Oral history interview with Robert Buzzard

Little Thunder::All right, my name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University, and I'm here interviewing Robert Buzzard as a part of the Chilocco veterans group project. Robert, you're a Cherokee and a Chilocco alum from the class of '57, a member of the Chilocco Board of Directors, and a veteran. We'll be talking about some of your Chilocco memories today, as well as your military service in the Air Force. Thank you for taking the time to interview with me. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Buzzard:I was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, at the Indian hospital, and I grew up mostly in the Chilocco area. I don't know what you would call it. Some people 1:00call it Chilocco Reservation, but it was the surrounding area. It wasn't on campus. It was farmland. My father tried for a while-- (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Farming for a while?

Buzzard:...tried farming, but he didn't quite make it. We had to give that up.

Little Thunder:What about your mother? What did she do for a living?

Buzzard:She was just our mother. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Homemaker and raising kids.

Buzzard:There were ten in my family, so she was a very busy mother. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Yes, for sure. What about brothers or sisters, and where were you in the lineup?

Buzzard:I was, there were--I've got to think about this, too.

Little Thunder:Well, you have nine brothers and sisters; we've figured that out.

Buzzard:Yeah. Actually, there was eleven of us. We had one adopted. It was a niece, but she was raised, she grew up with us. We count her as a sister, also, and she was younger than me. I had two sisters and two brothers that was older than me.

Little Thunder:Okay, in the middle?

Buzzard:Yeah, I was basically in the middle. The next one is a sister and two twin brothers that was younger than me. If we count my niece, I had four, four sisters younger, and two twins that were younger than me, brothers.

Little Thunder:Where did you--I got your tribal affiliation, right, Cherokee? Are you more than--

Buzzard:I'm full.

Little Thunder:--multiple tribal affiliations?

Buzzard:I'm full Cherokee, and my native language, that's actually my first language.

Little Thunder:Okay, that was what I was going to ask, your exposure to Native, to Cherokee and Cherokee culture.

Buzzard:In my family, that's all we spoke until we started going to grade school, except for my older siblings, I guess. Asked my older brother about that one time. He said he learned how to speak English before he started school. I don't know how that worked, but for me, I didn't learn until I was probably about, well, in grade school. I was still learning. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Where did you go to grade school?

Buzzard:At Chilocco.

Little Thunder:At Chilocco, okay, because was it your father who worked there?

Buzzard:No, he didn't work there. He was, at the beginning, well, he was still farming. A lot of these, I say Cherokees I guess, the other tribes did that, too. They were from the Cherokee Nation. We lived around the Chilocco area, and a lot of them would migrate to different parts of the country where there was work, mostly harvesting fruit and things like that. My dad did that for a while until he finally got a job here in Ark City. Used to be a meat packing house there at Ark City. He got a job there, and that's where actually he worked until he retired.

Little Thunder:Okay. So the elementary school, you went to the Chilocco elementary school on campus there.

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:Okay. And you were how old, did you say, when you entered school, 5:00about seven or eight, or younger?

Buzzard:When I what?

Little Thunder:When you first went to elementary school.

Buzzard:My birthday's in October, so I was six and turning seven.

Little Thunder:You were six, turning seven.

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:Were there other family members or extended family at Chilocco already?

Buzzard:At the public school?

Little Thunder:Yeah.

Buzzard:Yes, I had that older brother and sister when I was in first grade.

Little Thunder:So, what was one of the--you were going back home at night during elementary school? You were in your home?

Buzzard:Yes, we lived at home during public elementary school.

Little Thunder:And then when did you eventually move onto the campus?

Buzzard:Ninth grade.

Little Thunder:Ninth grade, okay.

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:What was one of the hardest adjustments for you once you moved 6:00onto campus?

Buzzard:Probably would be--I don't really recall, but I think just probably leaving the family and going in with all these strangers, you know. Yeah, that probably was the hardest thing for me. I was so used to home. We was pretty much free to roam out in the prairie wherever we wanted. Still, at Chilocco we was still able to do that, but it was pretty much restricted where and when, you know. I think that was probably the hardest part, leaving the family, going, 7:00something entirely new.

