well, for me, it was bombed out buildings,
burned out tanks.
I found bodies.
I would be digging in the ground or something or another,
and I would pull a bone out and all of a
sudden I tell the military police
that I found this one bone,
it's about that long.
It came out there with the German police,
I guess and they dug out three bodies.
I find a bullet and it still attached to his belt.
I started pulling on that thing and a whole string,
a 30 caliber ammunition.
That was my playground.
I did not have a normal childhood.
I guess that's the way you put it. That's it.
>> But you knew
US servicemen from being
in these displaced person's camps?
>> Oh, absolutely. And what was your impression of them?
>> They were my brothers.
They're just like my brothers today.
Any military guy,
I see this hat, he's my brother from a different mother.
But I know what he goes through,
he knows what I went through.
>> And so when you were on the ship
coming to the United States,
was it your mother who asked you to serve?
>> No. I just told my mom at that time.
I said, and this was a promise to her
because I know what she went through
and what my father and my brothers went through.
I said, when I get to the United States,
I said, that's going to be
my adoptive country, which I did.
I said, I will join the military.
I will fight for this country. And I would do.
My oath of office has no expiration date.
I will defend this country to death, if I have to.
People don't realize what they have in this country.
They really don't.
I realize there's poverty here, I understand that.
But there's so many avenues a person can
take to get an education or whatever else.
I used to go to a lot of high schools and I spoke
to people, kids, seniors.
Don't let high school be your last source of education.
I said, if it's not college,
go to a trade school.
But do something with your life.
If you don't do this,
your good job is going to be,
Will that be French fries with that, sir?
I mean, There might be poverty.
I mean, for Pete's sakes,
if you can't afford it,
don't have the children.
>> Yeah. So this country is very important to you.
>> Absolutely.
>> And so you decided to join the Navy?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> And where did you serve?
>> The Pacific Coast. I was never on the East Coast.
I got sworn in, you saw the picture,
I got sworn in Sioux city.
Frank Peterson also,
my dearest friend, he died,
but in a car wreck.
[inaudible], he joined with us.
Cliff, he joined.
But I mean, there must have been,
five, six guys that we joined.
And by the way, at the time there was a drive going on.
And this is no joke.
After I got sworn into the Navy, I get a letter,
a week to the day, stating,
"Greetings, you are hereby ordered to come," blah, blah.
So I took that letter,
I went to the commander of
that reserve and he started laughing.
He gets on the phone and he says,
hey, we already got him.
That was the end of that, he hung up.
[LAUGHTER] I swear I thought they were
just so hilarious. Anyway.
>> So you were on the Pacific Coast.
Did you serve on an aircraft carrier?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> And you were in Vietnam?
>> Yeah.
>> A matter of fact,
I got this little ID card
that I'm a little bit proud of.
>> Let's see, 1979.
Can you see this, Camden?
Veterans of Feign Morse?
Great. Thank you. Yeah.
>> So yeah, I'm very proud of that.
You can't fake this.
>> So what was it like then to
get out of the army and come home?
The Navy, pardon me.
>> Sure. That's okay. What was it like?
>> Yeah. What was it like to come home?
>> Good points, bad points.
One thing it did is made me grow up.
Very quickly. But one second.
Did I enjoy all of that?
No. But I promised
this country I would do
my damn best to protect this country,
and by God, I think I did my job.
Unfortunately, it was just for three years,
but then again, that's okay.
Most of the time most of
the deployments are usually for two years.
>> So you went back to Iowa at this point?
>> Yeah.
>> And you reconnected with your future wife?
>> Well, actually, I'm going to back up a little
bit as far as she's concerned, okay?
It was on Tuesday.
That's when we had our meeting at the reserves.
And I got dressed and all that good stuff in my uniform.
I had about an hour to kill,
so I knew where she lived.
Because I knew most of
the people there in different high schools,
like a central or healing, and so on.
And I found out where she lived.
And so I went over there to her house.
And of course, I met her on ice skating rink.
But anyway, I found out where she lived.
I walked over there.
I was driving there so I drove over there.
And her father answers the door.
And he looks at me and he looks up and down.
Hey, Barb, Navy's landed.
And anyway, I took her,
there was a little cafe if you will,
maybe about a half a block,
something like that, down
the street from their house right there at the time.
And it was called the Brown Derby.
And anyway, my first date with her was right there.
And like I said,
you got to understand.
I mean, my heart just, she was it.
And after we got back,
her dad and I we started talking and I tell you what,
I loved that guy.
He was like my second father almost.
He was a little older than I am.
But he says,
Jerry, he says,
you know she's only 14?
I said, yes, sir. I said,
I know she is.
And he says,
you're not going to do anything stupid, are you?
And I told him, I said [inaudible], no way.
