On this weeks show, Fisher shares the announcements of the big announcement between the two family history giants, Ancestry.com and familysearch.org.   What will their new agreement bring to us over the next five years?  And how much will it cost?  Listen to the podcast to find out. Ralph Gates joins the show to talk about his experience working on the Manhattan Project as a teenager building the first atom bomb!

Transcript of Episode 10

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Abigail J. Bonnell

Segment 1 Episode 10 

Fisher: And welcome to Extreme Genes Family History Radio. I am Fisher your Radio Roots Sleuth. Of course ExtremeGenes.com available for your perusal at any time brought to you by TMC, The Multimedia Centers preserving your memories for over 40 years. And this segment is brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000. Extreme Genes “Find Line” is open and toll free 1-234-56 GENES. That’s G-E-N-E-S. If you spell it J-E-A-N-S you might get a very edgy clothing outlet so don’t go there. How are you doing? Glad to have you along. Ralph gates is going to be joining me, a very special guest today. No, you haven’t heard of him but as a teenager he worked on the Manhattan Project, yeah, making the Atom Bomb in WW II. He’s in his late 80s, somewhere in there, but he also goes around and interviews other veterans to get their stories. And we’re going to talk about how he does that because he gets things out of people that nobody else can. It’s going to be a fascinating visit with him coming up in about 15 minutes. Well, if you didn’t catch it there’s been a huge announcement made jointly by the two family history giants Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. The announcement reads that Ancestry and Family Search are aiming to load up a billion digitized genealogical records for Ancestry and Family Search users over the next five years. That is 1 000 piles of 1 million records per mile. So my suspicion is that all of us will have something tied to her lines in one of those piles when this is all done. Ancestry is investing over $60 million. Family Search will be providing thousands of hours of volunteer efforts. We’re seeing more and more collaboration between these two. And remember recently we talked about the State of Massachusetts, how they hired safe crackers to open a massive vault that has been sealed for decades just to see what’s inside? It’s on ExtremeGenes.com of course. With this announcement basically we all get to play, “What’s Inside the Vault?” That of course being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints massive record vault built into a granite mountain location in Utah which is the source of so much of the information that FamilySearch.org freely shares with the world and word is there will be a lot more announcements of collaborations such as this one. So read the article, it’s linked on our site ExtremeGenes.com. Just remember too, if you’re hearing about this in a podcast long after we originally aired this episode you can always find these stories by using keywords at ExtremeGenes.com.  The Massachusetts story for instance the words vault or safe will bring up that as well as the announcement from Ancestry and FamilySearch.org.

Well, last week we talked about Patricia Yearwood’s episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” and how refreshing it was to find a celebrity who didn’t have such a glamorous background. In her case, instead of heroes and kings, we found a thief. And that‘s when I shared with you the story of the two thieves in my family that we know of, one on my side, one on my wife’s. That led to our poll on thieves in your line. Do you know of any? And we actually had 36% answered yes, 36% answered no and 27% answered, “I’d never admit it if I did” so we count that as a yes. [Laughs] So 63% basically acknowledged the thief in their tree so I am not alone. I’m feeling good about that. And by the way, there was a story out this week about former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard who recently learned that she was the descendant of a convicted thief. Now why this is news I’m not so sure because Australia was “founded” by English people sent there as a punishment for petty crimes, it’s usually theft, so pretty much everybody there likely has a thief in their lines. That would be horrifying news for some people to find information like that in their tree, but in some places another type of person might be considered much worse. And I’m not talking about hard core criminals. I’m talking about Yankees! Yes, soldiers from the North. The South Maryland News has a story about how St Mary’s County has records of over 760 veterans of the Civil War both black and white who fought for the Union. The article’s headlined, “There may be a Yankee in your Tree.” [Laughs] In the article itself the author Duane Whitlock Clemens refers to the possibility of a Yankee “hiding” in your family tree. In Maryland that must be an issue still after all of these years.

Well, the final episode of the 4th season of “Who Do You Think You Are?” is history and yes it was Jim Parsons from the Big Bang Theory. Jim’s from Texas and learned he had ancestry from a neighboring Sate Louisiana. It was a real important branch on his tree in terms of interesting stories. He learned he had an ancestor who served as a doctor in Iberville, Parish in the mid-1800s. He graduated from the medical college of Louisiana which is the precursor to Tulane University School of Medicine. His name was Doctor Jean Baptiste Hacker or Hackere as they would say it down there I’m thinking. He actually worked through a scourge of Yellow Fever and then in 1854 he published an article on the subject in the New Orleans Medical and Surgery Journal. And amazing when you think the doctors would survive being around so many sick people, you’d think that, you know, getting through something like that would show him to be super human. Well, he may have had good resistance to illness but this ancestor of Jim Parsons was not so resistant to accident as he wound up dying at age 64 in a steamboat fire. Those were real common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, there was one called the General Slocum that caught on fire in the East River of New York City. I think it was about 1904 and they lost about as many people as were lost on the Titanic. Unbelievable! If you want to read more about Jim Parsons’ adventure on “Who Do You Think You Are” there’s a link to our summary on our website on ExtremeGenes.com. 

All right, on to more good stuff, and despite all the indignities poor king Richard III has had to endure, you know, being buried under a parking lot, worse yet under an outhouse in earlier times, being found to have round worms in his system while yet alive. The folks in the UK are apparently very opinionated about where he should go next. Yes, they want to move him around after 500 years which is why I brought my British friend Abigail J. Bonnell (Abby) into the studio.

