| Summary: | (5:35) Mr. Kephart describes life as an officer in the military.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Kephart
July 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 4
Clint Alley: Well, going back to the Vietnam years, one thing we, we ask men who were in the service during that time, you hear a lot about people disrespecting military personnel at that time. Did you ever encounter any of that yourself?
Bob Kephart: No, not really. In, in any of my travels, any cities I were in I never ran into a problem with that. I’ve heard some people talk about that, but I, I’ve never really known any of the military people that I’ve associated with and we kept in touch with, with a lot of people like I said, we visited friends that we met. We’d go, I met a guy from Texas, I went out and visited him in his hometown. But we never really ran into any of that on the streets. I heard a lot of talk about it but I don’t know where that took place because any of the cities I was in I never saw anybody disrespectful to a military person.
CA: That’s good.
Rhonda Haygood: You mentioned the political part. Did you notice any change between when you first got in and the time you retired as far as how political it was? Was it more political early on or did it get more political toward the end or did you notice a change?
BK: Ah, it, ah, I don’t know. I would say that it stayed about the same. It really was just, it’s, there’s a lot of politics in, you know it’s in everything, but there’s a lot of politics in the military. You know, I don’t drink. I didn’t, I didn’t drink and you know the officers always had their parties, you know, and their wives threw parties and stuff like that and I can remember when I was a 2nd lieutenant I was ordered to attend a party. Said, “You will go; you will go through the receiving line and you will be there.” And I said, “Okay.” So I, I met a major that knew that I didn’t drink and he told me, he said, “Just get you a bottle of, a glass of ginger ale and follow me around.” So I did and he was one that did not like to participate in the drinking either any. I followed him around and he, he showed me the ropes of how to, you’ve got to go through, if you’re ever gonna get promoted you’ve got to go, that was the thing, you had to attend these parties. You had to be friends. You had to be through—go through the service line. You had to meet the generals. You had to, you know, you had to be seen and I learned the ropes through that of going through and taking my little ginger ale glass and following everybody and just having a ball just like I was half drunk, I reckon, cause a lot of them were. I didn’t like that, but that’s part of life; that’s part of the military. It’s part of the military. A lot of parties and a lot of get-togethers and it’s comradery. It’s a lot of that; it’s for that. A lot of people ask me now, you know when I’m involved in some meetings and things that I, that the military doesn’t come out in me and I said, “You know, I left the military and I don’t go back to it.” I don’t try to boss anybody. I don’t try to carry any—we have some things that I think worked in the military that I’ll use but they never think of it as a military. But I don’t carry it on. I don’t, I don’t try to be the head of the program.
CA: What year was it that you retired?
BK: 1992.
CA: 1992. So you were active duty or you were in the military from the Korean War all the way past the Persian Gulf War then.
BK: Um-hm.
CA: Okay. Um. That’s a long career. It is. I think that’s the longest career of anyone we’ve spoken to.
BK: I don’t know of anybody that’s had, that’s told me they’ve had that, I’ve had some tell me they had thirty-nine years. I had one guy tell me he had thirty-nine years but you don’t get that on active duty, because there’s a certain, when you reach a certain grade you’ve got so long that you have to be promoted or you’re, or you’re [roped out], what they call [roped out]. And if you’re not promoted you, you’re passed over the first time, passed over the second time and if you’re not promoted the third time, you’re out. And there’s a certain period of time you have to do that in. Like you could stay a major maybe seven years and that’s it. If you don’t get promoted to lieutenant colonel you’re, you’re [roped out], so. A lot of people, you, you find a lot of majors that were retired from the Korean War because they were not promoted and they, they had eighteen to nineteen years of military time and needed twenty for retirement purposes and the military retired them.
CA: Hm.
BK: They didn’t retire them, they, they, they [roped] them out. I don’t say retired, they [roped] them out before they got the time in for their retirement purposes.
CA: Um.
BK: So many and thousands of them. You’ve got thousands of majors that, that came out because they never made lieutenant colonel and they [roped] them out before they could get twenty years service in. Now that wasn’t right but it happened. Saved the government billions of dollars.
CA: Hm.
RH: Hm. I did not know they would do that.
BK: Yeah, they did. They did. You had people that would have stayed longer in service but that time and grade would, would get them and they could—they had to come out. But anyway, thirty-nine years is about the most I’d heard but I wound up with forty-one years, ten months and twenty-seven days, from the day I went in, first enlisted.
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