Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] I did not fully appreciate just how important it was for families to get closure. 0:16 There's a sort of an intellectual side of me that said, "Oh, come on, it was 70 years ago. Surely they've put this behind them." 0:23 But an MIA family never, ever puts away the loss of somebody who hasn't been able to return home. That's beautiful. Oh, hi, Pat. I'm Birdie. Hey, Dennis. This is Dennis. Dennis, pleasure to meet you. My pleasure. 0:36 And I've never met a family yet that wouldn't do almost anything they could to have the remains home. I would never have imagined that they could have found his remains. 0:51 I mean, it seems to me like it would be looking for the smallest needle in the largest haystack of haystacks. [thunder rumbling] That ocean's a big ocean. 1:04 The ability to find a plane in 80 feet of water out in the middle of the ocean after seven decades, it's truly unbelievable. 1:19 Pat Skinnon, welcome back to Titans of Transition. Yeah, it's great to be back. You've been really busy. 1:25 One of the reasons why I reached out to you to do this follow-up es- episode is to hear about your new documentary that's coming out on Project Recovery and all the work that this nonprofit has done. 1:36 It, it's amazing how much this idea of yours that came about many years ago has grown and has touched so many lives. So can you tell us about this new documentary, about Project Recovery? Sure. 1:51 About in 2014, we were in the Republic of Laos doing some searches and a, a company, a production company from Santa Monica, Imperative Entertainment, contacted us about the desire to document our work. 2:09 And we, we had actually their presence with cameras and boom mics and all the gear for two seasons, actually, 2014 and 2015. 2:22 It's really quite interesting to, to do work while cameras and audio booms are following you around. You get used to it and, and they were terrific. They were real professionals, and we had absolutely no problems. 2:36 But one of the things that we felt was important was not just to document us searching, but also to follow through with our findings. 2:45 And in those two years, we made some pretty interesting findings, crash sites that had not been discovered before. And ultimately remains were, were taken from those sites. 2:57 They were, uh, taken into the MIA-POW Accounting Agency, and the identifications were made, and the remains were repatriated to the families, and the funerals were held. 3:11 And so documenting that full spectrum from initial discovery to the final memorial ceremony was, we felt, very important to the, the whole meaning of a documentary. I mean, why do you do it? 3:28 And we were very pleased with the results that showed that, uh, the impact on the families was profound. And at the time when we were invited to these repatriation ceremonies, 3:43 we were always surprised by how much it not only meant to the immediate family, but to the extended family and the community in these towns that where the remains were returned. 3:59 And that shows up very clearly in, in the movie. You're looking for a particular service, serviceman who was lost, but it could take years before you can have that 4:13 ceremony, and during that period of time, you're doing all the research. You're going to different areas. Uh, you're continuing to improve your process with new technology. 4:25 You, you get very much involved, I think, probably in the process. Yes. 4:29 And sometimes people who look at it from the outside, when they check out the documentary, they'll see all this technology and all this amazing gear and equipment and these minds involved. 4:41 A- and you might think that it's all about that, but it really isn't. It's about that, that closure piece, and I remember reading in the book Vanished about that and reading the stories. 4:57 It's that people side of things, isn't it, that really- Yeah... drives you. It really is. In some instances, we've been given the privilege of notifying the family. 5:07 Other times, the Department of Defense notifies the family. In either case, the family goes through stages. Uh, first is disbelief. What-- Are you trying to sell something? 5:19 And eventually you just have to allow the family to work through it, and then all of a sudden, the impact comes really literally emotionally crushing down on them when they realize that this individual 5:34 who has been talked about, who has been remembered in many different ways by the families, is a real person. 