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Interview by Jane Olive

JO: We are at Gig Harbor Fire and Medic One on Bujacich Road NW on April 05th, 2019. This is Jane Olive interviewing Don Lee who will have his eighty-first birthday tomorrow and congratulations to him. After all these years of service and helping his community, he’s still alive and kicking, very busy and very active. So, well done! Let’s get some background on you, Don. Where were you born?
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DL: I was born in Rio Tinto, Nevada in 1938, on April the 6th. Rio Tinto, Nevada no longer exists. I like to tell people that when I moved away there was no longer a need for the town. They closed it down. My dad was a miner who worked in the typically gold and silver mines, also in a mercury mine in California. During my early years as a Cub Scout age young boy, I learned to go underground with my dad and way up top on the top of the ‘head frame’ which is an elevated structure to draw the ore cars off and dump them either as slag or as ore. My job as a nine-year-old boy was to stand at the top of the shaft and signal the hoist operator whether the ore that came up was either ore or slag. I hope I got it right sometimes.

During that time, I learned to deal with dynamite, that’s an important part of mining, and subsequent to that, when I lived in southeast Alaska, I got a job during the summer as a quarryman drilling and blasting. The only training I had in that trade was as a nine-ten-year-old boy working with my dad.

I am married to Tonya. We married in 1962 in Fairfield, California. We have two daughters, grown now. One teaches chemistry and other sciences in Gig Harbor High School and the other is the chief financial officer of the Genworth Corporation working out of Richmond, Virginia. Talked to her this morning and she was enroute to Beijing, China as part of her job.

I’ve had a varied employment history and career. I was in the navy from 1957 to’59 aboard the submarine, USS Perch APSS 313. I attended electrical A and B school as part of my training there. Upon getting out of the navy, I’ve continued to dabble in electrical repairs ever since.

I went to San Jose State College in San Jose, California to get my bachelors and master’s degrees in science education and went back and got a master’s degree in instructional materials in 1969-70. From there I became an instructional materials specialist at The Dalls, Oregon. In 1970 I moved up to Pierce County, settled in Gig Harbor and worked for the county Superintendent of Schools running the film library and providing media services to the districts within Pierce County. After a few years of that, the State Board of Education reduced the number of educational service districts which had taken over the responsibility of the county superintendent. I found myself as low man on the totem pole when we merged with King County and I began to write grant applications; the hardest work I’ve ever done. I continued for about two years writing grant applications.

I was a volunteer firefighter when they decided to hire additional personnel. I thought, “Gee, I’d to be a fireman. So I tested at the age of 42 years old and became a full time firefighter. But, because the salary was less than what I had been making, I continued to work for the educational service district half-time, full time for the fire department, and would spend my days…six o’clock in the morning I would head off to King County to work at the ESD. At 4:30 I’d leave that, drive back to Gig Harbor, change shifts at the fire department, work twenty-four hours there, go home for eight hours, and do it all over again. After a year-and-a-half of that, I was able to drop the ESD job and worked for the fire district in Gig Harbor ever since.

My hobbies have included all sorts of repair and fix type things; generally, for people who are in need. I work with the church at Chapel Hill and people who need electrical repair or minor building repair. I can go work on that and keep things going.

I became involved with Pep-C in about 1997 as I recall, when the chief came in and said, “Don, Pep-C’s having a meeting today, but I really don’t have time for that, so I’d like you to go in in my place.” I’ve been doing it ever since. That’s about twenty-one years. Twenty-two maybe.
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In the early years, the principal organizer was Joanne Gray. Joanne was a very dedicated individual who saw preparedness as a crusade. She kept the organization going. She didn’t take the major roles of president or general chair, but she was always on the sidelines making sure everything worked. She was the one who conceived of selling the water barrels for preparedness and to finance the Pep-C organization. That’s been our primary source of funding ever since. Joanne was really the guiding light that I saw during the very early years of Pep-C. Unfortunately, she had a severe stroke, and passed away, it’s been ten years now. But her work continues on.

In the early years of Pep-C, before I became a part of it, Pep-C was a ‘publishing machine.’ Almost all of the funding that came in was spent on publishing preparedness monographs of various types. The things we now get from government entities were not available, and so on typewriters and a copy machine, they would type up a monograph on the basic supplies you need for preparedness for two weeks. Or how to preserve or store water, how to make it safe. Or, Washington is earthquake country, this is what to expect. Wide, wide variety of publications that have now fallen into disuse because we have the slick printed versions available from the county and from the state and federal governments.

JO: Who was president when you came in? Was it Dave Watson? Or someone else between Dave and you?

DL: President of the organization when I first joined, I do not remember.

JO: Dave said he passed his materials on to that person and cannot remember that person’s name.

DL: This was before Dave was president. Dave Watson was a principal at Artondale Elementary and was a very important part of Pep-C’s goal to help schools be prepared. We did a lot, of course, with Artondale, and the other elementary schools, to get their individual ‘comfort pacts’ as part of what they did. Every child would bring or be provided with a comfort pack that was put in storage with their name on it so if something bad happened, they would have this. It’s like a go-and-grab bag. It had just a few items of food and something to drink and a comfort item that was important to them.

JO: That was a great idea.
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DL: Yeah. It continued for some time, but it seems to have fallen into disuse because of storage problems and, quite honestly, they haven’t had to use it, and so, “Gee, if I didn’t use it in the last year, maybe it’s not necessary.” Never mind that the earthquake is coming; we all know that.
One of the projects that we took on in conjunction with the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) of Pierce County is retrofitting the lights of an elementary school with plastic sleeves around every fluorescent tube, because the fluorescent tubes are vulnerable to falling. We went out and had this whole raft of tubes to put around the bulbs. We did that and felt very good about one school. At the end of that they added up the costs involved in terms of labor and whatnot, and said, “You know, that wasn’t very effective. We need to look at a different way to make them good.”
We met with the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and gave talks to them. Our stock in trade in the early years was to talk to any group that we could twist their arm into giving us time. We’d join them for their regular meeting and push preparedness. We did some formalized training, but mostly it was the personal preparedness talks. These are the things you need and this is how you get about it. We depended upon the fire department to provide the medical training and the CPR training because they were prepared to do it. They had all the training and the certification and why reinvent the wheel.

JO: How do you find things now? How many years were you president, first of all?

DL: I was president for two years, I believe. Before me, Marvin Nauman was president and he was president for about three years. And before him, it was Ken Roberts. Have to come back to that. He did a good job. He was only president for perhaps two years. Dave Watson was president for years and years and years because nobody else would step forward.

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Well, let’s see. I had a thought in there. Oh! The Preparedness Fairs! The first fair was held at Chapel Hill Church, I believe it was in 2012,

JO: Were you president then?

DL: I don’t believe so.

JO: What years were you president? You just left when Curt Scott came in. This was Curt’s second year that ended so he’s going into his third year now. So, around 2016?

DL: Could have been. 2014-2016. Something like that. We held the Preparedness Fair at Chapel Hill. It was designed as a minimal cost fair. Chapel Hill provided all the facilities without cost. People were invited to contribute if they were a commercial organization, and the sum was huge! It was $25 per booth only for the ‘for profits.’ The nonprofits were provided booths at no charge. We had about nine hundred to a thousand participants come through. It just worked very well. I think it was at that fair, that Tom Miner who was with the Pierce County Sherriff’s Department gave the keynote speech. His topic was, “When bad things happen, you’re on your own.” We do not have the manpower to rescue you, so be prepared. It was very well met. The fire department, the sheriff’s department…all the agencies I could twist their arms, did a great job. Two years later in about 2014, we held a second one at Chapel Hill. We had a little over a thousand people go through. That one, Ken was the president and we had quite an active organization committee of which Ken was a part. We had the Boy Scouts that met at the LDS Church demonstrate Dutch Oven Cooking in the parking lot. We created a fire pit environment for them to use and that was well received.

JO: Was Ken LDS?

DL: Yes.

JO: I can track him down that way.