I said, I will not do
anything to her until or after we're married.
And I kept my hands off of her.
Other than hugging and, you know, kissing.
I had to do that, obviously.
You really have no idea,
I was just smitten with her.
But I did.
I I waited until after our wedding.
She was honest to God.
She was a virgin, if you will.
But I promised her dad,
just like when after she and I got married.
And you saw the picture of her.
When she came down that aisle in church,
she literally took my breath away.
I swear to God.
And I'm thinking to myself, I said, geez,
Jerry, she is just
absolutely gorgeous out of this world.
And I said, she's going to be my wife.
>> And what date was that?
What was the date of your wedding?
>> 9/11. But I had that date first.
It's not the towers falling down.
>> What year?
>> 1965. Immaculate Conception Church.
And the priest that married us,
that was his second wedding.
He was he was new. Very new.
>> So then what brought you to Atlanta?
>> Jobs in Sioux City were scarce or less.
After being in the military,
and learning trades and things like that,
nothing in that town offered me
what I thought I should have.
Because when I came out of the Navy I
had papers saying that I was a tool and die,
which is the highest thing you can have.
I mean, I could run any machine.
I turn lathe, engine lathe, whatever.
I could do everything.
I did that on the carrier.
There was just nothing for me there.
So I went to Morningside College
and I learned three programs at the time.
It was Fortran, basic [inaudible] language, and Cobol.
And about that time,
because that was a year deal,
my brother was here in Atlanta and he knew
I was going to this program school
and so on, learning program.
And he says, Jerry,
this might be right up your alley.
He says, they're opening up
the Southeast conference here in Atlanta.
He says, if you're any good at this,
you're able to get hired on.
So I got on a plane,
and they gave me a logic test for two days.
Four hours in the morning,
four hours in the afternoon for two days.
And I'm glad to say I only missed three answers on that.
And like Miller Darden,
the guy that actually hired me,
he actually hired me right on the spot.
And he wanted me to come to work.
Now, this is Thursday and Friday.
He wanted me to come in and work that following Monday.
And I told him, I said, sir,
I said, I got to go to Iowa.
I said, I got to collect my wife,
and my baby at the time.
And I said, I got to get rid of whatever I
had because all I had was a car at the time.
And he says, okay.
He says, you got a week.
I said that'll be plenty.
So I flew back home that weekend, told my wife.
I didn't even give her any warning.
I said, pack up everything,
sell whatever you can out of the house,
new furniture and whatnot,
and I said we're moving to Atlanta.
>> So what were your first impressions of Atlanta?
>> It was a whole lot cleaner than LA and
San Diego also, yeah.
It was a lot cleaner.
>> And you got an apartment in Candler Park?
>> Candler Park. Yeah. Actually we
rented a part of a house.
That was an experience also.
She had mushrooms growing out of the bathroom floor.
The first day, evidently we made
enough noise so the bugs then, they were hiding.
And I'm not kidding. They were hiding.
But we put the groceries we had in the refrigerator.
The next morning, we got up and there were
roaches all inside that refrigerator.
We were there for three days, by the way.
[inaudible] What are we doing here?
So I start looking for an apartment,
and we had found one.
It was Candler Park.
And my brother lived maybe a quarter of a mile from that.
I could still see that refrigerator.
But my wife, she just went ballistic.
She says, no.
This ain't going to work.
But anyway, from there,
I commuted from Candler Park to Sandy Springs,
which is a pretty good drive,
for several years until I built my house in Stone Honing.
>> So you were in Atlanta in the late 1960s,
did you have a sense for what was
going on with the Civil Rights Movement?
>> Sure, I have.
>> What were your memories, impressions of that?
>> Stupid people.
I'm not talking about the movement
and I'm not talking about Blacks, Whites or anything.
I did read and I did listen to Martin Luther King.
He really was a brilliant man.
I liked him a lot.
I hate to say this,
but the white people,
I don't know what their problem is.
I really don't. I mean,
I have some niggers across the street,
they are black, and I've Donna,
she's a member of my family.
I helped raise her kids and things like that.
Her husband, he was a truck driver.
And he was gone a lot of times for
two or three weeks at a time or longer.
And I always kept an eye on them.
And she knew darn well,
that all she had to do is just call
and I'd be there in a second.
And she knows that I know how to use firearms.
And if need be,
I can introduce him to a few of mine.
That's how I got one of my SKS rifles.
He was very reluctant, but hey.
>> So you worked at AT&T.
How long did you work for AT&T?
>> Almost 31 years.
>> And so you witnessed a lot of change?
>> Yeah.
>> And you mentioned you had
a baby daughter when you left Iowa,
did your family grow after you came here?
>> Well, God only gave us two.
She couldn't have anymore.
She had a [inaudible] uterus,
and she had a miscarriage, one.