5:44 And particularly for the follow-on generations that never knew this individual, uh, it becomes so very real, and the picture on the mantle, uh, is no longer just that. 5:57 It is, it is the, it is the image of a real person coming home finally after all these years, and the family starts thinking about things like How has this impacted my life? 6:11 And then they realize, and it's inevitable, that there are consequential sacrifices that every one of these families has made as a result of this loss, and they- it's grown into their family unit, but this gives them, number one, time to think about 6:32 the, the return home, but at the same time, it brings the families together, and it's really truly been amazing. 6:40 Some of these ceremonies, people have come from all over the United States, and many of the family, extended families, have never met each other. They're u- you know, this is the time when families come together. 6:54 Yeah, that's amazing. And you're not contacting these peoples years ahead when you're starting to do your investigation because you don't know if you'll ever be successful in recovering those remains. Absolutely. 7:07 We have a firm policy that we do not reach out to families. We make it a point of doing it that way so that we don't raise false hopes. We also would never, ever ask anything of the family. And this way, 7:24 when it's all said and done, then it's real. And now sometimes the families hear about our work, and we've had families- I was wondering about that... 7:36 yeah, and we worked out something with the Department of Defense such that if a family contacts us, we're not gonna tell them we don't know anything. That just doesn't work. Um, we'll share everything we have. 7:52 In other words, it might be all we have is a historical record, or i- maybe by chance it's been one of the sites we've been working on. I remember one, one case, I love this story. We had found this, um, 8:08 Avenger crashed on a coral island of Peleliu, just off of one of the Japanese runways, and the Department of Defense came in and did the recovery operation and didn't find anything. 8:22 This is not uncommon or didn't find any remains, but they did find the dog tag, and it was for an individual with the air crew, and they essentially closed the case because there was nothing found. 8:38 I received a call asking if we had ever done anything on this airplane, and the answer was, "Yes, we have." 8:45 And they wanted to know, obviously, if anything had been found, and I said, "We can connect you with the Department of Defense and the Defense POW MIA Accounting Agency." 8:54 And they did, and they learned that no remains were recovered. However, 9:01 I was speaking to the archeologist and he mentioned that the dog tag had been found, and we were able to obtain the dog tag and send it to the family. 9:12 The family built a repatriation ceremony around this one dog tag, and it was absolutely spectacular. The... 9:21 Not only did the family show up, it w- it was decided to hold it at the high school that this individual had gone to, this is in Alton, Illinois. 9:32 Also, the community showed up, and we thought it would be a few people, and it was a crowd of 100 people or more, and with television crews and VFW salutes, and it was a great event. 9:47 That's a little surprising, to me anyway. I, and I've tracked what you've been doing, but I would think the family, maybe the extended family, but this community involvement that you've been seeing, 9:58 that's very interesting to me. Yeah, we've seen that repeatedly in, in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan, Texas. Wherever we've had these ceremonies, we've been invited to attend. 10:10 The community learns of it and will turn out. One of them had a billboard put up that said, "Welcome home, Bud," and that was during Christmas, and the theme of it was, I'll Be Home for Christmas. Ah. 10:24 And yeah, it, uh- The old song. [laughs] Yes. And the fire engine had the ladder, uh, truck, uh, extended with this huge American flag, uh, over in front of the church, and the ceremony was beautiful. It's just the... 10:43 And people were lining the, the road all the way to the cemetery where the, um, the VFW was lined, the Girl Scouts were out with their white gloves saluting, the Boy Scouts were out. 10:57 It was all completely spontaneous as far as we know, and so these- And people who haven't tuned in before on some of the other things you have done speaking about this work or my previous podcasts, they may not have the context of what you've said before about this openness and the stories that get made up about these lost service members. 11:23 Can you take just a couple minutes and share that? 