00:00:00.140 - 00:00:23.840

Well, let's go and just get started, then, Um um, and Joe, if you would like to begin, um, Well, first of all, my name is Paul Ortiz. We're here today with Joe. Would, uh, Joe, of course, was a longtime resident of the Panama Canal Zone. Hey, became president or a chair of the Panama Canal Museum president.

00:00:23.840 - 00:00:42.950

Uh, and he's been a person who has been an integral part of the coming together of the University of Florida and the Panama Canal Museum on Joe. I wonder if we could actually kind of start backwards. In a sense, a zit were or kind of more in the contemporary moment.

00:00:43.340 - 00:01:01.460

And if you could talk about why you became involved in kind of trying to preserve the history of the American experience in the Panama Canal Zone I mean, why is that? Why has that been personally important to you? And how do you see it is being significant?

00:01:01.910 - 00:01:35.260

I could do that by going back in time. Okay. Yeah. Starting in the around the mid 18 hundreds, my family on a mother side moved to Panama from Spain in 18 80. My great grandfather was an Englishman from Devon, England. And he was on one of these steamships that, uh, went from San Francisco to Panama and back, carrying mail to and from Panama and the United States.

00:01:35.270 - 00:02:02.200

The mail then would be delivered to the to the Atlantic Side of Panama and then up to New York. So that's he was on one of those ships in the 18 eighties on the Pacific side. They had a cooling station for those ships in a little island named Tab Ohga, about 10 miles off the coast of Panama, where all these ships would come and refuel.

00:02:02.210 - 00:02:27.650

They get cold for the steam. My great grandmother was a young girl at the time, vacationing with her parents on that island for the summer, and they met. So this Englishman met this Spanish slash Colombian slash Panamanian lady because Panama was part of Columbia at the time.

00:02:27.650 - 00:03:17.370

It wasn't an independent country, right? So in 18 80 or so, my great grandfather and my great grandmother got married. But so that score stirs my interest in Panama because I go way back on my mother's side. My grandmother, their daughter, grew up, of course, in a bilingual environment, and she went through the French period of the canal construction as a teenager, and there's a young lady, and she saw a lot of the devastation the malaria, yellow fever, the dysentery, tropical diseases that killed thousands of French employees, which eventually led to the abandonment of the French effort in Panama.

00:03:18.420 - 00:03:55.800

So in 1903 the United States, mhm was instrumental in getting Panama separated from Colombia in pendulum became an independent country, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and his gunboat diplomacy. My grandmother, who was this daughter of my the English and Spanish relations, started a romance with the Colombian soldier who was stationed in Panama.

00:03:55.810 - 00:04:19.560

And when the revolution came, which was a bloodless revolution, but the Colombians and Panamanian separate, he stayed in Panama. This Colombian soldier and my grandmother married him. So in 1922 my grandmother was because she was bilingual. She was teaching Spanish to Americans at the Y. M.

00:04:19.560 - 00:04:46.200

C. A. In Balboa. And my father was recently, uh, dispatch to Panama on the U. S. Army in 1922. He wanted to learn Spanish very quickly, So he went to the Y M C A and took lessons from my grandmother, but it was only once a week, so he wanted lessons a little bit more advanced and more more frequent.

00:04:46.200 - 00:05:04.050

So she invited him out to her house in Panama, Panama City suburbs, where she would give him three times a week. Private lessons. The first time he showed up there, she wasn't quite ready for him. So my mother was sent out. She was 14 years old time.

00:05:04.540 - 00:05:24.670

My mother was sent out to entertain this gringo, and she sat there with her arms crossed and didn't say a word to him for 15 minutes until my grandmother came out and started the Spanish Lesson. When my dad got back to the barracks that evening, he told his buddies I met the girl I'm going to marry.

00:05:25.850 - 00:05:45.850

He was 22 she was actually. Actually, he was 16. I take that back. She was 16, but they didn't see each other for another seven years. And then he saw her. She was a carnival princess and they had a parade and she was on one of the floats and she was a princess of the float.

00:05:46.940 - 00:06:06.120

And he saw her there, and he called her brother up whom he knew and asked if he could date his sister. And he said, Sure, why not? So they started dating, and three years after that they got married. So I go way back in Panama. My dad was an interesting guy.

00:06:06.120 - 00:06:24.770

He was in the Army. He got out after two years in state in Panama, never returned to the United States except one time when he was later Ah, supervisory auditor for the canal and he was sent to New York. Thio audit the books of the New York office of the Panama Canal Company.

00:06:25.640 - 00:06:49.780

That was the only time he ever returned to the United States, he said. You could give Manhattan back to the Indians a Sfar, as he was concerned because he found paradise in Panama. Really, Waas, it was wonderful. So I was born in 1937 in the Republic of Panama, not the Canal Zone, because my mother was was really Panamanian.

