Tony Ramos
Interviewed by Linda Wood
May 22, 1998
In Linda Wood's class at South Kingstown High School, South Kingstown, RI

Linda Wood: ...May 22nd, 1998, talking about his experiences as a war protester in the Sixties. Do you think you could wear this? Don't wander too far away.

Tony Ramos: I'm pretty animated when I talk.

LW: If it bothers you, just take it off.

TR: Okay, anyway at the time I was in Southern Illinois University, having graduated from East Providence High School, and my brother, who is now Assistant Superintendent, if you've, you've met my brother, when we were in junior high school in the Fifties, there was a, what do you call it, a guidance counselor named Ms. Osterguy, and Ms. Osterguy told me and my brother when we were getting ready to go to high school and get ready to take courses and they put you on these different tracks of where you are going, Ms. Osterguy, in the goodness of her heart, was going to help us, and she told me, she told my brother, who's now Superintendent of Schools, that our kind don't go to college, and that the best thing for us to do was to take shop courses and learn how to fix automobiles and stuff like that, because our kind didn't go to college, which is a, it gives you an idea of the climate of the time in the Fifties, that someone would actually say that to a student, and I'm a smart guy, that someone would actually say that, my brother's not too dumb, either. So that was the climate of the time.

Well, fortunately, my parents were pretty good people and we ignored that foolishness. And I went off to college and the civil rights movement was raging, and there was a girl that I knew, Minnie Jean Brown, who was one of the kids that went to Little Rock High School. Do you all know about Little Rock High School? Well, Little Rock High School was where the first desegregation of the schools in America went on, `cause they had this thing called separate but equal, which was hardly the case. And Minnie Jean, well, she was a friend of Martin Luther King's, and she would go to all the marches and they went marching down to Selma, I remember Minnie Jean asking me to go to Selma, Alabama, to march, and I told her that I wasn't going to go to Selma, Alabama, because any cracker that spit on me, I was going to kick his ass up and down and forget non-violence and all of that foolishness, and that I was not a candidate for nonviolence.

And so there was a bunch of people who went down, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't go down. Finally, Minnie Jean, Minnie Jean married a fellow from Illinois, a Scottish, Scotch-Irish fellow, and they went to Canada. The war was going on and he was drafted. In fact, he and I went to the draft board, went to our physical together in St. Louis, we took acid, actually, and went to our physical in St. Louis.

That's another thing that nobody talks about. The Sixties was about dope. Now I know there's a "don't do this, don't do that", but that's the truth of it, that's the honest truth about it. We all smoked marijuana, we all smoked hashish, we all did acid. Some people fried their brains, some didn't, and it was a, it was a guideline underneath of what's all that's happening. So when you read all those history books, believe me. When the President said "I [indraw of breath] - but I didn't inhale," he's lying. Cause we all smoked marijuana. Anybody that was involved in all that, most of us did it, and that's the truth of it.

Anyway, Roy and I were, we went to the physical together and I remember walking into this room, on acid, and it looked like an aboittois, like a slaughter house, and they had us take off our clothes, and we all sat there and bent over, and they looked at our ass and checked our teeth and all that, and I got this distinct image of cattle being led off to the slaughter, which is what was happening. Here was the US government getting all us young kids, and you know, eventually at the end of the line, was somebody, and you either killed them or they killed you. But that's what I saw very, very clearly, and it really opened my eyes to what was going on. I mean, when you go into the draft board, you're a free citizen. You're not a soldier, they have no, really, they have no rights over you. But when that guy, when they're giving you those orders, he has no, he's a Sergeant in the Army. I'm a college student. So I refused to obey, well who are you? "Step forward." "Kiss my ass". "Step forward." `"Well, I'm stepping forward." "Okay."

Well they sent me out, and we did our little number, I went back and I had a girlfriend at the time and I, I was indicted. Long story short, I was indicted here in Providence and my girlfriend and I, we decided we'd get married and go to Canada, and I didn't know I'd been indicted, so I called my father up to tell him that I was getting married, and he said "What happened?" And I thought that he thought that she was pregnant or something, and I said "No, we're just gonna get married". He said "You've just been indicted". Oh, my goodness.

So we get in the car, we had some friends, and a little tiny little MG convertible and four of us with the cat in this little two-seater car, and drove up to Northern Illinois to where my wife lived, my girlfriend who became my wife. We got married by a German minister who had escaped from Germany, and I can still hear this guy, he had the thickest German accent. "Do yu take dis vomen to be yur vife". I couldn't believe it [laughter]; but the guy was a pacifist, he was a really wonderful man. He had escaped and hidden. But the tone of it was just too ironic for me.