'Cause I think that provides some context for the outpouring of emotion and this sense of closure at these ceremonies. Yes. 11:35 When a individual serving our country goes missing in action, that's very different from the terrible situation where someone is killed in action and returned home because there's a certain finality to that, where the individual is, they're honored, there, there is a special place for them, but no such 11:55 thing exists for an MIA. And the families are oftentimes left only with a telegram saying, "We regret to inform you..." And the result of 12:09 not knowing actually Builds up in, inside of both the generation immediately affected, but also the following generations. And the person starts to take sort of a mystical or mythical, some, some unreal 12:27 sense. And the families oftentimes, in spite of the fact that they know that there's a 99.999% chance that the individual is, is dead, will hold out hope in various ways. 12:41 One of those ways has been, and I've heard this repeatedly, that the individual could be still alive, that the natives rescued the individual, hid him in the jungle, and took-- and is taking care of him. 12:57 And the- Maybe they lost the debris and- But also, yeah, always there's this quality that you have to have amnesia involved in there someplace, and, and they know deep in their hearts. But because the answer isn't 100%, 13:14 there's always this chance. And so when it actually happens, I think that's part of the reason that there's this flood of emotions because they're suddenly released from fantasy into reality. 13:27 We have one story where a family heard that this individual had shown up in San Diego after the end of the war with an Asian wife and family. And, um, 13:43 when we found the plane, his remains were in the nose turret of the bomber. 13:48 It, it releases, and all of those stories go away, but it also shows how time is not on our side because the generation that we really try to work hard for is the original generation. And as you know, 14:04 being alive in 1944 and '45, those individuals are passing very quickly, oftentimes with no answers. 14:13 So we really want to get the answers and get them as fast as we can, so you get the cross-generational impact. So let's swing back to when you first 14:31 said this, "I cannot put this down." And I remember you telling this story before when you and your wife were diving i- in Palau, and you caught a glimpse of a wing tip of an Avenger. Isn't that right? 14:48 Well, I don't know. I-- That wing tip, we saw it, and it... and I've never found it again. And I have searched and searched, you know. I didn't realize at the time how important that wing tip was. 15:01 It was, it was wedged into a crack of a coral wall. And every time I go back to Palau, I get in a boat and try to go find it. I know about where it is. I just can't find it. But that was my first, 15:15 my first realization of some of the aspects of war. When you see part of an airplane, immediately nothing good happened. And 15:25 then I think a couple of days later was when I found the wing, relatively intact wing of a B-24 bomber. That was the real beginning. What hap-- Uh, w- let's broaden the scope of that point in time for Dr. 15:38 Pat Skan, right? So you had founded one of the early biopharma biotech companies back in, what was it, the '80s? '80. '80. So there was only a handful back then, I think. Yeah. And for years, you were in that career. 15:56 You got your MD, you had your PhD in chemistry, and then you decided to make that choice of going into that new exciting direction, fairly high risk. 16:07 [chuckles] And for decades, you were involved in that, in growing a company and leading this firm, this company, developing therapeutics. And then you're on vacation, 16:21 and this thing happens, and maybe not immediately kicked you in the chest, but how did it raise into this passionate work to do something about this? This is- Well-... 16:37 intriguing to me because so many people wonder about what their ultimate significance of their lives is going to be. 16:45 And I'm not saying it's only in one area or another, or you have to make this hard left turn and everything else goes away. You obviously had a couple things going on at the same time, but you weren't exactly not busy. 17:01 [chuckles] No, right. You were very engaged. So something grabbed a hold of you, Pat. I was raised in a military family. I have to say, though, 17:12 the, the thing I wanted to do in being in a military family is to get out and get on my own. I was tired of moving from place to place as an army brat and... But I think deep inside, it left certain important 17:28 values with me. Values. And, and when I saw that wing, it was immediate, and it was profound. 