Veterans Interview: Chuck Olmstead with Ron Brockman

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

This special answers for elders podcast honoring military veterans his sponsored by carriage. For more information about carriage, the website is sear EA gecom. Well, this is Chuck Olmstead. I’m down here at Patriots landing and Dupont Washington and our guests today on answers for elders is Ron Brockman. Ron, welcome to answers for elders. Thank you. Well, we love to hear the stories of our veterans and I understand that you retired as a captain from to services, well, actually just from the Navy, just from the Navy when you were a marine as well. Yes, well, we’re going to hear a little bit more about how that happened, a little bit more of your story. But I always like to go back to the beginning of a story, and that was where were you born, CODYAC Alaska Kodiak? What year? Nineteen forty. Okay, so you were born right at the beginning of the well, at the Pacific War was had started, just not to warn, in December of nineteen forty. Interesting, and so a year you were year old before Pearl Harbor. Yeah, so you probably had some vague memory towards the end of the war, I would think of life in the Pacific or do you remember any of that when the war ended? That’s kind of interesting. What I do remember is seeing planes flying over towing targets. Interesting because we had a navy base in Kodiak in those days and they flew a lot of planes out of there. So, yeah, that that’s about all I can remember. Huh. which the town was filled with servicemen, right. What did your family do there on and Kodiak? My Dad worked in the fisheries industry. So Uh Huh, UH, Huh. Interesting. So tell me about Kodiak. Growing up in Kodiak wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Yeah, outdoors everything, fishing, hunting, hiking, whatever. Uh Huh, Uh Huh. So we graduated from high school there. Yeah, obviously. And what happened after high school? Well, I graduated and what may or so, and in the next year, well, went to the University of Alaska for a year, not for a year, for semester, and then later on I joined the Marine Corps in November of fifty eight, nine hundred and fifty nine. So you would have been about nineteen years old then. I have actually about eighteen. I was as I graduated in high school at Seventeen. I see, I see, so join the joined the Marine Corps. And so then where were you? Where did you do your training? Then Camp Pendleton, California. MMM, MMM, so what was your assignment? You know, coming out of penalts, and what were you what were you doing? Well, I didn’t have much time to do anything because that’s when I got sent to the Naval Academy. Interesting. How did that happen? Well, the year before, when I was at the University of Alaska, I had seen an ad and burned some notice in the paper that the congressman was looking for people that are interested in going to the service academies. So I wrote to him and told him I was interested. I had no clue what I was doing to do that, and so he nominated me and I flunk the entrance exam. So the following summer, when I was out commercial fishing, I wrote him a letter and thanked him for the opportunity to have tried and said I wish I could get over my deficiency and try again, and I just kissed it off and write day I graduated from Marine Corps boot camp. I got my next my nomination again from the same congressman. Interesting, and I got on my first leave out of after boot camp, I went down to la or wherever was the nearest city, and bought a book how to prepare for the college entrance examinations and I memorize that damn thing and I went in take the exam and passed it. Interesting. Yeah, so Naval Academy. Yep, that would have been about one thousand nineteen, six thousand and sixty one. I was a class of sixty four. MMM MMM. So how long did you stay there in the academy? Three years. Three years. It’s a four year course. Yeah, so what happens after the academy? Well, I had to go back into being an enlisted marine again, I see. And but and I went down and I told my congressman. He said Bologny, he said you’re out. And then that was on a Friday and on Monday, I might, discharge came through. I see. I mean he just called up and started yelling at people in that got me out of the enllisted marines. MMM. So went boot back to Kodiact, go fishing again. I see. So how long did you do that commercial fishing? I spent five seasons on a salmon boat. Interesting, six weeks on a crab boat. That was enough for me. That crab boats. Those are tough, aren’t they? Oh Man, the winner winter weather, you know. HMM. So out on the bearing bearing see that. No, CODYAC seas, on the KDIAC seas. Yeah, is I. is that tougher than the bearing sea or no, not, nearest just as tough, is it? Yeah, yeah. So, but then you went back into the service. Is that correct? Well, the yeah, I had gone into the Alaska National Guard after or high school? What? During high school actually, and I went back into the guard after after all this. MMM, and that was the beginning of my long time association with the military to yeah, so how does that work? So then, when were you considered active military during that entire time as part of the National Guard? Is Part of no, not not. You’re not considered active. You’re considered a reservist. I see. Uh Huh. So, and that all adds up to retirement. Nice. See. So then after fishing and and being in the National Guard, so then what happens next? Well, I kept going back to college and so forth. Came down to Seattle, was going to school down here, ended up getting married, went on a Seattle Police Department hmm for six months and then decided to go back to school full time. So dropped out of the Police Department and actually my wife and I ended up in Fairbanks going back to college up there when she got pregnant and we didn’t have any money and didn’t have a job. So what I needed to find a job, so I went down to the police department. They hired me right on the spot. So interesting. Another six months as a coup MMM, and I asked for time off to study for finals and they wouldn’t give it to me, so I said goodbye. Yeah, college is more important. Yeah, and you are studying for I didn’t know what then, Isa, studying, trying to get a degree. Yeah, well, eventually you went back into the service full time. Well, not quite, not quite. Well, tell me about it. Well, it’s gets real disjointed at this point. I see I’ve I’m not an MD, I’m a Doo. Do you know what a d I don’t know what a deal is. Doctor of astyopathy. Okay, Osteopathic Medicine. All we do. We do everything a MD does, plus manipulation of the back and whatnot. So anyway, when I graduated, trying to find an intern the other thing is that different is the deal? It’s require that you have obe and pediatrics in your internship, and I got into a program in Boston with the Public Health Service, their commission corps. Okay, but the hospital they sent me to didn’t have OBI and pads, so they