DL: I’ll figure out the name soon, because he’s still active but not with Pep-C.
We also began a series of meetings with the MACC, the Multi-Agency Coordinating Committee. That involved police, fire, utilities, roads, everybody who had a response to an emergency on the peninsulas was a part of that organization, including the hospital. It involved generally a quarterly meeting, sometimes a bit more often than that, where a discussion of operations was held. During the snow/ice storm, we had a severe snow and ice storm with a lot of wind that really raised havoc. The MACC opened up and they created a coordinated task force to handle the roads, the power, and the emergency response so we had fire, roads and power all working together. And it worked! It was textbook perfect. They got through the area like gangbusters when other regions were saying, “Help me! Help me!” They were doing it. It became a model for the state.

JO: Do they still meet? Are they still active?

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DL: Shortly after this time it became apparent that the MACC was really too many groups all under one umbrella. There were responders. There were preparers. And there were hangers-on. The responders needed to talk about the details of their response. There was so much other clutter in the meetings that they were not effective. So, they are meeting separately on about a quarterly basis if I understand. Pep-C is not a part of most of those discussions. When preparedness comes into the agenda, Pep-C will be invited to participate. Dave Watson has been the principal representative of Pep-C to go to that.

JO: We’ve had a couple more fairs. They’ve switched to Gig Harbor High School

DL: Yes. The Peninsula School District and Gig Harbor High School have hosted the last two fairs. Very, very good venue for that. We had a much larger display area and more people displaying at the one two years ago now.

JO: I think that was in September, eighteen months apart.

DL: Attendance was OK. It was figured to be right around a thousand people. Then, this year we had another one at Gig Harbor High School. Smaller number of displays. The first fair, we had way too many classes and discussions where a person just couldn’t get around. We had the chief seismologist from the University of Washington giving a presentation in the gym. Attendance really wasn’t what it should have been for that quality of presentation. So, the one this year, we cut way back on the number of presentations and were competing with the first real nice weekend of spring. So, attendance was in the eight hundreds.

JO: I think that’s pretty good. I didn’t think it was that high.

DL: Well, it may not have been.

JO: We didn’t keep lists of it this year.

DL: It was down considerably.

JO: Well, this is wonderful. I had an idea, but it’s wandered away somewhere in this pit here. Did I hear that you were a fire chief at one time?

DL: I was a battalion chief. It was interesting, When I was hired as a firefighter, they doubled the size of our response group. They had had four full time firefighters; one per shift at a time, and one working weekdays. They hired four of us so that doubled the number so we had two people on shift at a time. There was no central dispatch so if we got an alarm, by lots we chose who was going to be dispatcher and who was going to be first out. If it were a fire alarm, the dispatcher would follow as soon as he dispatched the call and there would be nobody on the central radio. It was all the mobile radios on the response rigs. At that time, we had over a hundred volunteers in the district and we had two on duty firefighters.

JO: What year was that?

DL: It was 1980, the year that Mt. St. Helen’s blew until probably about 1985…could have been ’84. And then we were able to add more personnel. At about the end of the first year, they tested for captain because we were all just firefighters and one had more seniority than another, but he was still a firefighter. So they said, “We need a hierarchy,” and I was lucky enough to be selected after a year-and-a-half on the department. That position transisted into battalion chief. I held that until my retirement in the year 2000.

JO: That’s good to know. What did you think about Cascadia Rising? Did we participate in that at all?

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DL: Pep-C did not participate in Cascadia Rising. We haven’t been involved in any or many of the regional exercises because our forte has been in preparedness. We’ve been the group that goes out and talks people into being prepared. We don’t have a significant role in response. So, as that happens, we don’t take a me-too role in the big exercises.

JO: As the population here is really growing, how do you feel we are doing in the sense of rescue, response…certainly, if there is the big one, nobody can get to anybody to help you out. The roads will be down, the freeway passovers will be a mess. They may be up, but the land around them may be down. So, I’m thinking, the population has grown, have the fire and police departments grown with the rest of the population?

DL: The fire department has kept reasonably well with the population growth. They now staff, I believe, five stations full time and they have a minimum of about fifteen firefighters on duty at every moment. Police, not so much.

JO: I hear police and sheriff. What is it in Gig Harbor?

DL: Gig Harbor city has its own police department. They have increased markedly, but still they have, I would doubt that they have four officers on duty at one time. The Sheriff’s Department, if they have two or three officers on duty for both peninsulas, that would be full staffing. One of the big differences between the different departments, the fire department is a junior taxing district. They are not beholden to the city of Gig Harbor or the County for their funding. The residents of the fire districts have voted a basic rate of taxation on themselves, and that pays for the fire services. The library works the same way. They are a junior taxing district. All of the junior taxing districts have a lid which cumulatively they cannot exceed without a special election of the people. So the fire district in 1978, they voted a bond issue to build new fire stations. At that time, nine stations were constructed under that bond to give equal coverage throughout the Fire District Five area. District 16, I can’t speak to because I wasn’t a part of that district.

JO: Now we’re running low on tape, is there anything you would like to add?

DL: Yes. One of the other areas I’m involved in is Shelter Manager for the shelter at Chapel Hill Church. Chapel Hill is the largest shelter on the Gig Harbor Peninsula. Key Peninsula has Key Peninsula Lutheran Church. This is a very active and good shelter preparedness organization. We have capability and emergency power to operate twenty-four-seven at Chapel Hill for the shelter. We haven’t had to open it except for minor emergencies and I hope it stays that way.

JO: All this preparation and we’re hoping never to have to use it.

DL: Exactly.

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JO: Just like having a little insurance policy. You hope never to have to use your insurance policies either. Well, that’s great. We’re pretty much near the end of the tape. This has been wonderful. So much information.

DL: So I talked continuously; talked your leg off.

JO: No. No. It was all valuable.

DL: Well, thank you.

JO: Thank you! All right. Closing off.

THE END

Interview by Jane Olive

JO:  We Are :ocated at 3801 75th Ave Ct NW; Gig Harbor, WA 98335 Artondale. March 29th, 2019 Dave Watson is being interviewed for his work with Pep-C and the interviewer is Jane Olive

JO:          Dave, when were you born?

DW:       1942, 21st of August. I remember it well.

JO:          Place of birth?

DW:       Seattle

JO:          Have you lived most of your life in this area?

DW:       Washington. I was away in the navy.

JO:          You’re married. You’re wife’s name?

DW:       Susann.

JO:          Kids?

DW:       We have three kids. They’re all in the area.

JO:          And how many grandkids?

DW:       I have ten right now and two great grandbabies.

JO:          You smile great big when you talk about those. They must be darling. So, occupations…when were you in the navy?

DW:       In the early sixties. Four years. On a ship for most of that time. My navy experience was school and on an aircraft carrier, USS Hornet in the Pacific.  4 years, I was in the Navy Nuclear Weapons Program which included handling, arming, maintenance, repair of many types of nuclear weapons. I had and have a TS clearance.

JO:          Those were the Kennedy years.

DW:       Kennedy was killed when I was in Japan.

JO:          Were you involved at all in the Cuban blockade?

DW:       Yes. I was in the Pacific. When the Cuban thing happened, I was in nuclear weapons and we went to DEFCON 3. We armed two of them. One on a plane and one on the hanger deck.

JO:          Scary!

DW:       Yep. We had radio silence for ten days. Went up off the Russian coast. Yeah, that was not fun.

JO:          Have you ever seen the movie, Thirteen Days? What did you think of it?

DW:       When you’re out there doing it, you don’t hear all the stuff. We didn’t know any of the details of this thing going on. No one talked to each other; to your people back home.

JO:          After you got out of the navy?

DW:       I went to college. Ended up teaching. Went to Seattle Pacific College. I graduated with two degrees. I worked at Boeing while I was going to college; at the calibration lab at Federal Boeing Field for flight tests, doing all the instruments they were doing.

I was raised at the campus there. I lived in a dorm. My dad was a professor there. He was Dean of Education and Dean of Math.  My grandfather was the President.

JO:          Wow! So education was your heritage.

DW:       Yeah, it was.