Little Thunder:Right. What was the easiest adjustment for you?

Buzzard:The easiest adjustment was, well, the easiest adjustment--. I don't know if I would say there was anything easy adjustment. That was just so gradual that it just, there was not really one thing that really turned me on to the school. It was just something that I knew that I have to go to school because Mom told me to. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:And some of your classmates, even, from elementary school 8:00probably, and middle school, were still at Chilocco. Is that right, or not really?

Buzzard:No, the ones that I was in elementary school with, they went to Bacone. Two of my good buddies, they ended up at Bacone. The rest of them would usually go to either Ark City to high school, they'd either go to Ark City or Newkirk, I guess. I don't know where they went, but there wasn't anybody that I went to elementary school with there at the high school.

Little Thunder:Okay. What dorm were you in?

Buzzard:I was in Home Two. I was in Home One, Home Two, and Home Six, all three of them.

Little Thunder:Okay. Was there a pretty big Cherokee contingent at Chilocco at that point?

Buzzard:No, I think it was pretty well evenly divided among the tribes. It was pretty much even.

Little Thunder:What teachers or classes stood out for you in school?

Buzzard:I think I liked math because I liked the teacher. He was our junior high football coach, too, so I kind of liked math. Actually, I did like math quite a bit. I took algebra and geometry, I remember, and I guess my next one would have been American History, which I really, later on, I didn't believe it anyway, so. (Laughter) Anyway, the teacher, the American History teacher that I had, one of his boys was a good friend of mine in elementary school, so it was kind of like I knew the man.

Little Thunder:Right, right. What did you do for--what kinds of sports did you 10:00participate in?

Buzzard:I just played football.

Little Thunder:Football.

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:Okay.

Buzzard:That was it.

Little Thunder:What detail did you have?

Buzzard:The detail that I had was, of course, I had to keep the room clean. I had to keep the dorm clean. We all had to take part in that. We didn't have any outside janitors coming in, cleaning up for us. That was the detail, the main detail we had. Then if you got in trouble, you had extra detail, which I had extra detail. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:How often did you go home, and it wasn't very far, actually.

Buzzard:No. We had weekends that they'd call "boys' town day," but we could go home for the weekend. We could pass and go home for the weekend. I really didn't 11:00go as much as you would think. After I got friends, you know, I liked to spend time with my friends.

Little Thunder:How did you get home when you went?

Buzzard:Usually someone would come pick me up.

Little Thunder:Okay. What did you do for entertainment when you weren't in class?

Buzzard:Oh, we just kind of, sometimes we would go out to what we called, I think we called it the lawn, out there in the middle. We went out there in campus, you know. We'd go out there at nighttime; we'd have Indian dances. We would have what we call a Stomp Dance. That's something we would do, or we would just go out there and maybe visit with the girls. It was certain times, of 12:00course. They had other entertainment, too. They had movies sometimes. Sometimes they had dances, just different things like that. Then on weekends, we'd go out into the woods, maybe just walk around and see what we could find. (Laughs)

Little Thunder:What's a memory that stands out for you, in terms of either class or outside of class?

Buzzard:I think what really stands out for me, you know, in my first couple years there, I took welding as my trade. They were making a new football field out there, and I happened to be in welding when they were building the bleachers. Then I cut part, putting the bleachers together out there. They're 13:00still there, so I guess we did a pretty good job. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Oh, neat! (Laughs)

Buzzard:No, like I said, I wasn't really the welder, but I did take part. One thing I recall about that, the welding, is that our instructor was all crippled up. He could just barely walk with a cane. When they start putting them together, Chilocco had this old crane. I mean, it was something antique. It had cables to operate that bucket, and he was up there. He was operating the controls and the foot pedals. He could hardly move his legs! Well, he come down--he had long I beams to help him come down. He'd bring that down like that, and, boy, we'd start running. (Laughter) But I guess he was pretty good because he never did hurt anybody. (Laughs) The older boys, the older welders, they're 14:00the ones that did the welding. It was just kind of a learning process for us, but I remember doing all that.

Little Thunder:Did you watch the National Guard exercises while you were at school?

