Nov. 9, 2024
Hanford Insider: City Council Updates, Community News, and Veterans Day Reflections
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Army veterans Don Knight and Gerry McKee take us on an unforgettable journey back to their days in Vietnam, sharing powerful stories of camaraderie and unexpected humor in the midst of chaos. We honor Veterans Day by highlighting these unique experiences and insights about transitioning back to civilian life. This episode promises to deepen your appreciation for the sacrifices made by veterans and the enduring bonds they form. As we celebrate these heroes, you'll also get an insider's look at Hanford's thriving community, from the exciting new developments like Barrel House Brewing's upcoming site to the vibrant events lined up for the holiday season.
Join us as we explore the vibrant tapestry of Hanford life. Listen in for the latest community news, including the successful move of Blue Door Massage Therapy and the passage of Revenue Measure H that aims to enhance public services. We also spotlight major events like the upcoming Christmas parade and Hanford Winter Wonderland. Whether you're planning to join the Veterans Day car parade at The Remington or watch the Hanford Marching Band Showcase, this episode is packed with everything you need to stay connected with the heart and soul of Hanford.
You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
Thank you for supporting the show!
Chapters
00:59 - Community Updates and Calendar
06:52 - Veterans Day Salute
36:01 - Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley
Transcript
WEBVTT
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On this week's episode of the Hanford Insider.
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We'll be celebrating our veterans, rob will have some community news for us and I'll be back with your sports update.
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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, november 11th.
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Welcome to this special show saluting our veterans this weekend.
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I'm releasing it early so that you can hear about the exciting plans for Monday's celebrations.
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This is the Hanford Insider, the podcast where we dive into what makes our community tick, from local stories and hidden gems to conversations with the people shaping our neighborhoods.
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We're here to celebrate, explore and connect.
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Whether you're new to Hanford or a longtime local, this is your source for everything happening in our town, from events and news to unique conversations with people who make Hanford what it is.
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Thanks for tuning in and let's jump right into this week's community news.
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Last Tuesday, the City Council met to discuss many items.
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At the beginning of the meeting, they had the opportunity to pen two new HPD officers.
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One of the items on the agenda was about the relocation of Blue Door Massage Therapy from Irwin and Ivy to 1208 North Dowdy Street.
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You see, back in October the Planning Commission ruled that the business could not move to another location.
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Owner Ayla Tidwell rallied her clients and friends to appeal the ruling.
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After further consideration from the city and comments from those in attendance, the city struck down the decision by the Planning Commission and decided to rule in favor of Blue Door moving to their new location.
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Congratulations to Ayla and her staff at Blue Door and a special thank you for your support of our community by donating to so many local organizations.
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The other big item on the agenda was the sale of the old Kings County Courthouse to Esteem Land Company to flip the old building into Barrel House Brewing and other establishments by the summer of 2026.
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It's estimated that at least $10 million will be put into the modernization of the building.
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This company is also working on the Wealth Center building that houses Hola Cafecito and the Acai Bar.
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They have a proven track record with their successful projects in Visalia, fresno, bakersfield and Paso Robles.
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I understand that I'm very biased on this issue, but then again I don't know many people that actually made the trek up to Santa Cruz, like my family did, to see the Cooper House.
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That was Max Wallin's inspiration and dreams for Courthouse Square to become Google it.
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It was a similar courthouse that was turned into restaurants, outdoor dining and many shops before suffering a significant damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and it had to be torn down.
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It's sad to see what the courthouse in Hanford was to have been and what the building has become.
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It's time that we give another investor an opportunity to develop this historical landmark.
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I'd hate to see it be torn down.
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The city doesn't have the money for needed repairs and upgrades.
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In fact, the city has spent over $100,000 a year just keeping it open.
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That money can now be put back to better use in the community.
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Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.
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In other news you've probably all heard by now that Revenue Measure H has passed with 60% in favor.
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Beginning January 1st, the city sales tax will be 8.25%.
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The additional 1% will go directly to public safety, roads, parks and code enforcement.
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The city will soon be selecting members of the Oversight Committee, so contact your area city council member if you're interested in receiving more information about how to keep an eye on these expenditures.
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In the race for City Council, nancy Howes has been elected to fill the vacant position for Area C and Kimber Reagan has been elected to fill the position in Area B.
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The new council members will be sworn in at a special meeting in December after the results have been certified.
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The Hanford Chamber of Commerce is planning the annual Christmas parade on the day after Thanksgiving and they're accepting applications for entries.
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Find out more at hanfordchambercom.