JO:          You said you have two degrees.

DW:       Yes. I have a bachelors and a masters. Then I worked at Renton and got laid off. The tax thing. You know about that? The state was going to tax Boeing on the planes they had on hand on one day of the year. So, Boeing was not stupid; they flew all the planes out of state. Then the district lost all of us. They laid off all the first year teachers and half the second year teachers. Anyway, I was fired.

JO:          And what did you teach?

DW:       I was elementary. I taught sixth grade.  Well, I came to the Peninsula District after that. I worked at several schools, and taught third grade, fifth grade, fourth grade, sixth grade. And then I became a principal. I started at Evergreen, half-time teacher, half-time principal. Then I moved to Artondale. I was there eighteen years. Tore it down, built a new one, and now they want to tear it down again. I’m not sure why. I don’t think they know all the facts.
And then I joined the fire department here as a volunteer. That was at the Arletta Station when we lived there. Then we moved to North Rosedale so I was at the Rosedale Station. Then they built the new one and I was at the Swede Hill Station. I was a captain, an EMT, for twenty-six years. Lot of aid calls; I was in most of the homes here in those days for various reasons. I used to go across and get the firetruck and go on fire calls when I was at school. My superintendent said it was OK.

JO:          Well, that’s life in a small town.

DW:       It was then. Not so much now.

JO:          I’m going to stop it and make sure we’re getting good sound…OK. Any hobbies and interests?

DW:       We have a cabin. We like to go in the woods. This is at Black Diamond. Neared the mountains. Near the Green River Gorge. Been all over that area. And we RV, and we dance.

JO:          What kind of dance?

DW:       We like to waltz, polka, things like that.

JO:          Could you give me a year when you actually came to Gig Harbor.

DW:       Came in ‘78 to have a house, but we came before that, we rented. I was trying to get a job somewhere else, so we moved to Enumclaw for two years. In 76 and 79.

JO:          Would you spell that for me. I’m new up here.

DW:       E-n-u-m-c-l-a-w. I was their first EMT in that department. They had no idea what to do with me.

JO:          And what is an EMT?

DW:       Emergency Medical Technician. I was in the first class here in Gig Harbor. That’s when Medic One started in Seattle, and it kind of spread out into the hinterlands. We had a class of about twenty-five of us. And that was the first time we had aid service to the citizens, other than an ambulance.

JO:          There wasn’t a hospital here.

DW:       No. Years ago there was…a little tiny one. That was down in the Harbor. It was long gone when I came. Yeah, it was a long way to the hospital. Long way. I figure I’ve done roughly five hundred car wrecks and thousands of aid calls over the years.

JO:          How did you get interested in the Emergency medic work?

DW:       A friend of ours wanted me to be in the fire department when I was in Arletta. So I joined up.

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JO:          Well, that was quite a career in itself!

DW:       I loved the medical part. There haven’t been many fires here. As we grew, the homes, they don’t burn as many. But I don’t like the junk in Olympia. Paper. Paper requirements and constant fiddling. The fire department’s great. It’s a really good fire department.

JO:          Well, I was a school teacher too. Primary grades, special education. I always thought the administrators’ job was to think up more paper work for us to do; as if we weren’t busy enough!

JO:          When did you become involved in Pep-C.

DW:       Pep-C didn’t exist. Some of us were concerned about – well, it started out with earthquakes. We took some FEMA classes here locally, in various places. I started in about ’74 learning things and then we started some dialogue. When we first started we had an ex DEA agent, I can’t remember his name. He started getting the whole shebang about getting the departments together.

JO:          What is the DEA?

DW:       What is it? The Drug Enforcement Administration. He was a drug agent.  I don’t remember his name and he was transferred to Louisiana or someplace. This was before Don was involved.   We had a retired Navy captain, Ray Zimmerman, a wonderful man; and absolutely marvelous guy. We got all the agencies together, the schools, the power, the phones, the police and the fire with two departments on the two peninsulas. We actually had the state patrol there for a while but they’re so shorthanded, that disappeared. Once the city was a city, we had them. We had Gretchen Wilbert for years. She was the mayor. She used to teach kindergarten for me. And when she retired she went into politics. She was a feisty little gal. She was a nice lady. She’s passed away now.

We had a lot of, as the membership grew, we tried to involve the community so we had a lot of military who took leadership in their neighborhoods and they would join, but of course, they’ve all joined the big gate in the sky by now.

JO:          Well, this sounds to me like, when the town was smaller, I may be jumping the gun here, but it sounds like neighbors knew each other and so you could get together and talk about it.

DW:       It’s much denser now. Our problem at that time, we were teaching, this is before PC-NET. We would go out to neighborhoods. The hardest thing to do at that time was defining a neighborhood. Everybody thinks like a town now, but then it wasn’t like that at all. Your nearest neighbor might be a quarter-mile away on the peninsula. It used to be that way here. This used to all be bare land.

JO:          It may be that people chose to live in isolation. So they didn’t really want to be cozy.

DW:       They don’t have any choice now. The land is disappearing. Gig Harbor High School was to be about here on the other side of 40th. It was beautiful timberland. They made a deal to move it to where it is now because of sewers.  So that eliminated that problem for them. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous site. It would have had a middle school with it too. It was that big. Now it’s all homes.

We had uh, I know where you’re going with the question, I think. Stop me if you want. Anyway, we did OK. We did strategic plans, emergency plans for the county. We were working in concert with the county before they really had the Department of Emergency Management. And then it sort of evolved as the need grew. I was sent to FEMA Academy by the district and then I was co-sent at another time by the school district and I was also sent by the fire department for a different class.

Pep-C; we had a lot of retired engineers on board. They were joining. We started planning for the schools. We did an assessment. We had structural engineers as members or we drafted some. We did all the schools that existed at that time. Did a needs assessment, and then we formed teams. We went into the schools on the weekends; bolted, moved, strapped down, screwed to the floor. The schools were built different then. They didn’t have any idea of escape and things like they do now. And the new codes after 1998 helped a lot. Anyway, we did all the schools. High schools were more difficult because the assumption was that they’d get out of there; get in their cars and run and try to get home. Little kids, you have to keep them in tow.

JO:          In Hugh’s mind, you headed this up. He thinks it was a marvelous work that you did.

DW:       After that, I was part of the district, of course, doing this stuff for the district…

JO:          Is Ray Zimmerman still involved?

DW:       No. We don’t know if he’s passed away. He wanted to be with his children who are all military and they’re living south. He was in a motor home and finally they abandoned ship. I was so sad to see him go. He was a peach of a guy.

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We did kits in all the schools. The district paid for it. We involved the prison. We had all the medical guys, we had ER doctors and nurses, kind of get together, and our district nurses and the fire department and they said, “What do we need when the building falls down?” So we built kits out big plastic tubs like Tupperware. No, Rubbermaid. Anyway, we had a certain size kit; like a high school would have five kits, middle school would have three, and a big elementary school would have three. We’d get all this stuff together at a school, Artondale I think, yes, it was Artondale. We got prisoners and they came and they put all these kits together. And, we had an escape. One escaped. They let these people talk to their friends. Well, they knew they were coming and they went. Anyway, we made kits and put them out all in all the schools. We had lights, and whistles, and space blankets. We tried to get one space blanket for every two kids, but it was kind of being squished. Always is. Anyway, every school had things they could get by with.
That started the barrel program. Pep-C got into that to make money. We used to sell space blankets, but we could not with…well, of course, now it’s all online. That was before the internet. We didn’t want to go into competition with our local merchants so we always would discuss that before we had any kind of promotion thing. Ace Hardware had our back all the time. Later, Costco. Home Depot.  That was the early years. Of course, they weren’t around; it was all woods. That was deer country.

JO:          So, when Pep-C formed, were you the first president?

DW:       No. No. The DEA guy was. I don’t remember what they called him. I took over after Ray went south and I got all his stuff, all his maps and earthquake scare tactics that we would do with the community. That was…I was president…I don’t know, twenty years.

JO:          When did you start being president?