Buzzard:No, I didn't. They usually, their Army was off, not with the campus. It was a little ways out, and that's where they would go. I don't know when they built that armory, but they would just go there, have their drills and everything. At their meetings, they didn't come on campus. They just went to that armory and drilled inside and had class inside.

Little Thunder:What about the high school dances, the school dances?

Buzzard:Yeah, they had them maybe once a month or something like that. I don't 15:00recall. Yeah, we went to them.

Little Thunder:You enjoyed those?

Buzzard:Yeah, I didn't go to them very often. A lot of times when we had them things we had to dress up, you know, sports coat. I wasn't that kind of person. (Laughter) The funny thing is, those other students that knew me there, a few of them bring this up. "He was the only one that had a sports coat, so everybody borrowed it." (Laughter) I don't recall that, but they always bring that up. "We always borrowed his, just passed it around." Actually, Chilocco is like a big family. Them dances, yeah, I went to a few of them, but like I said, I didn't 16:00very much like to get all dolled up.

Little Thunder:So you ended up enlisting in the Air Force? What happened after you left Chilocco?

Buzzard:Air Force.

Little Thunder:You went straight to the Air Force?

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:Okay, and why did you enlist?

Buzzard:Well, a eighteen-, nineteen-year-old Indian didn't have much chance getting a job in this world, (Laughter) and I actually wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world, and I was so interested to see them airplanes flying by, overhead. My older brother was in the Air Force, too.

Little Thunder:Oh, he was? Okay.

Buzzard:Not at the time that I went in. He was already through with his tour of duty. That's the main reason I went in, was probably after some kind of adventure instead of going right into the job market, or working at a filling station, or out here doing something that I didn't want to do.

Little Thunder:And so are we talking about 1958 or '59?

Buzzard:Oh, it would be '58, '57-'58.

Little Thunder:Where did you do your boot camp training, your training for the Air Force?

Buzzard:It was down at Texas, like at San Antonio.

Little Thunder:Okay. Had you ever been there before?

Buzzard:No, that was the first time.

Little Thunder:What were your impressions of Texas when you got to go off base?

Buzzard:It was disciplined. (Laughter) That's the only time that I was there, and once I got out of boot camp, I didn't go back. (Laughter) --fifty years later, maybe. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Well, how did your background at Chilocco help prepare you for that?

Buzzard:Oh, that was just a easy transfer, you know. It was just, I mean, I knew that I had to keep everything neat. I knew how to make my bed. I knew how to take care of my own clothes. I knew everything. It really did. Just a little more strict when you get in the military because everybody was the same there. Everybody had the same haircut, same clothes, same shoes, same bed, same everything, but it was easy.

Little Thunder:Were there other Native soldiers in your--.

Buzzard:No, no there wasn't. As far as I know, I was the only one in that, what they called whites.

Little Thunder:What did you think of your officers there?

Buzzard:We didn't really have anything to do with the officers there in boot camp. They were there, but mainly just the enlisted men. Putting us through the 19:00training, we had all enlisted instructors. We hardly had anything to do with officers.

Little Thunder:Were there any surprises about boot camp for you?

Buzzard:Oh, probably the surprises would be how different races are, you know, between white, black. Mexicans were pretty much like us. It was like you just kind of fit in, but then you'd get into the other, the white or the black. To 20:00me, it was totally different because I'd never been around them at Chilocco and my family and relatives and everybody else. (Laughs) Once you get in there, you just wonder. They talked about doing this and that, where I've been at Chilocco. It's kind of complicated to somebody who just got out of high school.

Little Thunder:Where did you go after boot camp?

Buzzard:I went up to Illinois, Chanute Air Force Base, for training, aircraft mechanic training. I don't recall how long that was, a year perhaps, six months maybe.

Little Thunder:Did you use any of your welding up there, or was it--.

Buzzard:No, it was just a mechanical type, aircraft, yeah.

Little Thunder:How about, did you get on a plane for the--did you fly on a plane at all?

Buzzard:Oh, a lot after I--.

Little Thunder:What was that like, your first airplane flight?

