The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley Giving, Giving up and Sharing

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the listening tube.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. This is the last episode of 2025, and I think you'll enjoy my conversation with Jim Polk, United States Naval Academy graduate.

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But first, not the headlines.

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Most of the people in the United States and people all over the world are celebrating Christmas and the new year of the Gregorian calendar, as well as Hanukkah. And before I go further, I would be remiss to not acknowledge the horrific terror attack at Bondi Beach in Australia. My sympathies to those killed and wounded by the assailants, a father and son duo of Muslim hate. Charity and giving are normally the sentiments expressed during the holiday season. Peace and goodwill are encouraged. But the generosity of people takes a front seat this time of year, especially in the United States. Americans are by far the most generous people in the world when it comes to sharing the wealth we earn. According to Giving USA, U.S. charitable giving was more than $592 billion in 2024. Even Americans who are themselves struggling to make ends meet often find a small way to give back. Local charities are in full force with programs like the Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program, which solicits toys which are then wrapped and delivered to less fortunate children. There's also Senior Santa, which collects non-perishable foods and activities for older people who may be alone or in need of some support. There are thousands of charities in the United States, and many of them do a great job in support of their mission. There are some, of course, that take advantage of the public's generosity using donations for purposes other than what you'd assume, and it's important that those be identified and shut down. Diseases like cancer and other physical ailments are also supported by charities that help raise money for research or to give direct aid to those suffering. Many individuals who are suffering from cancer find support from local generosity, through fundraisers, gift basket raffles, and auctions. Another way people help other people is through online sites that collect and distribute charitable donations. But they usually take a very high commission for facilitating the transaction. Charities are the capitalist answer to socialism. It's still a form of spreading wealth, but it's entirely voluntary, which makes it stronger and more purpose-driven. Certainly there are those charities that take measures to make themselves more visible. They often do better when it comes to raising funds for their cause. Many media companies will promote charitable fundraisers for free, and it's a good idea to take advantage of the publicity. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say, and it's evident in the amount of giving by those who hope to help a cause. The success of a charity may depend on what radio station or television station they use to promote the cause. Those who can afford digital advertising can add that to the mix as well. The reality is that the charitable causes that spend the most money on advertising are the ones who bring in the most money. The question that needs to be asked is, how much of my donation is being used for advertising and administrative costs, and how much is being used to help the cause? There are places you can go on the internet that will help you learn more about it. Most will tell you the percent of donations that are used for administrative purposes. They vary from 2% to 30%. But administrative costs can be different from advertising costs. It's recommended that nonprofit organizations spend between 5 and 10% of their revenue on advertising. I would agree that advertising is a good idea for any charity or fundraising event, but it might not be what you had in mind when you donated your money. What needs to be pointed out is that in a socialist society, there is no such thing as charity. When everyone is provided for by the state, at the level the state deems appropriate, nobody has the option of creating a nonprofit organization designed to help a specific subset of humanity. Specific subsets of humanity that we, as a population of humans, deemed worthy of the emotional and financial support of others. Having the freedom to contribute to a cause in which you believe or to help someone in need is perhaps one of the greatest freedoms we have. Not just the option to help others, but the ability to earn more than we ourselves need. It is a great honor in the United States of America to be able to give when we have more than we need. It is also a great honor in the United States of America to give when you barely have enough. What makes both extremes honorable is having the option to do so. Odds are it won't be anything you had in mind. If you believe in being able to donate to a cause you care about, I give you credit. Some say that it's a shame we need charity. One might ask, why, in the richest