Abby: Correct. [Laughs]

Fisher: You know, Abby has been an American citizen for what 12/13 years?

Abby: Oh no, about four years.

Fisher: Four years?

Abby: Um hmm.

Fisher: That recent?

Abby: I’ve been a green card holder for many years.

Fisher: Oh see and I’ve worked so hard to try to get you to speak American and it just doesn’t work. But see, I can put you to great use in helping us to understand some things.

Abby: Um hmm.

Fisher: Newspapers and other interested parties are passing around petitions now to figure out where Richard III should be buried next. Now as you know, one group wants him buried right where he’s been in the last 500 years. Is it Leicester [Leister]?

Abby: Leicester [Lester].

Fisher: Leicester [Lester]?

Abby: It’s Leicester [Lester].

Fisher: Well, that’s L-E-S-T-E-R.

Abby: I know. You can’t unravel it. It is what it is.

Fisher: Leicester [Lester] And others wanted to be buried where he wanted to be buried before his life was so rudely interrupted on the battlefield while yet a young man. So far the York folks have 29 500 signatures on their petition while the Leicester folks, “How’d I do?”

Abby: Very good.

Fisher: Oh thank you. They’re about at the 20 000 mark. So do you people typically vote over there where people get buried? What is that?

Abby: No, we’ve got bodies buried everywhere. [Laughs]

Fisher: You do, actually. 

Abby: We really do.  

Fisher: It’s so old. [Laughs]

Abby: We have bodies buried everywhere. We’ve got coins buried everywhere.

Fisher: Yes.

Abby: We’ve got treasures buried everywhere. It’s just remarkable. You often hear like somebody digging in their back garden to put a shed in and they come up with some wonderful treasure.

Fisher: [Laughs] I know. I love that.

Abby: Medieval coins worth thousands and of course then the British Government then takes charge of that.

Fisher: Well, you look back at all this with the king and you almost think it would be better if they’d never found the poor man in the first place. [Laughs]

Abby: Yeah, leave him under the outhouse. 

Fisher: Yeah. So since our British friends are basically casting their votes on where poor King Richard III should be buried I thought we’d ask the same of people listening today in a new poll at ExtremeGenes.com. Should he be buried (a) in York, should he be buried in Leicester Cathedral or should he simply be reburied under the parking lot? You can cast your vote right now. 

Fisher: What would you say Abby? 

Abby: Where was he born?

Fisher: I think he’s from York. Remember this is all about the “War of the Roses,” right?

Abby: In that case take him back to his birthplace. Just take him back to where he was born.

Fisher: So you would sign for that?

Abby: Yes.

Fisher: Okay. And that’s where he wanted to be. 

Abby: York is very pretty as well.

Fisher: Does this get you prickly, I mean, talking about this?

Abby: Not really.

Fisher: No?

Abby: Because again, we have so many dead bodies.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] I think this whole thing actually has to do with tourism basically.

Abby: [Laughs]

Fisher: Who’s going to get the body so people can visit it?

Abby: That’s what it’s all about.

Fisher: It always is. Thank you for joining us.

Abby: My pleasure.

Fisher: All right, we’re running short on time in this segment but I want to mention we’ve got some great stories on the website ExtremeGenes.com about a guy who found a message in a bottle. This man signed it, gave his address, gave the date from 1906, yeah, it’s a 107-year old message. Is it your ancestor? Read about it at ExtremeGenes.com. Plus, a descendant has found his family’s cemetery. It was actually missing in the middle of this small little area. He’s restoring it. You can read about that plus be sure to catch up on our podcast from last week’s show with Ron Fox talking about digitized newspapers, a lot of response to that, people wanting to know how to do it. You’ll enjoy the podcast at ExtremeGenes.com and vote on that new poll on Richard III. Should he be buried in Leicester, York or leave him where he was under the parking lot. This segment was brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services, your family history resource. Call 877 537 2000. We’ll be back with Ralph Gates, a veteran of WW II, who worked on the Manhattan Project. He’s also a recorder of veterans getting their stories and preserving them. You’re going to want to hear Ralph coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 2 Episode 10

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Ralph Gates

Fisher: Hey welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. I am your Radio Roots Sleuth Fisher here, and brought to you by TMC the Multimedia Centers Preserving your Memories for over Forty Years. I am so excited to have our next guest Ralph Gates. Ralph I keep running into people ever since we started this show saying, “You know, you need to talk to Ralph Gates.”

Ralph: I think they remember my picture in the post office. 

Fisher: Maybe. [Laughs] That may be so. How old are you sir? 

Ralph: Eighty eight. 

Fisher: Eighty eight years old. And I will tell you, Ralph stands tall, he walks strong, and he’s all over it still. And Ralph served in World War II. 

Ralph: I did.

Fisher: Part of the greatest generation.

Ralph: Okay.

Fisher: [Laughs] I think so.

Ralph: [Laughs] 

Fisher: And Ralph actually served now was it a teenager that you were involved with the Manhattan Project? 

Ralph: I was about nineteen or twenty so I guess that’s still a teenager.

Fisher: Okay. Pretty close. Yeah. Tell us about that, and of course for younger people, who may not know what the Manhattan project was, let’s just map that out.

Ralph: The Manhattan Project was designed to build an atom bomb to end the war in Japan. 

Fisher: Obviously it succeeded. 

Ralph: Yeah.

Fisher: You were called in. When did it start? What year did the project itself begin? 