00:06:49.780 - 00:07:18.970

But she didn't wanna have American doctor bring me into the world. So I was born in Panama Hospital, but we lived in the canal zone, so we grew up there in the canal zone, which was started in 1904 After the U. S and Panama signed a treaty thio in perpetuity, theoretically to construct the canal and operator canal through the city through the country of Panama.

00:07:19.580 - 00:07:53.650

The Canal zone was established as an independent, as if it were sovereign entity of the United States government to the exclusion of any sovereignty by Panama. So it was really an independent United States piece of land five miles on either side of the canal and 50 miles long in the Canal Zone, government ran schools and hospitals and mortuaries and cemeteries and, uh, customs, immigration, fire, police, the whole works.

00:07:53.660 - 00:08:19.300

It was like a military reservation. You had to work there to live there. You couldn't be an outsider. There was no unemployment. If you didn't have a job in the canal zone, you couldn't live in the canal zone, you wrap. So it was idyllic in a way, growing up his kids, we had the beautiful country of Panama, the language, the culture of Panama.

00:08:19.300 - 00:09:15.570

I'm bilingual, so I've assimilated very well the food and the the music and the beaches and the mountains and the jungle. And everything was just beautiful. And then yet we were part of Americana in this little enclave of canals. Um, so I guess I got my interest in preserving that history from my great grandmother and her ancestors, but also, from my own experience living in the Canal Zone, going through the the periods from 1937 when I was born through the war effort, through the civil disturbances and when Panama and the Canal Zone had some very major differences were Panama broke diplomatic relations with the United States in 1964.

00:09:16.640 - 00:09:55.620

Those riots, though civil disturbances, actually caused the initiation of treaty negotiations, which ultimately led to the transfer of the canal, the Panama the treaty started. The negotiation started in 1968 after the 64 riots, Kissinger and Juan Antonio Attack of Panama. He was the foreign minister, got together and laid out some principles which ultimately led to Jimmy Carter's negotiations with General Torrijos, who was a dictator.

00:09:55.810 - 00:10:22.370

But it was a He was a Bonilla, benevolent dictator, and, uh, people loved him in Panama on he was their representatives. So he and Jimmy Carter negotiated the treaty 1977 to be effective in 1979 and e give you more background or I could go into mother.

00:10:23.740 - 00:10:47.530

Well, I think about my experience. Yeah. Why don't we talk about your experience, Joe? I mean, you're kind of growing up and coming of age and yeah, okay, well, I went to elementary schools and high schools in the canal zone in 1957. My father died suddenly of a heart attack, and I was currently at the time enrolled in the junior college.

00:10:47.540 - 00:11:12.470

It was an AL Zone junior college operated by the government. E was in my second year. It was February. My father died, which meant we had to leave the canal zone because my mother didn't work. Yeah, so I applied to to universities in the United States, and this is February, and it's awfully late to start applying for a fall semester, you know?

00:11:12.480 - 00:11:41.730

But I applied to the University of Florida and I applied to Florida A and M University, not realizing when I lived in Panama that Florida A and M was on historically black college. And in those days, you had to submit an application with your photograph, and I sent my application in with my photograph, and I never heard from the Florida A and M in 57.

00:11:41.730 - 00:12:01.850

I could have been the spearhead of the civil rights movement, you know, in reverse. Uh, but I wasn't accepted. And I wasn't accepted at the University of Florida either a time, but we had to leave, and we had never lived in the States. My mother had never been out of the country of Panama.

00:12:03.240 - 00:12:30.100

My sister was older, two years older than I, and a younger sister was 11 years younger than I. So without a job, the three of the four of us left Panama and we didn't know where we're going. But since I had applied to the University of Florida, we came to Gainesville without having been accepted, and I sat on the registers registrars doorstep for weeks and weeks.

00:12:30.100 - 00:12:47.460

And finally, after I think I gave him a pretty good sob story. They admitted me on probation, even though I had very good grades at the Canal Zone Junior College. It was a junior college. It was overseas, and they weren't ready to accept all of my transcript, but they accepted most of it.

00:12:48.040 - 00:13:09.880

So then I graduated from University of Florida. What was the shift like coming from Panama to Florida. I mean, what were some of the differences you noticed right away? It was not as friendly. I found that in Panama everybody is so sociable, so willing to help.

00:13:09.880 - 00:13:35.060

So So really, I don't know. They're very helpful in their very courteous and very for, you know, form away. But it's a different lifestyle, more open, less less concerns about race or religion. And the first thing I noticed when I got to the United States was the emphasis on race.

00:13:36.440 - 00:14:05.520

We had never experienced that in Panama. I didn't know what racial discrimination was. I had no feelings toward any person of different color of different religion. We all melted. It was never an issue. It was never consideration. And it was startling to me when I came to the States to have this, uh, this focus on race all the time, everywhere you turn.

