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Yes, I'm Richard. A shovel. I am a physician and I did my internship in Panama 1961 62. I worked there for a while in the hospital, went back for further training, came back in 1970 stayed till I got too old in 1993. Then I retired. Now I think the Panama Canal is the greatest peacetime accomplishment, at least in terms of something architectural or construction in the entire history of the United States.

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It's singularly important because we live in a time when people don't think the government could do anything. But it was done and planned by the government of United States, and it was done socialistic Lee. I like the interior in general and the first Saturday that we had off, we went up to a little town about 60 miles from Panama City called L V.

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A. It winds up in the mountain, and it's the crater of an old volcano, and we thought we'd be driving through heaven knows what, and we were. It was dark when we left. I could think of jaguars and snakes all over the place where the sun came up and everything looked fairly peaceful, but we got there before anything opened, and we're standing there at the entrance.

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And there was a lady, an elderly lady roasting coffee in a frying pan. And she said, Would you like to have some? And we said, Oh, my guess, yes. Could we pay? You said No, no, no. You look lost. I want to take care of you.

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So she made the coffee ground us and gave us coffee. And that was one of the happiest time that happened very early. Um, another time was when Jimmy Carter came down, I was going to host Mr Carter for lunch with member of the community. And I had to go down to the El Panama Hotel the night before to talk to some Secret Service people about how the arrangements would go while they were shooting at the universities.

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I drove past early. When I came to go back, I started down that way. They were still shooting. I got at the bottom of the street and was told I couldn't go this where I had to go back. So I had to go. Another route to go home found out that five students had been killed that night, so that's kind of memorable to their two different kinds of memories.

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Well, the canal zone to May 1. It does symbolize what the government can do because it was a government run operation, and yet it was a very nice place to live. It also symbolized cooperation between the United States and Panama because in spite of the difficulties at different times in the relationship between the United States and Panama, actually relationships were friendly.

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We all knew Panamanians and we went into Panama. And so I think it did represent friendship between two countries that was lasting and continues. Well, it sounds a little hokey, but the first thing is to say just the memories itself. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of memories.

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I brought back enough a lot of photographs that I took from Panama. We got books there and many, many, many things that will remind you of this time or that time. So it's really a whole lot of things that we brought with us and mostly things that evoked memories.

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Although used to be a place where every Saturday during the dry season, a troop of government dancers would dance. The Panamanian folk dances out at old Panama on a stage, and I probably have five or 6000 slides just of that. But we have. We have slides of the beach up in the mountains, all kinds of places, I think probably as much as anything, dealing as a physician with the people that came in.

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I think that contrary to the situation with many medical practices in the United States, people were appreciated of the medical care that you gave. People were very kindly, and it really was a conversation, a two way street, to work out a medical problem rather than my telling somebody or writing a prescription on paper that covered it.

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So, uh, just the many, many, many people I saw and I still see them Before I left, I actually got the chart of a baby. The mother was the baby I delivered when I first went there, and now I was seeing daughter of the baby, and I realized I had been there for a rather long time.

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When that occurred initially. Panama, Panama Canal or the Panama Let's There was a third World country when I arrived, and I remember for example, a small Indian boy was brought in. It was very, very ill. He had a bag of something around his neck on a string that had a terrible smell.

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And he had a little round thing that looked like a ball of red wax on a lock of hair. And it was another one of the interns that was taking care of him. And I said, No, don't take those things away. He's liable to leave. He didn't listen.

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I came back the next morning. The little boy was gone because people had not looked at the cultural part of medical care. I don't know what happened. I hope he I hope he lived. That's hard to do because contrary to what most people think, the transition started in 19 77 went on until the year 2000, so it included good times and bad times.

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Uh, I suppose the worst of that was dealing with Noriega and 18 89 before the invasion took place. I was out of the embassy a night in December. Before the invasion. We had a couple of people that were shot. Uh, naval officer and his wife were taken by some Guardia personnel and dealt with very badly.

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It got very scary at that time. I had put in all my medical papers in order, and I was planning to leave the following February. I didn't do so because things got better. But it was to the point. I think that we might have had trouble running the canal because people were leaving.

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I would say Panama's a very friendly place. You'll enjoy being there. People are nice. I myself don't like the city anymore. When I first got there, it was 100,000 people. Now it's over two million, and I'm not fonder of big cities anyway. But if you go to the interior, it's still beautiful.

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Nature is a lovely thing the people in the small towns will take. We'll take care of you and look after you. Andi, You could stop almost anyplace each where you want it safe. The food is safe, the water is safe and go and look around. You will find something that you like that turns out to be a wonderful, wonderful experience