ECKART LEMBERG. Born 1928.

TRANSCRIPT of OH 1747V A-C

This interview was recorded on November 8, 2011, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Sara Wright. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Jenna Woods. The interview was transcribed by Janna Plant.

ABSTRACT: Born in Germany in 1928, Eckart Lemberg and his family fled to Australia after his father was incarcerated in and later released from a concentration camp in 1938. In Australia, he studied aeronautical engineering and embarked on a career in aircraft design and testing in Australia, Canada, and the United States. He has lived in Boulder since 1960. In addition to discussing his family history and his career, Mr. Lemberg tells stories about his avocations of climbing, skiing and running. After taking up running at the age of 47, he went on to compete in many mountain races, such as the Pikes Peak Marathon, the Imogene Pass Race, and the Everest Marathon—the latter being the highest marathon in the world, with a starting line at 17,000 feet. Mr. Lemberg completed the Everest Marathon three times, the last time at the age of 69.

NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets.

[A].

00:00 (Today is November the 8th, 2011, and my name is Sara Wright. I am interviewing Eckart Lemberg, who is an 83-year-old Boulderite who came to Boulder in 1960, and who was one of the early blazing trail-runners in Boulder—culminating, or at least a high point of that, literally, was doing Everest—the Everest Marathon. He’s going to tell us a little bit about that, but he also has a rather harrowing early childhood story, as well—that we’re going to get into. This interview is being recorded for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. This is interview is being filmed by Jenna Woods. So, Eckart would you please tell me where and when you were born?)

Okay. I wasn’t very conscious at the time, but I was born in Breslau, Germany. It’s in the state of Silesia, which is close to Poland. It joins Poland in the southern part of Germany.

(And what was the year?)

1928.

[pause]

(Okay, so we’re going to skip ahead just a bit. Why don’t you tell me what led you to move to Boulder in 1960?)

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[pause]

I got a job while working in Canada, and the program of design—We were a company called Avro Aircraft—an English company. They had designed a supersonic airplane; they were in the finishing stages of that, and they hired me from—I had been working in Britain, in England—working on various airplanes, and testing airplane components.

It was just at that stage—I’d been there for three years plus, and the—I saw that I was getting—it was a wonderful company—Bristol Air—Aeroplane Company, okay. [pause] They had actually—stop a minute, would you?

(Mm-hmm.)

So, you see I have to reverse it now.

(So, you worked for Bristol Aeroplane Company—)

Company, yes. Okay.

(—in England.)

In England.

(And then you went to Canada?)

Yes.

(To—?)

Yes.

(To Avro.)

Yes, and the reason is we were in a test lab—[aside] are you okay now?—I found my way into a test lab to test—the wings of the Bristol freighter were failing in service. It’s a relatively small freighter, but big enough to take an automobile. They had a wonderful reputation of designing fine airplanes, and they were beginning to fall and suffer fatigue cracks in wings and things. In England, what they decided to do is to set up a fatigue test for a wing of a freighter, and that was my job. To create this test, I was given a wing, and you figure out how to jack it up and down and get the loads that you have to apply to it. Then, just pump it up until it fails. I did that for a whole year.

(Was it—you’re mechanical engineer, right?)

Aeronautical engineer.

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(Aeronautical.)

There’s a difference.

(It was your father who was—no, okay—)

05:01 The aeronautical degree is probably the hardest degree you can get out of mechanical engineering that goes up at—we were the first group in Australia, in Syndey—where I graduated—the first group that went supersonic in training. This was 19—finished in 1950. So, I was able to get jobs in various aerospace companies throughout the world really just by watching as to who was hiring or maybe etcetera. And that’s how I got to England after I got married. Simply because we wanted to do a tour, I had grown up in Australia—after coming from Germany—and I had graduated in Aeronautics, and then because Australians are encouraged—particularly the engineers— to go overseas to get further training, they do encourage that—and then come back to Australia, hopefully. Some do, and some don’t. It took me many years, but eventually I did, for a while.

(Okay.)

This airplane wing—I got it set up, etcetera. We got experts to tell me how many loads to apply to the wing, depending on flight and depending on landing, and so on and so forth—whatever the loads were—applied to the wing. I did that, and filmed it with my own video, which I have actually, somewhere at home. Much to the surprise of my engineering bosses, who said, “You’re the first guy that’s ever been interested enough to film your own stuff.” [laughs]. And it wasn’t classified.

We finally found out I couldn’t break the wing with the known loads—

We finally found out that these airplanes were crashing in Spain, and when they checked the details they found that they were traditionally overloaded by about 30% above the maximum load, and they were being flown off plowed fields. The aircraft is not designed to fly off plowed fields [laughs] because what happens to the wing—the wing gets these consistent upwards and downwards load, which in normal flight—on a standard runway— would only be once, when the wing droops down when you hit—you know— your running gear hits the—your landing gear hits the ground.

We found out that the constant reversal on a plowed field means that this wing was subjected to far bigger reverse loads, and they are bad for airplane wings. So, it wasn’t Bristol’s fault. They had produced a fine airplane.

At the end of that, I was a bit tired of testing this and looking for cracks. We didn’t find any cracks [laughs] until—at the end of it, I handed it off to somebody else to do something else. About two weeks afterwards, when he continued my existing testing, the wing did develop a fatigue crack [laughs] under these extreme loads it was subjected to.

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At that stage, I was getting a little stale. I wasn’t earning enough money in England. Canada came up with a job offer, and that’s how I got to Canada to help them finish the calculations and the testing on their wonderful airplane. I was only there for a year-and- a-quarter. The reason is that the Prime Minister thought the airplane was too expensive for Canada. I think it’s Stephen Baker [?]. You can check the history. It was about— we’ll get the dates together.

10:11 I’d been there a year-and-a-quarter suspecting that I was last person in, pretty much, I was going to be the first out, if they lose the contract. I actually went to meetings and found out that _____ had sent a design team—not a design team—a personnel guy to interview people who could work for Stanley Aviation, which was a classified program testing ejection seats for supersonic airplanes. It turns out that eighty of us went for these interviews, all of them knowing that this probably would fail the contract we had in Canada. About twelve of us got job offerings, and I was lucky enough to get one of those.

Stanley Aviation—then they applied—I had to get a secret clearance for a foreigner. I don’t believe in walking across borders illegally [laughs]. It’s very hard to get in, be a foreigner, and then immediately jump into a classified program. It took three months to get—there was another Australian on board in Canada. Both of us—he’s a friend of mine—we applied. But he found out, as an Australian by birth, they had so few immigrants coming from Australia to the U.S., it would take him eleven months if they ever lost the contract. Because of my German birth, since most Germans—we had a high percentage of Germans coming to the United States—it took three months to get my clearance.

One day, I got a call from a personnel manager. It was a Monday. He said, “Eckart, you’ve got your clearance. You’ve got the green card. Quick! Put in your notice. We need you right now.” I think that was a Monday or Tuesday.

On Friday, the government cancelled the contract, and put out 14,000 people—right out by an announcement over the loud speakers, they said, “The government have cancelled our contract. You are all laid off”—that was on that Friday—“as of now.” On Monday, they had to hire 3,000 personnel people again, just to process the layoffs.

People were walking out. People who had, for roughly six years, been designing a supersonic airplane that was about—they had built three—they had built three—the company was fighting this. They were going to try them to beat the world speed record, arguing that if this plane—it couldn’t be cancelled if it has those kind of achievements. In the meantime, it struggled with the United States to get them to assist with funding this Canadian airplane. Of course, the pressure from the aerospace family in the U.S. was resisting that, in other words. So, they did not approve any extra funding.

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The idea was to use this airplane if the Russians wanted to come from the north, that it would—an airplane from Canada would help to protect the country and the United States, as well. That’s the story for it.

Would you believe that I found out later on—because I already had my job, so I just walked out. I remember the time when these people who had spent six-to-seven years designing a superb airplane, all of a sudden they get laid off with no chance of any future.

15:27 It was snowing that day, and there were people trying to get out of the company, and up the hill. People were signing—engineers were signing their own drafting board. They were taking their own tools out, which belongs to the company, and there’s a guy at the guard, one of the security guards—guy took his drafting equipment with him. He said, “This is not an approved signature.”

And the engineer said, “Who are you to argue? You’re laid off, as well.” [laughs]

So, he paid—they took stuff out for whatever, and then they were struggling to get out of the company in this snowstorm. It was such a sad story. There’s a guy who’d come from Russia, and he had a family to come to this wonderful new country. He was sort of a White Russian. He’d started a Canadian family. I think he had three kids, and these people were just overwhelmed. I shall never forget it.

And that’s how I got to Denver to Stanley Aviation, and worked there for a year-and-a- quarter.

(Did you live in Denver at first, or?)

Yes, we rented. We actually drove the English car we had. It was very well—we drove partly through some snowstorms, all the way from Canada. All the way to Colorado.

(What was the type of car?)

It’s—I’ll have to give you the name—it’s in my documents.

(Okay.)

May I?

(Yeah. Later is fine.)

It’s an English—it’s a very solid English car, but the British—never mind; I won’t say— [laughs]. Their cars are not as reliable as some others these days. It did well. It got us to Colorado Springs. We looked at that, and then went on to Denver—rented a house for a few months, etc., etc., while I started work at Stanley Aviation.

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And after about six months there—without any equipment or training—a few of the guys at the office decided, let’s go out Long’s Peak! That’s about eight of us from the office. I had no idea about altitude training. So, we took off. I had my video camera and my slide camera, and I would run ahead of the group and film them coming up. And then I’d have to run to catch up with them. We went and hiked our way to the base of Long’s Peak. At that time they had the cables, which are right next to the vertical climbing surface. We went up [laughs] the cables where—they’re pegged into—steel-pegged— this is on a steep slope, but basically you grab a hold of the rope that’s contained by steel pieces welded into the mountain, into the rock. You got halfway, and there was a little one-foot ledge. A guy with us was just ahead of me—one of our people—and he happened to—he was a bachelor—he had a doggie, and he couldn’t find a dog sitter, so he had his little dachshund in his backpack.

(Uh-huh.)