Buzzard:I thought it was boring. (Laughs) No, it was something that I always wanted. My first experience with that was, "This is great!" Here I am, way up here in the air. It was a few hours, we was there where we was going to go instead of two days later you get there. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:But it became routine pretty quickly, huh?

Buzzard:Oh, yeah, after that it was pretty boring afterwards.

Little Thunder:Did you enjoy working on planes, though?

Buzzard:Yes, I did. It was pretty easy, really. Pretty tight, but I enjoyed it 22:00while I was in the military.

Little Thunder:Now, how long did you serve? I guess Vietnam was going to start around '61 or something.

Buzzard:Well, Vietnam started back in the late ʼ50s.

Little Thunder:Oh, that's right.

Buzzard:We really didn't get into it until Kennedy era.

Little Thunder:Yes.

Buzzard:We were already in it. Anyway, we had so-called instructors there and others. The Air Force actually was there; the fighter planes was there; and they had the Vietnamese security. What was decided was that we would send the Marines 23:00and Army in there to relieve the Vietnamese army so they could go out and fight the war. It would be our security--. I was in from--I was in eight years.

Little Thunder:Oh, eight years, okay.

Buzzard:I got out in the mid-ʼ60s.

Little Thunder:Did you ever ship overseas at all?

Buzzard:I was overseas six years.

Little Thunder:Oh, wow, okay.

Buzzard:I came back, then went back.

Little Thunder:You re-enlisted?

Buzzard:Yeah, I went back and went back overseas. Most of my tour of duty was overseas. Very little was stateside.

Little Thunder:So where were you serving?

Buzzard:I was in Germany, stationed in Germany, but it was always going here, 24:00going there. Wherever the planes went, we went.

Little Thunder:Wherever the planes went, you followed.

Buzzard:We went, yeah. We was there, and we'd take off sometimes on weekends and visit different places.

Little Thunder:And your job was primarily fixing the planes, making sure the planes were well maintained.

Buzzard:Yeah.

Little Thunder:What did you think of Germany? When you went off base, what did you think of that?

Buzzard:It was a pretty country. Of course, it had already been repaired from the war. There was still some damages there when I first went over. It still had some damages that they hadn't redone. --

Little Thunder:So we were talking about, you could still see evidence from World War II a little bit.

Buzzard:Yeah, it was still, they're probably still there, but they had them big 25:00bunkers up on the hill that they had blown up. I never did go up in them. Some of them guys went on up. You'd see them way out there in the pasture, up on the hill. Along the Holland border there they had what they, I don't know what they called them. They were tank traps, I think they called them, that they had built. They were just concrete posts, maybe like three in a row, just the whole border of Holland and Germany. Those were still there. Other than that, I thought it was a beautiful country. It was. It was old, very old, ancient. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:And did you repair planes, then, in Vietnam, as well?

Buzzard:No, I didn't go there. I mainly spent my time in Europe and then some stateside duty.

Little Thunder:What's an experience that stands out for you from those eight years?

Buzzard:Yeah. My discharge. (Laughter) Well, I got a discharge twice. I got out and went back in. That's how I got my eight years. It was a little over eight years because I did a little reserve time in between. I've been asked that by other friends that was in there. "How come you come back in? Not supposed to get a discharge and say, 'I'm going to go back in and do it again.'" (Laughter) No, 27:00I think the whole adventure of being in the military was sometimes--. A lot of times it was pretty dull, and a lot of times things were going and you just didn't even think about other things. Another thing, too, that reminded me so much about being at Chilocco, because the common area that we had, I think I missed that a lot when I got out of the common area. I missed that for a long time after I got out. Twenty years after I got out, I still thought I was going to pack my bag and get ready to go somewhere. That's actually the way I felt, and I always felt like it was just temporary. Wherever I was at, wherever I lived, I felt like it was just temporary because I was so used to that from 28:00Chilocco, actually, a little over twelve years of people coming and going, friends coming and going. So even after I got out, after my eight years, I felt that way for a long time, that I was still going somewhere. Finally, I think I got over it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:After you got out, what did you do?

Buzzard:After I got out, I kind of took my time coming home. I spent some time up there in New York with some friends of mine that I went to school with.