DW:       I don’t know. Seems nonstop. I couldn’t do it anymore. You know what I didn’t like? I didn’t like getting the agenda together and all that stuff. And I honestly (I don’t know if you want to say this), I was getting discouraged by the attendance withering down. In early times, we had everybody there. I mean it was a big meeting, fifty people. And these were all agency heads and civilians. Well, you know, they are so short on time, we started losing them. Pierce Co. roads were the first to leave. They were just up against it all the time. They couldn’t meet monthly. They would come once in a while. Then we lost State Patrol because they kept reassigning the staff and they were leaner and leaner and leaner, for a while out here anyway. We got along great with them. The Sherriff would come and go. We had Sargent Hooperholtz. He lives over here. I had his daughter over at Artondale. Wonderful kid. I wonder what happened to him. I haven’t seen him since he retired; oh, one time.

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Of course, now, it’s a detachment out here; before, you might get a guy from Lakewood driving down here like crazy to come to a call. You know, it’s a lot nicer now. And everything is funding now. We didn’t have all the funding then. When I started at the fire department, we bought our own jackets to go on an aid call. Sew the patches on your jacket. But the times have changed. Anyway, we had problems with the agencies. I think the biggest thing was the regular meetings. They were being pushed by all their people to have meetings too. Their time is just pressed, so we lost them. That’s when they separated. They have the MACC now installed. I don’t remember what it used to be called; “interagency” or something like that. We had already done two plans by the time they broke out; two emergency plans for the county. Those things that go on the shelf and nobody reads.

About that time, the computer was coming in, about the time we separated; and I might be a little foggy here. The County came in and we kind of took over. We were out training neighborhoods. They kind of wanted to do it, and of course, our people said, “If you’re going to do it, why would I do this?”

Understand, a lot of us were younger then, most of us, and so we had all this energy. Let’s go down and take Joanne Gray. She was a volunteer and she was a couple of the officers. It was like a crusade for her. She was really a nice lady, suffered physically, but she was really, really, a nice person; and lived not too far from here. She was involved about twenty years. And she passed away. It can’t remember the disease, but it might have been MS. She brought her parents in too. He was retired army and the nicest people in the world. And all of a sudden they didn’t come. They were in it about a year-and-a-half and they didn’t come any more when we heard she passed. Then they went to a home. You know, life changes! Changes all the time.

JO:          It certainly does!!!

DW:       Anyway, the agencies went their own way and Pep-C turned into a…and this was a hard sell. I was a first responder for most of the time I was in this thing. And it’s hard for civilians and not think they’re going to be there when the bell rings. And we had various people with their personalities and things, and it was just a hard pill that they didn’t think they were going to be in the action. But the agencies don’t want people they aren’t used to, or trained with, to go to things or do things.

JO:          Oh, so you mean like people were joining Pep-C hoping they would go out on runs?

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DW:       Well, they want to do something. Comes the big day, they want to be able to do something. And you see that all the time. Maybe you’re that way.

JO:          Sure! But just in my neighborhood. I want to be helpful in a crisis.

DW:       The agencies found it hard to work with them, especially because of their liability. The law enforcement are really that way!! I mean they hold everything close. And I don’t blame them because they have to go through the court system. And the fire is always under scrutiny, as all agencies are. We had a hard time all these years with the phone company. They were kind of in a land by themselves. (Don’t embarrass me here too much). They were kind of, “We’re going to do our thing, no matter what you guys want to do.” And you can understand that. They’re the underground stuff and not up in front. But they’re better. They got better. They just don’t want to come to meetings. In the early years, the light company was that way. Then they got way better! Because they knew they had to work in concert with everybody.
I think the thing that turned them was the big ice storm. I was at school. Our buses were underway and we had all the busses turn around that we could get on the radio. The kids were brought in and kept at Artondale. The trees and limbs were falling like crazy. The power lines, you could hear explosions. Boom! Boom! Boom! That’s the time, when they went out on a call that day or the next day, they went down to Key Peninsula and they had guys draw guns on them. “You get my house, right now!” They had to call law enforcement. After that the whole thing changed. They started sending teams – law, fire, whatever was appropriate, you’d get a team to go.

JO:          That’s a great story! That storm lasted quite a while; ten, nineteen days in some places?

DW:       I don’t remember, but it was a long one. That was pre-prison. They were always sort of in a world to themselves. They really kind of came around, to the fire department anyway. In the early years, it was a different kind of prison. They had one firearm in a safe with the warden. They had people escaping all the time. They’d just run down to 16 and hitch a ride. It happened so much that they didn’t go looking for them. Why? Why would you do that? Because they’d go right back to where they came from and they’d find them the next day. No chase, no problem. I worked there two summers to make extra money. Teaching. Quite a place. Anyway, it’s much more organized now.

JO:          And I have the impression it’s now used for rehabilitation.

DW:       They’ve had a lot of good programs to do that; the dog thing, baby sitting, and things like that. They have the “Four-Steps” program.  They’ve done that with buildings now. They used to have the “hole” (isolation) I taught in there. A lot of people were mentally ill. When I moved up north and had the station for that, I’d go there with fire trucks. There were always suicides. I went to three hangings there.

JO:          People get hopeless.

DW:       But! They’re better now. I went to two babies. They’re better now. I think they have an RN always on. They used to have an RN occasionally. That part’s better. They’re good neighbors; that’s what I tell everybody, they never ask for sugar.

DW:       Back to Pep-C. I got worn out that’s why I left. I’d been doing it since the 70s. It’s just a long haul. And then I got interested, when I retired, I was the safety officer for the district after I retired.

JO:          When did you retire, Dave?

DW:       Two thousand. I worked for them for a couple of years. I was a kind of roving safety guy doing their emergency plan, things like that. Anyway, I got out of the fire department. I kind of got hurt, I couldn’t lift big people anymore; I lifted the biggest man in the world; hurt my back. I’d been doing it for twenty-five years. Anyway, I got asked if I would be interested in the museum. So I started doing that. And then I was asked to be on the board, so I said “OK.” This is at Black Diamond. And then the archivist, the board, said, “We want to digitize. These aren’t holy pictures, you know, these are just pictures and we want to be able to see them.”  The archivist left and I got sort of drafted.

JO:          And when was this that you were drafted? When did you get into the museum work?

DW:       Oh, man. I think I’ve been there seven years already. I’ve been the archivist five years. I will not live long enough to digitize everything.

JO:          No. Nobody will.

DW:       Thousands! Thousands of pictures. That’s a priority because we are losing them, they’re turning white or they’re turning black. Then the documents are coming. I’ll have to get help to do that; just volunteers. You know how that goes.

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JO:          Yes. It’s a worthy project.

DW:       Yeah, it’s fun. And we were raised in that area. Have a cabin.

JO:          So how do you feel about Pep-C now?

DW:       I wanted somebody else to do it. I handed over all the stuff I had. I made a stick and I gave it to my successor and I stayed for a while. But once I wasn’t part of the fire or school districts I wondered, “Why am I here? I’m not doing any good.” I used to do a lot of stuff for the fire and that’s why we built that station, to be up on that hill there, to have one big united thing. We were going to do it up in Gig Harbor, at Kimball (you know where that is), there is a big old land there. Anyway, we decided to go up and have a training center. The back part of that building is reinforced. It’ll take a little bit of an earthquake.

JO:          A 7-point? They think?

DW:       Oh, maybe.

JO:          So you’ve just left Pep-C officially the last few months. Don and Curt were unhappy about that.

DW:       Don, he was a teacher and a fire-fighter. Then he quit to be a career fire-fighter. He was a captain and a battalion chief. Anyway, I love that guy, he’s a great guy. And Hugh, I wish he’d wear his hearing aid. Love the guy! But, you know, it wears you out. Don and I have talked for years; we’ve had some other guys too. it’s hard to get people to volunteer. Every ethnic group or social group is having exactly the same problem. The Elks are having it; the Italian clubs, they are diminishing. German House in Seattle will fold. The antique four-story house is worth a million dollars. All the gold from the Alaska gold rush went to it. It’s in the vault down there. The vault’s still there. Its right by Harbor View Hospital. It’s down about a block. Everybody’s doing the exact same thing. There’s some dance clubs we’ve been going to for years. They’re all doing the same thing. The young kids don’t want to do it. So they’re going to pass away.