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Many local residents have been concerned about the growing number of homeless, setting up a very large encampment at the old COS campus near 13th and 198.
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The Hanford Sentinel reported Friday that the City of Hanford is exercising the new camping ordinance to remove everyone from the property or risk arrest.
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This is the first large scale test of this new ordinance.
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We'll have to see how it turns out over the next few days and possibly longer.
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Here's some events coming up on our community calendar.
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Hanford Winter Wonderland opens on November 23rd.
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Tickets are on sale now at hanfordwinterwonderlandcom.
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The Kings Players presentation of the Education of Angels continues at the Temple Theater.
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For tickets and information, visit kingsplayersorg.
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For tickets and information, visit kingsplayersorg.
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Kings County's Asian Experiences at the Carnegie Museum of Kings County is open each Friday, saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 pm.
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Part 2 showcases local Asian communities in the years following World War II.
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Specific displays focus on the histories, cultures and tradition of the Japanese, chinese, filipino and Hmong in the area.
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For more information, visit carnegiemuseumofkingscountyorg.
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Make your plans now to attend the Veterans Day Festival in the Civic Park on Monday, november 11th, from 10 am to 4.30 pm.
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This event is put on by the VFW Post 5869.
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The Remington is having a parade of cars on Monday.
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The community is encouraged to drive by the facility at 11th and North Star between 3 and 3.30 to show our appreciation for the veterans living there.
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Residents will be out on 11th Avenue waving to the cars as you drive by.
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You're encouraged to decorate your cars, wave your flags and honk your horns.
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You'll hear more about that in the interviews coming up later in the show.
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The Main Street Hanford Christmas Tree Walk begins on November 12th and continues through December 10th in downtown Hanford.
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For more information, visit MainStreetHanfordcom.
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The Hanford Marching Band Showcase will be held on Thursday, november 14th at Neighbor Bowl.
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There will be performances by all three high school bands, as well as the Pioneer Middle School Marching Band.
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The bands from Woodrow Wilson, jfk, jefferson, pioneer and Parkview will be performing the National Anthem together.
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The event is free, but donations are always gladly accepted.
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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.
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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.
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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.
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Well, it's great to be here at the Remington again with our stories from the Remington, and today our focus is Veterans Day, and with me is Army veteran Don Knight.
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How are you doing, don?
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I'm doing pretty good for an old man.
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Hey, welcome to the show.
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I know you followed some of the history pages that I have and everything.
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Yeah, I've seen some that's awesome.
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So tell us a little bit about your family and some of the things that got you interested in serving our country.
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Well, I was raised in Sanger, california.
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I'm born in Oklahoma, I come out here in 43.
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And, like I said, I was raised in Sanger.
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Out in the country we never went to town except we needed a haircut or something.
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And when I turned 16, I was getting a little bit big for my britches and I thought I knew more than my daddy and mama did.
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So I pushed my dad out down on the bed which I should have never done, he's a big man and I took off and me and my buddy went to see the Army recruiter.
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I was 16, he was 18.
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Well, he said you're going to have to be 17.
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How can you do that?
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And I said I don't know.
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He said get your parents to sign for you.
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So I signed up at 16, joined the Army 1953.
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Went to Fort Campbell, kentucky, 16 weeks of airborne basic, went to Grand Ole Opry and then took a week off and come home.
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Then I went back to Fort Benning, georgia, for jump school and flunked out of jump school because my buddy had flunked out of jump school.
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I thought we was going to stay together.
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We didn't sign up together but we'd been together and he went to Korea and I went to Germany.
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I was in Germany for 28 months In the Army.
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I had eight weeks of basic and then eight weeks of heavy weapons basic training and then I thought I was going to be in the infantry.
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Well, got over to Frankfurt, germany, and Repo Depot and the guy said I need three MPs, volunteers.
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You, you and you.
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I was an MP, military, police and Army Division, the 9th Division.
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Yeah, he's still got the hat.
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Still got the hat on.
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Yeah, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
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I come back, I found out that I didn't know everything and I come back and we straighten things out.
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Had a good life since then 1959, I went to work at the post office here in Hanford, worked there for 33 years and retired in 1992.
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Been here in Hanford ever since, started down here at the Remington about five years ago and it's a great place.
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My wife had dementia and she was in a dementia hospital uh, recovery thing and I and I it's like this but it was uh, uh secure, they couldn't walk away.
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She was up there for five years and she finally passed away.
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And uh, 2021, three years ago.