country on the planet, does a person have to rely on charity to help pay for medical bills? Without acknowledging that because they live in the richest country on the planet, they can rely on charity to help pay their medical bills, without the government forcing others to help pay their medical bills and wasting money along the way through administrative costs and likely fraud, as we're learning about in Minnesota. While I think more centrist people like myself are likely to associate charitable giving with more liberal people, because most charities are made to help the less fortunate, the statistics indicate that conservatives are more likely to donate to charity. The left seems to think that it's the government's job to take care of these types of societal needs, while the conservatives have more confidence in the people. Anyway, bottom line is donations to senior Santa and to help fight childhood cancer are both forms of age discrimination. Charities are one of the few exceptions to some anti-discrimination rules. Many charities only benefit people of a certain race or culture. Some charities don't have any such limitations and will help people based solely on a condition such as devastating injury or some type of victimization or condition. If you are going to give to a charity or nonprofit organization, do your research and know what it is you're supporting and how much of your dollar is being used to support the cause. Keep in mind that all charities have costs to operate. You might be more efficient if you find an organization that has a narrow focus rather than a general purpose. A smaller organization may spend a higher percent of its revenue on administrative, but the rest is more directly applied to the cause. That's not to say that the larger organizations like the Salvation Army or the Red Cross aren't worthy of your support. Charitable giving is, without a doubt, an American institution. There is no other country in the world whose people give more to others than the people of the United States of America. We are the most generous people on earth. With that, there are those who will take advantage of our generosity. Sometimes it's our neighbors, sometimes it's people from somewhere else. Regardless of who it is, nobody likes being scammed or taken advantage of, or being swindled in some way. We all like to feel confident that when we give to charity or when we pay taxes, that the money we contribute to something other than ourselves is being used in the manner that we hope. We use our power at the ballot box and our power at the checkbook to express ourselves by who or what we support. That's what's most disturbing about the events unfolding in Minnesota. A similar situation may be occurring in Michigan and Ohio. It seems like Somalis, or as the President says, Somalians have revived a method of controlling local governments. It's not anything new, but the melting pot has reduced its effect. The immigrants from Somalia have revived the practice and have managed to gain control of enough local governments to game the system. And because of their influence, the governor of Minnesota, among others lower on the chain of command, were willing to overlook the fleecing of billions of dollars from the generosity of the American people in order to pacify the Somali population. The Somalis haven't blended into the melting pot, instead, consolidating their influence in such concentrated voting districts as they have been able to influence not just local but state and even federal policy. It would appear they've used that influence to redirect billions of American tax dollars to causes other than what you might have expected. There are reasons to believe that the Somalis sent American tax dollars to terrorist groups, and the state of Minnesota let it happen because the leaders there were being held captive, like the crew aboard a hijacked ship off the coast of Somalia. We'll see how it all plays out. In the meantime, if you want to donate to a charity or contribute to the well-being of others in some fashion, then I applaud your spirit. The evidence would indicate that's a very American thing to do. This week in 1783, George Washington resigns as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland. I've never been to Annapolis myself, been to Baltimore for a few baseball games, as the Orioles are my favorite team. In a few moments, I'll speak to a man who, unlike General Washington, began his military career at Annapolis. Good old George Washington leads the revolution against the most powerful nation on the planet at the time. Resigns. Wants to lead his own life. But no. Less than six years later, he becomes the president of the new United States of America. The most important thing he did as president of the United States was allowing somebody else, in this case John Adams, to become the second president of the United States. Once again, he just got stuff to where it needed to be, then endeavored to get out of the way. That's true leadership. This week in 1799, 4,000 people attend George Washington's funeral, where Henry Lee declares him as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