And when we got to this one-foot strip to the right of the cables, the doggie jumped out, and I’ve never been in the mountain myself before [laughs], but another guy and I worked our way across this one-foot, grabbed the doggie, put it back in his pack [laughs], and he’d had enough. He went back down the cables.

20:19 Shortly after—there were people waiting to come—we then struggled on to the next—it’s a 300 ft. cable. It was actually a hemp rope of some kind, and we got to the top of that, exhausted [laughs]. We’re gasping there for air—never been above—much above sea-level, except for the skiing in Europe. We finally got ourselves to the summit, and came back down the backside, came back through the Keyhole, and I have no idea how we did it. But we did it. These days there are no cables; they’re taken down, and now you have to go through the keyhole, unless you want to climb vertically up the slope—up the face, the famous face [the Diamond] of Long’s Peak.

(Was that your very—sort-of—first real mountaineering experience?)

Absolutely.

(Okay. And were you hooked, or were you—never wanted to do it again, at first?)

No, I don’t know—it was easy [laughs]. I don’t know why. It felt easy. Thanks for reminding me; I need to dig in my many boxes, and see if I can dig out that—my pictures. There are boxes of them in my computer room.

(Okay. So, at some point you decided to move to Boulder?)

I didn’t decide to move to Boulder. I was at Stanley Aviation, and Stanley was a brilliant engineer who used to be a helicopter test pilot. He started his own business because he was a little hard to get on with. So, he started own business making just—I guess he started making ejection seats for airplanes, I’m not sure. He did well enough at that, that his business set up in Denver, and that’s after a while they had designed an ejection

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 6 capsule that would be capable of ejecting a pilot out of an airplane at high-speed, which would normally tear the pilot’s face apart—you know, the impact with the—at high- speed. So, what he designed—or had his team design—was an ejection capsule that would first of all enclose the pilot. In other words, it was folded up behind him—a series of honeycomb shells, orange peel-type things. They were pivoted on each side, and this capsule—when the pilot decided it’s time to leave the airplane, he had two handles. The first handle he pulled was—it would lower this thing and totally enclose him. There’s a bar that would pull his legs back, so that they didn’t get in the way, and as soon as that set down, he was completely enclosed in an air-pressurized capsule cabin all by himself. Then he pulled the next lever next to it, and that shot that whole capsule out through— smashed the Plexiglas container, and he flew and it deployed a parachute, and he came down sitting in this container.

Stanley had to—they had to design a crushing model because the pilot was still in his seat, so wherever it landed—and they hoped it would land on sand somewhere, but it could have landed on hard surface, they had to design a crushing material, and they designed—did a lot of tests on—some with people volunteers sitting in the seat that they would drop at the same speed that the parachute would allow it to descend, and that was the way they finally got a correct way of crushing—it was actually steel being cut and sliced and so forth. It seemed to work best rather than crushable honeycomb, and this was the capsule I was given to test and apply.

25:28 When it leaves the airplane, is it subjected to these high-speeds, and it was all of a quality honeycomb-type structure, so I had to put air-loads on it, apply suction cups in all different directions as to wherever the air would first hit it, and pull in the critical directions. That part of it was tested separately. The crushing and landing was tested separately, but I had so many attached components to this thing, pulling it sideways with hydraulic jacks and things, that the mayor of Denver was invited to come see this monstrous beast. It seemed to past its tests very well, so it was qualified, and my test was finished.

Afterwards, the design engineer told me, “You know, Eckart, I think you’ve put the wrong load on it.” [laughs].

And I said, “I did not put the wrong loads on it.”

Eventually—I mean, it was a perfectly friendly separation—but they still felt I had the wrong load, and I finally got a job—I left that because Ball Aerospace, now Ball—a friend of mine who happened to be a technician at Stanley said, “Eckart, they’re looking for engineers at Ball.” Etcetera. Etcetera. “You should apply,” and I did. That’s how Ball finally took me on, because of my aircraft experience. Because their new manager—his name momentarily—I’ll give you the name later on—he was a wonderful engineer. He’d only just been assigned for that job, and he hired me because of my airplane experience, because that’s what he had, as well.

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I was at Ball 11 years after that, but after three years, I suddenly got a call from the Chief Structures guy at Stanley Aviation. He said, “Eckart, we owe you an apology. Your loads were correct.” It was nice. It was nice of him to call me back.

(Cool.)

The trouble is, not too many ejection seats were made because it was for the B-58 bomber, and they didn’t make too many of those.

(Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your history with running in Boulder? And not just running, but mountainous running.)

Okay.

(And it’s not just about you, right? There’s a history of mountainous running in Boulder—)

Yep.

(You were telling me a little bit about it—which I didn’t know, having grown up here.)

You grew up here?

(I did.)

You did. I know, I meet some people who’ve grown up here—good friend of mine, a young kid who was the son of a family that I knew very well—neighbors—and eventually he got a job—he was a brilliant—still is—brilliant engineer—he’d got a job in Texas, and immediately almost after he graduated—in fact, he taught engineering as an engineer, and had never—he was amazing. But he got a job in Texas, and after a while he came back, and I said, “You know, Glenn, I—you’ve never been in these mountains behind here.”

He said, “You know—”

So, I took him. He said he had never—he was born here, but he had never in these mountains right in our backyard.

30:15 We hiked from NCAR around into the hills, and he had a great time. Ever since I’ve been living so close to Bear Peak, I just try to help people to see this incredible mountain scenery, and that’s why I try to encourage—and every now and then meet ladies who get lost in the mountains [laughs]—they’ve never been there before!

(I remember you actually saying that that was part of the whole idea of the folks that started the mountain marathons, right? They were upset that so many people were running on the pavement, and had never seen the mountains.)

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Correct.

(Do you remember telling—tell me about that again, because I don’t really remember what you said.)

For some unknown reason—or no, that’s not true. It was a known reason. In the early years—in fact, when I first came to Stanley, one of the technicians there was on the ski patrol, and he said, “You know, you’ve skied—not much recently, but—.” He said, “Why don’t you try and join the ski patrol?”

And so after some practicing, I eventually went for the ski patrol test. We had to hike up and ski down, etc. etc. etc. on the famous pass on the way from here to Winter Park. Highway 40?

(Sorry.)

Berthoud Pass.

(Berthoud Pass. Right.)

Thank you. Comes with old age, I have trouble remembering names. I went for the test. We had to hike up—cross-country skis, all with skins underneath—and then ski down, and come down the steep surface underneath the lift. We came a day-and-a-half early, so we could practice, because we had to ski down that steep bit under the lift—no-fall, etc. etc. I was lucky enough to pass the test, and that got me onto the ski patrol. I was lucky enough to pass it, and I spent 11 years on the ski patrol at A-Basin [Arapahoe Basin]. That’s a complete story all by itself.

(I bet.)

After that, the Japanese were very nice financial—by that time, I had run about 100 toboggans. The patrol just a year before was named the outstanding patrol in the nation for this one particular year. The Japanese were kind enough to buy Purina Chows, which owned A-Basin, and they brought—they introduced a bunch of—they wanted to improve the quality of the skiing of the patrolman, so they put them—us—through a series of tests, so that you’d be not just a strong patrolman, but you had to be absolutely perfect in your style. And there I was—I was a pretty strong skier, and looking absolutely ideally perfect [laughs] was not my style. There was another guy from Europe—he and I pulled toboggans—he was just a strong guy, and he could do anything if needed, but anyway—.

35:02 I got to the point where they were doing a test, and there were six guys checking your quality on the steep run above A-Basin that goes straight down by the lift. I got so angry that there were these six guys watching how I was skiing, that I just decided to retire from the ski patrol. When I took that up, I had been by the way when I went back to Australia, I was appointed as the American representative for the ski patrol—to talk to

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Australian ski patrol people. In the summer, of course, I got some people out of Bondi Beach [laughs], and talked to them because it’s surfing time at that time.

[Mention of need for inserting a new battery]

(We only have about 40-minutes left, and we could probably come back, but I know you really—)

Probably. Oh, yeah.

Well, you keep me company [laughs].

(I know, but I know you really want to share some about your aunt and your family.)

Yes.

(So, do you want to go ahead and talk about that?)

I just, in my memories—in my book, what I am saying is split some pages—my time in Germany, etc. etc.—and see if I can get at chambers—uh, sorry—chapters. And the lady who helped me get it set up to begin with, one of the local ladies who does check on people and _____—check on whatever they want to write about—and so she said, “You know, you’ve got to, first of all, time,”—not put too much stuff in, etc. Anyway, so I have a page—two pages at the moment just for headings.

(Why don’t you just start from the beginning, and pretend I don’t know anything about your childhood, and the fact that you’re—it’s miraculous that you and your family are— made it to Australia.)

Okay. We can’t go the whole route [laughs].

(We can’t?)

Too complicated. Yes, we can, but—.

(Well, think of the—you know—the shorter version, and then we’ll go into more detail later.)

You have to use a machete to cut my [laughs] discussion down.

(Okay, pretend you’ve got ten minutes to tell me what mattered most, and then you’re going to die. No, I’m just kidding. [laughs])

I know. I’m going to die [laughs] sometime anyway. Anyway, all right. I was born— I’ve already told you that little bit.

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(Yep.)

Where—in Breslau. Breslau was in Germany, is now in Poland, since the Russians— after the war—were so generous. When they beat somebody in a war, they steal some of their property. In other words, the Russians took off a bigly portion of Poland, so they said, “No, problem. We’ll give you a portion of East Germany,” which is where Breslau was swallowed up. So, when I visited with my favorite cousin—who’s also born in Breslau—she and her boyfriend, we went to Breslau—we couldn’t speak the language because they’re all speaking Polish. It’s very demoralizing to say the least.

Ten minutes up? I’m kidding.

(You speak German still?)

I have for some years been a German interpreter. I’m finding now they still call me occasionally. It’s very stressful stuff because the judge expects you to go bang-bang- bang-bang, and what they don’t realize is sometimes, when you don’t do this all the time—it’s not the German I have a problem with—it’s just converting to the right name at the right time, and the judge has got about a micro-second to make up her mind or his mind. A lot of tension.