Little Thunder:That you went to Chilocco with?

Buzzard:Yeah, in the city. I seen there wasn't much going for me there, and the 29:00guys, they weren't doing anything. (Laughter) I was probably there a little over a month or something. After I realized that this is going nowhere, I thought, "Well, okay, I'll head back for the prairie." Hopped a train and came back, and I went--. My sister lived up there by Wichita, so I went up there. My real goal was, what I really wanted to do was go up to the Idaho area and train to be a forest ranger--

Little Thunder:Oh, okay.

Buzzard:--is what my dream was. I really wanted to do that. I got up there by Wichita--up with where my sister and her husband lived. I went up there. I was 30:00there probably about a week, and I got to thinking, "I got to do something. My family's going to start thinking I'm a bum, just laying around." So I told them I still had my mind set on going up north. I thought, "Well, I'm going to go look for a job." I went to one of them aircraft plants, and they hired me.

Little Thunder:Right, because that was the big center.

Buzzard:So they hired me! I thought, "Well, okay, I'll work there for a little while." I went on to work there, then kept working there, got married, then had a daughter. Many years later, I'm still around there. My dream finally went away, I guess.

Little Thunder:A big Native community up there. Were you involved with that, the 31:00Indian community up there?

Buzzard:No, I wasn't. I worked there at that aircraft plant for a little while, but then I thought--well, let me go back. When I was in the military, we used to always, we had these sessions that we, just throwing in their gripes. What I remember, we'd be sitting out somewhere, doing something, cold, wet, snow, rain coming down your neck, all muddy. We'd be sitting around, "Oh, when I get out of here, I'm going to have to get me a inside job. I'm going to get me a inside job. You won't catch me outside again!" So when I got inside with the aircraft 32:00plant, I worked there I bet a week, and I go, "This isn't for me. I got to get outside. I got to get back outside." (Laughs) I kept applying at this, which was KG&E at the time. It's like OG&E, a big utility and telephone company. The telephone company, finally, after a couple years or so, maybe longer--in the meantime, I had gotten laid off from Beechcraft, and then kind of messed around for a little while. Then I went on and got a job at General Electric at the engine shop. I worked there for a while, and I didn't like it there either because it was inside. (Laughter) I was still going to these other telephone and electric companies to apply.

The telephone company, I went over there and renewed my application one time. 33:00They said, "Well, okay, we don't have anything for you. We will have something for you, but we have to send you to school for it." I said, "Okay, I'll go for that." So I left there. Right a block over was the electric company, so I went on. I usually made my rounds that way. I'd go to the telephone company, then go there. I went over there, and I had applied for line maintenance. This woman there at HR, she looked it up and said, "Okay, I'll renew your application, but we don't have any openings right now." I started to leave, and this guy come out of the office there. Had a little office of his own there. He come out, and he said, "Hey, come here. I want to talk to you." I went in there, and he offered me a job at one of his power plants. He said, "This will be a chance for you to get in the company. After six months, you can transfer out and go anywhere you 34:00want to." I said, "Okay! I'll take that." He sent me out there, and I talked to the plant superintendent there. I knew I was going to take that job already, anyway. I got over there--so I went to work there. Twenty-eight years later, I retired.

Little Thunder:And were you outdoors, mainly? (Laughs)

Buzzard:Yes, I was outdoors.

Little Thunder:Okay.

Buzzard:I was inside, outdoors--.

Little Thunder:Taking care of the equipment, just back and forth.

Buzzard:Yeah, I retired as a operating foreman--

Little Thunder:Wow, okay. --

Buzzard:--after all the areas I'd--.

Little Thunder:So you were able to kind of keep in touch this whole time with your family, basically, in Oklahoma, too?

Buzzard:Yeah. The hours weren't very good. We had rotating shifts, and all three 35:00shifts. We would work day; we would work evening; we would work eleven thirty to seven thirty. Every week, we would rotate to something else. I was always tired. I thought it was supposed to be that way, until I retired. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Do you feel like that's kind of home now, right outside of Wichita?