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And uh, that's when I, when I had moved in here two years before that I had moved over here in 19, 2019.
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I got my 19s and all that stuff, but anyhow, I played a lot of music around here.
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I played music for years, I know, with the Jerry Cardoza Countryman Band.
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I played with a whole lot of guys, played drums, that's right.
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I remember that Played bass and played drums and played whatever they needed, and that's about it.
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Got three kids, two boys and a girl.
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The girl lives in Oregon, the oldest boy passed away and the youngest one lives here.
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He's a manager of Holt Lumber, buddy Knight.
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He runs Holt Lumber and I got six great-granddaughters, three granddaughters and three grandsons.
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I'm a happy camper.
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I really am.
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That's my life.
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Yeah, you mentioned your service at the post office.
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I know a lot of people probably remember you working there.
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I worked the window for 28 years In fact.
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We just had a guy moved in, him and his wife, duke, and Rosemary Conchola Maybe I should have used his name, but Duke and I worked the window for a long time and we had some cut up stuff we done up there.
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Guy walked in one day and I was on the window and if they wanted to hold their mail they come up and they sign an address card.
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They put their name and address on there and put hold the mail.
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The guy comes in.
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He says hold my mail.
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I turn around and say hold his mail.
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The guy comes in.
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He says hold my mail.
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I turn around and say hold his mail.
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He said is that all there is to it?
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I said yeah, hold your bill.
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No, we finally got him straight and I got his name and address.
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But Duke fell to the floor.
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The guy was on the other window.
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He saw that and he just reminded me of it.
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I forgot all about it.
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It had been 30 years, 30, 40 years ago.
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He reminded me of it Hold my mail, hold his mail.
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Just tell mail.
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Hold his mail.
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Just tell him to hold the mail.
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Getting back to your service in the Army, can you tell us about maybe some of the places that you served in conflicts?
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Well, I got to visit a lot of places.
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I left New York City, I had Thanksgiving in Camp Kilmer, new Jersey, in 53, and I had Christmas in Frankfurt, germany, in 53, and that was the beginning.
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And I tell you what it was a growing up stage.
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It was exactly.
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The Lord knew what I needed and he gave it to me.
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It was a bunch of neat guys and a lot of fun, a lot of work, a lot of learning, a lot of growing up, a lot of growing up in a lot of ways.
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And I'll never forget I wouldn't smoke or drink in front of my dad, even when I come home on leave.
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At that time I had a younger brother.
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I come home, I was 20 years old Well, yeah, 19.
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And I come home and my brother was 17.
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He's sitting on the porch drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in front of my dad, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in front of my dad, and I couldn't handle it.
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That's not something.
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Yeah, I had gone from being just like my brother to growing up and I didn't know how to handle it.
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So it took me a while to smoke and drink in front of my dad, but I guess that's respect, and I needed to give some respect for where it was needed.
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Yeah, so this is Veterans Day 2024.
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And last week we shared with Margaret Cardiel.
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She was talking about the importance of remembering our veterans.
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Why do you think it's so important to remember the service of our military members?
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If we didn't have these people that volunteer to protect our country, we wouldn't have a country.
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Really, if you take it down to the nth degree, if somebody didn't go.
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I see these things when World War II come about.
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I heard a guy talking the other day about the draft.
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We don't need the draft anymore.
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Why would we need the draft in case we're going to war?
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The guy said well, during World War II we didn't have a draft.
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When World War II started, the guys come out of the field, they come out of the factories, they come out of everywhere and volunteered and went to war because it was needed and uh, and that's, that's that that great generation was just, is was just.
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I mean, when when you sign up, you take your hand and you swear that you'll uphold the Constitution and, president of the United States, you're signing your death warrant.
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I mean you could be killed.
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You know, let me go, yeah, let me go, let me go, I'll go, I'll go, and it's a great thing.
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It's a great thing.
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If we didn't have those people like that, we wouldn't have a country, we wouldn't have a country.
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I just love veterans, all of them, even the bad ones.
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And you've kept up friendships with a lot of the people.
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Of course, you've had some past, but it's nice to be in a place where you're with so many veterans and they have a nice wall of honor and recognize all of you and do a really good job here of doing that.
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So, don, thank you for sharing your story, thank you and thank you for being on the show and we look forward to seeing you in the future.
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Thank you, rob.
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It's great to be here with Gary McKee, who is also an Army veteran.
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And Gary, how are you doing?
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I'm doing good for 78 years old.
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It's great to have you on the show, Gary.
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Can you tell us a little bit about your family and kind of what motivated you?