Ralph: Well, that started before I got into it. Actually, when I do this I ask people, “If you were thinking of say two people connected with the Manhattan Project and the Atom bomb, who might they be?” Well, most people would say Oppenheimer or Harry Truman, because he dropped the bomb.

Fisher: Right.

Ralph: Very few people would say Franklin Roosevelt.

Fisher: Roosevelt. 

Ralph: Yeah, Roosevelt was very important in this because before the war started in 1941, 1939 really, somebody discovered the possibility of fission from uranium. Fission being the thing that generated the bomb.

Fisher: Right. Now, this was Einstein perhaps?

Ralph: No, no, no, no it was a young Jewish lady named Lise Meitner who was working in Germany, she was Jewish but she was working in Germany in 1939. She discovered this and gave its name fission when she was working with uranium and broke it apart and all of a sudden she got two daughter products so to speak with the energy, and this created a lot of stir around the world because people said, “My gosh, it may be able to harness the power of the fission.

Fisher: And you could weaponize this.

Ralph: Well, yes. According to Einstein’s equation E=mc2, where E is the energy, M is the mass of the matter, and C2 is the great big number 186.000 squares.

Fisher: Then you got started on this project in the 30s even before the war started?

Ralph: Yes.

Fisher: I did not know that.

Ralph: Well, um hmm.

Fisher: But they obviously kicked it up when the war did get going and there was that race on with Germany.

Ralph: Niels Bohr who was a physicist in Denmark in 1939, when the world found out that they had done this thing, uranium, he became very concerned because he is part Jewish. One of his ancestors, maybe a grandparent or something was Jewish and he was in Denmark and he was concerned that Hitler in Germany was way ahead of anybody else and might be able to make a bomb out of this, so he was concerned. What he did was to contact a couple of his friends, patriots who left Europe because they were Jewish, one was Eugene Wigner and the other was Leo Szilard, they happened to be in the New York area. And he called those guys and if you let me paraphrase it he said, “You guys, you better get to your president in a hurry because if Hitler develops a weapon out of this there will be hell to pay for everybody.”

Fisher: Sure.

Ralph: They thought this was right. They said, “But Niels, we don’t know Roosevelt from a hole in the ground.”

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ralph: “But we have a friend out here, whose out on Long Island right now” this is the summer of 1939 “And let’s go talk to him and see if he’ll do it because he’s well known. He’s name happens to be Albert Einstein.”

Fisher: Yes, okay. That’s where he comes in.

Ralph:  And they got him to write a letter to Roosevelt. Now Roosevelt didn’t know anything about physics.

Fisher: And I remember seeing a copy of this letter, this is a very famous letter.

Ralph: Yes it is. And they wrote this thing to Roosevelt and he looked at this, he said, “Well, this is pretty frightening. Is this real?” And to find out, he took six thousand dollars, so I hear, of his discretionary funds that he didn’t have to report to Congress about.

Fisher: Right.

Ralph: No transparency.

Fisher: Sure. [Laughs]

Ralph: He didn’t want them to know that he was even concerned that Germany might do something like this. So that was really the start of it, of the Manhattan District they called it then. He got a whole bunch of physicists together from various colleges and places.

Fisher: Way out in New Mexico, which is the middle of nowhere.

Ralph: No that came later on.

Fisher: Okay.

Ralph: They kept these guys and said, “Hey you guys, I have been told... “And still just 1939.” I have been told Germany, Hitler might develop something out of this, is this true?” And they looked at it, these were physicists, they said, “Well, it’s true but we sure don’t know how to do it.” And that was the start of it. He said, “Well, let’s get going on this thing.” It was called the Manhattan District first of all because Columbia University in New York had a great big supply of uranium and they were doing all sorts of work with it anyway. Not thinking about a bomb but just investigating it because it was kind of new. And that started it and there were certain parts of this spread out at different universities and research laboratories around the country to figure out if they could make a bomb. In the meantime they’d realized they didn’t have enough uranium to make but one bomb and the military wanted to have at least three before they dropped it in case it didn’t work or something.

Fisher: Right.

Ralph: But they discovered how to make the bomb out of plutonium, and that was what I was called on to do. There were probably about two or three thousand of us around about doing this who were called up. I was in basic training, as soon as they called me up in September, everybody has to go through basic training, so I was put into infantry replacement training. 

Fisher: Okay.

Ralph: And that was a wonderful experience. It was a little bit like a boy’s scout kind of thing. I mean, a nineteen year old kid was firing rifles and machine guns and throwing hand grenades.

Fisher: Yeah that’s fun when you’re nineteen, isn’t it?

Ralph: Yes it was.

Fisher: When you don’t really connect it what you’re going to actually be doing. 

Ralph: But we were learning how to kill and be killed and I remember that. The only thing I disliked about it was when we had to have Bennett practice. I did not like the thought of doing that. 

Fisher: I can imagine.

Ralph: But anyway, we were due to be shipped out. I didn’t know anything about what was going on at Los Alamos or anywhere else but I was in basic training and we were due to be shipped out around the second or third of February. The Battle of the Bulge started early in December of that year and they cut our time back to twelve weeks so we were now going to be shipped out on the second or third of January. While I was in the final basic training bivouac out on the hill, the mountains they call them down there in Northern Alabama, between Christmas and New Years. It was early in the morning of the 30th of December. I had shared my shelter half with three other guys. We made ourselves a tent and all that, and the sergeant came up he said, “Gates, you in there?” 