00:14:06.340 - 00:14:23.970

And of course, those were civil rights theme, civil rights era. And there was a lot of effort being made to end discrimination and and all of that. So I think that was the forefront of the national dialogue at the time. But still it made an impact on me.

00:14:24.340 - 00:14:44.350

Another little story when we first got the dean's where we stated, Ah, hotel downtown. I think it's called the Thomas Hotel. I don't know if it's still there. It's been converted into a community center. Okay, Yeah, it's a beautiful building. Yes, Like an old plantation. Yeah, the white building.

00:14:45.040 - 00:15:01.670

We stayed there for three nights before we got a motel, which is a little bit less expensive. And then we look for a house. First day I went down to breakfast and the lady that the very nice girl came over and said, What would you like, honey?

00:15:02.300 - 00:15:24.780

I said, Well, I'd like scrambled eggs and sausage. She's okay. She came back. She brought this plate of scrambled eggs and next to the scrambled eggs was this white stuff on the same plate. And I said to myself, That's funny looking sausage. And so I'm about ready to take a bite of it.

00:15:24.780 - 00:15:44.820

And she comes running, says, Oh, honey, I forgot your sausage. And I said, Well, what is this? He says, Those air grits, Of course. I never heard of grits before. So little things like that, you know, they stick in your mind and they were different. But overall, I got along really well.

00:15:44.820 - 00:16:06.510

I got admitted to the University of Florida. I met my neighbors. We had fun times barbecuing, and I got her job assistant. I got an assistant ship toe help. One of the professors in the business school. He was writing a book and he wanted to know everything.

00:16:06.510 - 00:16:33.270

There was about risk, the word risk. So my job was to research every book in the library that had the word risk in it and and pull it out and see what it said on. I compiled a huge portfolio of every possible meaning of risk and how people address it and how they handle it all that for that I got $25 a week and I lived on that.

00:16:35.040 - 00:16:50.160

And then my mother and sisters went back to Panama after two years. And then I stayed on graduate school, and then after the graduate school, I went into the U. S. Army and then I returned to Panama and started my career with the Panama Canal Company.

00:16:52.240 - 00:17:13.320

Um, that was interesting because I started as a graduate intern with the college degree and is a management program that the federal government has that you start out as a GS five in one year. You move through GS seven. In one year you move to a G s nine, which is a pretty good ascension.

00:17:13.320 - 00:17:50.270

But it's during that two year period. They train you, they have management courses and and they in the organization I was in. I was allowed to go every three months to a different department to learn about their department, rooming me for management positions. When I got my great seven, I had had a box of candy, and I'm passing it around the office as something that I was proud that I got my promotion and I was giving everybody piece candy and one lady had been there 38 years, didn't have a college degree.

00:17:50.270 - 00:18:10.450

In fact, nobody in my organization at the time had a college degree, not even my boss in the fifties in the early sixties. It just wasn't something he saw a lot of, she said, I'll take a piece of chocolate, but under protest, I said, Why? I said, You've got a great seven.

00:18:10.450 - 00:18:42.370

I've been a great five for 30 years, Yeah, so I had to deal with that, and I was, as I got higher into the organization, I had to deal with people who were rather jealous, envious, I would say, of the rapid rise. But it was happening all over the Panama Canal Company college graduates from being given these management intern positions with a lot of training, a lot of exposure to different scenarios, and they were rising through the ranks.

00:18:42.380 - 00:19:04.010

Joe, where these individuals who had similar life histories is yourself people who grew up in the Canal Zone, who then went to college somewhere and came back. Everyone of every one of them, Well, I take it back. There was one felt, actually, two fellas who came directly from one from Massachusetts, one from North Carolina.

00:19:04.020 - 00:19:24.180

And the reason they were there is they had met somebody from Panama who told them about the Panama Canal and the job openings that were available. And so they apply God okay through the Federal Register or whatever. Why did you come back? E really missed Panama.

00:19:24.640 - 00:19:46.100

I loved it. I my roots are there, you know, And my friends were there, my family, my mother had moved back. They were there. I still have a lot of relatives in Panama on my mother's side. Yeah, and so I'm bilingual, so I feel like I fit in.

00:19:47.040 - 00:20:11.630

But there's something special about the Panamanian culture, the vibrancy on the music and the the You're passionate about life. They really are, and they like to laugh. I like to dance everywhere you go. In Panama, others dances all the time. Mhm. When you come to the States, you're already different.

00:20:11.630 - 00:20:43.760

Dance a wedding or maybe a retirement party. But even then, there's not a whole lot of dancing in. Panama was dancing all the time everywhere, and it's just a joyful place to live. And the fishing is outstanding. Deep city and lake fishing, the outdoors sports air available all year round because the climate is so temperate, so moderate, rather the and the canal offered a very good living.