Buzzard:Where I'm at now? Well, I got, like, I think it's a little over twenty acres out there. I live out there by myself with my two dogs, and I'll kind of slip back to the temporary feeling, you know, because I think what I'm really looking at now is time, is getting back here. I'm not biased about races or anything, (I try not to be) but they're all German farmers around me. (Laughs) 36:00Of course, the young German farmers, they got other jobs, too, to make ends meet, I guess. I'm actually the only Indian out there, (Laughs) so I miss the, I really do miss my Indian friends. I really do. I miss that, so that's kind of why I think I'm feeling like it's just a temporary thing.

Little Thunder:How long have you been on the Chilocco National [Alumni Association] Board?

Buzzard:I think I'll be finishing up my second tour of duty in June. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Okay. Have you had any offices with the board, any positions with 37:00the board?

Buzzard:No, just the member at large. That's as far as I want to go. I don't think I want to get too involved with it. There's not much to it. You come to meetings, and if you want to tell them something, you tell them. But that's given me a chance to actually get with the Indians again and mingle with them. I like that. I love the reunions that we have here. We weren't going to have one this year.

Little Thunder:Well, yeah, that's being resolved right now, I guess. So are you a member, besides the Chilocco Native veterans group, are you a member of any other veterans groups?

Buzzard:Well, no. I'm not a member of, like, VFW or anything like that. I'm not. The chief of the tribe, he visits different cities where there's Cherokees, so 38:00he comes to Wichita. He came to Wichita about three weeks ago. He gave me an honor. He gave me this [Cherokee Medal of Patriotism and the Warrior Award] as a veteran.

Little Thunder:Oh, yeah. Oh, okay! So this is--I'll have you hold that up, Robert, so we can see it on camera.

Buzzard:So this is a civilian award, and they gave me one. It's probably about, you've seen the military ribbons, haven't you?

Little Thunder:Yes, that's a nice one.

Buzzard:I got one of them, too. He said, "If you're active, you can wear that on your uniform." But I'm not active, so--.

Little Thunder:Right.

Buzzard:But I still--.

Little Thunder:Do you mind holding it up there where we can see it? Great. I'll take a picture of it, too. Oh, that's a beautiful medal.

Buzzard:Did you get it?

Little Thunder:Yes, yes.

Buzzard:Okay. I got a plaque out there, too, about like that, that he gave me. I 39:00was going to bring it in, but I thought, "Oh, this is too much like bragging." (Laughter) I think I will bring it in because I'm actually pretty--that's about the only thing I ever got from the Cherokee Nation. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:So they do have, up there in Wichita, the Cherokee community that's fairly, they meet occasionally or have doings.

Buzzard:Yeah, I think they may meet maybe once a year, maybe. I'm not sure. They send out letters. They sent me a notice telling me that they're going to have a meeting. They have a meal, then they have the meeting. Of course, the chief and the group he brings with him make speeches. I'm not interested in speeches, though. (Laughter) I go to them. This year I wasn't going to go. Then my 40:00daughter, she wanted to go, so, "Okay, we'll go." So I went, and they honored me as a veteran.

Little Thunder:Well, it's good that you did. (Laughs)

Buzzard:That kind of surprised me. I was busy talking. My daughter was sitting there, and she kept punching me. "They're calling you up there!" "Oh, okay!" I got something else, too; I don't remember what it was. Couple times I went up there for something. I did appreciate this, though. I'll show you that other one when we're done here. It's about like this. (Gestures frame size) They gave me a ball cap. What it has on there is "Cherokee Warrior" on there on the ball cap. I got that out there, too. I thought that was cool, too.

Little Thunder:That's a nice-looking hat.

Buzzard:I'll bring that in after we get done.

Little Thunder:Okay. Well, what would you like people to know or remember from 41:00your story about your service and your Chilocco memories?

Buzzard:Probably my time in the military. Back then--you're probably too young to actually remember what went on during the Vietnam era. We weren't too popular. Now, we're still not too popular, (Laughs) but I do like for people to remember that I did time in the military. I don't really go around waving flags 42:00or anything, but it makes me feel good to know what I did, where I've been, what I seen. I seen things that I don't talk about. That's probably about the way I feel about being in the military, but I do know that I was there. Another thing I did, too, I kind of enjoyed, not military, but I volunteered for this Habitat for Humanity International. I went to Mexico and Central America and helped 43:00build. I seen things there, too, that made me glad to be where I'm at.