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ralph: And I said, “Yes sir.” We spoke very respectfully to the sergeants.” He said, “Get your stuff together you’ve got to go back in.” Well this was frightened me because my father died a year ago. He’d been in trenches in France in the First World War, and I thought my grandfather who was there was not in very good health and I thought this might be an emergency for all of us. And I said, “Sarg, what’s going on?” he said, “I don’t know, just get your stuff together and do as you’re told. Go back in.” I said, “Can I get a ride back in? It’s snowing.” And he said, “No.” Well we had come out a week before in sunshine and it wasn’t bad but anyway, eighteen miles back and I got over to the mess tent to get some coffee and we started back in. As soon as we got back in we were issued brand new uniforms and sit tight to wait for orders. 

Fisher: Wow. And this is where they send you off to Los Alamos?

Ralph: By way of New York and Oak Ridge along the way.

Fisher: So as a nineteen/twenty year old kid, what do they have you doing with nuclear weapons?

Ralph: Well, let me tell you what happened. When I finally got orders to get out from Anniston Alabama where I was at Fort McClellan, I got on the train with a half a dozen other guys and we went up to New York and we were met at Penn Station by an officer who took us up to the New York University School of Engineering up in the Bronx. It’s now the Bronx Community College. And we were assigned to study electrical engineering, and I was a chemical engineer, if that makes sense. 

Fisher: Okay.

Ralph: But nevertheless, as soon as I got in there, there were about forty people where we were billeted to there. And I was in a room with three double bunks and five other guys and I found out pretty quick, I was in one bunk and the guy in this other bunk, Harvey Willard, was a young undergraduate from MIT in physics. Dick Reed was a young undergraduate from Harvard in chemistry. Ken Reed, another good friend, was a young engineer from Penn State. We were all undergraduate kids who knocked through college. We all had different phases of technical training. None of us had been electrical engineers but we were studying electrical engineering. This was all part of Groves’ big plan because we were going to be the guys who did the grunt work for the physicists and they wanted us to be aware of everything that was going on to understand.

Fisher: To understand how it all works even though you weren’t in any decision making situations.

Ralph: Absolutely not. [Laughs]

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

Ralph: But it was fun.

Fisher: And aren’t you glad for that? [Laughs]

Ralph: Well, I guess so. It’s an interesting story. General Groves had everything compartmentalized and I was just at Oak Ridge one night, this was kind of the central point where they got us together and then they send us off to stuff. And that night I was walking across the bridge to go over to the mess hall area, coming the other way was a good friend of mine Hugh Richardson who had graduated in chem. engineering a year ahead of me. I’d finished three years by now, and he was there in uniform. I said, “Hugh, what in the world are you doing in this awful place?” [Laughs] He said, “I don’t know. I’m dogged if I know. I know what to do but I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

Fisher: Wow! [Laughs]

Ralph: Now this was part of Groves’ idea of compartmentalization. 

Fisher: Sure.

Ralph: So at Oak Ridge, recently they’ve had some wonderful stories about ladies who were hired down there during the war and never knew what they were doing. None of the guys, except the top guys knew what they were doing, but I was only there twenty four hours because the next day I was put on a train and sealed up in a Pullman car with probably fifteen other guys and we headed West. And I still didn’t know anything about the Manhattan Project. I’d been at Oak Ridge but I didn’t know what that was all about.

Fisher: When you say you were sealed up, what does that mean Ralph?

Ralph: Never got out of it. No contact out of it and on the trip to from Knoxville we went up to Louisville, switched off to another train in our Pullman car, we went over to Saint Louis and were switched off to another train, probably the original San Jose chief and we headed West. We thought we were going to the Pacific. 

Fisher: Okay. Sure.

Ralph: Except I found out later on one guy there he was corporal, we were all privates, and he was instructed to get off the train at certain places to make a telephone call. And this was, “I’m Corporal Hall reporting. My shipment is intact and no one has approached us.”  This was the way that they confirmed that no one knew what we were doing and we were not allowed off the train, we were not allowed to talk to anybody, they brought all our meals in to us and everything like that. And so we thought we were going to the Pacific, but probably three nights and four days later in stopped out in the middle of nowhere, they detached our Pullman car and left us there. The rest of the train went on and pretty soon a bus came.

Fisher: Wait a minute, they left the train car in the middle of nowhere?

Ralph: Yeah left us there. We were sealed up.

Fisher: Wow!

Ralph: And pretty soon a bus came down and a guy picks us up and checked our orders, we said, “Where are we going? Where are we going?” “Shh, you’ll find out.” I heard that a dozen times.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ralph: Well, pretty soon our bus came to a sign that said San Jose, New Mexico. Well I had heard of San Jose, I’d never been there, must be a military base around here somewhere. Obviously I didn’t think we were going to the Pacific now but still had no knowledge about the Manhattan Project. We went through San Jose, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but you go up the Rio Grande river for a ways, the town of Española which is the only place that had a decent bridge for us to get over, came down the other side, turned off on a gravel road and went up into the mountains. Came to a fence where there are some guards and they took our orders, sent us through, then we came to another gate and here was a sign that said Los Alamos Ranch for boys.

Fisher: Oh boy. 

Ralph: And once we got inside that gate we didn’t get out until the war was over.

Fisher: Until the war was over. And you spent your time working with these people to develop the bomb.

Ralph: Right. As a chemical engineer I worked pouring high explosive shape chargers out of TNT. We melted it in sugar kettles and made castings.

Fisher: Unbelievable. 