00:20:44.240 - 00:21:10.450

The Panama Canal. The salaries were the same as they were in the U. S. Government in the states, but with 25% additional tropical differential, which was enhancement. Now the problem with that is tropical differential was Onley available for US citizens who were hard not locally, but who were hired for the States.

00:21:11.420 - 00:21:32.960

In some exceptions, like my own, I was hired locally, but I had come from the state, so they they gave me the benefit of the doubt. So they so I got the 25% differential. So if you're making $5000 which was a lot of that time, uh, you had another 1000 12.

00:21:32.960 - 00:21:56.490

52 to that. And there's a lot of money at the time we had the canal offered the home leave benefits so that every two years you would get a free trip to the States to your home of record. And because my dad came from New York in 1922 that's where he shipped out of with the U.

00:21:56.490 - 00:22:22.670

S. Army. He claimed New York State as his home of record, which fell to me as well because I had no other home of record. I was in Panama Meta. So they paid by transportation to New York every two years, and we accumulated leave so that you can have two months of leave a year, tremendous benefits and the reason for that.

00:22:22.680 - 00:22:41.850

It started back in the early 19 hundreds. They wanted workers to go home and refresh for two months, then come back and work on the construction of the canal and they pay their way back. They'd ship them back and then brought them back. So that practice continued until the US turned over the canal.

00:22:42.540 - 00:23:08.450

1999. Okay, so from a personal standpoint, I wouldn't have traded my life for anything because Panama was just a wonderful place to live and grow up and work. And it still remains to this day, one of the just the most beautiful places. It's getting crowded. It's Ah, a lot of people are going there because it's so attractive.

00:23:09.840 - 00:23:39.680

They're attracting a lot of Europeans. Canadians in the United States, citizens into the interior parts of Panama, where they're forming small communities now so and ex patriots all over the place. Because Panama has a program where if you're a retiree and you have an income of over $500 a month, you're entitled to what they call who Bolado benefits retired benefits.

00:23:40.940 - 00:24:12.060

You could import household goods free of duty. You can import a car free of duty every two years. You get 25% discount on everything you purchase including movie, theater, tickets, restaurants, airline tickets. So it's just a very attractive place for retirees. And they have course. The guaranteed income means that Panama's economy stays afloat with a lot of retirees spending their money.

00:24:13.700 - 00:24:46.660

And, of course, the canal. It's Ah, it's an enterprise now that's creating billions of dollars for the Panamanian economy. Yeah, E wanted Joe, if you could talk, I want to get a certain point to your role in the museum. Um, but I wonder there's something, as you know, that we've talked about over the years and in the project and that and that many of the people you have interviewed have addressed that issue about the about Panamanian management of the canal.

00:24:47.140 - 00:25:08.660

And, as you know, in the seventies, there was this talk about Well, if the US turns over the canal, it's just gonna fall to pieces. Um uh, could you address that? Sure. E. Think you're right, e think in the seventies that was the mindset that United States citizens only that manages a canal.

00:25:10.100 - 00:25:30.380

Every department was headed up by a career U S. Military officer. The Marine director was a Navy captain. The governor was a major general in the United States Army lieutenant governor was a colonel in the U. S. Army. The engineering director was a colonel in the U.

00:25:30.380 - 00:25:54.450

S. Army. So all these major bureaus, divisions or departments you column We're headed up by government. Assign these people who were rotate every two or three years into a position, then back out to there full time job, whatever service they came from below that the deputies were civilians.

00:25:55.340 - 00:26:20.280

But they were all Americans below that there. Division chiefs, they were all Americans. The Panamanians were mostly the laborers, the middle. There were a lot of middle management. But when the time came from promotion, the canal would bring people from the United States, or they promote an American from other parts of the organization.

00:26:20.680 - 00:26:42.180

That was in the seventies, but the canal treaty changed all that. First thing I did is it gave preference to Panamanians and hiring so that if you were a Panamanian, I was an American applying for the same job. Panamanian would get 10 points reference. The only equalizer was a veteran.

00:26:42.190 - 00:27:14.340

We would also get 10 points preference. And when that happened, then most of the time since the treaty, the Panamanian would get the job because they wanted to bring in more Panamanians. Theory was, we had a 20 year transition period, and over that 20 years we wanted to bring bright young Panamanians into management training positions and looked him rise to the top over 20 year period.

00:27:14.350 - 00:27:40.180

And that happened successfully. We employed a lot of training programs specifically for Panamanians in the canal. The pilot force was entirely United States citizen, and not only that, but every pilot had to have a master's license and had to have three or four years actual blue water, deepwater sea experience.