Little Thunder:That must have been an amazing thing.

Buzzard:And when this, (I don't know; maybe I shouldn't even say this) when the president was campaigning, he kept talking about, "America's going to be great again." He doesn't know how great it is now, before. He just hadn't, being a white man, (Laughs) he didn't come from where I come from. But anyway, that Habitat for Humanity, I did that for a while. Then my hips started bothering me, and I couldn't--. We had these blocks about like that that we laid, building 44:00walls and doing concrete floors.

Little Thunder:Oh, wow, so you were doing the construction.

Buzzard:What we did there, we buy our own transportation. We bought our own plane tickets. We paid for our own ground transportation. We had a van and a driver while we were there, and we had to pay for our own room and board. We donated so much money for supplies, to buy supplies to build the houses with. I enjoyed that. I was staying in Honduras, and there was this little girl, about like that. I don't know why she got attached to me, and I really loved that 45:00little girl, you know, because they was all dark complected. Every day--she lived right next door in a little kind of a, it was a little house. It was made out of--it looked like one of them dirt adobe, I guess they call them. That's what it looked like, and she lived there. Her parents, every day, would leave. They would be gone by the time we got to the worksite, and the mom and dad would be gone. Where they were going was, it was coffee bean picking season, and they would go up to the mountains to coffee plantation and pick coffee.

They would come back in the afternoon. Along about three o'clock, they would come back, and they had this John Deere tractor with the big trailer. That was 46:00their shuttle, you know. It would bring them back. But this little girl, she come out there, and she was pretty shy. I'd be working or doing something, I'd turn around, and she'd be back there, standing there, looking at me. She wouldn't come there. Then I would just go like this. (Gestures a "come here" wave) You didn't go like this to them; you went like this to them. I'd go like that, then she'd come over there. We weren't supposed to give them anything like treats because the work leader said if you started doing that, all the kids in this little town would be here every day. (Laughs) But I would sneak some M&Ms or something, you know, that we'd sneak behind this building. I'd give her the M&Ms, and we'd go back there to eat M&Ms. She had a older sister, and of course, there's other little kids around there, too.

Pretty soon, they probably sensed something was going on. They'd come around there, and she'd have the M&Ms. She'd go like that. (Hides hand behind back) She 47:00was just a little thing, like that. I went back again just to see how she was doing, and I found out that she was only seven years old. She was seven years old, and I thought she was, like, four! She was really tiny, but that's the way they were, just little people, because of their diets, I guess. I don't know. I didn't go back after that. I wanted to. I still think about going back, but I doubt she's there now. Yeah, that little girl, she was the cutest little thing. I think about her. I did that for a while and thought I'd quit. I just don't do much anymore, just take care of my own stuff. (Laughter) I've got three rental 48:00houses left that I've got to take care of. I had some properties in Missouri that I was taking care of, so I finally sold all that, sold out.

Little Thunder:Well, I hope you get to come back closer to Oklahoma, and thank you for sharing that story.

Buzzard:Well, I would like to come back. I had this friend down there, a Seminole that I used to go visit. We would go to all these singings, you know, tribal singings, that they had around there. We'd go to them, go to the Stomp Dances, powwows. They don't have that up there where I am. The Germans, they don't do things like that. (Laughs)

Little Thunder:Right. (Laughter) Is there anything else we should talk about that we haven't covered?

Buzzard:No, except that I started working when I was about thirteen years old. 49:00It was either that or settle for what my dad could buy me, as far as clothing goes. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Well, it keeps you young. Work keeps you young. (Laughter)

Buzzard:I thought, "If I want a good looking shirt, I'm going to have to go get it," and not have to wear something that my mom bought out of a garage sale or something. (Laughter)

Little Thunder:Right. Well, thank you for your time today, Robert, and thank you for your military service.

------- End of interview -------