The Listening Tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelising tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

My guest today is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy class of 1957. Jim Paul, Jr. would rather talk about his classmates than himself, but I wanted to learn a little bit more about him first. He spent some time in the listening tube from his home in Georgia. As a 1957 graduate of the Naval Academy, the United States Naval Academy, I'll make sure I put that part in there. You you probably graduated from high school in 1952. Is that correct? 51. 51. Okay. Well, that was over a decade then before I was even born. So thanks for hanging in there long enough to speak with me today.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

I'll bet you are. It was a fun one to watch if you're uh if you're neutral as I am being an Air Force veteran.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Well, actually, we graduated the uh last class of Air Force officers from Naval Academy in 1957. In 1958, they started graduating from the Air Force Academy. So before before that time, uh West Point and Annapolis graduated officers into the Air Force. Both of them did?

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Yeah. Okay, because I knew that uh the Air Force had uh separated from the Army in 1947. I didn't know that they relied on the Navy for education.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

They relied on getting officers from both West Point and Annapolis. And then when the Air Force Academy started up in 1958, they started producing their own officers. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Now, upon graduation from the Naval Academy, was your rank uh lieutenant junior grade? Ensign. Ensign? Ensign, yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

So what was your first assignment? My first assignment was uh the USS Montrose in San Diego. It was uh a troop transport uh that took a battalion of Marines to uh to land on islands for for attack purposes, and uh like we did in World War II. And our ship had a lot of LCVPs, the landing craft on board. And my assignment was as third division officer, and I had the there we had one five-inch gun on board, and I had that five-inch gun, and I had a crew back there to operate the uh cranes to put the boats in the in and out of the water and operate uh operate the uh the boats.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Just as an aside, uh my late father was a plank owner on the USS Mills when it was recommissioned in October of 1957.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yes, that was that's uh uh destroy escort.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Uh now you eventually became uh a submarine officer, correct? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

I went I went from the Montrose to uh New London, Connecticut for submarine school was six months, and then I went to the USS Redfin that was in Norfolk, Virginia, and I served on there for three and a half years. It was a great experience.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

What were living conditions like on a submarine in the in the 1950s or early 60s?

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Shoulder to shoulder. We were close. Uh my stateroom had three officers in it, and you could only have one more standing up in there at a time. It was but maybe like about two feet by two feet with a uh wash basin that folded down so you could shave and brush your teeth there. The shower areas were used as storerooms because no one took a shower, and uh, but it was very tight quarters, and and uh if we had extra people on board, we had to do what was what hot bunking, so uh we didn't have enough bunks for everyone. So when somebody went on watch, somebody else would get into a bunk and stay there, and so they uh we we did that a lot because we had a lot of technicians on board that from different companies because we did a lot of evaluating of the equipment that was going on the uh first ballistic missile submarines.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

I don't know if they make them a whole lot bigger than they did then, but I'm sure they take into account more of the creature comforts uh that we know will keep the troops happy. I I'm not sure they have Burger Kings on submarines yet, but I wouldn't be surprised.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Well, they since they're down for six months or so, they are they're they they have a lot more comforts and uh and and more room to move around, and and it's not the extreme uh crowding that we had on the World War II submarines.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

I'm speaking to you today because you have a book out, and I believe it's been out for almost a year now. Is that correct? Yes, and it's called Shaking Up the World. But yes. Now you're you're the author, but this is actually a compilation. So you didn't write Shaking Up the World all by yourself, did you?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

There are 59 authors in the book that did 80 stories, and I I did some of them, so we're all authors, but uh but on the book is compiled by and my name James D. Paul Jr. So it's a class. I made it a class book, and uh I had a review committee uh uh of eight, uh, and they include one woman that was retired from the uh Smithonium. I had uh one man that was a colleague from the Augusta Georgia Chronicle. Uh he was an outdoor writer, and and we collaborated on some stories, and and he was on the committee. So I had a civilian, I had a Miss Estonian woman, and then I had had uh officers from from my class, including an admiral on my review committee. So when I did a story, I edited it and sent it to the person that was alive and had them review the story and send it back to me. Or if the person was not alive, I sent it to a member of the review committee or a couple of them and had them check it for accuracy and edit it and then send it back. So that was a process that I used. So I I've never been able to do anything myself, so I always have a group do it, and I've always find that that's a more successful way to operate.

SPEAKER_03 21:27

Now, all of the authors that helped compile the book are all members of your graduating class from the United States Naval Academy in 1957.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Except for a couple.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

I I had I had an enlisted man on the redfin that did a story on his experience of searching for the thresher, a down submarine that we lost off of New England, and his experience with that as an enlisted man, and then he actually went back to. Naval Academy to be a member of the honor guard, the to honor the uh the remains that it really wasn't the remains, but it was to honor the captain of the lost submarine. And uh and Jim Gradless was his name, and Jim did that. And uh the man from uh the Augusta Chronicle newspaper, Bill Bebb, was on the committee and and just did a story in the book.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

Do you normally stay in touch with these people or had you before you started compiling these books, or or did you have to make a conscious effort to find these people?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

I was in touch with with many of them. I think the side benefit for me doing this was getting to know more classmates than I did before. I knew a lot of classmates. Uh the academy always tried to do what they could about moving us around on different assignments and everything so that we got to know one another. I I would say that uh, well, I'll tell you this right now. We have a Zoom meeting once a month. Can you believe that? You got a bunch of 90-year-olds, and we're having a Zoom meeting, and but we have business we take care of. We have class projects and uh and and we do a lot of things. And usually we'll have we sponsor a chair in the history department is our class project, and usually uh that professor is on with us monthly. And sometimes we have a department head, and sometimes we have midshipmen, uh, both men and women that that are on our Zoom meetings. So we stay in touch. I I think it's far more than a civilian school. We started with 1,160 and graduated 848. And we most of us have stayed in touch. The Air Force people kind of got away from us because different bases, different assignments, but through reunions, we got wished out and got them and pulled them back in. We wouldn't let them get away. I'm sure they'll I'm sure they are grateful for that. Oh, I'll tell you very much so. And and I had a friend that was a close friend, and we we lived next door to one another at the academy, and his name was Papacio, and I had never met a Sicilian in my life until I met him, and he had never met anybody from the swamps of Georgia, and we kind of bonded our first year there when we got there, and we were friends, been friends the rest of our life until he passed away a few years ago. But but yeah, we we really do stay in touch, and but he uh he was involved with a satellite program and a lot of secret work, and when he retired, he went to work for TRW, and uh and then we found that we were both living in Southern California, and so we could spend a lot of time together, and we did. My wife and I started having uh many reunions on the West Coast and inviting classmates, and and we grabbed a lot of Air Force guys and pulled them in. And they they were thankful for us finding them again. Thank you for finding us.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

Now, you've had quite the adventure since leaving the Navy as well, stint with Proctor and Gamble, leading a conservation uh organization in Southern California, writing articles about fishing. You you've never really slowed down, have you?

SPEAKER_02 25:14

I haven't. I have I have uh my life has been going from one project to another. And uh I I've got uh we just heard it in another book last week, and I've got uh four or five stories to go uh in a book for 2027, and hopefully I'll make it there. But uh, and if you've got you got a story, send it to me. It's called Close. And I think almost everybody's had a close call. So send me a story on close calls. I've got I've got a couple of really good ones already. I I might have to think about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah. Now, now, were the contributors to your book more likely to share relatable but personal memories, or were they more likely to recall accomplishments?

SPEAKER_02 26:01

I I think it's uh you know, uh accomplishments uh is really not a word that we use. I I think it was experiences. Uh uh if to be in to have a story in this book had to have some kind of a twist to it. It couldn't be I was born here, blah blah blah, I did all these things, and ain't I great. That's not the kind of book it is. It's one of experiences. And I could give you a couple examples. The reason I call this book Shaking Up the World was because the experiences and what these guys have been through. Brad Parkinson was a father of GPS. He was the architect of GPS system that we have today, and they received awards and honorary degrees all over the world. And we'd like to get a uh a building on a campus named for him if we can do it, because he certainly deserves it. But there are two stories in the book about Brad Parkinson, and I think you would enjoy it. There's a photo in the book of Brad receiving the Queen Elizabeth II award from Prince Charles, and they've got these really funny looking grins on their faces. And I said, Brad, what is this? You're getting a the Queen Elizabeth War from the Prince, and you got this funny looking grin on your face. He said, Well, the prince asked me if I could explain to him how GPS worked. And I said, Have you got about an hour? And they both laughed about that. But Brad Brad is a retired uh professor from Stanford and taught advanced mathematics there. I think the guy's absolutely brilliant. He's unbelievable. And we would not have GPS as civilians today if it weren't for Brad. And uh he did he did an awful lot for us, and uh and then I had a classmate by the name of Charlie Duke. Do you know that name? Uh does not ring a bell, sir. No. Okay. Did you see the movie Apollo 13? I did not.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

I okay I was alive for it, so I never thought I had to see the movie.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

It's it's uh it's about the uh uh a trip to the to the moon that didn't make it to the moon because he had a problem, an explosion in an oxygen tank, and uh and they were fortunate to get him back alive. But Charlie was scheduled to be on that flight, but uh he came down with measles. And and and then then one of the other guys uh that was scheduled to go couldn't go because he had never had the measles, so they were gonna now go set him up with the possibility of him getting it. So, at any rate, Charlie went on Apollo 16 and spent three days on the moon, and uh they took a rover up there, a little open-aired four-wheel electric-driven thing, and and drove around the moon. And they could only go four miles away from the lander because it on Earth they'd experienced that four miles with the furthest they could walk with that big backpack with the oxygen generator and uh uh air conditioning system on their back. And so I think it weighed a hundred pounds or so, it was very heavy. And so they rode around in the lander, and and Charlie was the one that communicated with NASA, and and the other astronaut drove it. But uh, there's a picture in the book of of them in the lander, uh exploring the boon. Uh, there's this picture of Charlie in the book. We have it planted an American flag on the boon, and he's saluting the American flag, which is which is pretty impressive. But I'll tell you how we did that story. Charlie told me, he said, Jimmy, uh, he said, I don't want to write the story. He said, I want you to write it. He said, I want you to interview me and you write the story. So I said, Well, I'm gonna invite my granddaughter, who's a 30-year-old granddaughter who's got a photographic memory, and she can sit down and help me take notes. So we got Charlie on the phone. Uh, Melanie and I each took a set of notes. And when we got done, I took the two sets of notes and and wrote the story and sent it to Charlie. And then he edited it and added a little bit to it and sent it back, and that's how we came up with that story. It was a and I really enjoyed doing that with my granddaughter, but it was a group effort, and and that's how we did it. And Charlie sent me uh 20 photographs from NASA, and I picked 10 of them to put in the book with the liftoff, with the landing with the parachutes in the ocean, and then getting off the helicopter on the aircraft carrier. So there's some good, good shots in there of Charlie. I think those are those are fun stories to read. And uh there's one little incident that there that the Olympics was going on at the time they were on the moon. So Charlie and the other astronaut said, uh, why don't we do an Olympics up here? And Charlie says, Right. And he says, I'm gonna do the long jump. He says, Well, he's hopping and hopping and hopping. And when he was in the air, he realized that if he landed on a backpack, he was dead. So he twisted his body so he landed on his side. And when he got on it, he landed on his side. The astronaut said, Charlie, that wasn't too smart. And about that time, NASA came on the phone and said, No more.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

Yeah, those moon rovers were pretty cool. In fact, they they took three of those up there on three different uh moon landings, and and all three of them were left behind. So they're still up there on the moon.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Oh, yeah, yeah, they are. They are, and uh he's a great guy. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and uh yeah, it's funny how we all stay in stay in touch with one another. But now I can tell you uh another aspect of the story is um Bob McAlee. And when I announced the class that it was my intention to do a class book and put together a stories of of the class, uh Bob called me and said, Jimmy, would you like some stories from the NFL? I said, Oh, Bob, I'd love to have them. I wanted to be as diverse book as I could get it. And uh, and so Bob uh was an official in the NFL for 27 years and did three Super Bowls. I think he's the only referee that did three Super Bowls in three different decades. He said, My job as a referee is to stand behind the quarterback. I don't know if there's been a completed pass or penalty, a touchdown, or anything. My job is to watch the quarterback until the whistle is blows or the quarterback's on the ground. But before the play begins, he said, I have some things I have to do. I have to check the game clock, the play clock, the formations, the substitutions, and a couple of other things. But he said, When I'm in Chicago, I have one other thing I have to do. I have to reach around to my back pocket and see if my penalty flag is there. If it's not there, he said, I go to the huddle, I stand behind number 34, and I say, Walter, give me my flag back. And Peyton pulls the flag out of one of his jerseys and gives it to him.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Walter Payton, the great running back of the Chicago Bears, the Hall of Fame class of 1993.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

What a great man he was. He was absolutely wonderful. And there's some more stories about Walter in there. Walter liked to have fun. He was a football player first, but he'd love to have football play of fun on the field. He just it is he was a good good person. And of course, they've got the award named after him now.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

Yes, the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award. Uh yeah, perhaps the most prestigious award uh you can get as an active player. Absolutely. Did any of the contributors write about failure or suffering or regret?

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Well, uh, as a matter of fact, Brad Parkinson's article is called The Critical Failure that led to GPS. And I'll I'll just mention briefly what happened. He had uh a group of engineers that put together the the the way GPS would work, but they needed money to put satellites up to experiment to do the evaluation of the system. So they had a big meeting in the Pentagon. He had all the generals and admirals from all four services, and everybody's there. And Brad puts on a presentation. And when he and when he got done, they said no money. So, but there was a contractor in the room, and and when it was over, he said, I'm very impressed with what you did. He says, I think we need to pursue this, and so that led to the GPS, is Brad working with a Australian contractor, and then later they got money to put the satellites up to experiment with the system, but uh, and there's more to it in the story. It's a long story. And when he got you read it, I said, uh, you know, there were parts of this thing, I didn't understand what I was reading. He said, Yeah, well, my essay was designed for graduate engineers. So I asked my girls, I said, uh, so did what did you do when you got to that part of the book? They said, we just skipped over that paragraph. Another thing that was a failure was that I don't know if you remember, maybe you don't, the the gunships over Vietnam. Do you remember the gunships? No, sir. Okay, well, during the war, there was one main road, and at nighttime the Vietnamese traveled troops and ammunition and supplies on that road. And the gunships were up at night to try and knock those trucks off the road. And they had 40 millimeter guns, like same same ones that came off the ships in World War II, uh, mounted on these planes. But and the aiming system was an analog system, and but they had been experimenting with the digital system that they said would be more accurate, but it was not working. And the Air Force said, You've got one more month to evaluate this, and then we're going to cancel the program. So they went to Brad, and that who was at the time, he was uh uh associate director of the aeronautics uh section at the Air Force Academy teaching there. And uh they went to him and said, You are the only person in the Air Force that can make this system work, and we need you to do this. And Brad said, I'm associate director, I'm teaching classes. I can't just gauge up on this. They said, We've already got permission for you to do this and somebody to take over your classes. And of course, he he was not exactly happy with this because he went around his back to do it, but he finally said, Okay, and so he went to Florida and the head, the technicians and head systems and everything down there. And so he worked almost 36 hours straight to get the system working, and so the the plane flew out over the Atlantic, and there was a barge out there that was going to be the target. When the plane left, they said Brad if he wanted to go. He says, I need to sleep a few hours. I haven't slept in 36 hours. So he said, When he went in and slept, and the plane went out, and when the plane landed, he woke up and he looked out there, and everybody got off the plane, and everybody was smiling, and he knew that it had worked. And uh they came out, they told him, he said, we absolutely destroyed that barge. And so at that point, Brad was gonna go back to the Air Force Academy and finish out his term there. But they said, no, we're sending you over to Layoffs that you're gonna ride one of these planes and evaluate it. So here he was a teacher that he's on combat duty, and he was he'd done this assignment for nine months before he came back. If to say that he was the only one in the Air Force that could make that system work, and he did, he made it work. He did. So there's a there's a failure that that turned out positive.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Have any of the stories in the book led to other opportunities for the authors, such as you know, a documentary or interest in expanding on the story for some type of media other than literature?

SPEAKER_02 38:55

But there's some stories in this book that would make a great movie, but his story in this book is is just unbelievable details of what went on.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Every class, whether it be a service academy or a college or a high school, has a cast of familiar characters. You got the jock, you got the nerd, the beauty queen. How would you characterize yourself among your classmates? That's a guy.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Uh and and there was always a little bit of competition about who was going to get that because the two point, if you got less than a 2.5, you didn't graduate. So it was always a god of 2.5 you had to do that. I graduated with about a 3.3, so I had it with a B average. So I I did okay from coming from the swamps of of South Georgia, I guess. Yeah, plenty of plenty of room for maneuvering there, didn't you? Yeah, I I did. I think I got along pretty good with everybody, tell you the truth. And I think uh I think I have really uh I think I'm really accepted by my class and and I feel honored by my class because I did this book and uh and I'm so well supported. Everybody supports what we did. And and uh any anything I've done in life as a leader has always been a group that got the results, it's not me. Like I said, I made this book, the book of Dale Academy class in 1957. It's not Jim Park's book, it's my class book. So it's our book, it's not my book. And uh I just happen to be the one that's that's uh I don't know what I'm doing. I've compiled the stories and I've been promoting, and I've been doing podcasts uh uh one or two a week, I think for what a while now, and and and I've been asked to do a lot of speaking, and uh you can probably tell I like to talk.

SPEAKER_03 41:12

Well, Jim, I unfortunately we're out of time, but I just I want to say thank you so much for uh spending some time with me in the listening tube today. I do appreciate it, and I've really enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have as well. I have. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. That book again is Shaking Up the World, a compilation of stories from and about the United States Naval Academy class of 1957 by Jim Polk, P-A-U-L-K. Thank you to Jim for spending some time with me in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2025. Shout out to some new parts of the world tuning in, Brampton, Ontario, Falkenstein, Saxony, and Bury, St. Edmunds, Suffolk, and Defiance, Ohio. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I wish you a happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Gregorian Calendar Year. You'll hear from me again in 2026. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. He's a nut job, but he's still sharp. For thou ad infinitum.