And the ones that I do have, Shane and Dawn.
Right now, Dawn and Scott her husband,
they have this,
what do they call those?
Drones. And what they do is they got a business going,
and he goes around and he flies the drones and he
checks for people anywhere from 200,000 square foot.
It was a warehouse and he went to three of those drones.
It's a monster building,
but he got all of that,
and he puts it all together for the owners.
And he did one for a ship.
It was an oil tanker.
And he was really happy with their work.
And since then,
it's nothing for them to do three,
four of them a day.
So he's got a pretty good business going right there,
and I'm glad for him.
And of course, my son Shane,
I don't have to worry about him.
He works for a guy,
the owner of this company.
He's Turkish.
And he lives in Turkey.
And my son, right now he's on his way to Arkansas,
and he sells travertine.
I don't know if you ever heard of travertine.
Very expensive pool rock.
It's about that thick one square, $27 each.
So it's nothing for them to put in.
And these people that
have nice houses and things like that,
they will have travertine along their pools and
things like that because
most of the time people can't afford it,
they're very expensive, and that's what he does.
And of course, the guy gives them a car,
he's driving Lincoln and that's what he travels in,
and he goes and sees
different businesses and so on and so forth.
So he's happy,
I'm happy, my kids are happy,
my grandkids are happy.
>> So tell me about Golden K Kiwanis.
>> Golden K Kiwanis.
That's one of my favorite subjects.
Anyway, I joined that outfit
about four or five years ago.
Doctor Seaman from here,
and Bob Baglam he's a member of the city council.
I know Doctor Seaman for several years.
And Doctor Seaman, he just had
an operation right here
on his neck because he has cancer,
but he's good now.
And he always wanted to see my car.
I got a 1968.
It's a grand sport and it moves pretty good.
Matter of fact, there's about three mustangs
here in town that they
tangled with grandpa and they
thought grandpa was going to get chewed up.
Well, they didn't realize
how many horses I have under the hood.
And they behind me when we finished.
They always asked me,
what do you got in that thing?
I always tell a four cylinder.
[LAUGHTER] He knows what I'm talking about.
>> My dad drove a '69 SS.
>> Anyway, I went to see
Doctor Seaman and he wanted to
see my car so I drove it over there.
I don't drive it very often because it really likes gas.
And I mean, really likes gas.
And you can't use that stuff out of
a pump because he knows he'll know this,
that compression ratio is what gives a lot of horses.
Well, this is 13 to one compression,
and so it squeezed.
So I drive it over there.
And he looked at it and he says, beautiful.
He says, you got a few minutes.
I said, Yeah. I said,
I'm not going anywhere.
So he gets on the phone and he called Bob Baglam.
And Bob Baglam,
he comes over there
and he just fell in love with that thing.
He had to sit in it,
he had to start that thing and
hear the rumble of this thing and so on and so forth.
Anyway, after all this is said and done,
they both gang up on me and they said, hey,
you be good person to join the Kiwanis.
And usually, I am not a joiner like that.
But when they told me about kids,
I said, I'm your man.
And here about a year or so ago,
my wife and me and my sons,
and everybody, the whole family,
we went down to Florida for vacation.
And I came back and I went to the next meeting and Bob,
he looks at me and he says, Surprise.
And I said, What? You're the president.
You're voted in as president.
I said, G, that's nice.
Anyway. So every year,
we have a pancake breakfast.
I know you haven't heard anything because we don't.
But the money that we raise, and by the way,
I'm the pancake flipper,
one of them, there's two of us.
Anyway, the money that we get,
it's a nonprofit organization,
as you know, all that money
that we get the high schools,
grade schools, elementary schools,
everybody gets a piece of the pie.
But all the money stays in Terrell County.
It doesn't go anywhere else.
When they told me about that,
I said, am in.
And honestly, I have been having a ball.
I have met some great people.
Because of that, one of my jobs is to get
speakers to come over to our group and speak to us,
like Doctor Jensen and Doctor Loris,
and so on and so forth.
I can name you a half a dozen of them.
And the people that I do get,
I like to get somebody that's going to be interesting.
I'm not going to get
anybody that's going to sit there and show
you how to beat a batter or something or another.
I'm going to fall asleep within five minutes.
But I usually try to get somebody that's
going to keep everybody's interest,
and somebody that I think is intelligent,
and somebody that surprises me and so on.
And I can't find any other way of
describing some of the people that I have had already is,
they've always surprised me.
>> So it's a good segue.
I only have a couple of questions left,
and my first one is why do you think it's important for
students to learn about the history of the 20th century?
So World War II everything that came before and after.
>> I don't remember the guy that said this.
But if you don't learn from history,
you are bound to be determined to repeat it.
Some history to repeat it is fine in Dandy,
but a lot of it is a cutthroat situation case in point.