Anyway, so we drive up to Illinois and Ann, again, Ann was Scotch-Irish something or another from Illinois, and in those days, this was real taboo. I mean, for people of different ethnic groups and different races to, to date was something. To be married was beyond belief. People would honk for, people would spit on you in the street. It was really, really quite a phenomenon. Nobody every spit on me, however.

Anyway, so we arrive in this town, and I remember before Ann used to say "Come on up and meet my mother and father, they're nice people". And I said "No, I'm not going up there. Some little old redneck town in Illinois?" You know, and I had all these prejudices about who these, who these people were. To me, small town America meant stupid white people who wore, who wore KKK [Ku Klux Klan] hats and did nasty things. So she finally convinced me to go up and visit her mother and father in this little town, fifty people in this town, fifty families in this whole town. We drove up and got out of the car and walked around the back of the house and Mom and Dad were back there next to the raised swimming pool and the father came up to me and said, "Ah, you're Ann's friend Tony? Here's a martini." Boom! And we were, they were just wonderful, wonderful people. They were just wonderful people.

In the meantime, so then, the second time we come is to announce that we're married. We arrive, they give us a car. The town insists that we go have mass, that we go to a religious service at the Methodist church. The whole town came. We shared the wine and the bread and all that. And I'm Catholic, I was Catholic. But, and they insisted that we go around to the elders of this town and talk to them about who we were and what we were doing, and so Ann and I went around to all these people in this town and talked about the Vietnam war and talked about racism and we went to Canada. My in-laws gave us this car, and we went to Canada. It's a long story. Went to Canada,

Interviewer: What year was this?

TR: This was 1968.

Interviewer: `68.

TR: '67-'68. Yeah, it was `68. Spring, `68. We went to Canada, where there was a large group of Americans who were going to Canada at the time, including Minnie Jean and Roy, who had, had gone before us, and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] came looking for us at this time, and they came to this little town of Gainville, Illinois, and they asked all of these people if they knew where we were, and everybody said no. It was a real lesson for me. It really cured me of my racism. And I'll tell you that anybody in this country who's my age that says that they haven't a little bit of racism is a liar, and I'm not talking about color, I'm talking about racism. I'm talking about "You wop, you guinea, you jew, you whatever" whatever all that is that we grew up with, it's, it's there. It was there, and that was one of the first big lessons for me that made me realize how prejudiced I was because I had this image of who small town white America, especially Mississippi and, and I just came from Mississippi two weeks ago. I feel safer in Mississippi than I do in South Boston.

Anyway, so we went to Canada, we lived there for quite a while, all summer, until, I gather this is the thirtieth anniversary of the shooting of Martin Luther King. And, what was that, last month?

April fourth.

TR: April fourth. On April fourth, Ann and I, we were living on a lake up in northern Canada, we'd canoe across the lake to get our groceries, it was a pretty idyllic life. And we, we went down, we went down to Toronto. We were living out in the country, and we went down to Toronto to meet, to see Minnie Jean and Roy and have dinner. And we got there, we had dinner, and after dinner we went out, we got in the car to go back and it said that Martin Luther King was shot. And we went back into the house and told Minnie Jean and Roy, who were friends of Martin's, and we all were crying and so on, and at that time I decided that I was going to come back to the United States, that I wasn't going to let evil run the country. I wasn't going to do like, that America wasn't going to become like Germany, and that the truth was going to be told and that this thing was not going to be allowed.

But rather than just come back across the border like many people did, and have them handcuff me and take me away and nobody knew about it, I decided, seeing that I was in the media business, I decided to make a media event out of it. And this was before portable cameras. There weren't none of those things around. But, so I called up some people called the Boston Resistance, and the Boston Resistance sent these people up to look for us and they came up all, all full of intrigue and wanted us to go back to right away and I said well, I couldn't do that, because my wife was in Illinois having her teeth done and they'd have to come back some other time, and we'd have to make arrangements. And we were living in a big house, and they were expecting us to be down in the basement, being little poor little starving little runaways from America, and that wasn't the case.

Anyway, so I realized that I had better take control of this situation, because these guys were out of control. They, they had a different agenda then I had. And so I called them up and we made arrangements and the arrangements were that we were gonna fly into Boston and we were gonna take sanctuary in the church that Paul Revere had the light in, it was the first, North Church. Well, we get to the airport, and we get to North Church, and it turns out that the church doesn't really want us to be there because they had had the first sanctuary. You all know what sanctuary is? It's a medieval concept that if you go into the Church, then the State cannot come in and get you, that you are under the protection of God and the community, and until you can work it all out.