17:35 From jumping off the boat to walking through the shallow water a few feet to the wing tip and seeing the, the engine, the landing gear, the obvious places that had been hit by any aircraft fire, uh, I just knew, I just knew this was a terrible thing had happened here. 17:55 And, and obviously, if the wing was here, the rest of the plane couldn't be that far away. And of course, the boat driver knew nothing about where any of the rest of the wing, what rest of the aircraft was. 18:12 And I said, "Well-" That's wrong. We're gonna- I'm gonna do something about it. I-- And it's one of those things where you make time, you just make time. 18:24 And I- and fortunately, I had the full support of my dear wife, who, uh, supported me in many different ways when I was busy with the company, and I was no less busy with the company. But if you really 18:40 want and need to do something, you, you can find a way, uh, and I did. Oftentimes, twenty-four hours, it's the day, and after that, it's a new day. 18:49 I slept less than just found time to sneak away to the various archives in Montgomery, Alabama, and, uh, the Navy Yard and different places to try to collect information, 'cause in 1993, when all of this started, it wasn't like we have the internet or anything else. 19:12 It was all eyeball to paper in terms of- Microfiche or- In microfiche. Absolutely, that's-- And that meant you had to go there. And, um, 19:24 fortunately, we have wonderful archives in this country, so I was able to find out a lot from going to each of the service archives. 19:35 And the National Archives has great records as well, both written and photographic and even video sometimes. 'Cause a lot of the, 19:46 a lot of the bombing missions were photographed and sometimes even videoed, and so you could get important information from there as well. And my job, my, my day job, if you will, took me oftentimes to 20:00 New York and Washington, D.C., and the National Archives is in the D.C. area, so I could always get away for a little while and do some more. And I was doing this all on my own for the first few years. Now we have 20:15 a PhD historian who lives in the Virginia area who does incredible work, far more sophisticated than I ever could, but, but you had to get started, and that's what I did. Yeah. 20:27 Also, as some from a leadership standpoint, you quickly realized you needed a team, and you started bringing people in to help you. 20:36 But in the early days, you approached this the same way you probably approached something in the laboratory in science. You said, "Okay, I have to get some data. I have to- Yep... plan this out." 20:46 You, you weren't the type of person who just gonna, "I'm gonna go back and bump around and see what I can find out." It's fascinating to see the intentionality- Well-... of this search. 20:57 Both for my company and for this, I said to myself, "If I'm going to do it, I'm gonna do it the best way I know how, and I'm not gonna mess around." And the-- 21:11 For this, I had to, uh, you correctly called it, I had to accumulate data, and it was data that I could acquire in, um, 21:22 in the archives, but it was also data in the field, and then trying to link those together so that the archival information and the, and the field information were correlated. 21:35 And then I could start talking about it and reaching out, and that took about s-six, six years before I had enough information to go and contact. 21:48 What we call now DPAA has gone through at least two prior versions, and at the time I went, it was called the Central Identification Lab Hawaii, and then it became the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and now it's DPAA. 22:04 So but-- And I use them interchangeably because it's essentially all the same philosophy. 22:10 The, the, the Department of Defense and the people of the United States have invested money going back all the way to the Vietnam era to look for MIAs from Vietnam forward. Yeah. 22:24 And so reaching out to them, now I had a database. 22:27 Unfortunately, at the time, I was supplying information to, to that agency, but they would-- did not have a mechanism for responding back other than saying, "Thank you for the information." Thank you for the information. 22:43 [laughs] But on- once, once I put the team together and we started, we would make annual treks to Palau because there were many aircraft that were missing and still are missing in Palau. And, um, 22:58 we would locate these aircraft, and the way we would know DPAA was listening to what we wrote is that they would start sending out search and recovery teams. 23:09 And one of our first big ones was we had found this B-24 bomber that had taken ten years at the time to locate. It was underwater. Then it took about, 23:22 let's see, it took about six more years before all of the remains were recovered and the ceremony at Arlington Cemetery occurred. 23:35 So it is a very long process, but it really built on a, a growing base of using the scientific method as much as possible. We actually do generate hypotheses, for example, and, and try to act on those. 