Look what's happening in China.
Look what's happening in Russia.
Look what's happening in Iran, Iraq.
Look what's happening in Afghanistan.
You want to live like that
where if you look cross side at somebody's,
they're going to beat you if not shoot you?
I said, Come on people.
Learn from the mistakes they made.
Anybody, anywhere, whoever you are,
I dare them to sit there and tell me that there was a
liberal or a socialist type
of government that ever succeeded for very long.
The answer is going to be no.
And the history, you can go all the way
to Adam and Eve if you believe in Adam and Eve,
there's always going to be the person
that's going to want something,
and they can't get it, so they're going to kill
somebody in order to get what they like.
But they don't want to work for it.
They just like what you have.
Easiest way to do that eliminate you.
That is a dead fact.
>> So you think it's important for there to be
a government structure that protects
people from that power?
>> The government you're talking about?
>> Structure for how countries work.
>> Yes. I have read
the Constitution backwards and forward several times.
That's the way this thing was designed.
We didn't need another king.
That's the whole purpose of our way of governing.
You have the three branches.
That's the way it was designed.
But governments have a way of playing with these things,
whether it's word games or whatnot.
The true enough, the Constitution
and the declaration of independence and so on,
and the Bill of Rights,
they may not be perfect,
but I guarantee you this,
there's nothing better on Earth.
Nothing. I don't care where you go,
there is nothing better than those.
>> So then what you hope that people will take away from
learning about your family
and your family story in particular?
>> That's a tough question. That really is.
I hope they learned from history.
That is a difficult question to answer
without going into a lot of detail, do you know that?
>> Yeah. Well, sometimes,
it's lessons that maybe you
feel like you learn from your parents.
>> Absolutely.
If you get rid of the family unit, what's the point?
What's the point you and me, women,
men, what's the point,
if you don't learn something like that.
A woman was made for one thing,
and her duty in life,
I shouldn't say duty.
But her point in life,
if they want to, is the bare children.
A man can't do it.
He can fertilize the egg.
I have never heard of a man
bearing a child unless he had a whole baby or something.
Parents are the center point of life.
That's the only way that I can put it.
You destroy the family unit, you destroy yourself.
It's that simple and that difficult.
>> So is there anything you want to
talk about I haven't asked you about yet?
>> Yeah. I would just like to make a point
that I hope this helps somebody.
If it's one person,
two people or something or another,
especially, young people,
think what you're doing.
Just because somebody says
the grass is blue or pink or something or another,
don't argue with them.
Because you'll never win the argument.
They got their mind set because of this.
What you're saying is that,
no, the grass is green.
They'll never understand it
because that's the way they think.
But keep an open mind.
You have to have an open mind.
You have to look at why the person is thinking this way.
You don't have to become one.
I know this may be a sole subject to some people,
but like these men,
they say, I feel like a woman. Well, fine.
So did Bruce Jenner.
And he became a woman.
But can he have kids?
No. No way, know how.
Fine. That's the way you think.
That's what you want to do, great.
Knock yourself up. But don't force it down my throat.
>> So freedom is important to you?
>> Freedom is all there is.
Yes, of course.
>> Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with
us and allowing us to record it today.
I really appreciate it.
>> Well, I was apprehensive.
I told you that to begin with.
>> Did you feel okay?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Great.
>> Once we got off of that family [inaudible],
I will tell you this though one thing.
You never asked me about like for instance,
well, Auschwitz, let me just say.
If you've never been there,
I can describe it to you,
but you won't know the effect of what you will see.
Like my wife, for instance.
I took her through there and there's some places
up there in one of the buildings that's got
all the suitcases and the hair,
the eyeglasses, their teeth,
baby clothes, and so on and so forth.
And of course, the sewing case temperature regulated.
And I'll tell you what.
When she came to the babies in particular,
she literally cried, I'm telling you,
uncontrollably, because she knew what happened.
Same thing with my dad.
Several years ago, my oldest
brother and my father before he passed,
he went there, and especially at the wall.
My father collapsed because of
all the relatives and everything else like
that one of his brothers,
for instance, and so on.
So when we went to the ovens,
it wasn't quick enough, as I told you.
I already told you what they did with that.
And I told you what they did in die hall same thing.
But you just didn't die automatically.
But I did go through the gas chamber.
And I'm telling you right now.
If you ever smelled rat poison,
go to one of those and go through that gas chamber.
And the walls in that place are
still permeated with that rat poison.
You can smell it.
It will never go away until they tear that thing down
and they'll never tear it down
because it's a memorial right now.
But all I want to do is I want people to think about what
could happen if they don't
participate because just like the German people,
they said, well,
we were all lied to.
Yeah, I know, but you could have smelled it.
>> People want to pay attention.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate.