Introduction to Interview
In this interview, Greg Flierl, a retired United States Air Force officer, discusses his experiences in the armed forces, what led him to enlist in the Air Force, and how his service has affected his livelihood. He talks about changes made to the US military once women were admitted, and the general culture surrounding the military.
When he was young, Mr. Flierl grew up in a time when World War II veterans were held in high regard and after the war was over, and were almost everywhere in ‘normal’ life. Growing up with the “Greatest Generation” influenced more people to join the military because of the heroism associated with service.
Additionally, Mr. Flierl provides brief insight into the Cold War and what it was like to serve at this time. Pilots were trained to always be prepared for a nuclear fallout, and regularly ran drills that kept them prepared for the worst case scenario.
The Cold War officially began in 1947, just following World War II. Tensions between the United States and the USSR escalated as the USSR continued exerting their influence over Europe with the goal of spreading Communism. Even though no direct conflict took place, both sides were forced to prepare for what could become a nuclear war, which meant keeping the Armed Forces on standby in preparation for an attack.
Mr. Flierl also addressed a personal side of his experiences and talked about how serving affected his wife and children. More specifically, how frequently relocating affected his kids’ childhood and how working long and irregular shifts affected his wife at home.
[B-52 P Airplane: bomber planes used during the 50s and the height of the Cold War]
Biography
Mr. Greg Flierl was born on July 5th, 1955 in Freeport, Long Island, New York. There he grew up with two older sisters and one younger brother. In 1973 he graduated high school from Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, Long Island, New York.
Upon his graduation he entered the United States Air Force Academy in July of 1973, and graduated from the Academy on June 1st of 1977. The day after graduation he married his first wife Elizabeth Cartwright, and together they had three children. During this time Mr. Flierl attended pilot training at Reese Air Force Base in Texas, and finished his training in 1979. He became a T-37 instructor pilot and a B-52 instructor pilot.
Throughout his service he held multiple titles. These include but are not limited to Commander in the 5th Logistics Support Squadron at Minot Air Force Base in Minot, North Dakota; Commander at the Defense Distribution Center in Richmond, VA; and Director in the Air Force Readiness Division at the Pentagon. Mr. Flierl retired on June 1st of 2005 as a Colonel (O-6). He now lives in Las Vegas with his second wife, Lisa Boyd. In addition to his there children, he has six grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and another great-grandchild on the way.
Transcription
AJ: All right, I think we’re recording. So, uh, hi, how are you?
GF: I’m good.
AJ: Awesome. Awesome. So just to make sure we’re good, you’re okay with this being public, right?
GF: Yes.
AJ: Okay, perfect. So I’ll start with one of the big questions. How do you think the Air Force has changed over time?
GF: There’s been a lot of things. Um, most of the stuff that I saw, and I’ve seen since I was in the Air Force came about more from societal changes and things rather than wars or conflicts. One of the big things was the changing roles of women in the Air Force. I was at the Air Force Academy from 1973 to 1977. Now, women have been in the Air Force since it was founded in ‘47, but they had been limited to support roles, and there were promotion limits until I think about 1967. I mean, a woman could not be a general, which was kind of strange. And then, excuse me. Then in 1976, which was the time I was a senior at the academy ‘76-’77, the first women were allowed in. Rather an interesting experience, because obviously, the academy wasn’t set up for men and women to be there at the same time. So, it was a fairly small group. They were segregated in one area of the dormitories, so that they had like, their own bathroom and shower facilities and their own rooms, section of rooms. So, the academy just wasn’t ready for the mingling, which is understandable. And I actually, I worked in the first cadre with them. So, I was one of their trainers when they went through basic training, and also served in that role a little bit during the year. So that was kind of interesting. It changed a lot of things, this didn’t happen until 2004, this change. But what I remember when I first got to the academy in ‘73 was that they drop you off in a bus, when you’re all wondering what’s going on and everything. And you’re standing by this huge ramp that leads up into the main area of the Academy. And across the top of the ramp, in huge letters, is the beginning of a poem. I think it was called ‘The Coming American’ by Samuel Foss, and it read “…bring me men.” Okay, so obviously, in 2004, that changed, it’s now what they call the Core Values Ramp. And they changed it to ‘Integrity first, Service before self, and Excellence in all we do.’, which is basically the core values of the Air Force. Yeah, one other thing was, uh mid 90, I think it was around ‘93 or so. The Defense Department appointed the first Secretary of the Air Force who was female, that was Sheila Widnall. And I happened to be at the Pentagon during ‘95 to 2000, while she was still the Secretary of the Air Force, and so I got to do a lot of briefings with her and other stuff. Really, really sharp lady and a good Secretary we had.
AJ: Wow, that’s really interesting.
GF: Yeah. And then in ‘94, I think that was when the Air Force lifted all the restrictions on women being in combat aviation. They were still restricted from ground combat, but they were able to fly fighter jets. And everything up until then they had been restricted to support aircraft, like refueling aircraft, KC-135’s. There was a big thing when the first all female KC-135 crew flew. So those things, and I think, again, it pretty much mirrored what was happening in society at the time. And obviously, the combat restrictions was one of the biggest, there was a lot of concern. If you remember back to the Gulf War, about what do you do about a woman who has been captured by the enemy? I mean, because we know the torture and everything that happened to men and males say in Vietnam, a little bit in Korea, World War II. So, always, always a concern. But it’s interesting that the Air Force moved ahead pretty swiftly on it I think.
AJ: That’s really cool. I didn’t think about that. But specifically for the Air Force Academy, when women were first admitted, did that create a big rift or any sort of tension at all, or was it just a smooth transition?
GF: There was I mean, obviously, anytime you have a change that big, there was resistance, some of it from the cadets. Obviously, the officers and staff at the Academy, who ran the academy. You didn’t hear anything from them because I mean, that was one of the big things was, hey, everybody gets behind this and that’s it. You had an- I don’t know how off color can we be here?
AJ: You can go for it.
GF: Okay, all right. The class of ‘80, the first women were the class in the class of 1980. And so the males in the class of 1979 had a underground name for themselves, which was LCWB, which was the Last Class With Balls. So again, that was underground. They weren’t gonna come out with that. So anytime you have a huge change like that, especially in an area that’s- the Academy is very close knit. It’s very small it’s, any one time there’s maximum of maybe, excuse me, 4,000 cadets. So it’s a very small, close knit group. So anytime you make a change like that, yeah, you’re gonna get some resistance. But in later years, obviously, they’ve had the same problems as the rest of society. There’s been sexual assault allegations, there have been, things like that. But I mean, that’s a problem in society at large. And the academy really is just a small slice of society.
AJ: Gotcha. But do you think how long do you think it took for? Sorry, that, too, I guess the problem with like, the riff, the tension to that ever go away? Like, did it take a long time? Or-
GF: Yeah, well now I wasn’t there. But, we keep in touch a little bit with the rest of the Academy. We get, articles and stuff all the time. But, basically, once they were fully integrated in all four classes at the Academy, from the freshman class up to the senior class, then things calmed down, I mean, which you would expect, once they’re fully integrated. At the beginning, it was, it was sort of like special treatment and those kind of things. So it was, it created some riffs, obviously, and it was something new. But once everything got integrated, they were able to integrate the women into the individual squadrons. The Academy’s divided up into 40 squadrons, so each Squadron then had women integrated in it, lived with the rest of the male cadets, they had obviously separate, bathroom facilities and stuff, but the academy worked it out so that you could do that. And once they got integrated in all the classes, it smoothed out a lot, obviously, and of course, that mirrored society, once things move along, then everybody gets on board. It just takes time.
AJ: Gotcha. That’s really cool. I wonder if we could shift gears a little bit and then talk about what motivated you to join the Academy in the Air Force.
GF: Okay. Yeah, I’ll give you a tie back. I’ve got a couple of things to talk about why, a chain that’ll also tie back into things. So lots of different reasons why I joined the military and the Air Force in specific. One of the things you have to remember is that the era that I was born into and what was going on in the world at the time. I was born in 1955. So that’s 10 years after the end of World War II. So you have all the World War II veterans, for the most part are still alive. They’re all around you in society, they’re teachers, they’re butchers, the rest of it. So you had that, that group around you, the whole country. And they were highly respected. Veterans of World War II, obviously, the greatest generation and all that. They were highly respected at the time. And also, at this time, you have the Cold War, which started up after the end of World War II, between the Soviet Union, China, United States. So I mean, there was, there was like this looming problem out there all the time. 1955 was also two years after the end of the Korean War, which was, I mean, essentially, it’s probably the first proxy war between the communist countries- Soviet Union and communist China- and the United States. And then the year I was born, was, the French had just left Indochina. And so it was the beginning of increasing US involvement in the Vietnam War. Again, probably, arguably the second proxy war between the communist countries and the rest of the world. And so, Vietnam didn’t end until officially until ‘75, although it started winding down sooner. So for the first 20 years of my life, the United States was at war. So that changes your perspective on everything that’s going on around you. And then while I’m growing up, for example, the 60s, you had TV shows that celebrated the World War II generation and things like Combat!, The Rat Patrol, even Hogan’s Heroes, which, if you look those up, they’re very interesting. They, used a lot of the actors had been in the military, they used a lot of advisors from World War II who had actually been there to try and maintain the realism and those kinds of things. So you had that. GI Joe, if you guys remember the GI Joe doll. That came out when I was nine years old. So I mean, of course, I had one. So there was a lot of military influence all around you. And it was a part of, it was part of the news every night, it was in the papers, you talked about it in school. So there was a lot going on there. And the majority of it was positive. Not necessarily for the military as a whole, but for the people who served. And that really didn’t start to change until you saw the anti-war protests and everything later on in the Vietnam War. The other thing that affected me and one of the reasons why I chose the Air Force was when I was 14, that’s 1969, and that was when we landed on the moon.
AJ: Oh, wow.
GF: Yeah. So if you look back at that, the majority of the astronauts then were military pilots. They were military test pilots, Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, they were all military pilots. So that affected me as well was one of the things as I was growing up, I always wanted to do is I wanted to be an astronaut. Well, how do you do that? Well, first, you’ve got to be a pilot. How do you do that? Well, you join the Air Force. Now at the time, the draft was still in effect. It ended essentially, my senior year in high school, but people were still being drafted. So you go, well, do I want to take a chance on the draft putting me where I want to be? Because that’s probably not going to happen. So what’s the best way to do it? And that was why I applied to the Air Force Academy when I was a junior, and so I said, this is my route to be an astronaut, which didn’t happen. But hey, I still had a good time. And so that was, that was why, I already had my mind made up. So even though at the time the tide was turning against the Vietnam War, and to a certain extent, veterans. There was a lot of hostility towards veterans who hadn’t done anything other than get drafted and do their time. So that was pretty much the reasons of why I joined the military and the Air Force specifically. Now, if you think about all that the end of the draft was a significant change in how the Air Force operated. Once you go to an all-volunteer force, you can do a lot of things you couldn’t do with a conscripted force because you can be a lot more selective about who you let in. The requirements to get into the military rose significantly. I mean, basically, for the Air Force, if you don’t have a high school degree, you’re not going to get in. They’ll take a limited number. It’s only a couple of percent of people with GEDs. The academy actually has a preparatory school that if they don’t think your academics are up high enough, but they like you otherwise, they’ll send you there for a year. So yeah, get your grades up and get ready for college. And then, you move over to the Academy. The other thing it brought about, with the end of the draft and the end of the Vietnam era, was as time went on, you have less and less of a connection between civilians and the military- less of an understanding. And you also have less of a connection with politicians. If you think back to after World War II, I mean, the majority of people in Congress were veterans, now, there’s a few more now, actually, the, the Gulf War era military is getting into Congress more and more, and you’ll see that both male and female, but for the most part, you have a lack of, I guess it’s just, that gut level understanding you have from having been there. And so you don’t have that in politics anymore. And you don’t have that in the general civilian populace anymore. After World War II, there were millions of veterans. I mean, the number of veterans in the country is probably a couple of percent. Because again, the population has also grown. We’re three over 300 million now. And then one of the other things that changed in the Air Force specifically in the military in general was with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 90s. Alright, when I was in the Air Force, I was a B-52 pilot. And one of the things we did, and people don’t remember this, but back in the 50s we used to have aircraft, B-52’s and some others that were constantly in the air loaded with nuclear weapons. Okay, as a result of the fear of, a hot war between, the Soviet Union, Communist Chinese and us. Now, over time they realized they were tearing up the airplanes. They couldn’t maintain that. So they switched to what they called ground alert, which I pulled many times, which was, you had aircraft fully loaded with weapons, you had refueling aircraft also standing by, and the crews lived in a little building near the airplanes for a week. When you do that, a week on, a couple of weeks, off a week on, so your life was pretty restricted at that time, you couldn’t go home, you couldn’t leave certain areas of the base. So it was a, it built a lot of camaraderie among the crews, because, all you had to do is spend time with each other every night, so you figured out things to do.
AJ: So it’s like being on standby?
GF: Essentially, yes. And you’d have, I don’t know if you call it rehearsal, or, but you’d have practice alerts while you were on. In other words, the symbol for going into your aircraft, starting the engines and taking off was a klaxon sound. So this horn would go off, and all crews would rush out to the airplanes, you’d get set up, you’d start your engines and you’d taxi out, get ready to take off. And then you had coded messages that came in and everything that told you whether you were actually taking off or whether it was just a practice or what was going on. I mean, it was I mean, it was serious business at the time. And, you were tested constantly, you had check rides, and everything where instructors and stuff, evaluators flew with your crew, to make sure you were up to the standards that they needed, those kinds of things. And all of that ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now, a lot of people will also say, that was the end of the Cold War. But if you look around the world today, Russia is still trying to be a global power, as much as before. The Communist Chinese are doing very well at becoming a global power. We’ve kind of let our guard down with them. So, the Cold War didn’t end then, it just changed a little bit. So that’s what I’ve got on those really. Well, what else would you like to know?
AJ: Well, I was thinking about just what a daily, what it was like daily for you in the Air Force?
GF: Um, that really depends. That’s a really long one. Because every job I had had a slightly different routine. When I first graduated from the Academy, I went to pilot training, okay. And pilot training was just, I mean, that was five days a week of school. You’d go in, you go to classes, then you go out and fly with an instructor, and you’d learn about how to fly and what you’re doing and all the rules and all the rest of that that went with it. And then you’d have a check ride to check your progress and you’d move on. But that routine was kind of like, most of the time you’re in the day, but every now and then you’d have what they call a night week, where you flop your entire schedule. So instead of going home at five in the afternoon, you’d get to work at five, six in the afternoon. And you would have your classes and everything and then you go out and fly at night, because rules and different procedures for flying at night. So that was that. After that I became an instructor in pilot training. I graduated as a student, I became an instructor at the same place where I graduated from. Yeah, that got a little more crazy because now you’re running a bunch of classes. So, you do a lot more night work, you do a lot more what they call cross country travel. You spend, you take a student, and you fly out to different airfields, around the country to get them training in how to deal with air traffic control, how to deal with the FAA, how to deal with other airfields. We went into a lot of civilian airports that allowed military flights to come in. So you learned how to deal with being around civilian traffic and those kinds of things. So that was kind of interesting. Then after that, that was when I went to be a B-52 pilot. Like I said, a week of alert, two weeks off, another week of alert. It was it was pretty stressful, especially stressful for families at that time, because my kids at that time were, under three, I think and so, you miss a lot of time with the family and stuff like that, which is, which is hard. After that, the Air Force has a number of educational programs, and I had applied to one of them and I got accepted to get my master’s degree. And the one I got was was, luckily was it was called the Civilian Institution Program. So depending on what degree you wanted, there were several public or private state colleges that you could go to. I wound up getting a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the University of Florida. The reason I went to the University of Florida was that my follow-on assignment was at a place called Eglin Air Force Base. It’s a test base in the panhandle of Florida. So it wasn’t that far away from where the University of Florida was. So it was less, less stress on the family moving around, we were only moving a few miles, that kind of stuff. So, and again, that was going to college. The additional thing was, I think it was every Wednesday night, you had a meeting with all of the other military at the school, and you actually wore your uniform that day, they want to make sure you still knew how to dress, those kinds of things. But basically, it was college. Welcome to college. Oh, yeah. And then after that, then my follow on assignment to Eglin, the test base, I was in charge of maintenance for the test aircraft, which are a totally different beast. But I mean, that was pretty much getting up four o’clock in the morning, going into work, getting ready for briefings to the higher ups because first thing you did in the morning was you briefed the commanding officer and the staff on everything on ‘Okay, what’s the status of our airplanes? Where are we? How many are broken? How many are are ready to fly? When will they be done? Do we have any parts problems to get them fixed?’ all that kind of stuff. So it was probably five, six in the evening, by the time you get home. So you’re looking at 12 hour days. Which wasn’t so bad again, you got to go home every night, you saw your family, we were able to get kids in school and things like that. So that was good. Let’s see, what do I do after that? Well, there’s a lot of moving around
AJ: Sounds like a lot.
GF: That hasn’t changed in the military at all. You move around a lot. And again, it’s stressful for families, and especially young children. Oh, after that, I went back to flying B-52s. So there was, I had to get refresher training, because it had been a while since I’d flown. So I spent a couple months in California, getting trained up again. And then I went to a place called Minot, North Dakota, which is really cold and really windy.
AJ: Sounds cold.
GF: Yeah. And so that was just after the breakup of the Soviet Union. So again, we weren’t pulling alert anymore. It was kind of a whole different, a different animal. I mean, we still flew long days, on average a B-52 flight was in the vicinity of 10 to 12 hours. Because on a flight, you tried to do everything you could possibly do in a combat situation. So you did high altitude navigation, you did air refueling, you did low level navigation. You did bombing runs, you did ECM- electronic countermeasures practice- where you practiced jamming enemy aircraft, enemy radars, those types of things. And a B-52, it’s got two pilots who sit upstairs, it’s actually a two level airplane. In the back you have a gunner and electronic countermeasures officer. Now, after the Soviet Union broke up, they took out the gunners because everybody was thinking, well, we’re not gonna be doing a whole lot of shooting at Soviet fighters anymore. And that’s actually proven to be a smart move, because in the Gulf War, we never really had to deal with fighters because the B-52 stayed at high altitude, they stayed away from any possible enemy fighters. And our fighters basically kept all the enemy fighters and radars stuff suppressed, so you didn’t have to worry about it. And then downstairs, you have two navigators, who, they’re basically in charge of getting you where you’re going and dropping the bombs on the right place. So the pilot just drives. He’s a bus driver to a certain extent.
AJ: Very, fun.
GF: And then the last thing that probably is any different, well, two things was that I spent five years at the Pentagon which is an interesting beast. That was another, unfortunately, I lived, because of schools and everything, and my kids were now going into high school. I lived about 30-40 miles away from the Pentagon, because they’re really good schools down there in, it’s Central Virginia basically. But it’s outside that little enclave, that kind of forms around Washington and the Pentagon and all that. Yeah, but what that meant was, I’m looking at, I-95, the area around I-95, sorry, the area around DC and everything. It was an hour and a half commute every day to get to the office. So again, I’m leaving, I’m leaving, leaving the house at, 5:30 in the morning, to get to work by 7:00. And then there was no point in leaving the Pentagon at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, because you’re just gonna sit in traffic.
AJ: Yeah.
GF: So you’d stay at work until 6:00 or 7:00 and then drive the hour and a half home. So again, it was a little rough on family life, but luckily my kids, now they’re in high school, the fact that Dad’s not bugging them was probably a good thing, I guess, I don’t know. But anyway. And then the last thing I did, which was very interesting, was I worked at a place called a Defense Distribution Center, which is essentially a military warehouse. That was in Richmond, Virginia, basically I ran a warehouse. Interesting, I’ve never done anything like that before. And you have forklift drivers, you have shipments you have to make, you got trucks going in and out it’s like running any distribution center, like, Amazon or something like that. So, that was pretty interesting. But there, to a large extent, there’s no such thing as a normal day. No matter what I mean, because you’re, for the most part, you change jobs a lot, you do slightly different things. They may all say, be in the same area, but slightly different things. And, of course when a war’s on, like the Gulf wars and those kinds of things, that changes everything, because you’re deployed all over the place. Plus you do deployments to maintain relations with foreign countries. When I was in, I was deployed to England, been to Italy, been to Australia, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Thailand. Probably a few others that I can’t remember at the time, but it’s very interesting. I mean, you get to see a lot of the world and a lot of how people live and everything. And it’s very interesting.
AJ: Did your family move with you? When-
GF: No, not on the short ones, they always moved on the major moves. But your deployments are usually anywhere in the vicinity of a couple of weeks to several months. Longest I ever had was three months. And that was the one to Saudia Arabia, so I missed Thanksgiving for that one. But I managed to work a deal with my replacement. And he was supposed to come like the day after Christmas. But we worked out a deal where he came the day before Christmas, so I got home on Christmas Eve.
AJ: Oh, yay. Yeah, that’s sweet.
GF: Yeah.
AJ: So it sounds like there was a lot of stress on family? Is that-
GF: A huge amount.
AJ: How do you think that affected your kids?
GF: Um-
AJ: Or is that too big a question?
GF: No, it, well, I mean, a lot of the stuff that it’s hard to nail down, but there were times, especially, I remember one of the early moves, I think the kids were four or five. It was when I when I went from flying B-52s, that was in Shreveport, Louisiana to, to the University of Florida. And I remember my son came to me one day, he was all upset because he couldn’t remember the faces of his friends in Louisiana. He remembered his friends, but he couldn’t see their faces in his head anymore, which terribly distressed him and so, it’s, it’s hard on kids, it’s hard for them. I had twin girls and a son and they were less than a year apart, which is a whole ‘nother long story. But I think my son probably had the harder time of it. I think the girls weathered it better because they had each other, there’s that certain bond between twins.
AJ: Yes.
GF: But my son, my son had a hard time in a lot of his mostly in school, I mean. Outside of school, he managed to do okay but inside his school he had some issues.
AJ: Gotcha.
GF: So it’s hard on families and, my wife and I, we had had issues at the time too. It puts a lot of stress on you, when you’re not around for a lot of the things that happen at home, when your wife is the one has to deal with everything that’s happening, whether it’s something going wrong with the house, or it’s with the kids, or whatever it is. So and you’ll see, there’s been a lot of, there’s a lot of divorce in the military. There’s a lot of mental issues a lot of suicide in the military. And a lot of that’s tied back to the stress that comes with the job. And the services are doing the best they can to try and help with that, but it’s a really difficult problem just because of the way of life and the way of life is required because of what we do. So, it’s a hard problem. It’s a hard problem, and I don’t think anybody’s going to solve it anytime soon.
AJ: Yeah, that’s a tough one. But I think that was all that I wanted to cover. Unless you had any final thoughts?
GF: No, I guess about the only thing I’d say and I know this may sound strange, but I enjoyed every minute and even with all the problems, all the stresses everything that went on. I met a lot of great people, I was talking a lot about the bad times, but there were a lot of good times to, with the family. We met a lot of nice people, some people I’m friends with still to this day. And yeah, I wouldn’t trade it.
AJ: Aw, that’s good to hear. Thank you.
GF: My pleasure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Edited for clarity
Research
I chose to research how military service affects someone who serves, particularly in the civilian setting and after their service. I focused most on how it affects the individual, specifically mentally. Oftentimes service members suffer higher rates of PTSD, suicide, divorce, etc. This is often due to stress from the workplace and difficulties at home. Service members often work long hours frequently during the week which cuts down on time at home with their spouse and family. Mr. Flierel addressed this subject by talking about the stress of his job on his family. He talked about how he often got home late, which left his wife to be responsible for many of the problems at home. He also branched off of this topic and talked about how his family was affected, specifically his kids. I also researched how kids are affected, and he confirmed what I found. Moving around a lot can have lasting impacts on children. Children of military families experience higher rates of stress disorders. Mr. Flierel talked about how his son felt when he was unable to remember his friend’s faces after moving from Louisiana.
Bibliography
The American Legion. How the Military Changed My Life. 28 Oct. 2011, www.legion.org/magazine/3369/how-military-changed-my-life.
Garfinkel, Renee. “Military Service Changes Soldiers’ Personalities.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 2 Mar. 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-out/201203/military-service-changes-soldiers-personalities.
Lieberman, Jeffery A. “Solving the Mystery of Military Mental Health: A Call to Action.” Psychiatric Times, 8 Dec. 2018, www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/solving-mystery-military-mental-health-call-action.
This interview was conducted over Zoom with the automatic transcription generated by Otter AI. The transcription was edited afterwards.
The interviewee edited the transcription for clarity.