And this is a concept that was first tried in America in 1968, and it was a Marine who refused to go back to Vietnam and the North Church took him in and I really don't know what happened to him, but that was the first case of sanctuary in the country. Testing the moral truth that, whether or not this was true, and whether there was a moral truth about what the country said.

And so I arrived there, and the church was afraid to do it because they had, there had been threats to burn the church down if they ever did it again, and they were, some of the congregation were against the war, and some of the congregation was for the war, and there were a lot of threats against the church and against the minister and so on, and so they kept us there, we were allowed to stay one night. Ann and I slept under the altar, and then the next day we drove down to the Church of the Mediator in Providence, and the fellow there was Reverend Perry, and he had allowed us to come in and take sanctuary in his church. It was a beautiful old wooden church on, I forget what avenue it was.

Well, we arrived there, and there was a, for a week, there must have been a thousand people constantly going in and out of the church and we organized it to take sanctuary in this church with, we put guys up on both ends of the streets in these different houses with walkie-talkies so that we could communicate with each other so we'd know what the FBI was doing, and the FBI would come running in at three o'clock in the morning for example, and all of a sudden there'd be a thousand people in front of the church, and their whole thing was to try to sneak in and take me out in the middle of the night and go on.

Interviewer: This is in Providence?

TR: This is in Providence, this was in Providence in 1968, in the summer of 1968. So, July, somewhere in there. It was the, it was just before Bobby Kennedy was shot. And so we were in this church, and it was a big thing. It was a big thing all over the country. It was on television all over the country, and so for a week this went on and I would talk to people about what the war was about and Civil Rights movement, and whatever it was. And I was twenty-three, I was a, I was a little bit older than you guys, I was twenty-three years old. And this didn't happen overnight, by the way. Because from 1964, `63, I had been writing back and forth to the draft board telling them that I wouldn't go. And there was a, there's a long correspondence that I have in my briefcase, actually.

I wish I had more time, because I wrote all about this, and I brought the book with me.

Interviewer: Maybe we could borrow it?

TR: You can't, cause it's the manuscript. I couldn't. And it's not the whole thing, it's just a little piece about the sanctuary part, but there are some great letters. I got my, I wrote for my FBI file, and the way I wrote all this was they sent me 98 pages that the FBI had on me, and on the bottom it said "See CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]".

Anyway, so we were in this church for a week, there was a problem between the church members and some of the people who were in the, there was a thing called Providence Resistance that was set up by a bunch of kinds at Brown and, and URI, and it was across the street from Brown, and it was a resistance movement of young people to, to be against the draft, to work on civil rights issues, etc. The Providence Resistance. It was a great bunch of people. But they, they were the people who organized all of the people to come up to the Church of the Mediator. And people came from all over. People came from here, Wakefield. People came from Narragansett, people came from Connecticut, people came from New Hampshire. There were lots of people who came and camped out and slept in this church.

Long story short, finally the FBI came. I should say there, there was a conflict between the young people and the older people who were the congregation. And I had a lot of work to do to make the young people not be so smart-ass toward these older people who were trying to understand what we were trying to do, and there was a big, there was a conflict, and I remember one time we had a little meeting and I had to tell the guys in the Boston, in the Providence Resistance, there was a Boston Resistance, a Wisconsin Resistance, there was a Resistance all over. This was the Providence branch of this organization. And tell them that they had to be more respectful of these people who, after all, were letting us into their house, and they were being threatened, and they were frightened, and that there was, they, they had to talk to those older people and not be so nasty to them, like they were the enemy. And the cry in the Sixties was that anybody over thirty was the enemy. Well, now that I'm considerably over thirty, I don't think of myself as the enemy. Actually, I'm amazed at how many seventeen year olds are older than I am. Anyway.

Anyway, so finally the FBI came, and they kicked the door of the church in. It was pretty amazing. They came right at news hour, and rush hour in Providence, and there were so many people there, that it gave the news people time to get there with their large cameras instead of the little, like I say, there was no portable little cameras back then. The news people arrived, `cause they came at rush hour, and they came in and they literally busted the door of the church down on TV and they lied about it, they said that they just walked in, that the minister let them in, but that wasn't true. They broke the door down, pushed the minister aside, and they came into the sanctuary of the church. And there were lots and lots of people in there, and we were all sitting down, and they didn't know who was who, and so they asked who was Tony Ramos, and everybody said that they were Tony Ramos. It was pretty, it was pretty spectacular. And I gather I had the book upside down, we were all reading from these prayer books, and I gather I had the book upside down, because prayer was not the biggest thing on my mind at the time. But there's a letter, could I see that?