23:49 And we had some pretty fun moments as I tried to explain to non-scientists what a hypothesis is and how- [laughs]... to generate a plan from it. So it, it built the team, and the team is strong now. 24:02 We were called the Bent Prop Project from pr- essentially from the beginning. We got that name because that's all we ever saw, where if we saw a propeller, it was always bent, and we 24:16 In 2012, we changed the name to Project Recover, and at that time, we built an, an alliance with 24:25 the Scripps University, uh, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Delaware, uh, team members who are doing a lot of our underwater robotic searches, the really high-tech stuff. So have this, uh, 24:40 unit team that now we've been in, I think, 21 countries since, since 2016, 24:51 and I've been in 13 of those 21 countries, about to be number 14 as I go to Denmark, and we're making incredible progress in terms of finding. In fact, we're locating sites much faster than we can do recoveries. 25:09 At the same time, to your point about technology, technology is exploding really profoundly, particularly in the underwater setting. 25:20 The underwater robotics have dra- dramatically improved in sensitivity and, and capability so that the resolution, all of these 25:31 different kinds of tools that you can put into these underwater robotics has just been phenomenal. Interestingly, it's not happening as fast on land. 25:42 We're still very close to where we were almost 30 years ago with, with a compass and a machete and the... and now we have GPS. 25:53 And one of the biggest advances actually was Google Earth, 'cause for the first time, we could actually see where we were. Without actually traveling it. 26:01 We get the right kind of upper vantage of the areas that you've identified, again, through that research of where the deployments were, where the action happened, and zero in on the target area, but then in order to go into the next level of detail to try to identify and find things. 26:19 Yeah. It... One of our most important tools is the interview process. 26:25 The, we have found that to be immensely helpful, and by interview process, when we go into a host nation, we will search out and try to find elders, historians. 26:39 Oftentimes, and particularly in the Pacific Islands, oral histories are very, very useful. 26:46 The individual himself or herself may have passed away, but the oral histories are kept, and we've actually been able to make progress ba- based on oral history information. 26:57 It is an incredible cultural experience to do that. 27:01 Each country has their own culture or cultures, but we are able to go into these countries, and by showing respect for who they are and making sure they understand that we're guests, that we're able to interview oftentimes very successfully and find out information that will not be in any archive or any other way. 27:29 We've also done interviews in the United States when one of the first things that I did as I started collecting information was I would look at an after-action report, and it would say the pilot or aviators that were flying in, in the 27:48 early to mid-'90s, these guys were still alive and feisty. 27:54 And we were-- I was able to get some incredible interviews on video from them that proved to be very helpful in many- I think you brought some of us into the documentary, didn't you? A little bit, yes. 28:06 Yes, one of the- Yeah... Green Beret squadrons. Yes. That was a particularly fun one. That, that just... 28:13 They're these guys, and they're all about 80 at the time, but when they started talking about that time in 1944, 1945, they were 18-year-olds. 28:24 They, these guys, it was just incredible to see the vitality infusing through these 80-year-old bodies as they reflect back on those times. 28:34 It is- I recall one of them, uh, came back to Palau to the, to a beach where they had fought and- Yes. I-... it was a pretty profound moment for him. Yeah. R.D. 28:45 Bergen is a Marine who landed on Peleliu at Orange Beach, and he came back and walked the area where, precisely where he landed and talked about that experience. I, I was amazed on several grounds. Just he was, uh, 29:04 he was, I think, 90 at the time or thereabouts. 29:09 So to make that long trip and then just the emotion of landing on that beach and the last time he was there, bullets were whizzing over his head, and bombs were going off, and mortars were raining on him. 29:24 The experience of having him talk about it was amazing. And I remember he knocked out a bunker, and we went to that bunker. 29:36 It was still there, and he walked around it and showed how, as a Marine, how he knocked it out. I mean- Where the gun placements were and- Yeah. Absolutely. 