00:27:40.930 - 00:28:03.080

Well, that changed so that Panamanians could come in after graduating from their own nautical school into an apprentice program. And they would start out with the tugboats or the launches and then moving to junior pilot positions and then eventually rise to the senior pilot positions. And that worked very well.

00:28:03.080 - 00:28:32.600

So that by the time we transferred the canal in 19 2099 all but probably 40. We're Panamanians, pilots, pilots all but for the 40 U. S. Pilots, we're were the seniors. They've been there 25 30 years, and they would eventually phase out. I think there are now six left US pilots, but Panamanians have done very well.

00:28:32.610 - 00:28:51.870

They've they've Their safety record is is good, if not better, than what we had. The the canal waters time which measures the time a ship enters the one end of the canal that goes to the other. We try to keep it in 24 hours and maximum could have waters.

00:28:51.870 - 00:29:20.810

Time has always been within that 24 hour period with Panama when the U. S. Had it occasionally exceeded that 24 hour period. So they're they're doing. They're all their measures of efficiency and productivity are are, well, as good as the United States and the training intensive training programs.

00:29:20.810 - 00:29:49.860

We would send Panamanian students to the United States to learn. We bring in consultants and professors from different universities. Uh huh. Management experts, engineering experts, medical experts. They bring them in for a week or two of training. So it was an intensive training program for 20 years, and as a result, when we transferred the canal, that was a seamless transition.

00:29:50.340 - 00:30:10.230

You would have known from one day when the U. S. Had it to the next day when Panamanians took over that there was any problem if things went on just as they did now leading up to that, the treaty itself was a very traumatic experience for everybody, including Panamanians.

00:30:10.240 - 00:30:36.860

I'll tell you why treaty disestablished the canal zone, which meant that the the Canal Zone government, which was an entity US Agency of the United States government and the Panama Canal Company, another agency of the United States government, were run by one governor president. He was the governor president, governor of the Canal Zone, president of the Panama Canal Company.

00:30:37.640 - 00:31:07.400

Many of us worked for both entities, US agencies. But treaty eliminated the canal zone government which took away the schools, the hospitals, the immigration, the fire, the police, the customs automatically. Now those functions went the customs fire, police and immigration went to Panama. They had responsibility in the canal zone.

00:31:07.400 - 00:31:36.090

Now, for those functions, the Panama Canal Company ran the commissaries and the mortuary and some commercial services. Those went to the Department of Defense. So you took a U. S. Government to U. S government agencies, and you just establish one and you transfer some functions from the other two U.

00:31:36.090 - 00:31:53.770

S. Army and you abolish some other functions. You have something called the Reduction in Force. And that means you could be in this position one day. But the next day, when the treaty comes into effect, you may be out of a job or display somewhere else.

00:31:54.740 - 00:32:13.470

The prime example was that the chief of the motor transportation division was a great 14 gs 14, which is pretty high level management. He wasn't a veteran, so they had no veteran bumping rights. So when the riff came, he was bumped down to a chauffeur. All right, three.

00:32:14.140 - 00:32:36.160

So here, the day before, he was in charge of the operation. The motor pool, which is with thousands of vehicles for the crown. Next day, he's a driver. So the morale was incredibly difficult. Policemen, they were abolished. So a lot of them, um, transferred to U.

00:32:36.160 - 00:33:01.170

S customs. It became Border Patrol agents in San Diego or Texas or someplace A lot of our good friends had to leave. Yeah, in my own organization, one of my best administrative officers was bumped out of my office and in place came somebody else who nobody wanted.

00:33:02.340 - 00:33:25.270

He had a reputation for being not a very nice person, not very bright. But he qualified for that job. So he bumped the best person I had out. And so throughout the organization, you had people who were misfit misplaced in positions, even though they technically qualified on paper, they weren't qualified to do the job.

00:33:25.280 - 00:33:51.910

What years were these? Thieves? 79 from 79 on. Okay, that's the effect. October 1st of 1979 was the effective date of the treaty. Treaty was signed on September 7th, 1977. So there was two years when we made preparations and the rift notices went out six months before so people could make plans to either leave, retire or or stay on in a different position.

00:33:51.910 - 00:34:14.020

They didn't know where they were going. Now the impact on Panamanians. We had a lot of Panamanian employees who lived in the canal zone, and by virtue of living in the Canal zone, you're entitled to free schooling, relatively three hospital care. But he had to pay something duty free privileges.

00:34:14.020 - 00:34:41.250

You could reimport household goods. You can import cars, you could shop in the commissaries. All of that went away for the Panamanians from one day to the next. Their cost of living probably went 50% overnight. Because Panama is costing. The economy was in Panama was much Khyber, that everybody had to pay duty on items with the canals always duty free and the U.