If I can find this, I'll read you the FBI's description. They had a spy in the place. Here we are. This is the letter of the FBI spy who was in the church when they came to get me out. Me and Ron Moyer, this fellow from New York. And also, when you get a certain age, you can't see anymore either.

LW: I have to tell you that we checked with the Providence Journal to see what happened in Rhode Island in `68, and they came up with nothing. And we talked to Governor Almond who was the US Marshall at the time, and he said nothing.

TR: Mmm hmm, yeah, he's lying.

LW: And he said nothing, and ,

TR: They're all lying.

LW: And Marshall Layden didn't refer to it either.

TR: They're all lying. I guarantee you, that they're all lying. Or else they have selective memory or don't want to lie, because they pursued me not only up 'til then, after I got out of prison they were still talking about indicting me for whatever it was. And I have the proof, because I've got all the letters. This is Rebstell, let's see, Contelpro. Contelpro was a secret FBI organization that was set up within the FBI to disrupt any civil rights or anti-war movement in the country, and anybody who had any kind of liberal ideas was subject to being investigated by Contelpro. They were a pretty nasty bunch. And that's who's the, that's who this guy's working for, and this is Rebstell, whatever Rebstell is. It's, it's, I'm sure it's Rebel something.

But Rebstell to Bureau in New York, dated 9/3/68. Rebstell, this must be the guy's, the secret spy's little nickname, Rebstell. Code name, Rebstell.

"In connection with the apprehension of the above two individuals inside the Church of the Mediator, 225 Elmwood Avenue, Providence, RI, on June 3, 1968, I submit the following for the information of the Bureau. It was observed that upon approaching the church, those outside of the church were equipped with walkie talkies, apparently so they could advise those inside the church of our arrival so that they could apparently take their positions on the altar in the actual Temple. Upon going into the sanctuary, there were approximately twenty to thirty 'kooks' with their beards, etc., sitting around in a circle in what might be referred to as the sanctuary of the church. Obviously they were praying, but it was noticed when Ramos was pulled up, the book he was praying from was upside down."

"Immediately upon identification and being advised that they were under arrest, they immediately made the statement that they would have to be carried out, that they would not walk out willingly. Immediately upon picking up these subjects and in accordance with an apparent preconceived plan, groups of their supporters kept walking in front of the agents, carrying these two individuals in an effort to delay them or to make it uncomfortable on their way from the church to the vehicles in which they were going to be transported. As the sidewalk outside of the church was reached, the crowd increased, and the pushing and shoving was accelerated. It was noticed, however, that no one actually laid a hand on any agent, just pushed and shoved with their bodies in an apparent attempt to aggravate an agent to a point where he would perhaps lose his temper and take a swing at one of those characters which, although might be justified, would incur poor publicity and enhance their objective."

"It was also noted from the minute the agents proceeded from the church until they left, members of this group had their own photographic equipment, which enabled them to take photos inside of the church without any additional lighting which would indicate it was expensive camera equipment. They apparently made it a practice of recording on their film their entire activity. After placing these individuals in vehicles for transportation for arraignment, large numbers of this group sat down in front of the vehicles. It was necessary for the police to remove these individuals but on several occasions, as soon as the police removed one or two, two others would jump in. This of course resulted in an attempt to try to embarrass law enforcement. And of course, while all of this was going on, the news media in the form of television cameras is recording the entire thing."

"It was necessary to arrest nine individuals in addition to the subjects and they were charged with disorderly conduct. The activity of removing females in particular" Now, let me, let me read this one slowly for you. This gives you a good idea who this character is, "The activity of removing females in particular would make one seriously wonder as to the type of individual since obviously it becomes necessary that they be mauled, that their clothes be pulled, and that they be dragged by their legs. All of which enables them to have portrayed on TV views which would certainly not be considered family television, and indicates the recognized fact that such individuals are completely devoid of any morality or of any modesty. When the patrol wagon was approaching the Providence Police Department where nine of these individuals were to be taken in and booked by the local authorities, blank, who was also in the patrol wagon, told them that it would not be necessary to be carried out. Now, since there was no one around, that they had accomplished their objectives and that they would walk in. Both Moyer and Ramos, brought to the Federal building and being taken up for arraignment, walked, did not desire to be carried in any way, and it was obvious that the only reason that this was done at all is to create publicity for themselves as well as for their alleged "cause"." Quote, unquote.