29:46 And the story gets documented that he knocked it out, but here we have the living person showing, "And I went here, and then I ran over here and did what I had to do." 29:58 And so one of the side benefits of what we do is we get to, we get the privilege of these interactions, and now they're getting extremely scarce, of course. Yeah. 30:12 But, um, but it has been a great adventure in that regard. So the name of the documentary is- To What Remains. There's an easy way to remember it. If you see it, it's the last three words of the movie. So the... 30:27 Of course, you have to see the whole movie to remember it, but the, uh... It's, it is obviously symbolic in many ways of not just the remains, but what happens when they are found and recovered. 30:41 I felt very honored that imperative, put everything into it that they did. 30:46 They really did a absolutely remarkable job, not only of the photography, but the audio, and they did a whole bunch of Hollywood stuff that I don't understand, colorization and audio balancing and things that I didn't actually get to see some of that, which was a, a new experience going down to Santa Monica into these 31:09 various studios. When we had our opening night, December 7th of last year, the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and we simultaneously opened it up in, in Washington, D.C. 31:23 at the naval yard, uh, at, at Navy Yard and at Pearl Harbor. And Secretary of the Navy attended the opening at Pearl Harbor. And so the way it timed was we were literally showing it at the same time. 31:40 So it was, it was a tremendous opening night for us, and we've shown it now in about 50 different locations around the country. 31:53 And our CEO, Derek Abbey, and I traveled to about 30 of them and did Q&As after the movie was over, and we really had a tremendous enthusiastic response to the video and to the documentary. Yeah. 32:11 It's available on Amazon, I think. This one- It is. Yeah. And Apple, and if you go to our website, which is projectrecover.org, it'll tell you all the various places that it's, uh, available. 32:25 And I think it's important for those listening in to understand that, again, just coming back to this is a nonprofit, so this was a pretty big deal to get the word out to this work that this organization is doing, and I think nudging the rest of our governmental agencies to take it up a level. 32:43 That's the way I would say. But it's- Well-... been very influential, and this helps- Mm-hmm... fund your work. And- It-... I encourage everyone to get a copy of it, a DVD, or watch it. 32:55 You can have a watch party as well with your family and friends. Yeah, I... It was great. 33:00 I was flying back from California, seeing my daughter, and I was watching it on the plane over Wi-Fi, and I had a Wi-Fi interruption, and I think I sent you a message saying, "This is phenomenal. 33:12 I can't wait till I land so I can finish watching this." [chuckles] But it was so well done, and it's, it did a great job at telling the story. Obviously, there's a lot-- You can't cover everything. 33:22 It was very moving and informative. But let me ask this question. 33:26 You said you've done Q&As various different times as you've done after these showings, but I'm sure people ask on the interview you like I'm doing, what are some common questions that you get asked that maybe surprise you or maybe they're just frequently asked? 33:42 They... One, one of it-- Because when people see the movie, this is the first time they've been aware of Project Recover, and a very common question is, "Why do you do this?" And start at the basics. 33:53 And from why do you do it, then it is, "How do you do it?" And, "Who funds this?" And, you know, the first twenty plus years, we funded ourselves. We would... 34:04 If there was a team of six, we would take the total amount spent divided by six, and that's what each person paid. We've now grown beyond that. 34:13 We've had some generous donors who've helped out enormously, and we interact with DPAA. We find that working with the Department of Defense is good, and the interaction is very positive. 34:27 In fact, we are-- have a memorandum understanding with them. But we also like to work independent of them because there are things we can do so much faster. 34:38 You will be shocked to hear this, but the Department of Defense is a very bureaucratic organization. It is. [chuckles] I know. It's hard to believe. We find that we can do things so much faster in some circumstances. 34:54 Uh, one of the things that we've taken to doing is campaigning. And what we'll do is we will find a region. 35:01 For example, right now we're working in Croatia and the east coast of Italy and, uh, Papua New Guinea and the Solomons. Those are just examples where we know there are multiple crashes. 35:16 And so if you come into a country for the first time, there's always this learning curve. But after you've been back second, third, fourth time, they learn who you are, and there's- You've established- Inefficiencies. 