JO:          But they were big in our era.

DW:       Yeah. We used to have two dance clubs; the Dakota and the Minnesota Club. They merged and I’m not sure they’re in business at all now.

JO:          Is there anything else you’d like to add?

DW:       Pep-C?

JO:          Yes.

DW:The hardest thing I think in the life of Pep-C is, people come in and want to be ‘Superman, Superwoman.’ If they could take one task and do it well, keep it a size you can do… When we were training neighborhoods, it was very successful. We had lots of people, the civilians, they wanted to be safe. And that’s changed too. Not that interest. People are coming here from the city, and they expect it to be a city. We faced this in the fire department. What do you do? You can’t have somebody right on your doorstep. You’ve got to be ready yourself. And that’s a hard sell for city people. They think the fire house is right there. And it isn’t. The same with police services. Although it’s way better now. I can remember a deputy going from Lakewood out to the Devil’s Head, out on the tip of Key Peninsula, on a call. It’s so easy to get in a wreck when you do lights and sirens and stuff. So easy. You’ve just really got to watch yourself. But those days are long gone. And they should. These people all pay taxes. They should have police service.

JO:          Well, Dave, we’re near the end of the tape. Anything else you want to add? Any thoughts?

DW:       Mix up my fire service with Pep-C too. We’ve had a lot of good police people. I tell you, they are just ground down by how many calls they get. There was a deputy, Tom Miner, and he had a dog named Major. He used to come and demonstrate his dog. Of course, he’s long gone now. I think Tom is retired. Bill Seeward, he was a peach of a guy. He got sick, but he was a nice guy; a lot of nice people. I loved PSCO Huberholz. He was kind of a gruff bear with a heart of gold.

JO:          Anything else you can think of…

DW:       No. I have all those records still in my computer. I’m not sure where it went.  It had minutes, documents we sent, forms we had, photographs, things like that.

JO:          And they’re in the computer still somewhere.

DW:       I never purged them.

JO:          We might put them on a CD.

DW:       Oh, you guys. I gave you a stick full.

JO:          And where is it? Where is the stick? Who did you hand it to?

DW:       Ken Roberts replaced me and I handed all files and records over to him.  He left with medical problems.  Marv Nauman was president for several years with me as VP to support him.

THE END

Interview by Jane Olive

JO: January 31st, 2019. interview of Hugh McMillan by Jane Olive at her home, 3801 75th Ave Ct NW; Gig Harbor, WA 98335. Interview is conducted for information on Hugh’s life and on the origins of the Peninsula Emergency Preparedness-Coalition (PEP-C).

​HM:       I was born 17 June, 1926 in New West Minister, BC, Canada.

JO:          And you were married?

HM:       Not when I was born, I wasn’t married. 

JO:          Your wife’s name?

HM:       My wife’s name is Janice and we have been together, married, for 66 years. This is after she chased me around the campus for two years before that. You believe that, don’t you?

JO:          Oh, she hog-tide you to get you to marry her! Tough woman!
HM:       I almost didn’t marry her because I knew I was going into the caldron of power, Washington, D.C., and I kind of figured the marriage would last maybe six months when somebody from Vogue magazine would spot her and say, “I don’t care what your husband is making, we’ll pay you five times as much to be a cover girl on Vogue. She was striking.  Still is.

JO:          And you have two kids:

HM:       Lance was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1956, 8th of October at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital. Same day I went into the US Navy, many years prior to that. And Marshall was born on the 28th of November, 1959. They were both born in Tokyo.

A Little vignette on that. You can erase it if you want. I came home from Langley, that’s headquarters for the CIA. Jan met me at the door and said, “Wait until you hear this one.” I said, “What’s up?” Janice said, "I answered the phone.” A woman said, “Mrs. McMillan, I am (whatever her name was. I don’t remember) Marshall’s third grade teacher and this is very difficult for me because I am his teacher and feel responsible as his third grade teacher to let his parents know that Marshall is having some serious troubles.” "Really, like what?” “Well, he’s either hallucinating or he’s fabricating, or he’s lying.” “Explain that, would you?” “Well, we were talking about the Far East and Marshall said, ‘My brother and I were born in Tokyo, Japan.’” “Yes.?” “That doesn’t trouble you?”  “No.”  "Sometime later we were talking about India and he said, ‘That’s where my Dad rented an elephant and we went on a tiger shoot.’ Are you there, Mrs. McMillan?” “Yes, I’m listening.” “And a little while later we were talking about the Middle East and he said, ‘That’s where my brother and I walked around the Great Pyramid at Giza.’ Doesn’t this trouble you, Mrs. McMillan?” “No, because this is the life we led!” And I couldn’t believe that a teacher in the Washington, DC, area hadn’t been confronted with this sort of thing because it’s full of people with similar lives.

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JO:          Hugh, could you briefly tell us about your occupations? What were your major occupations, like CIA?

HM:       My major occupation was as an Operations Officer with the CIA, but I had all kinds of other jobs. My dad died when I had just turned fifteen, and this was the Depression time. This was 1940-41. I got my first paying job for the princely salary of thirty-seven and a half cents an hour as a box-out boy for Safeway. I was with the CIA just short of twenty-seven years. Then I retired and got involved with everything in the community.

JO:          That’s what I would like you to speak to. I’ve seen you taking photographs at Altrusa, taking photographs for PEP-C. You were with the Gateway?

HM:       "I was with the Key Peninsula News and with the Gateway. Right now, I’m not really with the Key Peninsula News anymore because they have a new policy that says if I put it in the Gateway I can’t put it in the Key Peninsula news; which I think is unfortunate because I do a lot of stuff that pertains only to the Key and people will never read it. The Key Peninsula News is free. It goes out to every household on the Key Peninsula. Which is wonderful, but it comes out twelve times a year and I think the stories that I put out need to be read, should be read 52 times a year, and not by one audience but by two audiences. And that’s why I stick with the Gateway.

When we first moved here, I often heard, 'Oh, you’re one of those 8-8-4 people.' I didn’t understand what they meant. It was practically a condemnation; you know, you’re from the lower class. And I thought, this is not good. We are one community. OK? We have different villages within our one community and each village has a right to its own identity. But we better respond to the planet as one community. So, I worked pretty hard bringing our communities together, and I think I’ve had a bit of an impact, because I don’t hear, 'You’re an 8-8-4 person' anymore."

JO:          What does that mean?

HM:       “It’s the telephone number for most of the 253-884 area or whatever and the comment was derogatory. It isn’t heard anymore."

JO:          How many years have you been working for the Gateway and this other newspaper?

HM:       Oddly enough, well, let’s go back a bit. I retired in 1978 and we moved into the house we’re now in (which I tore apart and redid) on the second of July, 1978.  On the 9th of April, 1979, we lost Marshall. That made me a very angry person … you wouldn’t want to be around me. I was not a nice guy because Marshall and I were quite close; not that I’m not close to Lance, we’re a tight family.

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"Somehow, in 1980, bless the fire department, the Key Peninsula Fire Department, in that year, was almost totally volunteer. We had a paid chief and a paid mechanic and that was it. They wanted me to become a fire-fighter. I thought, This is ridiculous. But, I joined the fire department as a volunteer fire-fighter with a bunch of what I mistakenly believed to be country people whose identity was to chase around after a big, red wagon. I didn’t think it’s going to last very long, so I signed up in May of 1980 as a fire-fighter. I had had fire-fighting experience prior to that because, before I went into the agency (CIA) waiting for my clearance, I had a job at Mt. Rainier Ordinance Depot as a fulltime fire-fighter. I thought, 'What a deal this is! Twenty-four on and twenty-four off! The twenty-four off you’re in bed, exhausted. But I had the experience. I really like fire-fighters and what they do. Not too long after joining KPFD I became president of its Firefighters' association. Then, they put the screws to me and said, “You have to run for Fire Commissioner and, I’m fighting it. Long story short, I became a fire commissioner. And then I became Vice-President of the Pierce County Fire Commissioners, and then I was elected to the Washington Fire Commissioners Association Board of Directors and served on that for four of my fourteen years as a fire commissioner before retiring. 