"It was also noticed that Ramos, who was indicted, was arraigned before a USDC [United States District Court] and was held in $5000 bail assurity." Then there's a blank space, cause that's the names of a whole lot of whatever it is. "According to the special agents assigned to the Providence Residence Agency, in their opinion, so and so participated in this sanctuary bit in order to get publicity and from interviews on television, it would seem that blank had set blank self up as the media between these individuals and authorities. The activities of the FBI in going in and arresting these men without any preknowledge or fanfare took the publicity from blank and blank and he has received little mention since the apprehension other than to make the allegation that the agents forced themselves in, which is absolutely untrue. And unwarranted, since the door was unlocked and the handle of the door was turned by blank in my presence."

"WPRI TV of Providence, Rhode Island, carried the television story, which was televised on the news twice last evening. They portrayed the interview of the two subjects and the minister that they had at eleven o'clock and yesterday wherein blank indicated that he had no information or any word from any authorities. They followed this with the comment that then, Wham!, in came the FBI. News commentators on the radio this morning heard by me indicate that it didn't take the FBI very long." This was an individual I would like to have known who this; the spelling is all bad, I mean, the guy was a real idiot.

Anyway, his story, I took about 100 pages to tell that story in here, and it's a very good story, and it's a much more interesting than that one. I thought when I read that, I was shocked at his talking about the morality of dragging, how necessary it was to drag and maul women and do all this sort of stuff, and how we didn't have any morality. It was astounding to me. Anyway, so we went, we went to court. And you know, my mother and father put up bond. And for a year, for all that Summer, rather, this was June, July, August, we really gave the Federal Government in this city and the police a hard time. They, Ron Moyer was in the state prison down here. I went there, they took me there for the, for the night anyway. Ron Moyer was in there and he was there for a whole month, and we finally, he was supposed to be taken back to New York, and his crime was that a judge in New York had said that he could not go north of 42nd Street on Manhattan Island. And if he went north, then he'd be arrested and put in jail, and it had to do with the draft. But that was his, that's what they were getting him here for, is because he had gone north of 42nd street in Manhattan. And they kept him in the prison in this little nasty little state prison up here. I'm sure you've all driven by it. Have you all driven by that little nasty little place there? It was built during the Civil War. It still looks like the Civil War.

Anyway, Ron was in there for a long time and then we found out about it, and so we decided we'd go down and visit. Well, we showed up to visit and the Warden, a guy named Langlois, Warden Langlois, was a real nasty right-wing idiot, and he said he's not going to let us in there because obviously we didn't bathe and we, until we took a bath and cut our hair, he wasn't going to let us in. Well one of the ways that we always dealt with this was with a sense of humor. We always tried to deal with them to the letter of the law. Okay, that's what you said, we've gotta bathe and cut our hair?, no problem. So we went down and we found one of those (??) bathtubs, and we put it on the truck and we got a whole bunch of water in buckets and we drove down to the prison and we pulled up in front of the prison and we took the bathtub and we put it in front of the door, we got in the bathtub naked and were pouring water over ourselves, and the lawy-, the man, he came out vivid. I mean the guy just didn't know what to do, and the next thing you know, there's twenty fire trucks and state cops, and they've got, they've got hoses they're going to spray. Well, come on, spray us, that's what you said. You know. We did get in to see him. I mean, he couldn't keep us out, but he believed that he could, and he would have had we not made this demonstration.

So Ron ended up going to New York, and I've never found out what's happened to him. I have no idea where Ron Moyer is to this day. Anyway, eventually, they tried me and the trial was again very interesting. It was a Judge Petine, Raymond J. Petine. A decent fellow by the way. I've talked to Judge Petine a few times since I've been out, and so Judge Petine had this little trial and when we arrived for the trial, he decided that people weren't dressed right, that they had to have ties, and the boys had to have ties and jackets, and the girls had to have skirts on. Okay. And all of the kids that were with me, they were very livid and I said, well, I'll tell you what. Man wants ties and shirts, here's some money, there's the American, what was it, it's like a Salvation Army, it was the American something or other on Main Street in those days. So everybody went down there and they bought ties. You know, a naked girl on it, a little tie this big, you know, some pants up to here and suspenders, and everybody looked like a clown. You know, jacket was oversized, the girls had these dresses that were, you know, eighteen whosiwhatsi, everybody was like a clown, but, we were, he said that's what we had to do, and that's what we did. But we took it to its extreme.