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What was your driving force to sign up for the military?
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And all of my uncles were generous.
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They worked for Anderson Clayton and my mother had one sister still living in Texas and one brother that lived down up north Oakland area.
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But other than that we all lived right here with my grandma and grandpa.
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So my life was my family.
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I mean every weekend we were at grandma and grandpa's.
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That was possible and that's about the way it was.
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I had uncles and aunts that lived in Lemoore and Tulare and everything, but basically everybody was here close and every Saturday and Sunday we were at Grandma and Grandpa's.
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They had a little place on East Hanford Actually it was three houses from the wild lands.
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Actually it was three houses from the wild lands and he had half an acre, did all of his own vegetable growing and had chickens and everything else and he was a jolly old man.
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At one time he worked for the railroad.
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He was a jolly old man.
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At one time he worked for the railroad.
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He was a railroad detective, so he had lots of stories to tell.
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I don't know how you would say it.
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It was just family.
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It doesn't seem like nowadays it happens that way anymore.
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As kids when we went to Grandma and Grandpa's we weren't allowed in the house.
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We played outside.
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The only reason you went in the house was to use the restroom.
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And uh, on his property he had an outhouse down the far end and of course the boys loved the white outhouse and the girls would go into the bathroom.
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But other than that we played hide and go seat, kick the can eating Annie over, yeah, yep, until everybody had enough to eat and was ready to go home.
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Good times, good times.
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We played a lot of horseshoes.
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He had his own little horseshoe pit.
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Let's talk about your military service.
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What got you inspired to sign up?
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Well, I didn't sign up.
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I was drafted.
00:19:41.258 --> 00:19:52.001
I was going to college, over at COS, to be an accountant and I kind of liked to party too much and my grades got down a little bit.
00:19:52.001 --> 00:20:10.244
And Uncle Sam said he'd like to talk to me and so I did my thing and went down there and next thing you know, on December the 5th 1965, I was in the Army until September the 16th 1967.
00:20:10.244 --> 00:20:16.734
The day I got home from Vietnam I was discharged from the Army All in one day.
00:20:16.734 --> 00:20:22.354
We left Vietnam at 2.30 in the morning on September the 16th.
00:20:22.354 --> 00:20:35.143
I got to Oakland Army Base at 6.45 on the morning of the 16th and by nine o'clock I was here in Hanford, and a civilian basically.
00:20:35.143 --> 00:20:36.325
So.
00:20:36.325 --> 00:20:38.509
So what did you do in the Army during your time there?
00:20:38.509 --> 00:20:56.497
I was a forward observer for a four-deuce mortar platoon, so I spent most of my time with the line company Charlie Company mostly, and then after an operation be back to my guys in two days and be gone again for another month.
00:20:57.811 --> 00:20:58.655
But other than that.
00:20:58.655 --> 00:21:03.414
So why do you think it's important for us to remember our veterans who have served our country?
00:21:05.111 --> 00:21:07.845
Well being like at the time when I was drafted.
00:21:07.845 --> 00:21:20.662
It was before all of the hoopla about being in Vietnam and all this and all that, and it's just more or less a field of duty.
00:21:20.662 --> 00:21:31.265
If you enjoyed your life up until that time, you were asked to help defend it.
00:21:34.576 --> 00:21:37.184
Excuse me, it's okay.
00:21:39.655 --> 00:21:45.800
So it didn't take a lot of moxie or whatever, you just went and did your job.
00:21:45.800 --> 00:22:03.401
I mean, we were all young guys and once we got through all of our basic training and stuff, we were all brothers and we would do anything for each other and uh, it's an honor.
00:22:04.063 --> 00:22:04.282
Yeah.
00:22:05.046 --> 00:22:05.446
It's an honor.
00:22:06.256 --> 00:22:12.909
But it didn't take us long, once we got to Vietnam to figure out you know, something wasn't right.
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We all watched war movies you know John Wayne and everything else and all the good war movies and we realized this wasn't fought the same way.
00:22:23.145 --> 00:22:36.454
And when we got to Vietnam I had 22 days in country before I ever got there because we went on a troop ship as a whole division.
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Half of us went to north to Pleiku and half of us down south to the Iron Triangle.
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So I got the Iron Triangle part, triangle part.
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But our first day actually with our feet on the ground was spent on a flatbed truck going cross-country to our new home.
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And I've watched movies sent and news deals and everybody thinks the 9th Division started our base camp.
00:23:10.224 --> 00:23:12.701
Well, the 9th division didn't start our base camp.
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