40:15 I did work up in Aurora several times, and so on, at some places like that— sometimes in Denver. After a while, I had to always refresh myself—all the standard names, judicial names, in German. I was ten when we left Germany. I’m one of the few people that, apparently, is still able to speak the language smoothly. My relatives keep saying, “How can you do it? You’ve still got the same as you—.” I’m still—I’m beginning to miss words and so forth, but anyway—.

(So, what was your life like with your family when you were eight, before the—)

Well, the funny part about this is I could not remember it because I was two. But at that age my sister, who’s four—she’s two years older than I—and she and my dad—and I don’t remember whether mother was on this thing—for some reason, we used to go in the winter—no, in the summer time—go to the North Sea somewhere, and there’s a forest close to the North Sea. So, we were hiking through the forest. Just my dad, my sister, and I. And I was two and she was four. All of a sudden—they’re looking at some bushes and blackberry bushes and things—they’re roaming around looking at stuff. All of a sudden, Dad says, “Where’s—where’s Eckart?” And I was nowhere to be seen.

They searched around. It didn’t take him too long. All of a sudden, he discovers I’m up to my chin in a morass in one of those mud puddles in this German forest. And it has sucked me down that far, and I was just yelping. He always seemed to know what to do, and somehow—you know, if you—sometimes you can sink in yourself—somehow he grabbed me—I had a lot of hair—managed to pull me out, and wrap me up, but it wasn’t very long—I was almost finished in my first two years of life. After that—well, they wrapped me in blankets, and took whatever care was necessary—I was fine after that.

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(What was your father’s name?)

Walter.

(And his last name is—)

Lemberg.

(Lemberg, as well?)

Yes. Yes.

(And what did he do? He was an engineer, as well, right?)

He’s a lawyer. No—

(Oh.)

I’m the only engineer in the family. They were all lawyers. They were the original ones who were either generals or lawyers. Some of them are still lawyers. My cousin—not so much—she’s a teacher, but her family—my aunt, her mother—Aunt Molly is my mother’s sister, and she was a wonderful lawyer.

(Now, who is the aunt that helped—)

She’s the one.

(—save your dad. Your aunt, Molly. And she was your mother’s sister.)

Margot. M-A-R-G-O-T, and we called her Molly.

(And your mother’s name?)

Erica.

(With a “k”?)

With a “c”.

(Okay. And Margot?)

Margot. M-A-R-G-O-T. And last name?

(Uh-huh.)

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Groebner. G-R—that’s her married name, is—G-R-O-E-B-N-E-R.

(Okay.)

She got a law degree, etc., but she was also very active—very active skier. But they used to ski not in ski areas—they used to ski through the forest, and I think she collided with a tree at one stretch and she broke a leg or something like that, but that seemed to get healed up okay. She was very gutsy.

45:19 (So, she was brave even before this happened.)

My mother was born, very strangely enough, on the ninth, ninth, 1900. And her sister was born ten years later. So, Molly was ten years younger.

(Okay. So, what happened with your dad during—)

Okay. Okay. My dad was a lawyer who took over—he first of all, had law with his father—that was the law office in Breslau, and during that time—that was Grandfather— was taking care of it, while both his two sons—Uncle Rudy, Rudolph Lemberg, who later became a famous scientist, and my dad, Walter. They both fought in the German Army in the First World War. Both got metal awards for service in the front. They were actually—I think both of them were involved in carrying out—winding up telephone lines—in the good old days, they had to walk them to the people who had phones—right up to fighting troops. There they had to—both were in the trenches and so forth, as a result of which my uncle became a pacifist and said, “Never again.”

My dad still had the fighting spirit in him. So, he was different in that regard. Anyway, so—my uncle Rudy is a completely different story. Again, he’s a wonderful person, who finally—you know—got us to Australia. But this time, my dad—so, Rudy had already— when Hitler came to power, he’d already said, “This is not for me,”—in 1933.

In 1936, Rudy managed to take his wife and go to England, and work with some scientific—he’s a biochemist. That, as I say, in itself is a story. But that’s how he got to England, and then from England—he was apparently quite—became a Quaker—not in England, but he was already sort of anti-war and so on, so forth. So, they shipped him off on a Fulbright scholarship to Australia, and that’s how he got to Australia.

In the meantime, my dad kept being a lawyer in Germany, and took over his—my grandfather died of cancer just a few years before—about the time when Hitler became known. The problem is that my grandparents were Jewish. My dad, however—my grandmother was actually—grandmother was converted to Christianity in the [19]20s, so what she did: she converted—well, both her sons were therefore now Lutherans. So, that’s how I—when my dad finally married my mother, who is absolutely from northern Germany—from the _____Prussian area of Danzig. She was born near Danzig—Gdansk, now.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 13

We never really heard very much about the Jewish faith, though. We grew up in the Christian faith. We were christened in that faith, and so forth. However—so, my dad, having fought for Germany, etcetera, he was apolitical. He did his law stuff, and he was a—he used to be a key tennis player, and he was working—playing in a bunch of tennis teams around Breslau, and he was in his law office—he used to drive us around on his motorcycle. He had a two-stroke—well, it was this German, very tough motorcycle with a big seat in the back that could accommodate myself—as a ten-year-old—or eight-year- old, and his wife, my mother.

51:01 We would cruise around Germany and, at that stage, there were Germans doing military practice, etcetera, etcetera, and we actually got to a flooded area. We had to get off and detour the bike because we were getting in the way of the Red Army, or there was—for training, there was the Blue Army, and the Red Army: both Germans practicing with each other because we were afraid that—we were convinced that the Poles were going to attack us, because we were so close to Poland. It’s amazing what propaganda will do.

So, that was just a little bit of background—what my dad did during that time. However, Dad was at his office. He had ridden his motorcycle to the office, because he never, at that stage, never had a car. Motorbike was good enough. One day, the secretary came. She said, “Dr. Lemberg, the Nazi—”—sorry. “The Gestapo are at the door. Would you like to go out the back door?”

And he said, “Not worth it.”

So, he met them at the front, got on his bike, did whatever he had to collect—with a Gestapo car in front, Gestapo car behind, and they took him off to a concentration camp.

For about a week or two, we heard nothing. Then we found that he was in a camp, and that camp was not one of the bad ones, yet. That’s all.

So, my mother’s sister—Aunt Molly—who was, by then, in her late 20s—she was always very aggressive, as a lawyer [laughs] and a sportswoman. She went straight to the Gestapo office, and said, “You have my brother-in-law’s motorcycle. Please hand it over.” And they did. So, they got it back. Somehow, somebody sold it, and that’s all we heard—that was taken care of.

The story with the Nazis was if you had the guts—

(Running out of tape.)

Okay.

(You’ve got four minutes—)

Okay.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 14

(—and then I’ve got to change the tape.)

Okay. If you faced them, and had the guts to face them, they respected that. It was really interesting. There were some German ministers who did the same thing and survived, because they stood up to it. Not everybody does, but anyway. Margot decided it was time for other action. She happened to have a doctor—you know, students—they were in their 20s—young, probably a young doctor. She got a medical—she was in some office. She got this doctor friend to write her a medical thing that she had—I don’t know what— pneumonia or something [laughs], some illness—got her to go off work between one and two weeks, I’m not clear on whether that was.

55:20 She jumped on a train to Berlin. Somehow, through connections she knew the name of a judge. And my dad had been in the camp for about three weeks. She went to this judge—who apparently had enough power—and after whatever she told him, she said, “The Lemberg lawyers are respected”—or this now is the office. Somehow, she got that judge to be convinced that my dad should be released from the concentration camp, so he could go back to his office to process any Jewish property, or whatever legal claims the Jews might have, etcetera, etcetera. My aunt was so modest she would never tell us all the stuff that she risked, whatever. Anyway, she came back with this okay that he would be released, and he WAS released.

And my dad came home. We had big celebration—“Welcome Home!”—you know. It was before Christmas, 1938. He came home, they had—he had been released for that— on that basis, but he had to swear that they wouldn’t discover—talk about anything that went on at the camp, of course. Well, promises can be broken, but anyway. He came home, and said—they decided immediately this cannot last. We’ve got to send a telegram to Uncle Rudy in Australia.

Sent the telegram to Rudy. It took him three weeks, but because he was already a known scientist—I think it was the Prime Minister—was Mr. [Robert] Menzies. He got the okay for us to emigrate in a matter of three weeks. Between the end of the—Christmas [19]38—we got the okay to just pack up and leave.

[To interviewer] Since you—it’s done?

(Go ahead.)

My mother—we actually—we managed to take all our furniture, a medium grand piano [laughs], plus German heavy storage in two huge garage-size boxes—that were so big to put a car in—make a good garage. All of this stuff was packed with a Nazi, obviously a customs guy, watching there. In the meantime, you couldn’t take out any silver, any properties, and that’s another story—how we managed to load all that up.

(Okay. That’s probably where we should start at our next meeting, because there’s more to your aunt’s story, too, about how she helped with the jewels—I remember that.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 15

Yeah.

(So, we’ll have to—I think we’d be wise, since we have to leave soon, to start tape two next time.)

I know. That’s fine.

(I just hate to get started and then—)

No-no.

(—have to run right out.)

That’s fine, Sara.

59:31 [End of Part A.]

[B].

00:00 (This is Part B, a continuation of the interview with Eckart Lemberg, which is being recorded for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The date is November the 29th, and my name is Sara Wright. Jenna Woods is again our videographer. Hello Eckart. How are you today?)

Very well, thank you.

(Good. So, you were telling us how your family—basically—narrowly made it to Australia, and you were able to bring some of your belongings along, and that your aunt was very helpful with that process. Is there more to this story that you’d like to share?)

Well, it turned out—miraculously enough—that I was—that my father rather, was in many ways fortunate, thanks to my aunt. But I’m not sure what portion of that you—I think you’ve already had that? When he was in the office doing his law work, and the secretary came and said, “Dr. Lemberg, the Gestapo are at the door. Would you like to go out the back door?”

And he said, “Not worth it.”

(Yeah, you—we talked about the whole part with getting all the way to Australia, but I do remember that—when we were hiking—you said there were other ways that your aunt helped you even after that.)