Ralph: And this was the stuff that surrounded plutonium and compressed it and made it go into a kernel of mass explosion.

Fisher: Our guest tonight is Ralph Gates. He is one of the people who worked on the Manhattan Project developing the Atom Bomb during World War II and we caught up on how this teenage boy wound up in the middle of nowhere working on bombs to end the war, unbelievable. And you know, you just got a great example of an oral history from a man who’s lived through a lot of it at eighty eight years old, Ralph. And now you have a passion for getting other people’s stories.

Ralph: I love that yes. 

Fisher: And as we love hearing your story, we’re going to hear about what you’re doing and some of the stories you’ve heard from others, coming up next on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.              

Segment 3 Episode 10

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Ralph Gates

Fisher: Hey, welcome back to Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. It’s brought to you by TMC, The Multimedia Centers preserving your memories for over 40 years. It is Fisher here with my special guest Ralph Gates who worked on the Manhattan Project during WW II, but has his own family history passion. And Ralph that’s part of the reason you’re here. You’ve been going around for some time now recording veterans and getting their stories. And from what I understand you’re the man who has the ability to get things out of people that nobody else can.

Ralph: Well, I haven’t had any blackmail yet.

Fisher: [Laughs] Now, how long have you been doing this?

Ralph: Well, I probably started about 15 years ago but really not too much until maybe a half a dozen years ago.

Fisher: Okay.

Ralph: This started when I first came out to Park City as a ski bum. 

Fisher: In Utah, yeah okay.

Ralph: One of the first people I met was an ex-captain in the Navy, retired 20/30 years I guess, in the Navy, Moose Smith. And he invited me to go down to a meeting of the Captain’s Club in Salt Lake City because they had a vista there that he thought I might be interested in. He said, “And the trouble with you Ralph is you are in the army and these are navy captains.”

Fisher: Uh oh.

Ralph: And in addition to that I’m going to have to promote you to a Colonel.

Fisher: Oh, you weren’t an officer, that’s right. [Laughs]

Ralph: [Laughs] That’s right, I wasn’t. Well, I’d like to say it was a year and a half before they found out I never got beyond the rank of Sergeant.

Fisher: Okay. 

Ralph: But because I had had Atomic Energy experience like that, so he said I’m now an honorary member of the Navy.

Fisher: An honorary officer, very nice.

Ralph: An honorary member, not officer.

Fisher: [Laughs] 

Ralph: Anyway, that’s where I started doing these interviews. I’ve done about 20 or 21 of these retired navy captains. Some of them are retired, some of them are reserved, some of them are now gone because I started doing this several years ago. And getting their stories was so valuable to me. There’s written stories all the time. These are really autobiographies. It’s much more important, I think, to see the emotions of people when you interview them. 

Fisher: Yes.

Ralph: So that’s why I like to do it. And I would ask questions that get them to talk about things that many times their wife and kids had never heard of before. 

Fisher: I bet that would be true. Now it is certainly a fact that many veterans from all the wars, but especially WW II, the veterans are well known to not speak much of what took place and it’s understandable. I think lot of these men have seen and experienced things, maybe even done things that’s very difficult to endure through the rest of their lives as they recall that.

Ralph: Well if they get older now we’re more willing to talk about it. I know when my kids were growing up I never let anybody know I’d worked on that terrible thing, that Atom Bomb. This was the “flower power” time of years.

Fisher: Sure, yes. [Laughs]

Ralph: But now we’re getting old enough, I don’t know if we’re proud of it but we recognize it anyway. 

Fisher: Well, you recognize it was a service that had to be done at that time.

Ralph: And it was very successful.

Fisher: And it was very successful.

Ralph: Yeah.

Fisher: So you’ve done 20 or 21 of these.

Ralph: Of the military veterans.

Fisher: And you’ve done many others though.

Ralph: Well, back home in Nashville, I’ve done it for all the guys I was in school and in high school in County Vanderbilt when we were young. They all went in service and I’ve done their stories.

Fisher: How many are those?

Ralph: Well, they’re probably 8 or 10 down there but then I began to do people up in Park City who had come into that little town which was an unknown little ghost town before Olympics got there. 

Fisher: Right, yes.

Ralph: And these are people that made that little town what it is.

Fisher: Yes.

Ralph: And they’re remarkable people who were really kind of like I was, an elder ski bum. They wanted to ski and they were going to come to this little place and do it and a good many other of them they flipped hamburgers or painted, whatever they did.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ralph: Now, as the town grew they all wound up with successful businesses and most of them are retired pretty well off now.

Fisher: Sure.

Ralph: And they’ve lived a wonderful life. 

Fisher: And so as time has gone on though, I mean, the sands start running a little short and people start thinking about, you know, and I quote this all the time because my mother used to say it. When someone passes away a library is burned.

Ralph: That’s right.

Fisher: And those stories are lost forever.

Ralph: Well, I’ve been trying to get all those stories that I have. I’ve probably done 75 to 100 different ones now.

Fisher: Totally now, okay.

Ralph: And they’re individual stories. They’re really autobiographies of people because I’d like to go back and find out who their ancestors were, with the idea why did they come over here?

Fisher: Well, tell me some of the stories that stand out in your mind from this experience.

Ralph: Well, I’ve got some wonderful stories of patriarch. I’ve done several other people. I won’t mention their names.

Fisher: Okay. Well, talk about even some of those you went to school with that you were talking about. Tell us some of the stories that stand out in your mind.