00:34:41.250 - 00:35:05.560

S. Government. We're bringing goods to resell, and things were just cheaper, you know, like a military base just cheaper. So the part Panamanian employees suffered the greatest on, and then they had to send their kids to come out to Panama schools. And yet they had lived up, lived in the canal zone for generations, learning English.

00:35:05.570 - 00:35:40.180

English was your primary language for most of these Panamanians. And a lot of them were West Indians. Panama didn't want him. So the US, fortunately in the treaty negotiations arranged to have the West Indians. We're actually Panamanians, but most of them were West Indians become eligible for a visa program that would accelerate their entry to the United States if they wished to come here after they retired or even before.

00:35:40.350 - 00:36:06.250

And thousands of them took advantage of that over a period of seven or 8 10 years, maybe so that that kind of eased. It's like his Panama. I didn't want him. They didn't want these people who were they thought they were. They were Americans are because I spoke mostly English, very little Spanish, so they felt more aligned with the United States than they did with Panama.

00:36:06.930 - 00:36:31.740

But the treaty? Someone described the disestablishment of the two agencies as, uh, cutting off your arms and your legs and leaving a torso because that's what it wasit was tremendous upheaval. In spite of that, the canal never shut down. People were still loyal. They kept operating.

00:36:32.730 - 00:37:02.090

And I've said this many, many times before. Both Panamanians and U. S employees who work for the canal tell us that it's not the United States Canal, and it's not Panama's canal. It's their canal. They feel the loyalty. So it's their canal. And that spirit, I think, has engendered a bond that carries over to this day.

00:37:02.090 - 00:37:26.950

As you've seen from the Panama Canal Society reunions. The body is there. It transcends generations, you know, and it's a nice thing that happened to the people in that respect, but it was really traumatic. Treaty negotiation e like to follow up on that at a later point with you.

00:37:28.530 - 00:37:55.760

Uh, Jova, Let's talk about the museum and the reunion. Some. I mean, what was the what led you to become involved in this initiative originally to establish a museum? Well, I go back to about 19. Early 19 eighties, there was a fellow named Adrien Bouchet. He was an historian, amateur historian.

00:37:56.330 - 00:38:16.450

He worked for the Panama Canal, is a marine traffic controller. His father was a Roosevelt medal recipient back in the construction days. He was passionate about preserving the history of the canal, the and the Canal Zone, way of life and all of that that that entails.

00:38:17.220 - 00:38:44.780

So he started collecting memorabilia and documents and photographs. There was a set of 23,000 glass plate negatives that were taken during the construction period by a photographer named Jalan. And those 23,000 photographs or glass plate negatives were sitting in the attic of the administration building for many, many, many years.

00:38:44.790 - 00:39:12.790

Boucher took them and sorted out. The best 2300 took 10% and from those 2300, he produced photographs, Captain negatives, glass place. But this photograph and the resolution on these on these photographs was incredible because of the negatives were eight by 10 class, and they're very fragile.

00:39:12.800 - 00:39:38.880

They break it if you just touched him. So he saved 2300 and created five volumes of photographs with those twenty three hundred one ones in the Library of Congress. One is in the National Archives and the other three year in Panama, I believe, but they shipped the other 23 all the 23,000 after that, to the National Archives.

00:39:38.880 - 00:39:59.740

So they're up there in Washington, a pictorial history of the construction of the Panama Canal. It's a beautiful collection. He also saved bottles and other artifacts, and and he kept looking around the United States. Every time you go to the States, he wanted to go to university.

00:39:59.750 - 00:40:32.880

He'd go to the Smithsonian Institution. He'd go toe historical society. He go all over trying to get somebody to take his collection and establish a small repository of memorabilia from the Canal Canal history. He finally found a place in Texas, a small library, and they said, Yeah, we'll make a corner of the library available to you, so he shipped all of his collection to them three or four years later, they went out of business.

00:40:32.890 - 00:40:57.320

They couldn't support their own library effort. So he got it all back state. And he tried through the Panama Canal Society to encourage them to support a museum, to start something that would be give him an office space or something that he could start a museum, and they kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.

00:40:57.810 - 00:41:21.020

Finally, he gave up and he transferred most of his collection to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. That's where it sits today around that time Chuck, Chuck Schumer. You know, Charles Homer called me up and says, You know, it's 1998 2 years the canal is going to be transferred to Panama.

00:41:21.020 - 00:41:46.540

We're gonna lose all of our history. Chuck's father, her grandfather, rather, was Roosevelt metal recipient as well. So Chuck has generations of history in Panama, he says. Would you be willing to help us start a museum? That's a truck, you know, I've been in civic, I've done something work and my job.