Thank you. Yes. So, once she managed to get him out of the concentration camp, which is a very unusual—it’s—I have not heard of anyone else getting out, but—did I mention

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 16 to you that during the three weeks he was in the camp—when they first brought people in, they stripped them of all their clothes and then put fire hoses on them, and he, sort of—although he swore not to say anything about what happened there—it was not so bad a camp—let’s put it that way. He apparently—he was proud to say that he was the only one they couldn’t knock down with their fire hoses because he’d been a tennis player in town, in various tennis tournaments and things like that. That’s one of the few things that we heard of life, because they had to swear not to talk, etcetera, etcetera. But anyway, that part of it was kind of interesting, because it was different.

When he got home—we had heard about it a few days before—we had the house all decorated, and then they said, “This cannot last” because of the judges’ decision—I believe that was covered before?

(Mm-hmm.)

Of what the judge said to bring him out of their so that he could process Jewish claims with his law office—because the Jews had no claims [laughs] that anybody would take any notice of.

So, at that stage, after he disappeared—you know—to the camp on the motorcycle between two police cars—we heard nothing then, etcetera. But it was Aunt Molly, my mother’s sister, who just stepped into that—and I may have told you that, as well—

(Yep.)

Because she told the Gestapo, “You have my brother-in-law’s motorcycle. Hand it over.” And they did, because they did seem to—well, she wasn’t—she wasn’t Jewish, so you could afford to be pretty aggressive, and she was twenty-eight, and [laughs] a pretty aggressive lawyer at that. That’s how that happened.

05:01 (So, were you all given Australian citizenship, then—once you emigrated?)

No, no, no. Not yet.

(Okay.)

No. What we—we had to—Okay, I’ve got the sequence right now: They had to send a telegram to Uncle Rudy in Australia, and you have a piece of information on his full name?

(Mm-hmm.)

Max[?] Rudolph and so on and so forth. Okay. They said, “This can’t last,” because they—“somebody’s going to find out that this is kind of iffy.” Apparently, the judge was in favor—well, that’s probably why she had known about him, etcetera, and that’s why she went to him in the first place. But that’s all that she did on that. She came back, and

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 17 there was never any—anybody discovered that the medical relieve that she got from her office was a fake, too—because she wasn’t really sick [laughs].

So, more had to be done. After a few weeks, Uncle Rudy then sent back a telegram to say, “It’s been approved,”—you know, etcetera, etcetera. So, we were absolutely qualified to leave Germany, and in fact, not just with our bits and pieces; we were able to completely pack into two big, automobile garage-size trunks—wooden boxes—a medium grand piano and some of our heavy, German oak furniture, etcetera, etcetera, and that actually—through miracles unexplained—managed to arrive safely in Australia. I think you also got the information of when they packed, that grandmother—my mother’s mother—had brought in baby carriage, some wrapped silver cutlery and stuff like that— that was quietly sneaked into their packer when the customs Nazi guy had gone to the toilet [laughs]. Quick. My mother had prepared to charm him with cookies and all kinds—she was a very good cook—and so when the customs guy was out of immediate visibility, they managed to wrap some of these baby diapers—wrap silver and stuff—and was quickly stuck in while he wasn’t looking.

(How old are you at the time now—you’re nine?)

Ten.

(Ten. And what do you remember about the journey?)

This was actually in the beginning of 2000—sorry 19—when did the war start? 1936. Excuse me.

(What do you remember about the journey?)

It was just—the packaging was done legally, except for what we stuffed in quietly, and so on. The funny part of that problem was that when the two containers were virtually full, all of the sudden the customs guy came around and said, “Where’s my bike?” [laughs].

(They had packed it?)

They had packed the bike, as well. So, that had to be unpacked again. It was finally sealed, and because it had been covered by customs, it was never opened again, and it worked its way through various ships or whatever, and arrived in Australia many months later, everything in good condition.

(And that was rare, as well.)

Hmm?

(That was rare, as well? To get out with anything.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 18

10:02 Yes. Oh, yes. We were very, very fortunate. But because there was still—we needed some money, because my father had spent all of his savings on the journey. The journey was on two Japanese ships, believe it or not. The first was to get over to England, and the reason was: that’s where Uncle Rudy had some Quaker friends. They were well-off, and they were the people with whom Aunt Margot, or Molly—she decided that she would just—I don’t know—she must have gotten another medical leave, because what she did, she booked a train, etcetera—and of course, also, a little bit of ocean across the channel to England. The reason was: she decided to take whatever jewelry—we didn’t have that much, but we needed some money at the other end in Australia—and so, what she did was she—she booked a trip to London, and she didn’t smuggle anything. We thought at first that she’d faked a passport, but she didn’t do that. She had her regular passport—the way I now understand it. She got on a train, and then on a ship across the channel. She acted like a 20-year-old—

(Flapper.)

Flapper. She had all the jewelry on—rings, necklaces, in public view—and she was playing, and the customs said, “Oh, that stupid flapper”—[laughs]. She somehow got herself to London, and took it—all this—to the Wood family. They’re wonderful people; left it in a drawer for us to pick up when we got there later on. Then she came back— nobody ever questioned anything [laughs]. If she’d been found out for some reason— that the medical—that’s another medical leave was a fake, she would have finished up in a concentration camp, as well. So, that’s where—several times—she risked her life, and that’s why I try to stay with her all the way until her death.

(That was recent, right? She died fairly recently?)

Age 100, in about two weeks. She lost her hearing—not lost it, but we were unable to— she was unable to talk to me anymore, when she got into a medical facility rather than from home, at which stage I talked to her as many times as I could. We had the most wonderful discussions. She stayed just alert all the way through.

(Do you remember what year she passed?)

Yeah. That was last year.

(That was last year.)

She was born in 1910.

(Okay.)

My mother was born—my mother was born on 9th, 9th, 1900 [laughs]. Sounds like Mr. [Herman] Cain [laughs]. So, she [Aunt Margot] was ten-years younger than my mother.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 19

(Even as a ten-year-old going through all this, you knew that it was your aunt that made all this—that saved your family—)

Yeah. At that first—the early stage, which when we later visited her—I kept trying to get out of her: “How did you do this in Berlin?” and she didn’t want to talk about it—you know—the judge thing. And—you know—there was—that was whatever it was. She achieved the right end.

(Yeah. Yeah.)

But this is the point: if for some reason, the customs guy had noticed us wrapping stuff in—we could have been in the same kind of trouble, as well. But for some miraculous reason, none of that trouble came about.

15:10 (Did you feel that fear that whole time of—that you were barely getting by with things, or were you more oblivious to it, at ten?)

No, I had a realization. I knew what was happening, but it was being handled beautifully, and I had no reason—you know. All I remember is when we’d finally—well, as I say, my dad had to use all his money to buy these ships—that means a German ship from Hamburg to London—which was one of their quality ships; and then they managed to get a Japanese ship from there to Singapore. I believe it was Singapore rather than Hong Kong. We went through Hong Kong—yeah, that I’d have to look up because from there we got a second ship, from there to Australia, and arrived all in one piece after my dad nearly got washed overboard in a storm, and the—.

He was an avid photographer. Even during World War I, he had a camera with him and somewhere in my documents, we have some photographs of what he did during the trench warfare and so on. But, he—well, he was just pretty tough, and did that. When we were going through Marseilles—on the Japanese ship—it was only a 10,000-ton ship. These days they use them with rowing oars on the outside—no, not quite [laughs].

This thing was a tiny ship compared to what they—you know, the big ocean liners they use now, but it took us all the way through the Suez Canal and up to Singapore and to Hong Kong. Anyway, the second ship—but during that—in the Mediterranean, that storm was so severe—usually—there are some stormy portions of the Mediterranean, but this was not the Bay of Biscay, it was the Bay of Marseilles, and the ship was being blasted by 80-mile—I don’t know, huge windstorms. It was pitching so much that the crew came out of their bedroom quarters in the bow and came to the inside of the ship. In the meantime, my dad and I—we were of course in the third floor—3rd class tourist at the back—that’s the cheapest one. In a big storm, you’d find your way to the middle of the ship where it—

(Didn’t rock so much.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 20

Didn’t rock so much. Dad was on the deck with his camera, and a huge wave came from the side. He grabbed—he just—well, he always had his camera ready. He snapped the thing. It hit the ship sideways—a great wash of water came over the deck. I was—I was standing there, hanging on to one of the railings—hanging on, and he got washed off his feet, and was sliding along the deck when a Japanese sailor went and grabbed him just before—the bars off the ship were enough he could have slid through, and one of the Japanese sailors grabbed him before he slid through.

(Wow.)

Actually, we have that photograph somewhere.

(Of the wave?)

Of what he took of the wave hitting the ship.

(Could you find that for us?)

[laughs].

(Today? Or is it buried somewhere?)

It’s—with—I’m still—my—I’m still in a mess.

(Okay, but maybe sometime.)

Yes. Please note down: Look for that photograph my dad took.

20:00 And perhaps some from the trench warfare in World War I, too.

If I can—yes.

(Okay.)

And there wasn’t that much, but he managed to just photograph—and it’s all in, basically, 8mm format. Little tiny prints, etcetera.

(So, you almost lost your dad twice.)

Yes.

(Wow.)

I know. But after that we went through the Suez Canal, and the Japanese were excellent. They had parties on the ship, and fancy dresses—stuff like that. When we were going through the Suez Canal—the funniest thing about it is you’re in their having breakfast,

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 21 and it’s nice and sunny, and you look—but you look out of the dining room of the ship— and you’re looking onto camels [laughs]. You can’t see the water. It’s so narrow that when you’re on the ship, you don’t see the water. You just see the desert, sand, and some edges. But you see—occasionally—a camel on either side or whatever until you go right through the Suez Canal, etcetera, etcetera.

At every stop that that ship made, Uncle Rudy had managed to get a—one of his contacts to meet us at the ship. That’s in—certainly in Singapore, in Hong Kong, and so forth. I do remember we were taken to visit a pineapple plantation. I think that was somewhere in Singapore, and you could buy a pineapple for a penny—or something like that. So, again that was very nice being greeted and so forth. Until we changed ships—oh my goodness, I think it must have been—the furthest one up has to be Hong Kong. I would have to refer back to the world map again. I’ve got to dig it out.