Ralph: Oh, all right, one is Buddy McCall. I’m going down to Tennessee in two weeks to deliver one of my little talks to a group of veterans including Buddy McCall. He was on the USS Jefferson I think it was, which was the first ship to get to Indianapolis. If you know about it, it was the last ship sunk.

Fisher: Yes. 

Ralph: Before that nobody knew about it for 3 or 4 days.

Fisher: Yes.

Ralph: They were the first ship into the internet. The Indianapolis is the one that did carry the structure of the Atom Bomb out to Guam and Tinian and so forth. But Buddy McCall was young officer on board and he talks about seeing all those bodies floating in the water. And they’d pick them up and there weren’t many legs and other stuff on it, the first ship to get there. Another friend of mine was with the corps of engineers. He was one of the first guys to get into Japan after the war and kind of rebuilding Japan after we destroyed it. I mean Tokyo, we had to rebuild it. And he talks about the welcome that he got from all of the people in Japan. They were so delighted that their Emperor had told them to surrender. They were delighted. They welcomed us. They waved flags and everything else. 

Fisher: Really?

Ralph: That’s something you don’t often hear of. 

Fisher: I know it isn’t because the expectation was, “Boy, you get over there, be careful.”

Ralph: They no longer had to die for their Emperor and they were so glad they didn’t have to fight when we were going in. So were we that we didn’t have to invade.

Fisher: Well, at the end of the day the Emperor was happy he did that too because he stayed in another 30/40 years.

Ralph: Yes he did.

Fisher: Now, for other people who might be interested in recording their relatives, their senior relatives and get their stories, what kind of secrets can you share about getting people to talk about things maybe they haven’t spoken about before by making them comfortable?

Ralph: Well, I usually I get what they did when they were young kids and then you get up to the teenage years and I invariably say, “Well now, you don’t want your grandkids or your great grandkids to think you were perfect because it makes it difficult on them. What kind of trouble did you get into when you were a teenager? 

Fisher: I love that!

Ralph: And I guess I’ve never had anybody say they went to reform school yet.

Fisher: Right. [Laughs]

Ralph: But they’ve all had brushes with the law one way or the other.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Ralph: And I’ve had some of the girls, asked them that question and they’re a little careful about what when on, but I’ve had some interesting stories about them.

Fisher: Really? Well, tell us what some of the girls had to say.

Ralph: No, I’m not going to talk about that. [Laughs]

Fisher: [Laughs] 

Ralph: I had one young lady said, “What’s going to happen to this?” And I said, “Well, nothing, dear, this is yours.” She said, “Well, I want my granddaughters to know about this.” And she talked about one of her misadventures when she was a teenager and that is hers and nobody else’s.

Fisher: What she learned of it, yeah.

Ralph: These people get these life stories, nothing I didn’t do anything with them and they get them and it’s what they will permit.

Fisher: Right and then at some point they might turn them over to other family members. Now, it seems to me, is it the Library of Congress that’s sponsoring the project of recordings?

Ralph: Storytelling. Generally speaking, I think, I’m not sure about this, they’re kind of snippets of something. But my idea is I want full auto-biographies. I want to know who their ancestors were who came over here some time ago, when they came and why they came, because America’s a wonderful place full of immigrants.

Fisher: So you want to talk about the octogenarians’ grandparents, who they knew and their stories and then you share that with the children?

Ralph: As far back as they go, yes. Like on one side of my family, the Gates family actually came over in 1647. [Laughs]

Fisher: Been here a while.

Ralph: On the other side the Schneider family came over from Germany in 1850.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Fisher: Right.

Ralph: And they came over maybe in the lowest class in the boat because they wanted to come over here to earn a living. 

Fisher: So what’s this meant to you talking to these people? What is the response you’ve received from some of these veterans?

Ralph: I have never had anybody who went through it that didn’t think it was wonderful. But it’s very difficult to get anybody to think of, “Why do I want to do that?” But once they get it done they find out. Now recently I did a story on a fellow who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. He died a couple of years ago but at his memorial right before Christmas two years ago, his wife played this tape I’ve done of his life and there were children and grandchildren, maybe even great grandchildren, they’d never heard this about him at all. And his wife knew most of it but his children didn’t know about some of the stuff because I was part of the war and I had asked him some questions about what he did. He was a helicopter pilot that went in and picked up people under fire. He got all sorts of medals for this. His kids didn’t even know about this.

Fisher: He probably didn’t speak much about it. It had to be terrifying for him.

Ralph: He didn’t but I got him to talk.

Fisher: You did?

Ralph: Yeah.

Fisher: I think that’s a special gift you have Ralph.

Ralph: Well, just having interest in him first of all but then having enough knowledge close at hand to ask the right questions when it’s probably the most valuable thing.

Fisher: You know, this is really kind of interesting. I spend a lot of time trying to encourage younger people to talk to their senior relatives. You’re a senior relative going around interviewing people younger than yourself. [Laughs]

Ralph: Well yeah, that’s right. I have interviewed some older than I am.

Fisher: Is that right?

Ralph: Oh yeah.

Fisher: Ralph Gates thanks so much for coming in and what a great story.

Ralph: My pleasure.

Fisher: Your story’s wonderful and thanks for all your service to our country and thanks for what you’re doing to record these stories.

Ralph: Thank you.

Fisher: We’ll be back with Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com next on Extreme Genes Family   History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com.