35:30 And so we, we have had good success with that, but that's something that really is not the model that DPAA uses. They go after a single site as a general rule. 35:43 So this combination of using the Department of Defense's style and then the style that we use of campaigning, it balances out and gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of what we can do and when we can do it. 36:00 As you're talking about working with them, it brought to mind that you actually, on some of these recent missions, had a Navy SEAL accompany you as well, didn't you? Um, yes. Yes. 36:15 Marcus Luttrell, the author of One Survivor and the movie. One Survivor. Yeah. And he, he was particularly excited to be with us because three of the- 36:28 POWs that we're looking for are, were UDT members. So UDT is Under- Underwater Demolition Teams. They're the predecessor of the SEALs. And in the entire history of UDT SEAL program, these three 36:46 POW MIAs are the only three who are unaccounted for. And so he was very interested in participating and being part of that, and he was very gracious, and we were pleased to have him. Yeah. But very interesting. 37:04 And it's in the documentary as well, so that, for those who are considering watching it, it's interesting to see his interaction with other service members, um, that we've talked about already and the mutual respect from, 37:17 from, for each other and, and the relationships that came through that. So as we wind down, I wanna just come back. The purpose of my whole podcast is talking about transitions in life or career. 37:31 Sometimes they happen at the same time often. Um, but this has been a journey. This has been a multi-decade journey so far for you. 37:40 Well, far- And as we talked about in the very beginning, it was happening while you were still fully engaged. And by the way, I worked at that company. We worked together. We worked together. 37:50 It, it's just a phenomenal story and example of how you can find a passion in the middle of following another passion at the same time. 38:02 So I think there's a lesson for people there that are maybe not fulfilled or think there might be something more, maybe questioning what the significance of their life is gonna be, who will remember them, all those big... 38:13 You would never have thought when you went on that vacation trip that you would spin something like this up, and I would say it's probably one of your fondest accomplishments. You were just awarded. 38:24 Weren't you awarded-- Did you get an award as well from the Daughters of the American Revolution, is that right? Yes, I got their Patriotism Medal. Yeah. So it, you know, it's a very big honor. 38:34 I- Standing in front of over three thousand people to receive my award in Washington, DC, a block from the White House was, was very special and totally caught me off guard. 38:49 [laughs] Yeah, but it's not like you were pursuing that at all. You weren't pursuing that. You were pursuing meeting G.H.W. Bush and George Bush and all those different connections. 39:00 They just happened to be in the story arc of where you were headed. Going back from that original, "I have to do something about this," they happened to cross your path. Right. 39:13 And, and in that way, I suppose I do wear blinders. I do stay focused, and we have a, a mission and vision statement, um, and we live by those. 39:24 And we find that if we have questions, should we go down this path or that path, we frequently solve it by just reminding ourselves what our vision is and what our mission is, and then we stay focused. 39:35 In, in terms of transition, just to talk about that for a minute, my, my sense was I didn't know I was gonna transition. I thought initially this was an interesting and important thing in my life. 39:47 I did not realize what it would grow into until much later. 39:52 And I retired from the company and more or less started doing this full-time, although I still do consulting for the federal government in matters related to biotechnology and bio, um, defense. 40:08 But the fact that I had this in my life defined the fact that I was gonna make a transition. 40:14 And I didn't, to be honest with you, I didn't think about should I be thinking about what I do when I retire and do I wanna-- what do I wanna do. 40:23 I do know this, that if I'd have retired and not had Project Recover, I'd probably have been pretty restless. I think mine, I can sit at home and read a book or do something for about a month or two, and then I- Yeah... 40:36 I need to do something. Not wired that way, Pat. No, no. [laughs] And I really think having other dimensions in one's life is incredibly important. And because I will tell you this, when you retire, that's it. 40:53 And so your name comes off the door, and you don't have the, you don't have that internet address anymore. And they're glad to see you if you happen to walk down the street, but-- And n-no hard feelings. 