The second voyage, by ship, to Australia was pretty uneventful. We went through the very level, very flat ocean, as we crossed—what did we talk about—the—equator. The equator, and it was interesting—I tried like mad to see—when you’re flushing the toilet—which way it flushes [laughs], and I didn’t come to any good conclusions. Anyway—

(So, what was Australia like?)

We landed in Sydney, and that was actually wonderful, because it was on a Friday— when it had been very hot. They called it Black Friday because it was 104 degrees— something like that—and some of the bushes were actually turning black from the heat. But anyway, the Sydney Morning Herald had a photographer, and they got a hold of my sister—two years older than I am—and that—I wish I had that—I can’t recall where that would be: A newspaper article on the front of Sydney Morning Herald about the new immigrants coming to Australia. My sister was the one photographed for that.

Oh! On the second boat, she was always full of—full of guts—and this is a two-masted, pretty old-fashioned, old steamship. We were, as I say, in the back of the ship, and for some reason, we managed to climb up the ladder on the aft mast. She got all the way to the, I think, _____—whatever it is up there. She had no fear of anything, at age 14. Twelve, sorry. I got partway up, and I said, “That’s enough.”

So, there’s a picture of her in the Sydney Morning Herald. Maybe someday I can—I’ve been invited to come back to Australia to celebrate our school’s—North Sydney Boys High School’s 100th anniversary, but I’m not sure, yet [laughs]. It might be too stressful.

25:39 (And you were an athlete even in high school, right? You swam, and—)

Well, I swam, yes. I didn’t do that much, because at ten, I had just barely gotten— Okay—actually, at nine, I got into high school and started learning English. So, I had about a year’s English, but my English wasn’t that great.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 22

(Okay.)

But when I got to Australia, there was—in a class—they put me in a class, and they interviewed me to see—you know—how good my language was, and it wasn’t that good, so they put me in a certain kind of—I think it was the 3rd grade, or something like that. After a while, they found out that my mathematics was way in advance of that, and I got shifted into 4th—the next grade up. But when I was there, there was one kid who decided to take me—well, when I first got there—under his wing. We started doing things together, and I think he—I think he had a pop gun or something, and we were shooting birds [laughs]. My uncle didn’t like that.

(No?)

He liked to preserve the birds, and so forth. He—that kid—remained a friend of mine for a long time, but by the time I got to high school and university there was too much else to do.

(And where did you go to university, again?)

Sydney University.

(Okay.)

I just liked math, so I chose to do engineering, and I—well, I also liked airplanes, and so on. So, I eventually chose the department of aeronautics. You had to do—first two years—you had to do general engineering, if you wanted to do engineering. Then, you picked a specialty over the next two. In other words, all engineers did the first two—that included electrical everything, and then later on, you did the aeronautics—I did, rather.

We had two professors, both from England—Professor Stevens was the aerodynamics guy—he was a wonderful guy; and—come on—Dr.—he wasn’t Doctor, yet—Wittrick, Bill—he was doing his Ph.D. in structures. And he was—there were no textbooks on aerodynamics hardly at all, at that time, in 1946—just after the war. In other words—

(—you had to learn from other—)

They—

(—experts.)

Bill Wittrick was the structures guy, and they both spoke with an English plum-in-the- mouth accent. Both were very brilliant. That way, when I graduated, I was speaking with an English accent. Prof. Stevens—because that was the post—the year 1946, just after the war—Okay [19]45—the war [19]39 to [19]45—and I was the first class out of high school. A lot of the others were ex-Australian—ex-service people, who had the

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 23 equivalent of what we have here—you know the free-training for servicemen? What’s it called?

(The G.I. Bill?)

Yes, the Australian equivalent of the G.I. Bill. And here I was, an 18-year-old, with no experience in the industry, with a lot of these 30 year-old guys that had worked in engineering places, had families, and so forth. That was the first year the university didn’t have a big parade because everybody was too serious. These were ex-service guys and they were determined to get this training, and be serious about that. So, it was very interesting year that way.

30:40 Prof. Stevens, just because he was the aerodynamics prof., he picked some of the older guys—sorry, the older students—and he used to take them out sailing to prove aerodynamics when you’re sailing through Sydney Harbor, in terms of—you know—how you get to lift off the sails, and all that.

(Did you get to go? You weren’t one of the older—)

I was not one of the selected [laughs]. I never said a word bo-peep to anybody [laughs]. I was sort of overwhelmed, if you like.

(So, then it was part of the Australian—there was a program, right?—you talked about it on the first tape—encouraging, once you graduated, for you to go abroad and work abroad—hoping you’d come back and bring more knowledge?)

Yes.

(But you didn’t come back? You instead worked in Canada, and came then to Denver, right?)

Well, I did come back.

(You did go back. Okay.)

Seventeen years later.

(Okay. Okay.)

Or something like that. That’s when I couldn’t find a job here in 1970.

(Oh.)

I wrote everywhere. I visited 30 different people with my resume. And everybody said, “Yeah, great resume, but we just don’t have any openings.” You know—it sounds a little similar to these days.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 24

(Right now, yeah. Mm-hmm.)

Anyway, and I just sent my resume everywhere although I had jobs as soon as I was laid off at Ball. We had just launched a perfectly fabulous experiment for Skylab—the experiment where we sent up instruments to look at the sun, and so forth. The funny part about it is I was lucky enough to design two of the big 10-foot mechanical boxes that then had all the optics and electronics, you know how that goes—put inside. Then you hang that on a big thing that they launch—a great big, cruciform tree structure. There are all these experiments around, and Ball had actually gotten contracts for four of those— two of which I designed the boxes for, and then you—of course you have to coordinate with the optics people, the electronics people—and then you have to make sure that it’s mounted correctly on the spaceship—on the spacecraft, and so forth. We had a very successful testing.

I tested one of the other experiments. I designed the box for one—or two. When that was finished, I then got into the testing department, where I tested somebody else’s. We put it through the vibration tests, as well as—then the assembly, and so on. Everything worked fine, and we shipped it off to NASA. Then Ball said, “Well, folks. You’ve done a great job. Bye-Bye.” [laughs]

(That’s terrible.)

They didn’t lay me off—

(Oh.)

Because when I then found no jobs—

[inaudible discussion; perhaps with videographer]

I reluctantly—we had just—a year ago—bought a house out on 100th Avenue, on the golf course—no 100th—what am I talking about?—75th—going out east, okay? Big golf course—

(Near Flatirons?)

Come on, what the heck was it? Mil—[laughs]—anyway, it was a lovely house, and we only had it for a year, and then came this. I wasn’t getting a job here. So, I reluctantly sent it back to the university in Adelaide. No, it was Melbourne. Melbourne University had an employment office for Australian graduates. As I said, Australia encouraged their people to go overseas, and to come back—bring this experience with them. They immediately shipped my resume to Commonwealth Aircraft, where I had done, not only my student training, as well as—when I graduated, they then hired me back as an engineer. I worked there for four years, after I graduated.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 25

36:10 We were actually designing, at that stage, a Mach 1.5—which is only one-and- half times the speed of sound—airplane, but actually that was the first graduating class in Australia that went supersonic. We had training in supersonics.

(How long did you work back in Australia then before you returned?)

Well, after graduating, I worked there four years, at—first, as a student, we had to get practical experience in the third year engineering, so they shipped—well, I had to volunteer somewhere or whatever—we found a spot in Commonwealth Aircraft. So, I got some hardware[?], practical training in the industry. The first person they put me in a group with—well, to work for—was the local union rep. I learned early on in my engineering profession about the attitude of the unions toward management. I hate to say this, but I got a very bad experience from their attitude, because they hated management—I kept thinking, “These guys are giving you a job,” and that wasn’t that.

So, what he did was he would go to his union meetings, and he’d say, “Well, go get some tools. This is a list of parts. I want you to assemble some undercarriage parts” for a little airplane we were building. And I’d go to the storage room—to the parts—it took forever to get parts out of there, and I had a little buggy to put the parts in. It took, as I say, a long time to bring the parts back to my bench, assemble one and then when I went back, he said, Well, he’s just going to a union meeting—you know—he’d spend all day on the union meeting. They hardly ever did any work. I have to be careful, but that’s how it was.

Without anybody telling me anything, I thought: Now how can I—it took so long to get one part—why don’t I just take ten of each component when he’s in a box picking out nuts, bolts, bearings? All you do is, instead of going back to that same place ten times, you simply get ten at once from the same box, and then go to the bearings box and get ten of those. So, I came back with a big wagon to my long bench, and I put all those components—I had pile #1, pile #2, pile #3. By the time he came back from his union meeting at the end of the day, he said [in a growly voice], “What are you doing?!”

I said, “Well, I figured out that it would be more efficient, more time-saving, for us to do it this way.”

He said, “You’ll put us all out of work!”

The philosophy being that the longer you spend doing a job, the longer you have a job. That was a union attitude.

(I think I should take a break. We’re going to take a pause, okay?)

Yes.

[break in recording]

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 26

40:28 (So, tell me all about your personal history of running.)

Well, I used to be a swimmer. I never got to be a runner until I was 47. From the various jobs, it wasn’t until—well, my first job here was at Stanley Aviation, and one of our technicians said, “Eck, you supposed to be able to ski—why don’t you try for the ski patrol?”

(Yeah, we talked all about the ski patrol last tape.)

Okay, all right.

(That was great. That was very interesting, but we didn’t talk about how that became marathoning.)

The reason that happened was when the Japanese took over Purina Chows, and started clinic-ing [?] people, after we’d been voted the outstanding patrol in the U.S. or something at A[Arapahoe] Basin, I was just not keen on being tested to a group of six people to watch if I was going to be perfectly parallel in my turns at the top of—in fact, at A-Basin there’s a straight run down to the parking lot, and I almost got so angry that I took it straight, and it would’ve killed me. I decided not to commit suicide [laughs]. I decided it’s time to retire, and then I had to do something else. So, to keep fit I just starting to just do a little bit of running. It’s about that time that the Bolder Boulder had their first race.

(Okay.)

It finished up in a grassy meadow here in North Boulder—the very first one. It was organized by Steve Bosley, bank manager, from the bank at the top of—here—I don’t know what bank it is. It’s—where they run the Bolder Boulder, it’s about the start of the Bolder Boulder, the bank is there. Steve Bosley was the—Okay at that time, I think he was already the president of the bank, etcetera, etcetera.