"All of that exposed me to things that are emergencies. I was dealing with Bill Lokey who in those days was Chief of the Pierce County Emergency Preparedness (PC-Net), but it had a different name. Bill was brilliant. He took a job later that paid him three/four times what he was making here. It was back in Minnesota or something. He had a wonderful saying, “You have your choice, you mitigate now or you litigate later.” That pertains to just about anything and everything. It pertains to our school district right now. We better pass that bond. This is a digression, but an important one … did you vote?”

JO:          Not yet, I have it open.

HM:       I’m not going to say another word!

JO:          So this work in emergency preparation, did it start when you worked with Bill?

HM:       I can’t remember how I fell in with him. I know that early on, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department – Peninsula Detachment - had an office in Pierce County Fire Protection District 5, which is the Gig Harbor Fire Department, in their Kimball Drive station. That was the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department representation here; a sergeant in charge and two deputies for 114 square miles and 78,000 people. That was unacceptable. I stuck my nose in here and there and the next place, and, in addition to scores of Sheriff’s Deputies, became acquainted with all the Pierce County Sheriffs, the current one being Paul Pastor who by the way has a doctorate. Paul is just a brilliant guy, wonderful person, very human. He’s the guy who was chief of operations and was behind us in creating Citizen’s Against Crime on the Key, and that’s a whole other story. It’s a part of the whole thing, of just getting into fire, law enforcement, the whole shmeer of community protection.  

We lived in Japan. That’s a quake zone. I was astonished after being in Japan just short of six years, Janice and I were on the fantail of the President Cleveland on our way home; it was one of those rare days when you could see Mt. Fuji clear as a bell.  We stood and watched her fade in the horizon, and as soon as she went out of sight, I felt the whole world’s weight lifted off my back. I didn’t realize it, but for six years I’d been worrying about what the Japanese say, “’Jishin’ is coming; the big quake is coming.” We lived through several quakes in Tokyo, not bad ones, but enough to give you a little sense of what’s coming.

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JO:          So that made you very aware of the dangers of earthquake events.

HM:       Oh, yeah. What a quake can do. Some of the things that I’ve learned…for example, the San Francisco quake creamed the city, but what really took the city out were the fires after. And where did the fires come from? Candles. Unattended candles. That’s one of my holy points. Anybody who stands       still for more than twenty minutes is going to hear me tell them, “Never leave a room with a lit candle. Just don’t do it, or kiss your house goodbye.” And that’s the same thing that happened in Tokyo. It burned Tokyo to the ground. Candles.

JO:          Well, moving on, we have Bill Lokey and Paul Pastor.

HM:       Paul came into the scene much later. The first one on the scene was Sgt. Bill Seeward. Wonderful guy. Viet Nam vet. Tough as nails. Smart as a whip. He was very concerned about the welfare of the people on this side of the Narrows.
Oh, a little secret, I’m also one of the very few people permitted into the Washington Correction Center for Women with a camera in hand. I’ve done several stories on that. I don’t think that very many people understand that the WCCW is the second largest employer this side of the Narrows in Pierce County. It’s a huge operation. It feeds a lot of people. Part of it is because of the stupid marijuana laws; a lot of those women are in there for no crime; they had marijuana, and it’s just terrible. I’ve done a number of articles on women in there. This is digressing, but I’m going to digress anyway.

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With the women, I was surprised…I’d come in with a camera and I’d look at them and say, “Is it OK      and they’d say, “Certainly.” So I’d take pictures of them doing something. Horticulture, working with the Prison Pet Partnership Program, working with pottery, working with ‘you name it.’ It’s not a punitive institution. It is a correctional institution. It takes women who know they are no good, who know they are losers, and turns them into people who realize, “I made a mistake, but I’m a human being and I’m going to correct it.”

One of my ways with journalism is to submit to the person I’m interviewing. They do all the work and I get all the credit. But nobody ever calls and says, “McMillan, you misinterpreted me,” or “You misquoted me.” “No, I don’t think so. Is this your email? Show me where I misquoted you.” So that’s what I do. I have people write. I’ve had a number of women in the prison write whatever it was that they were doing. This is what we were doing over a period of years beginning in 1984. And that’s a whole other story. At least a dozen women who have submitted a four-and-a-half-page copy to me said, “This prison saved my life.” That’s pretty heavy stuff.

JO:          Have you kept any of those articles?

HM:       Oh, I’m sure I have. I’ve got them.

JO:          Moving on, we’ve talked about your work with the fire department, the police, the prison, the Gateway and the newspaper on the Key, anything else you want to add about your career and community activities; and then we’ll go into how PEP-C got organized.

HM:       OK. In 1983 we formed the Key Peninsula Lions Club. Janice and I were in the restaurant when I heard all this roar and laughter behind the wall and I wondered what was going on. The door burst open and a whole bunch of males came out of the room. I grabbed a couple of them and said, “What’s going on?” “We’re forming a club.” “What club?”  “A Lions Club.” “What’s that? Would I be interested? Should I participate?” “Oh, yeah, maybe.” I had to recruit myself to my own Lions Club.  But I’m a charter member and we formed with forty-eight members in 1983. We had our installation on the 18th of August of 1983. We had forty-eight members, that’s a big charter. Two years later, we were up to sixty-four members. Today, we are down to twenty members of whom maybe a dozen are active. This is happening to all kinds of service organizations. People just aren’t volunteering. I don’t know if it’s because families need two incomes or what. But it’s very difficult.

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Part of my job with the CIA was to recruit people, to tell our government what their government was up to. And I’m not going to be modest; I was pretty good at my trade. I can’t speak about that, but I can say that I have a pin with a diamond in it from Lions International for recruiting a minimum of seventy-five new Lions who have spent at least a year and a day as active Lions.

I have people say, “How do you do it, Hugh?” And I say, “It’s really simple! Two words: Ask ‘em.” If you don’t ask them don’t expect them to ask you to let them. It’s not going to happen. I’ve recruited people who dialed me a wrong number and I got a wrong number once and recruited a guy over the phone. He said, “I don’t think the Lions would have me.” I said, “Why?” “I’m blind.” “You mean you’re sight impaired?” “No. I’m blind.” “Who told you the Lions wouldn’t have you?” “Oh, would they?” “Yeah, I’m recruiting you right now. I’ll pick you up.” He became our ‘tail-twister.’ He was a very active Lion. Don’t stand still long because I’m going to put a Lions pin on you. I’ve actually recruited a Lion for the Mazatlán, Mexico, Lions. Somebody made the mistake of sitting beside me on an airplane flying back from Mexico and he became a member of the Olympia Central Lions Club.

JO:          Anything else you want to mention?

HM:       I’m involved in lots of things.

JO:          Well, your writing, journalism, and photography work takes you all over. But I want to get back to Pep-C. Who else worked with you when you guys started Pep-C?

HM:       Well, the first guy was Dave Watson. Dave was the principle of Artondale Elementary. Dave got it into his head that the schools are going to be in real big trouble when we have a calamity, like an earthquake or whatever.

JO:          When was this? Do you recall about what time was this?

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HM:       Oh, God! It would have to be at least twenty-five years ago. At least. But Dave then went to the Board and the Board said, “Sure.” So he made sure that every single one of our fifteen schools was equipped with food and water to take care of the kids for three days. He was way ahead of the curve. I’m sorry that he’s stepped out, but Dave and I go way back.

And then, Don Lee came on the scene, and Don is just solid gold. Don, and we had a lady, Joanne Gray, she was our secretary and part of our team that went into churches, schools, whatever, to tell people to get ready. We didn’t come up with the term, “YOYO” until recently. That’s about two years, maybe three or four years old.
Where did Curt Scott come from?

JO:          Let me turn the page.