41:04 It's just life rolls on. I spent thirty-five years at that company, and I would be a stranger there now. 41:11 So the point is that investing one's life in one's work is important so that you do a good job while you're there, but, but allowing yourself some other activities that give you other directions to move, I can't tell you how important that is. 41:28 And I, and somehow I knew, 'cause again, I didn't sit down and say, "I wanna create another path," but I did. Yeah, that's really interesting 'cause our own self-concept and our sense of worth based upon 41:42 a job title or career or- Right... what you have attained. 41:47 And we've all read and seen these stories of people who've been extremely successful in their careers, but at the end of their life, it's like, "What else did I do?" You know what I'm saying? 41:59 I think it's a really good reminder that you are more than your job title, and you're more than your career and the plaques and the little mementos that you might collect in the cardboard box that's now in the garage. 42:12 And that's exactly where it is. And for me, I started out as an analytical chemist and nine years into doing that, I discovered that things frus- Well, before that, actually. 42:23 Things started frustrating me in the laboratory, how manual it was, and how much paperwork it was. And so I got into computers, and I went the whole IT direction and ended up- Yeah... running IT organizations. But- 42:34 When I was in the middle of doing that, Pat, I gotta tell you, I, that wasn't really what I thought was unique about me. It was more the people side, and I did not know that. I had no clear picture of that. 42:46 Even when we were working together, I started doing coaching on the side, and I loved it, but I still held onto the career, and I had this thing going along. And really, um, 42:58 the career and the job title wasn't what was unique and special about what I brought into the world. It just happened to be the venue where I used it at the time. 43:10 And one of the things I see in you is you see something and you can make a change, s- something catches your heart, and you're gonna do something about it. Yeah. 43:19 And that's one of the unique things that I think you're placed on this planet for, and I'm just so glad that you've done that, that you have- [laughs]... not held back. 'Cause so many people don't... 43:31 They start playing these tapes in their heads and they go, "Oh, I can't do that, I can't do that," and they just don't. 43:36 And I think the wor- the world is missing out on a lot of people not putting their gifts into action. Okay, I'm off my stump now. I'm done. No, I think that's very accurate. 43:45 [laughs] I think people do have many gifts, and oftentimes you may know a person and not know who they really are because they- That's right... haven't shared those ideas with you. 43:54 And there is a certain amount of insecurity or trepidation about, there's something no one else has done. Why me? If no one else has done it, does that mean it's a really bad idea? 44:05 Uh, or does it mean that here's an opportunity? Yeah. And too many of us think it must be a bad idea, 'cause if it was a good idea, someone would've done it. Uh, oftentimes that's not the case. 44:16 And these kinda transitions, and Project Recover is an example, but you don't have to develop an idea, a concept, and wind up traveling all over the world. If that's what you like, good. 44:28 You can do this in your community. You can do this regionally. There are many different ways, and many people do that, but there's just, um, 44:38 a sense from what you've said and what I've seen that there are many missed opportunities. Many missed opportunities. And so if people feel the pull, step into it a little bit. It'll be okay. Yep. [laughs] It'll be okay. 44:54 If not, then try something else. Exactly. [laughs] Yeah. So what? Try something else. Pat, thank you so much for coming back on. 45:02 It's been great reconnecting with you, and best of luck on your, you're going to Denmark, is that correct? That's your next trip? Actually, I'll be on a barge on the Baltic Sea, yeah. And it's another mission? 45:14 It's another mission, a recovery mission for a B-24 that we located about a year ago, and we're gonna go try to recover remains from that. Amazing. Safe travels, and- Thank you... 45:26 and we'll be keeping track of the developments as you go forward with this great work. Again, best of luck, man. Thank you very much. All right. Take care, my friend. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 45:37 Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of Transition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please check the show notes for additional information.