After just running the first Bolder Boulder, it got to be a thing: Well—you know, I’ll run the next one. And so forth. All of sudden, after ten years of that, Steve Bosley called us all. He said, “My computer tells me that all you 80 or so people have run the first ten, and therefore, from now on, it is—it’s great for the race itself—therefore I will—you will get everything free provided you have no breaks, no excuses, and you will have to run every year, and everything will be free.” I think the race costs quite a few bucks these days. You get a nice sweater—whatever, and so on. So, I thought anything for free is good [laughs]—like the ads in the TV. Free is good. Remember that one? Or, maybe you haven’t seen it.

So, I just—I became the Bolder Boulder Boldest, and I did that for the first 25 years, until my knees went out. Not because of that, but I used to just do that, and then get back into the mountains to do my training and my running. That’s the story. I now still go and stand and photograph like the kids—Greg’s scoutmaster [?]. He’s now in his 70s, and

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 27 he’s a Ph.D. in mathematics. He asked me—last year—to photograph him. I took a picture of him, and I said, “How are we going to see you?” Because we figured out his group and what his time would be, I knew roughly when he’d be there, but no I.D. on his body—with the thousands going by—was I able to take him. I finally said, “I tell you what—when you get close, and you know where I am—I’m always at the finish—” You’ve run the bolder Boulder, maybe?

46:07 (No, I’ve always rebelled against it. I don’t know why.)

That’s okay! No problem. Close at mile six and a bit, or whatever—it goes then, at the end of level, start to climb, and then you do a sharp turn, and get into the field. That’s where I stand—I ride my bicycle over there, and I take a stand. I own that stand portion. I get in front until people step in front of me, waiting for the person I have to photograph.

So, that’s how I do it now. Finally, I said, “David [?], why don’t do you just throw out your arms?” You know? And lo and behold, I’m—you know—have you ever tried to watch 50,000 people go past you?

(And pick out one—)

To recognize anybody? All of a sudden, I see the arms go up. I got my camera, because it only stays open for a few minutes—then shuts off again. I know, it’s old-fashioned film, and all that [laughs]. But anyway, there it is. So, I finally got it, and I got a picture of him. And then, not too much further down—all of a sudden—a girl comes past. She jumps over to me, gives me a big hug, kisses me on the cheek [laughs], and then turns around. I get a picture of her backwards, and I have no idea who she is. It took detective work, and I finally found out I had enough of the number, and I got back to management, and I said, “I know it’s difficult to find out.”

“Oh, no. Just—we’ll tell who that is.”

Got a name, and I called them. It turns out, she mistook me for somebody else [laughs]. But it was a great—it was nice! It’s the first time anybody’s leapt out of a crowd and kissed me on the cheek—anyway.

(So, when we were hiking, you’d said that there was a group of people that got tired of everyone always running on the pavement in town—)

Yes.

(—and that they started a series of mountain marathons? When was that?)

Not marathons, but races.

(Mountain races. Okay, so when was that?)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 28

Some of them were marathons.

(You started doing all of those, right? I mean—)

Well, the reason is that the guy who founded that group is David Felkley, and David Felkley lives in Nederland. He himself had some heart problems. He used to be a runner, but he had to cut that back. David Felkley founded the Boulder Road Runners group. You paid—I don’t know—about 15 bucks or something, but he would find races any part of Colorado, and take people off the main streets. We did Winter Park; we did Pikes Peak; we did Kendall Mountain; Imogene Pass. I mean, through his group—every two or three weeks, there would be a race somewhere—he didn’t organize the race, but he checked them for the right period, so we had a rest period in between—we saw parts of Colorado that we would never see by ourselves, you know? Because you travel to the other end of Colorado sometimes.

50:31 (How many miles a week were you running, do you think?)

Well, it’s only because of that—the running—I can’t answer that question exactly.

(It’s okay.)

You know?

(I don’t really—)

It’s difficult.

(Okay. But at some point, you graduated from six miles to 26 miles.)

Yeah. During one of those—Pikes Peak Marathon—where you run up from Colorado Springs, and you run up to the top of Pikes Peak, and back down again—

(Oh my gosh.)

It’s basically a marathon distance.

(Wow.)

But downhill. It’s easy—no [laughs]. I would finish up, and it was sometimes—I don’t know—four hours, or something like that—whatever it was. I would get there, and I’d been training before, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I was a total zombie at the end of that, always—Pikes Peak. I mean, for an hour or two [laughs], I was totally useless, but I made it. I didn’t try Pikes Peak until a guy who was always competing with me—in running—and we did other races—and he said, “Eck, why don’t you just do Pikes Peak with me?”

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 29

And I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll just—” Anyway, I finally did.

Pikes Peak, you have a choice. You either just go up, and not downhill—so you get Pikes Peak ascent or Pikes Peak roundtrip. Well, I started off with the ascent, and he was the one who told me—I think I had done the ascent. He was the one who told me, “Oh yeah. You should do it—the roundtrip.” And I’d never thought I could do it. So, anyway. So, the first time we ran, I beat him [laughs]—I’m sorry—on the way down. He’s a great guy, and so on, but he was also very competitive.

(Is he the one that invited you to do Everest? Or is that someone else?)

No, he didn’t invite me. I invited myself. So, we would do these different races, and in the end, I used my Toyota van. I once drove a car of seven runners—I think we drove to do Kendall Mountain, or something like that, out of Silverton, and so forth. Again, that’s a race up and down. The miners used to have a race. They’d get to the top, and they’d beat each other going down, but now they have a Jeep—a Jeep road that goes up, which is the way we would go. But you get to know places to stay at the bottom; you get to know the hotels after you do it about eight—ten times or something.

But Imogene Pass was a big one because you go from Ouray up over the mountain, and down to—come on—Ouray to [laughs]. Well, I’ll have to think about it.

(That’ll be your homework.)

Write it down. I have a momentary block. So, I got all these—The running started when I gave up the ski patrolling.

(Mm-hmm.)

That’s why it was so late—I was 47 when I started doing the little runs that got—Oh! The first run I ever did was—I was on the Red Cross Disaster Team—.

[discussion about needing to change the tape and the battery]

55:21 [End of Part B.]

[C].

00:00 (So, this is tape two of the second interview with Eckart Lemberg. You were talking about that there was a race where some of the people were still running with animals, which was an old-fashioned Colorado thing to do, you said?)

Yes.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 30

(So, a couple people had donkeys with them, and then some of the group got into trouble with hypothermia, and the donkeys were used to bring the people out?)

Correct.

(And what race was that?)

That was the Imogene Pass race.

(Wow.)

Up and over to Telluride.

(Okay.)

We’ve had wonderful weather at other times, but occasionally you get bitten by [laughs] some snow. Not too often.

(Did you ever have any drama with your health, with hypothermia, with breaking a bone, or—personally? Was there ever any scary—)

I don’t like to break bones [laughs]. It’s against my religious beliefs. I hope I never break a bone.

(Have you never broken a bone?)

Not really. I eat calcium every day [laughs]. I’m hoping. Citracal advertisement!

(When did Everest appear—the Everest Marathon, specifically—appear on your horizon? How did that happen?)

Well, Everest Marathon had been available—in existence, for a while. During that race—one of those races—I think people said, “Well, how many times did you do this?”

I said, “Well, about eight times or about ten times or something.”

It’s hard to—I could go back and record—but anyway. There’s usually a race table at a sports store, where they advertise. They usually have what are the latest in racing, etcetera, etcetera. You may have seen—maybe they don’t do it—I’m sure they do, but anyway. So, on this table, there was just this 8X10—people said, “Run the Everest Marathon.”

I said, “What?!” [laughs]—

(Yeah. That’s what I said in the mountains, “The what?!” People are lucky to live walking Everest.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 31

“You call this number.”

I called this number, and they said, “Well, we’re not runners, but we’re mountain climbers, and we were at this pub in Nepal, and they had these crazy people just planning to run a marathon in Nepal, etcetera, etcetera.” So, they said, “Yeah, we can’t help you, but this is the number you call in England.”

So, I got the number, called England, and then I said—that’s there it is. She said—well, it’s a woman organizer, Diana Penny, of the Everest—it’s now—by that stage, it was the Everest Marathon. I think they’d run one, but I was very close to race number two. I’d have to go check that. But anyway, it turns out—she said, “Well, what have you done?”

“Oh, well I ran Pikes Peak, and it goes up to 14,000 feet,” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And basically, well, “Give us all that information,” and I was approved because of the altitude stuff. Because other people came from England, Europe—I know they have altitude in Europe, too. In fact, a Swiss guy once won it.

They run, basically, every two years. It takes two years to get it organized, get the people, get the teams, get the Sherpas, etcetera—you know—and so forth. But it’s organized from Britain. So, Diana Penny Sherpani—she married a Nepali. He’s a manager for Sherpa groups, when you—you know—etcetera, etcetera. Sherpa. He’s a Sherpa. They are naturally inclined mountain, and trained—instinctively. They know what to do in the mountains, and they’re just excellent.

She married this Sherpa, and they’ve had one baby since. I think they had it on an airplane flying between England and Nepal or something [laughs] because—you know— he lives here—sorry. He lives in Nepal—gets the teams organized—and she’s in England, and every now and then they come together. The kid’s now about 18, and so on.

05:43 It turned out that that race was like a military operation. They put you up at a hotel here, and then you get out, and you’ve got all your survival gear. You pack all your gear in big army kit bags, which is the only way porters can carry it. It takes a long time to get all the gear together, and then you hike up. You—by bus—are driven as far as buses will go in Nepal, and then you get out and walk about several weeks—two-and-a- half weeks—walk over 100 miles to get from the end of the bus-line to the beginning of the race, which is Sir Edmund Hillary’s base-camp at 17,000 feet. All do-able for people in Colorado. It’s easy [laughs].

(All right. Do you run—do you actually run this marathon?)

Oh yeah.

(Really?)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 32

[laughs]

(You really run?)

Particularly if there’s a bison behind you—no [laughs].

(It looks like you’re running—)

Not bisons—they’re not bisons.

(—to the finish.)