And it was that kind of thing that was always going on in the Sixties. We were young, we were full of bright ideas, and we knew,

LW: Five minutes.

TR: Five minutes, okay.

TR: Well, I went to jail for two and a half years, had a good time, learned how to become a cowboy.

LW: Where did you go to jail?

TR: Southern Illinois, to, well, starting here and then Louisburg Federal Prison and then down to, that's a long story, I went to Danbury, and then they had a redneck minister in a racist whosiwhatsi and so I, they tried to send me to Tarahode, Indiana, which was a place where the majority of the staff were KKK, and a lot of black people were being killed there, and so I refused to go, big demonstration, they ended up sending me to Pennsylvania. Got there, big demonstration in the prison, I refused to do some stuff, they sent me out to the prison farm, yada, yada, yada, I spent a lot of time in the hole, but I learned to be a cowboy, and I have two horses in California, thanks to my experience in prison.

(student):: How long were you in prison?

TR: Two years. Any questions? Yes sir.

(student): What's the hole?

TR: The hole is the place where, in prison there's a, just like in life, they have all these carrot and stick things to control you, and in the prison, they have prisons within the prison, and there are different levels. They have like five different levels, and the hole is literally down in the basement, sub-basement, with a double door and a little hole in the corner where you're supposed to do your little business, but the flushing is controlled outside so if you're a real bad guy they'll just leave it in there and won't flush it for you, and there's another little indent in the wall with a - this is the United States, mind you, with a little, and it's going on now, with a little pipe, and you put your little cup up there and they give you water from outside and if you're a good boy, they'll give you a lot of water, and if not , and they slide the food under the door and if you're a good boy, they'll give you a lot of food, but if not they don't give you any food. And, but I didn't drink, and I didn't smoke, and I didn't eat, and I went for a long time without doing any of that, and I would sit in a lotus position. I would hear them coming, cause they would come every fifteen minutes to make,

LW: As a protest you did not eat or drink?

TR: Yes, whenever I would go into the hole. Because I usually went in the hole for some moral purpose, you know, they would do something wrong or there was something going on, and we would, then when I would go or somebody else would go, we'd all go in to back that person. So before you know it, they'd had twenty draft people there, twenty political pris-, we were political prisoners, but the United States to this day does not recognize that it has political prisoners. In other words, we're such a perfectly wonderful moral right country that anybody who does anything does it as a felon, that you're a criminal, that there's no such thing as a political crime in America, that all crimes are felonies, and that is just not.

LW: Do you know how many Americans were put in prison for resisting the draft?

TR; I have no idea. Hundreds. Hundreds. There would have been, I mean, there were millions of people demonstrating. The few of us who did go were just, we were the guys who were going to be the examples to scare the rest, but it didn't work. And the war,

LW: You were too busy with all of this to go to Chicago, I'm sure, in that summer..

TR: I was in jail that summer.

LW: So you had already gone to jail.

TR: I think I'd already gone to jail. I'm not sure. I don't remember.

LW: That was August of 1968.

TR: I was very busy, I don't know. I was busy covering my own behind. I don't know what was going on in Chicago. I remember the moon walk, I remember watching the moon walk on TV in jail.

LW: That would have been 1969.

I remember watching the moonwalk and Star Wars was the only thing, was one of the only things that I would watch on TV, and I remember when 2001 came out.

LW: I think that was 1969 also.

TR: It was '69? I went to the movies, Any other questions? No?

(student): Where have you traveled around in the world?

TR: Since then? I lived in Paris for six years, I have been in Sudan, I was in Iran during the host-, quote "Hostage crisis". I was there for three months. I have been in Moscow, and (Sushi?), and Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union was just collapsing. I was in China the year before the Tiananmen Square.

LW: Were you making films or just,

I was making films, yes. I was making films. Yeah, in Sudan, I was there for the drought before the rock 'n rollers discovered that drought, drought makes money, and yeah, I was making films. In Paris I was teaching at the University of Paris at the Sorbonne and at the American Center, which is a big cultural center there. So they didn't get me. They thought they had me, but I'm still here.

LW: And successful. Erin, did you have a question?

(student): Were you making documentaries?

TR; Yes, they were documentaries.

(Bell rings.)

TR: Ta da!!!

(Applause)

TR; Thanks, you guys.