HM:       Curt is our president.

JO:          Yes. Now Don was president before?

HM:       Don was president and a good one, Dave Watson was president. I have never held an office because I just don’t have that much time. But I’m there, and I try to keep our image before people and let them know there is a way to save your life and your family’s life no matter what the nature of the calamity might be. Talk to us. I’ve tried to keep our name in front of the public as much as I could because I think it is so important. Lots of people are going to die if they don’t pay attention.

JO: Who else was involved? There was another woman who was secretary for a while. I don’t know her name. I do understand that Joanne Gray has passed away?

HM:       She’s gone.

JO:          How long was she active? Do you remember?

HM:       Oh, I’m only guessing. I’d say about ten years.

JO:          And how many people came to your early meetings?

HM:       Early meetings…? Maybe a dozen.

JO:          When did you get in touch with the HAM radio folks?

HM:       You know, I’m not sure. I’m guessing about twenty years ago. Not everyone took the HAMs seriously because it’s a fun thing. Ok? It’s not a fun thing. It’s survival. Oh, another part of this, which is ancillary, is KGHP.

JO:          That’s the local radio station.

HM:       It’s the local radio station, 89.9, almost 90 is our code for it. That was put together by Max Byce, Milt Boyd, Stan Rippon, and Key Styles; all of whom are passed, they’re gone. Wonderful, wonderful people who understood radio. Keith and Stan were members of the Key Peninsula Lions Club. Max, I can’t remember if it was Max Byce or Milt Boyd were Kiwanians, so the service clubs were involved in putting that together. Both the Gig Harbor Lions and Key Peninsula Lions were at the front going out knocking on doors saying, “Hey! We need some money!” And we raised enough money to get it off the ground.

JO:          How much, do you remember?

HM: “The figure $26,000 seems to ring a bell - but I’m not at all sure. At first, radio KGHP was on about eight hours a day, roughly. Until the 26 December, 1996, when we had that horrendous ice storm which cut everything off. That’s when KGHP went twenty-four hours, twenty-four seven. It was our emergency radio. KIRO Radio is or was in those days, the emergency radio for the whole Puget Sound area. They’re located in Seattle. There isn’t a chance at all of KIRO Radio knowing that the Key Peninsula and the Gig Harbor Peninsula are in trouble. They’re going to be very lucky if they are still standing or if their antennas are still standing.

[Jane, The following is one of the things I knew I’d kick myself for not remembering to bring up during our interview:

“As part of our activities with PEP-C, many of us held neighborhood sessions in which we invited those living near us to attend briefings on how to be prepared. These were close and personal. With the help of a couple other PEP-C members like Joanne who’d bring lots of props and demo material to drive home the message of Be Prepared, Janice and I held at least three such sessions in our home over several months. When the 26 December, 1996, ice storm which cut everything off clobbered our area, our home became the place most of our neighbors came for hot food, showers, warm room, etc. because NONE of them were prepared. ALL of them are now prepared."

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JO:          I’m going to stop this now because we’re at the end of the tape.
Side II   
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JO:          A little leader in there. OK. This is the second side. We’re interviewing Hugh McMillan on his experiences with emergency preparation. We’re getting down to local radio stations and building the Pep-C organization.
HM:       Anyway, 26th December, one-nine-nine-six, we went twenty-four hours. I say we, I am no part of KGHP except being on the periphery and working whatever I can to make it happen; collecting money, getting people excited about it. It is our voice. During the, I think about nineteen days we were without power in some areas of that post-Christmas Day horror, it was KGHP that would tell us, “Do not go down such-and-such a road; it’s hot.” What do you mean by “hot road?” I mean it’s got live wires lying on the ground sparking. You go near them and you’re dead.

JO:          And that was very helpful.

HM:       Oh, yeah.

JO:          Of course, people had to have battery operated radios, that’s another thing everyone needs.

HM:       Yeah. That’s one thing we try to point out to people. I think I have in my car a wind-up radio, with a flash light. I don’t remember where I got it. I have three of them, two don’t work. I’m going to take them to the battery place and see if I can get them up.

JO:          Just to retract a little, when did you guys start thinking about, let’s see, who I have. Dave Watson, Artondale Elementary School principal, and you think about twenty-five years ago is when you guys got started.
HM:       I’m guessing. It might have been thirty years ago. See I keep forgetting that I’ve been retired for forty years. Can’t believe it! I’m not that old!
Chuckles.

JO:          So what was the reception? Did people cooperate? Were they interested? Or did they just not want to hear?

HM:       They were almost universally very interested. Don Lee and Joanne Gray and Dave Watson - and I would be there mainly with the camera so everybody knew what we were up to. We went into churches, we went into schools, we had props to go with it and handouts. We were infantile. We really didn’t know a whole bunch about how to make this thing happen. But we were determined it was going to happen. It was the determination of the core group that made us what we are today.

Let me tell you about Curt (Scott) while it’s on my mind. Curt and I have been friends for years. His wife, Patricia, was principal at the Peninsula High School. I remember one time she called, and said, “You’re the president of Citizens Against Crime?” I said, “Yes.”  She said, “I need your help.  In the park and ride near the high school, they’re passing drugs.  So we put our people in the cars that had a little sign on it that said, “Citizen’s Patrol” and the drug passing terminated. It just took one week. Anyway, that goes way, way back.

Curt and I became friends. Curt was teaching aviation at Green River College. He’s a superb pilot by the way, and a retired Air Force Light Colonel, 130 pilot. This was about four years ago, roughly, maybe only three years ago. For some reason, I started talking about Pep-C to Curt. He may have said, “Let’s do so-and-so” and I probably said, “No, I have to go to Pep-C” and he said, “What’s that?” I explained to him what Pep-C is and that we are getting our population ready to handle themselves in the big one. He said, “I bet your people don’t know the importance of small airports. Do you?” I said, “No, but you’re going to be our speaker. OK?” He said, “Sure, I’ll be happy to.” He’s a teacher so he knows how to speak and he does it very well. So I had him come to our meeting and Dave or Don, I don’t know who was president at the time, had me introduce him and Curt gave a performance on the importance of small airports. He caught our attention and four months later he became our president or chair or whatever we call them. He’s been very effective getting us more in motion.  But right now, I want to see us back in the churches.

JO:          I was going to ask you about that. What was the response of them, for example, LDS people? Mormon people are pretty good on this stuff aren’t they?

HM:       They are way ahead of everybody. They have supplies on hand; they have orientation groups. They take care of themselves, and I think they would probably help people who are not Mormons. They are well organized.

JO:          Were they able to give you suggestions? Ideas?

HM:       Yes, we’ve had them…I think some of them are members of Pep-C, probably in an advisory capacity.

JO:          I noticed when I joined Pep-C there were about four pages that listed all sorts of organizations from Pen Light to individuals who represented various clubs many churches…so when your information goes out, does it go out to all those people? And who compiled all that list?

HM:       I wish I could tell you, but I really don’t know.

JO:          Somebody did a lot of work to do that!

HM:       Oh, you bet your life.

JO:          How often did you guys meet?

HM:       We were meeting at least once a month, and we’re still doing that. And, we have added programs.  Our biggie has been for some years the Emergency Preparedness Fair which initially we held at Chapel Hill Church of which Don is a member that’s why we were able to use it; very helpful. They have huge parking lots. And then, somehow, we moved into Gig Harbor High School; I can’t remember what put us there. Curt would have a better handle on that. That’s where the last two were held, maybe the last three.

JO:          Do you get support from the local police and firemen?

HM:       Oh, yeah! Absolutely. We love them and they love us.

JO:          They encourage your efforts?

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HM:       Well, we meet as you know at the Gig Harbor Fire Department headquarters, and, once a year, we have a meeting at the headquarters of the Key Peninsula Fire Department. But the Gig Harbor Fire Department has a whole lot more money than the Key Peninsula and a bigger facility. But we want to think of us as ‘family,’ not as the Key, not as Gig Harbor, not as “5,” not as “16,” but as family. The fire people have, for years, been family, because we have mutual aid agreements. Key Peninsula has mutual aid agreements with Gig Harbor, with Port Orchard's Kitsap 7. We also have a relationship with Mason 5 which is the Allyn fire department. We support one another. If we have a need for manpower or equipment, the call goes out and they’re here for us. We’re here for them and they’re here for us. It’s just wonderful.