You start off—Well, so you go in tents because there’s no accommodation for 100 people, about 80 of whom are runners. The rest are support. They’re doctors. There’s a doctor for every group of eight runners, or so. They pick a doctor, and that’s another funny one because there’s a connection here. It so happened, that one of the doctors on her team actually works at the Boulder Med Center.

(Really?)

He does.

(Who is that?)

When I wanted to do the race again, he was the one who had to prove that I could do it. That’s another long story.

(And who is he?)

It’s Ron Beetham. His father just died. Dr. Ron Beetham. I think he still—I need to visit him again. Talk about a coincidence. You know? Of all the people in the world, and she’s in England—somehow he got into this.

(So, you were both there from Boulder, basically.)

Yes.

(Wow.)

Yeah, by pure accidental-ation. Don’t print that.

([laughs] Do you remember what year your first—did you do this more than once?)

I did it three times.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 33

(Wow. What year was the first one?)

[laughs]

(Do you rememb—sorry. Just if you remember.)

You know, I remembered everything until now. I’m beginning to forget some of the dates.

(That’s okay.)

Please, please put down “Action Item.”

(Okay.)

I ran race number one, and it was quite an experience because we camped overnight in tents because there wasn’t that much accommodation for that big a team. That worked fine. The Sherpas would get up in the morning. They’d bring us tea to the tent, etcetera, etcetera. But you had to be right with the group at the time, and you get used to it. It’s a military operation. To my knowledge, in the many years that they’ve run that race, they have never lost anybody, because they’ve always had doctors in the group, they know exactly what to prepare, and how to prevent accidents. They give you lectures on altitude sickness.

But I never had a problem with altitude sickness, and therefore there are several people going up—runners—they go up, they get sick, they get a Sherpa to walk down with them, sleep overnight, at a place down below. Some of those people then came back up again. They ran the race, and did well. There’s one woman who won the women’s time, but she had that temporary problem. What they do—they camp you at 15,000 feet, and you stay there for two days—I think two nights, something like that—to get acclimated or acclimatized. Which is the right word?

(They’re both right.)

10:42 Thank you. That’s how people—when you get to the—the day before the race you actually go all the way to the start of the race, and climb up the adjacent peak, which is about—between—okay, you start at 17,000 feet—you just hike up, just hike up to—

[Jenna:] (Is that this picture?)

[Sara:] (Well, this is Everest, yeah.)

[Jenna:] (Is the adjacent peak in this picture?)

[Sara:] (Is the adjacent—she’s asking if—)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 34

It’s behind—oh, it’s a picture of me—where is that picture?—behind—well, there’s a mountain behind me—no, it’s one—

[Jenna:] (Is the adjacent peak in this picture? That’s what I mean.)

[Sara:] (I think that’s actually Everest. Here’s the pointer, sir, if you want to say anything about this picture.)

That may just be a fellow in the way.

(You can point to the top of Everest, too.)

Yeah, I believe that’s it there.

(The adjacent peak?)

Yeah, but it’s in the opposite direction. The peak behind me is about 25,000 feet, and one of the English runners was up there, and he played—not the flute—but some instrument, some—what did he play? I think he’s got the world record for altitude for playing at 18,000 feet, or something like that.

(Wow. [to Jenna]: Did you get this picture already? I think we should. [to Lemberg]: Well, is there anything else you want to share about racing?)

Well, just to say—just to finish quickly: I did race number one and loved it. Race number two, I got together here—through the race circuit—Sheldon Larsen. Sheldon Larsen, himself, at age 28, or 26-to-28 had actually won—I believe it was the Pikes Peak outright. I was only competing in my age group, okay? So, if I won something, it was in my age group.

(Okay.)

Although accidentally, at Winter Park, I once accidentally won [laughs] because several of us picked the wrong trail. Instead of going to the right, we went to the left, and all of a sudden they come—“Ooh, this is the finish!”—so I pushed like mad to get to the head of this little group that was with me, and then we found out that we hadn’t done a 10K, we’d done an 8K. So, I accidentally won one of the outright races.

But, Sheldon and I then—he runs twice as fast as I do because he’s done—I would do a 25-mile race—this is one of the local ones up in the mountains here—not here, but a car- drive away. At the moment, I’ve forgotten that name. And he could do a 50-miler, and I have to get the name of that one. There’s a prison not far away there, in—one of our— it’s about a half-a-day’s drive, if not a day’s drive to go up.

(Just can’t think of the name of it, I’m sorry.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 35

Yeah, but I have to look at some maps, it’s so easy. He ran—Sheldon ran the 50, and I did the 25. When he did that, he ran through the same start and did it again. I think he won that one. So, he did amazing things. But we would train here, and he’d go up the mountain, and I’d be with him, and then he’d go up and then come back [laughs]. He’d go up again, so he would run twice as far as I would. Then, on the way down—one time, we were coming past the pond—no, before the pond—you’ve been up to the pond, up here? Up the microwave road—the fire—at the top of this street here is the access to the fire access road that go to the micro tower from University of Colorado, where you can look back down onto Boulder, and at that point, ah—what was I going to say? We were coming down from a training run, and we got above this—on that way up, there’s a pond, and then you up, up, up, and then you get to where I met you—you must have come up that way—

16:03 (Yeah.)

—from Canyon.

(Mm-hmm.)

Okay. We were coming down, and it was before the pond on the road there that’s coming down on your left. I was roaring down, and he said, “Lemberg, you’re going to beat your knees up! Slow it down!” He was right. However—So, we trained together, and on the second marathon—four years after the first run—because of jobs and things, I had to do it every four year increments. At that stage, I was already 65.

(Wow.)

The point is—that was the last time you could run. Lloyd’s of London had an age limit of 65 through that. Are we running out of—

[Jenna:] No, I just wondered which race was this picture in?

[Sara:] Yeah. The one where you’re at the finish line in blue?

Oh, that’s Everest Marathon.

Is it the first, second, or—first, second, or third time?

Oh! I think it was the—I’d have to think about it. It’s either the second or the third time. I’d have to do some study.

(So, you were either 61 or 65—)

Yes.

(In that picture.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 36

It would be the second one. I would be 65.

(Oh. But they let you do it again, after that? You cheated?! How did you do it? How did you get in?)

When I came from that race, the—there’s a fixed frozen camera at the finish, because people—when it takes you eight hours to run the race—they’re streamed out. It’s twice as long. If you’ve run a marathon in four hours, it’ll take you eight hours to do it up there—

(Okay.)

—because of the altitude. And so, I got down, finished—you know, throw your arms up, and all that—and that was photographed on the official. At least, we think. But anyway, the guy said, “You know, it’ll be months before you get the photograph—the official one. I see you have your camera. Do you want to do it again?”—[laughs]—“Do you want to do it again with your camera? Then, you got a picture right away.”

“Okay.”

So, I put my survival pack back on again. You have to run with survival gear—extra sweaters, and extra hats, and things like that, and etcetera. I mean, they hand you water, so you don’t need to carry, actually, any water. I don’t think we ever did, because you— at three miles, there’s an aid station.

I said, “Okay.”

So, I went back. It was a sort of sandy stuff. There are some steps down. Well, I went back to the sandy bit, with my backpack, and ran my race—threw my arms up. Photographed me with my camera. Months later, I got the race results. I put a phone call in to Diana. I said, “Diana! My time’s all wrong.”

She said, “Well, I can’t change it. I had to give what they gave me.”

You know, that’s obvious. I finally figured out the time between my actual race finish, and my re-do—that’s time they—that’s the official time. I said, “It’s ten minutes more!” I said, “You gotta let me run it again!” [laughs].

20:17 (And she agreed?!)

Not not readily. She said, “Oh no.”

I explained it to her. I said, “That’s—this is what happened. It had to be right.”

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 37

She said, “Well, I know you can run it. You know, you’ve done it twice. I know you can run it. However, I’ve got to talk to Lloyd’s of London.” And it took months.

(Is that when the doctor helped you? Dr. Beetham.)

Yeah. I’m just coming to that.

(Sorry.)

She finally got the okay, but it was hell to pay for her. But she got it, because she convinced them. “However,” she said, “I will only get the permission if you get a doctor’s certificate that says you can do it.”

So, when I heard that, I said, “Well, would you approve—you already know Ron Beetham?” [laughs]. See how coincidences happen?

“Oh yes, sir. Ron Beetham would be fine.”

I went to Ron Beetham, and all of a sudden he found the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He said, “You will do—your primary care guy give you a complete check up, you will do a treadmill test, and then you will run 15 miles with me in the mountains” because we had met on Imogene Pass, and stuff like that. At one stage, I beat him because I was ahead—no he was ahead of me, and then he was recovering. I caught up with him, and went on. That was the last time he ever didn’t—[laughs]. That’s the last time he didn’t. He went into training, and thereafter I could never catch him again. So, that was the story with him.

And me, he said 15 miles with me. So, I did test #1; I did test #2—the treadmill worked okay—and then when I got to the thing, it was a big, sunny Sunday. We’d had four inches of snow. I get on the phone, and say “Ron, how about this morning?”

“I’m too tired.”

So, next Sunday: nice sunny morning, still the four inches of snow.

“All right, let’s go.”

So, we roamed through the mountains here, and we had to make like 15 miles or so. We did all kinds of back things—keeping on this level. I had to put up my very best front, you know. Then, at the end of it, “Well, that’s it. Bye, Ron.”

So, I didn’t hear until afterwards that—somebody else said—he’d said, “At the end of it, he wasn’t even tired.” [laughs].

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 38

He didn’t—Oh yeah, I was tired! So finally, he approved it. That way, four years later, at 69, I got to run it again.

(Great.)

Of course, my time was a little slower than four years before, because well—was that the one? Oh yeah, we had snow during the night. That sounds horrible, but actually—before the race—they’d either have it in springtime—they used to have it only in the springtime. Then they decided to do either spring or fall, and they’d alternate back and forth. So, that’s why it’s—you have to follow the book to see which it’s going to be next time.

We actually ran, but I had already booked with Nima [?] a meeting afterwards, to go into some remote areas, where only farmers existed, etcetera, etcetera. That would be a start for the best trip afterwards. I don’t know, but anyway that’s what was arranged.