00:41:47.010 - 00:42:12.940

It was really pretty difficult for a long, long time, and I just want to relax. I don't want to get involved, take on any more projects, and he says, You know, it's not gonna be that much not gonna be that difficult. All we want you to do is is draft up prospectus that we to present to the Panama Canal Society just determine the feasibility of starting a museum.

00:42:14.000 - 00:42:33.730

I said, Okay, I could do that. So I bought a book. It's entitled. So you think you want to start a museum? It was written by retired Army general who was asked to start a memoir Museum of Military History somewhere in a small town, and he laid it all out.

00:42:33.740 - 00:42:56.130

He said, The pitfalls of these, the obstacles of these, the dynamics or the you know he laid it all out, said What you have to do what? You shouldn't do everything. So I read that book. I'm prepared to perspective we presented to the society and they said, We support you 100% except financially.

00:42:57.300 - 00:43:16.010

We're not gonna give any money, and we don't want you to be part of us because if you drag us down, we'll lose our revenues, our reserves. So E said Chuck, it is a good thing. I think the feasibility study shows that we could do it.

00:43:16.600 - 00:43:47.230

There's thousands of people out there who have collections of some kind about their history in Panama, and I think if we attract those, we could start a museum. So the first meeting of the society I went to 1998 July of 1998. I presented this perspective. They said no and I said, Okay, well, then we're going to start our own independent 501 c three organization nonprofit organization.

00:43:48.100 - 00:44:17.190

You're going to support us, you said, but you're not gonna be financially tied to us. They agreed. So we had a meeting right after that first business meeting, and there were about 25 people in the room, and the meeting was to decide whether or not there was any interest in starting a museum and right off the bat, Bob Zambada, who's one of our board members, says, I pledge $100 a month for the next 12 months.

00:44:18.080 - 00:44:44.890

Somebody else said, I'll give you $1000 right now. And so within a matter of 30 minutes we had almost $10,000 pledged so we could start the process of getting our by laws, uh, written the state credit ation accreditation. Uh, I R. S filings and all of that and rent space.

00:44:45.890 - 00:45:06.520

And we rented a small office about as big as this office as our first museum in the same building that the Panama Canal Society has its headquarters something. And that's how we started very slowly, very small. The first thing we did to try to raise money is we issued a medallion.

00:45:07.590 - 00:45:32.620

He was a medallion similar to the reserve up metal. It was silver 99.259 point 25 silver, a 0.95. And the beauty of it waas It was individually marked so that if you wanted your name on it, that medallion had a specific number. Medallion had a number, so there were no duplicates.

00:45:33.990 - 00:45:55.530

Everything was individual custom made your name and a number, and we sold hundreds of these. We bought him for about $22. At that time, Silver was not that expensive. And we saw them for I think it was either 35 or $45 and we saw hundreds of these.

00:45:55.530 - 00:46:14.640

So again, that was our first money making project. And from there we just started getting uh, people were donating money. They were starting to donate our artifacts to the point where we had thio enlarge the space that we moved downstairs to do the same office complex.

00:46:14.640 - 00:46:39.650

But it was 3500 square foot space on. We started building exhibits on We started going to the Panama Canal Society annual reunions with our exhibits, and it grew from there, just kept growing and growing. And the very first three or four years people says, you know, I'm not going to give you my collection because I don't think you're gonna make it.

00:46:39.740 - 00:46:57.720

And indeed, we struggled quite a bit for the first four or five years. There were times during our board meetings that were planning an exit strategy, how to get out of it because there's no point in going on because we're not getting the support we thought we would get from the Panama Canal Society.

00:46:59.880 - 00:47:20.720

They were okay. The society board was kind of reluctant to let us, but our advertisements or our promotional materials into their Panama Canal record their publication unless we paid for it. So they didn't give us free space in their publication. We had to pay for it.

00:47:21.880 - 00:47:43.710

Little things like that that kind of bothered us. But the worst thing is they didn't never. They never asked their membership to support the museum. As a result, they had four or 5000 members at the time. Every year, coming to these annual reunions in our membership was around 253 100 out of that four or 5000 people.

00:47:44.480 - 00:48:05.600

And we said, You know, if we can't attract our own constituents people who were born and raised and grew up and worked in the Panama Canal, if they aren't interested enough to support us, and how are we going to get the U. S. Public to support us and how we gonna grow this thing?

00:48:06.770 - 00:48:31.510

And it turned out our our average over the last seven or eight years or average membership has been about 800 again. Out of 4000 society members, only 800 with those 800 have contributed. We've raised about $100,000 a year steadily very steadily for the last eight or nine years, but that's it.

00:48:31.520 - 00:49:04.540

We couldn't go higher, and that 100,000 paid for 75,000 worth of expenses and 25,000 was for acquiring some items, and actually 75 with the expenses were closer to 100,000. So we had no real reserves. Um, we couldn't spend money to conserve documents properly. We couldn't take a rolled up photograph.