sent me to the Navy Hospital in Boston for four months where I did two months of Obie and two months of pads. So I got that. That was all considered active duty, I think. Okay, and then I got I get confused at this point. After that I can’t remember where I went next. It was so disjointed, so many different things going on at one time. Huh. Eventually I went back in the Alaska Army Guard and I I got promoted to Colonel Bird, Colonel Hmm. And then the headquarters of the Alaska National Guard was in Anchorage. Well, they don’t have a clue what goes on outside of Anchorage. So one day I got a call from a colonel in the headquarters. He said Colonel Brockman. I said yes, he says we’re going to have an EF monitor your drills. I said really, who’s going to monitor the E for screw. You Hung Up. Picked up the next phone. Naval Reserve. Yes, will you take an o six with over twenty years? What’s your specialty? Sir? Or topedis will take you. I said, okay, sign me up. Uh Huh. And then I did my last twelve years with the naval reserve and got sent to Desert Storm, where I was a orthopedic surgeon in a Marine Corps hospital. Wow, so we’re so desert storm. So that would have been one thousand nine hundred and ninety one correct. And so you were there for how long? Three or four months? I see. Yeah, whoever. However Long Desert Storm lasted? Yeah, well, it was wasn’t long. That was a very short war. Was the kind of wars we need. Exactly. So, of course. So you were in Saudi Arabia? Yeah, and so did they. was there a lot of surgery that was going on from over there? Was it? Was it all military or where? Did you have civilians? No, just military, just military Ring Corps Hospital. I see. Yeah. So then did you stay in Saudi Arabia after that or after the war ended? No, I mean get out of there quick enough. A little bit different than Alaska. Yeah, right, yeah, no, I went back to Kodiak and resume my practice and I did a bunch of other things though. I belong to an organization called orthopedics overseas and they would send orthopedic surgeons that different places around the world, and one of the places they needed one was Pakistan, for shower Pakistan. So I went there and it was all wounded from the war in Afghanistan, which at that Afghanistan at that time was controlled by the Soviet Union. Right, right. So I went there three different times, for a month at a time for three years in a row, and and somehow the Mujahadine really liked me. I don’t know why, but they did, and they asked me to come to inside Afghanistan. I said sure, so I went inside Afghanistan for a while and then that got got me all lit up for going to different foreign countries. So I’ve been to you ever heard of mercy ships? Oh yes, sir, very much. In a month on the Caribbean, mercy down and can’t remember where now, El Salvador, someplace. Spend a month on with them and went down a couple other places too. So I kind of toured around as an northpaedist. Very good. Yeah, so you you’ve had a lot of different experiences, I’m sure, from everything from the effects of poverty and living in to some to to war, war wounds. Yep. Yeah, so during all this time, then you still had your practice back in Kodiac, so you still had family back there and right, right, and all of that. Huh. So what what finally transpired where you decided to kind of hang up, hang up the scalpel? Well, I had a neck injury and I ended up having paralysis of my right shoulder and arm. I still have the residuals that you can see. There’s here and you over here this, there’s no, no muscle there, and that’s another part of this. So you know, when I couldn’t use my right arm fully, I had to drop my practice. HMM. And then few years later I went down to San Diego to go to a medical convention. Woke up thirty two days later in the Naval Hospital down there. I believe this or not, I had a toe infection fungus and it wiped me out and I was I was on kidney dialysis and everything else, and they were giving me the Antifungal medicine and this arm here, MMM, and evidently didn’t pay attention and infiltrated. You know what that means now? The fluid got outside the vein and I had no flesh from here to here. Huh. So I ended up having eight surgeries to skin grafts and a wrist fusion on my right arm. Well, I couldn’t hardly even get dressed with the way it is now, so there’s no way I could ever think of doing surgery. Yeah, so that pretty much ended my career. Then I started working down here and, believe it or not, I was really into medical marijuana. HMM, nicetill was kind of interesting. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, I’m sure you found that there was. There were medicinal uses for medical marijuana. Absolutely. What types of things? Well, as an example, I have a good friend who’s a pharmacist and she had severe neuropathy in her feet and I’d heard that marijuana worked and I said, well, wanted to try it, and she said no, no, no, no, and finally talked her into it, to taking the liquid marijuana and capsules. So she said she took one pill, awaited an hour, nothing happened, which took two pills, waited two hours, took three pills, waited three hours and all her pain was gone. Wow. So she’s a big advocate of it now. Interesting. So most people think that in order for the the medicinal purposes, it has to be smoked, but not necessary. Absolutely not. I don’t even recommend smoke because I am an anti smoker anyway. Uh Huh, I take some now. A little capsule helped me sleep. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, so what what is it within? Is that the THHC or what is it that that? I don’t know. I’ve never read any studies about how if anybody’s done anything about it. Interesting in doing any research on it, and they need to because it works and you see it. Every once while will see something in the news about some place using medical marijuana. Right, right, well On, I want to thank you for telling me your story. I guess one last question that I have is out of your years at the service. In actually would have been both army, navy and Marines, right where you and we were in the army, as well as far as noses at army, national army, national guards. So you’ve basically been all three branches and Public Health Service. So you’ve served in many different ways. Yeah, what would you say where the was the the primary lesson you learned out of out of all of that service as far as your experience in the in the military, and and say everybody should go in? Hmm? Why? Because you learn discipline, you learn all kinds of things. I mean it just just a wonderful experience. Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for sharing your story today. And we’ve been talking to Ron Brockman. He’s retired as captain of the US Navy and Ron, thank you for your service. Oh, you’re awesome. My pleasure. This has been a special honoring veterans. Presentation of answers for elders brought to you by carriage. For more information about carriage, the website is c Aar agecom.