But there was snow on the ground when we got to the monastery, on the way uphill. So, going uphill, during the race, it’s nice to have snow because what it does—it settles all the dust, and on the path where the yaks have pooped, and so forth—that gets mixed with the dust, and that’s what you breath in. So, you like to have that settled out. That was nice about that. But when we started going up this steep ascent to the Tengboche—the monastery—the big famous one that had been rebuilt after a big fire, which burned it all down.

25:41 We were there about—about halfway through the race—about 13 miles—and I was going up—and in fact, one of my competitor guys—I think it’s the guy who plays the horn, or whatever he was playing—the clarinet. I think it was maybe the clarinet. He was coming up behind me, so I thought I’d move over to the left on this approach, but the tourists had been down, and they had packed the snow. When I moved to the left, suddenly my feet just flipped up—both of them—flipped up in the air. I always got mountain tread on my—you know—on—particularly on that race—you know, heavy, snow tire tread. I fell on—which arm? One arm. I think the left arm. I fell on that, but the trouble is I must have thrown my other arm up, and that knocked him off. He claims, I—“He broke two of my ribs!” Or something—I don’t know [laughs]. Blamed me for— I don’t know.

I was on the ground, and I thought “Uh-oh, is that dislocated?” But no, no—it was still stuck there, but it didn’t feel so good. So, I managed to get up. He had already gotten up, too. And I—“Oh, it’s okay,” so I just stuck that left arm—it didn’t have much strength—in my belt. I ran the next 13 miles, all the way to the finish, with one arm swinging for balance.

Finished it, and then I had Nima[?] to recover. I knew it was weak, but I didn’t know how weak, and therefore I just—it was booked with Nima. We got into the bus, and drove up to the end, and went to this very remote village. Sometimes tourists get lost. They get attacked by roving bands. That’s why Nima says—We actually picked a farmer up. He was by himself, and you join a group of nice people. That’s more secure and

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 39 safe. But anyway, we did that, got to a holy lake, went up there, again into snow, but Nima had to help me with my backpack—put it on. We did that. At the end of that, we—no—we actually hiked up the ridge to where all the farms were on that, and then down, and actually finished up walking onto the road back to Kathmandu. So, it was a long trek afterwards. How I did that, I don’t know, but it’s—

(When you got back, did you have your arm checked out? Was there anything wrong?)

Oh, yeah. I wasn’t going to have anybody there touch it. So, I got back and saw Dr. [Jordan] Stoll, my favorite surgeon. He’s checked me over a few times. Cut me open several times. He said, “Put your arms out front.” He said, “I’m going to pry them apart.” And I’m [sound of pain]. He said, “See me in two weeks.”

(For surgery?)

Yeah. He cut open my left arm, and found that two of the tendons were not attached to the rotator cuff.

(Oh my gosh.)

So, he said—first of all, he’s a wonderful guy—beforehand he does any operation, he says, “Would you mind if we say a prayer before we do?” Isn’t that unusual? I thought it was wonderful. I had my ex there, and my—one of my kids, and that was great. So, he said afterwards, “Well, I found this piece of tendon. It was floating around there, and I found a hole, so I just stuffed it into there. Made it work.” He’s a wonderful guy. Don’t make him look stupid, like he’s—

30:26 (He was just joking.)

Yes.

(Yes. So—)

But then, months—years later, I was going skiing with people. I stepped out of a hotel here, and I was just supposed to ski up at one of our big, wide ski areas—invitation of my financial lady, from Chicago. I stepped away from—there was a hamburger place right across the street, I thought the heck with—I’ll just get a cheapie hamburger, that’s okay. That was in the night, and it was a bit snowy, but anyway I turned around and left the place, but the place was ill lit, and suddenly I’m stepping into a big hole that I hadn’t seen in the darkness. I fell on the right arm.

(Oh no. Did you do the same thing?)

It actually did the same thing on the right arm, but I went skiing the next day anyway. They never figured out why I was a bit slow skiing.

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 40

(So, did you run—you must have run until you were about 71, and then your knees finally gave out? Because you said you ran for, basically, 25 years. Right?)

That’s the Bolder Boulder.

(Yeah.)

Oh no. I did run after I got back from these various things. I did run Imogene [Pass] again, and—I’d have to look. It’s just—

(But now, you just troll the hills above your house hiking and making many friends?)

But they’re all married! That’s the problem [laughs].

(You’re silly.)

And so, yeah—I met this lovely Swedish girl [laughs]. Oh, she’s beautiful. She’s about my age. She’s about 45 [laughs]. We started talking, and in the end she said—we’re talking—I was just resting, because I get—now I’m beginning to get tired occasionally. I don’t know why that is, but the mountain has changed slope, you know?

([laughs])

It’s got this—it’s got this big problem with—this Bear Mountain—is suffering from a geological shift, because every time I go up it gets a little steeper [laughs]. Steps. Oh, other people say, “Oh, I know that feeling.” You have to take these big steps. Anyway—

(Eckart, that feels perfect to me. I mean, you and I will probably talk more, like if we do the book, but thank you. I think for the oral history program this has been wonderful.)

I’m so sorry [laughs].

(No, it’s been—)

I keep going on—

(Please don’t apologize—)

And on and on—

(It’s been fabulous. Thank you.)

But, so I have a lot of doctors in the—

(Yeah.)

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 41

Ron Beetham, and—I need—in fact, I need to call him. His dad died not so long ago.

(Yeah.)

And so forth, but—Dr. Stoll, just wonderful. And Andy Pruitt, from Sports Medicine. They seem to like to roll out the carpet when I come. I don’t know. I don’t deserve that. [laughs]. I don’t deserve that, but I take their ads—I hand out to people. I said, “I got knee problems, sorry. You can overtake.” These days, I’m telling people, “Okay”—I step back, and say, “High-speed traffic, please go on,” but it was not too long ago where a group of—whole bunch of nice ladies were coming up, and some guys, too. I think, maybe, I told you that, already. So, I thought “Oh, they’re going to go faster.” I mean, in the good-old-days, nobody went by me going up that mountain. I mean, it just wasn’t done.

([laughs])

Like the little Chinese girl—that was my—the little 14-year-old that was on my tail—I think I told that one.

(I guess so, maybe. Yeah.)

I hoofed it, and I got to the saddle, and I said, “I’ve got to turn around, and see who this is—this school—13-year-old is.” Well, the 13-year-old turned out to be about 35, Japanese. She’s delightful. But so, we did hike occasionally together [laughs]. Until I told Aoki[?]—“Got to not do this by yourself. It’s just too dangerous.” People, when they know, even so—because I’ve met a mountain lion up there. That’s another story. [laughs].

35:09 ([laughs])

I’ve met Forest Rangers—and I was by myself. This was in—Well, at the time when we had a parade—It was Labor Day, I think. Is that when you have marching parade in Louisville or something? The kids were in this parade, and I had to be back. So, at eight o’clock, I was close to the summit of Bear Peak. Just about ten minutes away from the summit. I’m by myself, and all of a sudden—I’m going up—I said, “Gee, I feel I’m being watched.” So, I look around. Nothing there. Look around, and finally get—run to here. And there, about 40 feet away, is this mountain lion just standing there looking at me.

(Oh my.)

I’ve filmed them at the zoo, so I can compare. It was a female, compared to male. I had filmed male, female, and so forth. And I thought, “Uh-oh. Time to get out my $30 spray can.” So, I was fiddling with—I was fiddling with my backpack. Of course, it didn’t

Transcript of oral history interview with Eckart Lemberg, OH 1747V page 42 come out. So, I started talking to her. I told her how beautiful she was. So, she just stood there. Feet planted. Not a movement. And, you know—feet planted—and it looked to me—she told me, “I want to cross the trail. I’ve already had breakfast.” So I— I kept shuffling, but I thought, “It’s time to, very quietly, walk backwards.”

But, I was on some gravel. So, as I’m walking backwards—all of a sudden, my feet slid forward about a foot. I slid forward—zzzzit!—she hissed at me. She said, “Don’t come any closer.” [laughs].

(You’re like, “I didn’t mean to!”)

So, I took another few minutes to apologize [laughs] because I could see that she wasn’t going to do anything if I didn’t do anything.

(Right.)

In the end, I thought, “Gee, we’re not supposed to make friends with these.” I finally got it out. I had it in my hand. It’s one of those $30 things that’ll spray pepper for—heaven knows how far. Well, whatever it was, there was a gentle breeze blowing around the mountain, and I was—thought, “Uh-oh. Well, maybe I’ll just scare her away.” That was the most stupid thing I ever did, because I gave it a squirt—I gave her a squirt with this. All I could see is this yellow streak out—dddzzzit, boink!—wasn’t even close. I came to the conclusion, you finally—almost made a fatal mistake, because if the wind had changed, and blown that into her eyes, she would have jumped me. Because, you know—

(She would have felt attacked, yeah.)

She would have attacked. So, I decided, “This ain’t going to work.” I had this thing in my hand, and I very gently turned around, and eventually walked out of sight. But I learned one thing: If you have a spray, you watch where the wind’s blowing to begin with. Otherwise, you’ll spray yourself. The other thing is: they’re useless unless they’re already on top of you, and then you have a chance to use the spray if you still can.

(Yeah. Wow.)

But I’ve talked to Forest Rangers since then—“Oh, wow! I’ve been a Forest Ranger for 100 years, and I’ve never seen a lion!” You know?

(What an awesome—)

But anyway—

(—life you’ve had. [laughs])

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I slowly—I slowly, then, just walked around, went to the saddle—not the saddle, the tree- line, and I saw a couple of guys there, and I just told them—It was around, you know, 8 o’clock in the morning. They were already there. I said, “I want you to know there’s a nice, friendly pussycat down there”—just to be aware. But by the time I’d got that strip up—it’s where aspen trees grow. Before you get to the top of—the top of the mountain, there’s a bunch of aspens, and it’s somewhere in there where I met my lady-friend. By the time—I just turned around then—I said, “I’ve got to get back. The kids are at this parade.” And I just came down. I haven’t seen a lion for 20 years.

40:31 (Well, there’s a few people who—that was the last thing they ever saw, so you got pretty lucky.)

I know.

(Wow.)

I know.

40:44 [End of Part C. End of interview.]

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