Segment 4 Episode 10

Host: Scott Fisher with guest Tom Perry

Fisher: Hey, welcome back, Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com, brought to you by TMC, The Multimedia Centers, preserving your memories for over forty years. And this segment is brought to you by Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services, your family history resource, call 877 537 2000. Its Fisher here, your Radio Roots Sleuth, Genies, and we've got Tom Perry here with us from TMCPlace.com. And Tom, you know Ralph.

Tom: Ralph's great. He, you know, wondered aimlessly into our store one day.

Fisher: [Laughs]

Tom: You know, he's been doing these interviews like he talked about for years, and has done most of them on the little mini DV tapes. And he brought them in, wanted a lot of them transferred to DVD for him. And he's introduced me to a lot of different servicemen that he’s worked with, it’s been awesome. And then last summer when we were doing the Heroes Across America tour, when we were out west, we had Ralph come with us as our interviewer, because I mean, we had some incredible deals. In fact, we were at a show at the Salt Palace and he was interviewing veterans. And I had this one lady, a wife of one of the veterans he was interviewing came up to me and says, "He has talked more about his war experiences in the last three minutes with Ralph than he has of thirty years of marriage with me."

Fisher: Whoa! [Laughs] Now I don't know if that says so much about Ralph.

Tom: [Laughs]

Fisher: Or it does about the marriage.

Tom: I think its Ralph.

Fisher: Okay.

Tom: I think its Ralph.

Fisher: Yeah. [Laughs] It could well be.

Tom: No, I mean it’s amazing! I mean, he just gets these people to talk about stuff and, you know, he interviews widows too. In fact, he actually interviewed my mother and talked about some of the experiences that my dad had told her. But my dad was like a lot of the people, didn't really want to talk about war stories and stuff like that. When I was a student down at BYU, I was actually doing some interviews for some different things and I finally got him to open up one time when mom wasn't home and talk a little bit about it. But it’s hard to get them out of this. But when they're talking to Ralph, Ralph's, you know, in the military with them. They're like brothers that have never met, so to speak. And they'll go on and talk about these stories. And we got some pretty incredible stuff on disks for people. And, you know, thanks to Ralph as you know, the people have been have been listening through the whole program, Ralph is amazing how he can get these stories out of people.

Fisher: And you know, you guys are kind of partners to that one end that he can go and have this talent to bring out of people what they won't share with anybody else, and then he shares the duplication process with you, does he not?

Tom: Exactly right. Yeah, he brings in the mini DVs, we transfer them to DVD for him so he can give them to the families. And a lot of times they bring in and make additional copies of them. And like on the tour when we were doing the Heroes Across America tour, we would actually, you know, it’s free, people just come in, come in and interview them and stuff like that. We were down in St George doing some interviews with some people and we had a code talker that actually came over and talked to them.

Fisher: Wow!

Tom: So it’s…

Fisher: There's not many of those left.

Tom: Very few, very few.

Fisher: Right, great heroes during World War II.

Tom: Oh right. And the thing is, it’s not just everybody when they think of war, they usually think about the men. But then I think, I don't know if it was in Utah or exactly where we were doing an interview where he talked to some of the people that were, the women that were in the air force, some of the women that built the planes, that flew the planes in different areas. They were never allowed to go into combat, but the stories that they have are just absolutely incredible, things I didn't even know existed!

Fisher: All the women who were kind of the model for Rosie the Riveter.

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: Yeah.

Tom: Exactly. And a lot of the women actually flew the planes from, you know, a factory to other states for training and stuff like that.

Fisher: And you need some of those.

Tom: Right, yeah.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: So it freed up the men that were actually, you know, going over, you know, doing the bombing runs and stuff like that. So the women would fly the planes across the states to different places they need to be to free them up, which I didn't even know that even existed. And there quite a few, you know, out west that came in and talked to Ralph. And he got some pretty incredible stories.

Fisher: Now how did you get involved with this program?

Tom: We just have always found a need that we wanted to get these people that had these war stories that were dying. I remember reading in the paper, I guess it’s probably been about two years ago I believe that the last survivor of World War I passed away.

Fisher: Yes, he was I think 107.

Tom: I believe that's correct. And it’s just there's so many stories out there, it’s just incredible, so we started interviewing people in our store about it. So we decided to put this little tour together and we'd go out and get these stories from these people. And I mean, none of them are boring.

Fisher: No.

Tom: I mean, you are on the edge of your seat when you're doing that. And Tony, our editor, he'd be sitting there, you know, looking stuff up online when they said, "Oh, I'm with such and such a battalion." or whatever. And he'd be looking for stuff online and finding their logos and stuff like that and we'd add that to the interview live while we're doing it. And then within about thirty minutes at the end of the interview, we'd hand him a DVD that they could take home or make copies at home and share to the rest of their families.

Fisher: And see, this is why you are so important to this whole thing. Every week Tom is on the show or somebody he designates to come in on the show to talk about preservation. And you know, we can talk about the stories that we find and the things that we learn, but that preservation is so key, because every time somebody dies, a library is burned, essentially

Tom: Exactly.

Fisher: And so when we record these things, there's a lot of relief on the face of some of these people when they get their stories out that they haven't shared before. And they know that their time is short.

Tom: Oh exactly. And like you say, when they know their time is short, it makes a big difference. And the biggest thing like you said is the perfect way, a library dies every time one of these veterans dies. And so, you know, if money was an object, I would be travelling the country 24/7 doing this kind of stuff, because I just absolutely love hearing these stories. But making them available and our goal down the road is one day to be able to get a channel on YouTube where we can post all these stories so people can go and listen to them. And these young kids that, you know, love going to the action movies and stuff like this, listen to these stories, they're more exciting and they're real.