00:49:04.540 - 00:49:28.450

We had no way to relax it to preserve it. You know, we just didn't have the tools. And and the resource is to do a proper conservation job as a museum is supposed to dio. So we decided, Oh, in 19. In 2000 and four, we obtained a grant from I.

00:49:28.450 - 00:49:50.200

M. L s Institute of Museum and Library Services for a management accessible. It was only a $2000 grant, but the idea was that they would send a peer reviewer to come to the museum and give us some guidance and assess what we're doing right or wrong and go from there.

00:49:51.070 - 00:50:11.120

So the reviewer came down, he was the director of the Augusta National Museum of the Time and came down for three days and spent time with us interviewing all of us. And we had prepared some documents beforehand, and we show them our our expenses or income or liabilities.

00:50:11.290 - 00:50:40.080

everything about our operation operation. Uh huh. And he gave his report. He says We're well run, well managed museum. The strength of the museum was in its governing body and the passion of its members and its loyalty to a particular common cause. But it's ah, it's a theme that doesn't attract a lot of interests around the United States.

00:50:40.090 - 00:51:01.060

You know, Panama Canal. It's interesting, but you're not gonna attract a lot of interest in the U. S. And he noted that if the Canal Society won't support the museum, the membership, then it's best to try to do something else. And there's path A and path be.

00:51:01.060 - 00:51:23.920

He gave us two choices. Path A. Go out of business, distribute your collection, give it back to the people who gave it to you, or send it off to some institution or whatever path me a line your organization with an institution of higher learning or established museum somewhere else.

00:51:25.060 - 00:51:44.390

That was in 2000 and four, and way initiated talks with University of South Florida and ST Petersburg Junior College, which were in the vicinity. And we said, you know, we can continue to try to build this thing. Let's keep working at it. That was Path C.

00:51:45.560 - 00:52:15.110

Let's see what we could do. And so we did that for six more years. Well, until now. But then, three years ago, Richard Wayne you, who was the former Canal executive grew up with us, became the director of the Port of Tampa, was at the University of Florida, giving a talk on the need to expand ports in the United States because of the canal perspective expansion, bigger ships coming through the canal.

00:52:15.110 - 00:52:41.680

The ports need to be bigger in the United States. In the audience was Janet Romero from the foundation Um Foundation, and she listened to Richard's talk and she talked to him after, and they spent an hour talking about canal different things. And you mentioned the museum and he told you, Why don't you called your wood and see what he has to say?

00:52:42.550 - 00:53:02.490

So she called me and we talked for three hours on the phone and mhm. The idea started germinating that hey, maybe the museum and the University of Florida could get together and do what they peer. Reviewer told us we ought to be doing back in 2000 and four.

00:53:02.850 - 00:53:28.080

And the timing was incredible because we had just had a board meeting and I have been added for 13 years, 12 or 13 years. All of our board members were in their seventies getting older. No new blood was coming in. We were discouraged with the support we were not getting from the Canal Society, and it was just wearing us all out.

00:53:28.550 - 00:53:54.350

So we said, You know, this is the time, isn't how Let's go for it. So Judy introduced. I mean, Janet introduces to Judy Russell that we got together and the rest A Z, you know, she assigned Rachel shipper to her board. Then we asked you and Phil Williams and in the library all toe help us out, you know?

00:53:54.350 - 00:54:15.550

So we went from there, and now is the best thing that ever happened to to us by having University of Florida absorb our collection. So that's where we are Now. We have a new organization called The Friends of the Panama Canal Museum Collection at the University of Florida.

00:54:16.140 - 00:54:39.310

So we'll continue to try to raise money, uh, have exhibits bring exhibits to the Panama Canal Society re unions, uh, stay involved as much as we can to help promote in and grow the collection. Yeah, well, it's been tremendously educational for for me, Joe personally and for our students.

00:54:39.310 - 00:55:05.850

And it's been a great opportunity. And we've had is you know, the students that who have done interview work, uh, one of them being Candace Ellis, who now is, uh, history PhD student at George Washington University on DSO. Used her experience doing interviews with your organization to really gain an understanding of history in general.

00:55:06.340 - 00:55:23.770

Amanda Noel is another young student who did interviews with us two years ago. I think the reunion, uh, Amanda now is working on her Masters and museum studies at the University of South Carolina. And so it's been just a great I think, all around opportunity for all of us.

00:55:24.340 - 00:55:42.590

Andi, I know that we're in many ways just getting started. Yeah, there's a lot to be, of course. Yeah. Well, do you want to go ahead and stop for now? Because I know you have a lunch time commitment, and then we can follow up the next time that you're in town.

00:55:42.600 - 00:55:43.770

Sure. Kind of