JO:          How do you feel it’s going with the community? Do you feel people listen? Do you feel people are setting up their households and neighborhoods? Or, is that a struggle?

HM:       It’s a struggle, but it’s happening. Very slowly. Curt arranged to have TV Station Five (KING) come out here. We had a long interview at the Home Port restaurant in Home. Curt, myself, and a photographer, and two reporters from KING. After we had a discussion, we went out in the field and KING made videos of several bridges, the Home Bridge was one, the Purdy Bridge and the Fox Island Bridge, with a pretty heavy duty explanation of the fact that these bridges will be out. If we have a quake anywhere near eight, it’ll take them. We took the KING team around to different areas where the road is not going to exist. It’ll be in the sea or in the valley; not something to drive on. We try so desperately to impress upon people that they’ve got to be able to take care of themselves for a minimum of three days, and, in our case, it’s three weeks; three days for people in Tacoma where they have access to all kinds of stuff. Three weeks for us because we are going to become an island, both of our peninsulas. One of the things we did with KING was go out to Fox Island which is way ahead of any other community in preparation. They have radio, they have a supply system, they have a communications system where there isn’t any radio or telephone with people whether they’re on bicycles or horseback. They’re well organized. They don’t think so, we look upon them as the paragon of all virtues and they don’t think they’re ready. They’re much bettrer prepared than anyone else.

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JO:          Now Loa Anderson lives out there. She does a lot of teaching on food storage and preparation. Have you met Loa?

HM:       I have not.

JO:          OK. She had weekly articles in one of the local newspapers for some time.

HM:       That would be the Gateway newspaper, or the Gig Harbor Life paper, and it’s gone.

JO:          Yes. She used to publish articles every weekend with stories on preparation.

HM:       I never got that paper. It was always circulated in Gig Harbor proper. I saw two or three copies. It was a good paper. Rick Halleck was the editor and I hope he’s not still looking for a job. He was my editor at the Peninsula Gateway at one time.

JO:          Oh, Cascadia Rising was held in 2016. What were your feelings about Cascadia Rising? Remember, they had this…I remember because it was held shortly after I moved here. They had all the military, police, sheriffs, radio people, for a whole day acting as if there was this catastrophe happening. They were practicing for it and they called it “Cascadia Rising.”

HM:       Oh, yeah! I forgot about that! I don’t think it touched a whole bunch of us. Not that it wasn’t a wonderful thing, particularly that it involved the military, I don’t think it was well enough published because I had trouble remembering it when you mentioned it; which means I probably was not involved. That probably means I was out of the country because this is something I don’t talk about.

JO:          How do you feel about your life efforts with the community? Meaning you guys with Pep-C.

HM:       I think we have done as good a job as is possible to do in these times with the assets we have. And with the ingrained attitude of some people, “There is nothing I can do.” That’s something we have to work on, and we’re pretty dedicated to that. That’s what we’ve been dedicated to for as long as I’ve been around.

JO:          Do you also get the impression that people don’t even want to hear about it?

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HM:       Some people…and we won’t use this…but the recorder will pick it up anyway. I was on the board of the Washington Fire Commissioners Association until 1996 and I was talking about a quake and our need as Washington Fire commissioners to get the word out that we better be prepared to handle it or to at least get our populations ready to handle it. The guy who was the secretary…. said, “Hugh, if we have a quake of 8.5 and above, just grab your ass and say goodbye to it.” That was his answer to being prepared for a quake. This is at the top level of the Washington Fire Commissioners Association.

JO:          So people are skeptical about it; but I have heard, particularly here on the peninsula, most of our homes are wood, stick houses, so they won’t have the same problem as the multistory buildings, concrete buildings will have. So, in that sense, we are better off. But our doors may be jammed, our windows scewed.
HM:       That’s correctable. But when a building is down because it’s made of mortar and brick, that’s not correctable. You have to start from scratch.

JO:          Is there anything else you think we should touch on?

HM:       I don’t really…off of the top of my head, Jane. But I’m sure as I’m driving home I’m going to say, “Why didn’t you tell Jane about ….!”

JO:          Well, we have a little tape left and we now know how to use the machine. We can always do it again. I can haul the machine out after a meeting and we can …

HM:       Huge step forward!

JO:          And we did this! I’m going to sign us off now.

HM:       Are you going to talk to Curt and Don and Dave?

JO:          Yes. All four of you if I can. Dave is next on my list because Don’s been out of town.

HM:       Dave’s probably at Black Diamond.

JO:          I don’t know where that is.

HM:       It’s a coal mining town on a lake, and he and Sue have had a house there for summers for years. I think they have moved there permanently. He’s a loss. He, more than anyone else, was the glue that put this thing together. I like to think that I helped him, but he is one that got it on. And, stepping right in behind him, Don. They are both Fire District 5 people.

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JO:          Well, I’m planning to interview Don and Dave, I just have to get to them and have this machine working.

HM:       Yes. That’s helpful. I’m trying to think of some of the people prior to them. Oh, God, yes. Is it 4:30 PM? At five o’clock, I’ve got to shoot kids at Vaughn Elementary.

JO:          We’ll stop right now. Thank you, Hugh, for sharing your stories. Have you given me permission to put this on the website if I can condense this and make a little history if you like?

HM:       You can do anything you like with it.

JO:          You have to sign the release.

HM:       I’ll sign it if you want.

JO:          We’re doing paper work now. I’ll turn this off.

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JO:          When KING was here… 

HM:       One of the things we did, Curt as you know, has his own four seat airplane, pilot and three. When we got to Fox Island and gave people a chance to get photographs with their various equipment, etc. We went to the airport. KING Video photographer, the reporter and I got in Curt’s plane and we flew all over this area. “That’s the bridge we were talking about. That will not exist. That whole hillside will not exist. It will be in Puget Sound.” The roads will be gone. We did this with KING and KING put it on their broadcast that night and it was fabulous.  I don’t know if we have a copy of the KING broadcast. We should. Maybe Curt has. Curt’s the one to ask on that one.

JO:          OK. We should gather things like that together. It’s a shame to let it get lost.

HM:       I don’t know why, but all the organizations I belong to, and there’s a bzillion of them, nobody has made an effort to have a scrapbook history. I don’t know why. Citizens Against Crime; there’s nothing. There was, but it’s gone. All of them, and it’s a damn shame because a lot of people put a lot of themselves into these things to make them happen.

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JO:          Maybe they don’t feel their lives are important. They’re out here in the boondocks and what does it matter.

HM:       Look at what I do. There’s nothing important in that until you have this happen. I’m at a Christmas party. I see this really quite handsome fellow and he’s with a lady I happen to serve on another board with; that’s the Peninsula Schools Education Foundation. I think, “Maybe he’s her husband” because she and I get along famously. So I walked up to him and I said, “Have we met?” He said, “Well, sort of.” He’s a forty-two-year-old command pilot with United Air Lines on a 747. “You took my picture and put my story in the paper when I was a freshman at Peninsula High School”. That’s what keeps me breathing.

JO:          OK. What we need to do is have you sign this consent and have you do what you need to do. Thank you so much, Hugh.    The End – 324

POSTSCRIPT:  On March 30, 2019 Hugh McMillan received a Plaque of Thanks recognizing his good deeds from a grateful community. It was presented at the Lions Club Banquet which was held at the Key Peninsula Civic Center. The award was commemorated with a bronze plaque at an installation ceremony held on June 11, 2019. The plaque lists many of McMillan’s accomplishments as well as his decades of service to the community. It has been placed on a post in front of the Key Center Fire Station. Frank Brubaugh, Chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners, notes that Sheila Niven and Stan Moffett spearheaded this tribute to McMillan, and that members of the community joined with local firefighters to make this award and plaque possible.