Fisher: Yes.

Tom: They're not somebody, you know, made them up or something for a movie. These are real stories that these guys actually happened. And they're personal, because of these stories we have our freedom today.

Fisher: So have you retained copies of these interviews yourself?

Tom: Yes, we've got quite a few of them.

Fisher: So you're starting your own library.

Tom: Exactly, exactly. And our library's isn’t even close to the size of the one Ralph has.

Fisher: Sure.

Tom: The one Ralph has is amazing. And once in a while, we interview somebody and they say, you know, "This is for my family. I don't want any other copies getting out." and we totally respect that. So we hand them their DVD, we erase it off of our hard drive. And then if they later on, when they're gone, if their kids want to return it to us and put it up on this YouTube page we're trying to create, then that's fine. But otherwise, you know, we respect them, if it’s just for their family, then that's fine. But Ralph has this knack of getting these stories out that's just incredible. In fact, you know, we could talk for hours with each one of these people. And sometimes you have to kind of hurry him along. We try to keep it to about 15-20 minutes, so you know other people can get their stories recorded as well.

Fisher: So you usually do a group at a time.

Tom: Oh yeah! When we were, at most of the places if we're doing a state fair or some kind of convention or something like that, we set up and announce, "Hey, we'll be doing, you know, these interviews from such and such a time." And of course there's no cost to it, so they would come up. Sometimes we'd have six or seven people in line and we'd just be chatting with them. They would be watching the other interview going on. We green screen stuff, so it makes it really easy to change. They can always add stuff in later if they want to. You know, we give them the DVD. They can get programs like Cinematize and rip it into an AVI file or an MOV file. So then they go on their PC or their Macintosh and edit the file and add more of their photos to it, slides, all kinds of stuff. It’s just a small, little piece, but I just wish somehow we could get all these stories done. And I know a library's dying every day.

Fisher: That's exactly right. And you know, I was thinking, it was about ten years ago, I remember hearing that it was about a thousand veterans from World War II were dying a day. That was about ten years ago. More recently I heard the number two thousand a day! So they are really going fast. And when you think about it, the youngest person to go in, if they didn't lie about their age would have been born about 1927, 18 years old in 1945.

Tom: That's correct.

Fisher: So they would now be, the youngest would be 86 years old. The bulk of them would be in their early 90s. You would think just, you know, obviously the older officers would most be all gone at this point. So they're moving very quickly. And we hear about that one World War I guy who was still around a few years ago. Still, we're not going to have that many left for very long.

Tom: That's true, that's true. That's why.

Fisher: I don't know any personally anymore. You know, when all growing up, everybody's dad was a World War II vet.

Tom: The only reason I know a few in our neighborhood and these that I met on tour, but like you say, we've really got to work on something like that to get those down. It’s just, it’s so sad, every one of those are dying every day. It just, it breaks my heart. I don't know these people. But we need to get these stories out, so these young people can understand what these people before them went through to preserve their freedom that we all cherish today.

Fisher: And I'm sure there're people in every part of the country who are doing this kind of service as you've been doing with Ralph.

Tom: All you need is a camcorder. And every high school program has, you know radio stations and stuff like that nowadays. You know, anybody that's listening to this broadcast, if you're in high school or something, you know get together a group of kids and go out and find the veterans in your neighborhood and, you know, start interviewing them. Put a little ad in the local papers saying, "Hey, veteran, we'd like to come and get your story down for legacy for your family." But everybody needs to get on the bandwagon and help us do this, because it’s impossible for us to do it by ourselves.

Fisher: Now Tom, recently you were talking about this free software by the way, to change the subject quickly because we only have about a minute left, a lot of calls on that this past week.

Tom: Oh yeah!

Fisher: An interest on that. Tell us a little more about that. Remind people about it.

Tom: Okay. Yeah, we have this free software that's available. Just go right to our website, which is TMCPlace.com and you'll see a little clickable on the left side, its blue and it'll say "Heritage Collectors." Click on that, you go to a special Extreme Genes page where it talks about the software. It’s totally free, there's no ads on it, it doesn't expire. It’s just totally free, to kind of help you get in to organize your pictures. You can make basic slideshows, you can organize your photographs, audio, video, put all these things together and you're ready to rock and roll. There's no charge, there's no ads. It’s just really cool software. You'll just absolutely love it.

Fisher: Well, it’s was fun to see people flocking to that last time we talked about this.

Tom: Oh yeah! We were flooded all across the country. It’s amazing how many people within a half hour of the end of the show were on the website downloading the free software. It was really cool.

Fisher: He's Tom Perry from TMCPlace.com. Thanks for joining us, Tom.

Tom: Thank you. See you next week.

Fisher: Hey, our thanks to special guest, Ralph Gates who joined us today. If you didn't hear our discussion with him about his time serving in the Manhattan Project, you've got to listen to the podcast. It’ll be out on ExtremeGenes.com later on this week. Thanks so much to him for coming out here. Don't forget, on our website, all the stories you heard earlier in the show, plus we're doing a new poll on King Richard III, should he be buried in York, in Leicester, or leave him where he was under the parking lot? Cast your vote. Let us know what you think. This segment was brought to you be Heritage Consulting Genealogy Services, your family history resource, call 877 537 2000. We'll see you again next week on Extreme Genes, Family History Radio and ExtremeGenes.com. This has been a Fisher Voice Works Production.